An Oath of Dogs

by Wendy N. Wagner

  “Where will you be?”

  The woman paused, confused. “What?”

  “Where will I find you when I’m done?”

  “Oh.” Winnie stopped and thought, perhaps poring through some kind of mental schedule. No doubt she kept busy, overseeing Canaan Lake’s many educational facilities. “I suppose I’ll be in my office. Building B.” She pointed at the smallest of the structures, where a pot of scraggly primroses brightened the doorway. Standish had no doubt Winnie planted them herself.

  Standish turned back to the array of cables and comm boxes. Whoever had installed the comm lines had not been the kind of wiring genius that Duncan Chambers had been. It might take her all day just to find the place where the main line entered the school grounds, and she’d probably need to dig to do so.

  The shrill roar of children’s voices made Standish glance over her shoulder. The double doors on the side of the largest school building had opened, and a seeming flood of children spilled out. A woman and a slender, bearded man followed behind them. The man held a clear plastic case close to his chest. Some of the shorter kids leaped around him, obscuring the box’s contents in their puppyish delight.

  Standish stared at the man. His straw hat and black, simple clothes marked him as a Believer. What was he doing here at the public school? The Believers had their own school on the far end of the lake. The children milling about him seemed to know him well.

  The group rounded the end of the building, and Standish, unsure of her motivations, followed after them. Hattie didn’t need any encouragement to come along. She had grown up in a Believer community filled with children and seemed to miss their noise and chaos.

  The group had paused at the edge of the school grounds, twenty or so children of a variety of ages, quieter now as they fell into a semi-circle around the two adults. The forest crowded up against the property line as if it were as eager as the children to see what was happening. Standish found a spot behind two of the taller children.

  “It’s almost time to open the box, so we need to be as quiet and still as we can. We want the butterflies to feel safe enough to come out.” The Believer man put his hands on his knees, hunkering down so his eyes were closer to a child’s level. “Now what do you think the butterflies are going to do when they get outside?”

  Some kids called out, but most raised their hands, and the man pointed at one of these well-behaved children.

  “They look for food!”

  “That’s right,” he said, pitching his voice a little lower as a reminder they, too, needed to be quiet. “And where are they going to find their food?”

  “On farms,” somebody called out, and a mutter of agreement rolled around the group.

  “Don’t forget to raise your hand,” the woman reminded them, her voice stern. She had the solid, soothing presence of a person who dealt with children on a routine basis.

  “On farms,” the man repeated. “That’s right. Remember the flowers I brought in this morning? Well, those flowers are growing right now on my farm, and these butterflies are going to fly there as fast as they can so they can eat their lunch.”

  A hand shot up. The man looked at the boy with the raised hand and hesitated a moment. Standish eyed the boy. He was nine-ish, still young enough to be cute, but old enough to have learned to like being the center of attention.

  The woman spoke. “Yes, Hallowell?”

  “My dad says butterflies are alien creatures that don’t belong on Huginn. He says they should only be allowed in labs. Why do you Fleshies keep them?”

  “Hallowell, come here,” the woman snapped. “You will apologize to Mr Williams right now.”

  Mr Williams raised a placating hand. “No, it’s a valid point, even if rudely put. Butterflies are alien, Hallowell. But so are we. There are things we need to survive on this world, things that Huginn can’t provide for us. Why, if it weren’t for these butterflies, I wouldn’t be able to grow hardly anything. And then what would we eat?”

  He drew himself to his true height, and for the first time noticed Standish. His hazel eyes traveled from her face down to Hattie, and his smile tightened a bit. But he turned his attention back to the children. “Speaking of which, these butterflies are mighty hungry. Let’s turn them loose.”

  The class fell silent as he knelt on the ground and removed the lid from the plastic case. The creatures within sat quietly a moment, feeling the air on their pale blue wings.

  The breeze quickened and the first butterfly floated up on it, hardly needing to flap. And then the others lifted out of the box, shimmering, lovely. No one spoke. Perhaps no one breathed. Every child, even the adults, craned their heads back in wonder as the butterflies took to their new freedom.

  Then someone shoved someone else, and the usual noise of childhood came over the clearing, and the teacher was waving, and the children were running away, someone crying, leaving Mr Williams and Standish alone at the edge of the oppressive forest.

  Standish cleared her throat. “That was beautiful.”

  He nodded. “They are marvelous creatures, aren’t they?”

  Her duties and the open telecommunications shed called to her, but not as loudly as curiosity. “How did you find butterflies that could live on Huginn? Wasn’t it difficult? I mean, bees don’t seem to thrive here.”

  He did not look up from the box on the ground, now emptied of blue wonder and filled with only branches, old leaves, dirt. He shook it out. “Trial and error, I suppose. Believers were the first settlers in Canaan Lake. We’ve been here over a hundred years now, and we brought pollinators with us on our very first ship. This kind of butterfly is the most successful we’ve managed to breed.”

  “Oh?”

  “The first generation did all right, and we’ve been encouraging them along ever since. No — not with some kind of genetic manipulation.” He stopped Standish as if he had sensed the question rising up in her mind. “Just ordinary animal husbandry. We help along God’s work, Miss Standish. We don’t usurp it.”

  “How did you know my name?”

  “It’s a small town.” He got to his feet. “If you don’t think everyone in Canaan Lake knew there was a new communications manager at Songheuser headquarters, a woman with a dog, before you’d even unlocked your front door, you don’t know small towns.”

  Perhaps he meant to put her off with such words. But there was something tremendously appealing about the man and his frankness. He was good looking, in an old-fashioned kind of way, and his hazel eyes were steady and intelligent.

  On instinct, she stepped forward, holding out her hand. “Well, I don’t know small towns, Mr Williams. I grew up in a city, and I’ve never lived anyplace smaller than a quarter of a million people. I’m in over my head here.”

  For a second, she wasn’t sure if he would take her hand, but he put out his own and shook with a firm grip. His skin felt warm and dry, his calluses as pebbly as Hattie’s paw pads. “Welcome to Canaan Lake, Miss Standish. It’s good to actually meet you and this fabled animal.”

  He hunkered down to look at Hattie. “You’re a beauty, aren’t you?”

  She flopped onto the ground and rolled over to expose her belly.

  “She’s trained to sit,” Standish complained. “You’ve got some kind of way with dogs, Mr Williams.” She found herself wanting to like him, just from Hattie’s clear appreciation of the man.

  “You can call me Matthias.” He stood up. “There have been problems with dogs in Canaan Lake, you know.”

  “I saw it firsthand last night. A pack of wild dogs running right down Main Street.”

  “Not the first time, but the first in a long while. I heard Rob McKidder died.”

  Standish nodded. And then, maybe because Hattie had taken to him or perhaps because she knew the Believers of the Word Made Flesh knew animals better than any group of humans in the galaxy, she asked him what she’d been thinking all day, a question she didn’t want to even consider, let alone ask someone else. “That won�
�t happen to Hattie, will it Mist… Matthias? I mean, what makes the dogs go bad?”

  He stared down at the white shepherd, his face serious but impossible to read. Hattie wriggled happily. “Keep her inside.”

  Standish opened her mouth and then closed it.

  “Mr Matthias! Mr Matthias, did I miss the butterflies?”

  A slender figure burst out of the trees, her blond hair white in the sunshine. Olive looked less like a wild creature today and more like some sort of forest fairy. Standish nearly expected wings to sprout from her shoulders.

  Matthias smiled up at the girl. “Olive! It’s good to see you, my young friend. I’m sorry to say that you did miss the butterflies.” He stood up and Hattie rolled over to sit properly beside him. The green tuft of moss stuck to her ear ruined the pose a bit.

  “Oh, Miss Kate and Hattie. I see you’ve met Mr Matthias.” The girl put out her hand for the dog to smell. Greens and pinks stained her palm, and Hattie took her time snuffling over it. “Mr Matthias is my second-best friend. I helped him with the butterfly box. I know all the good places to pick leaves for the caterpillars.”

  “That’s why I’m so surprised you missed their launch,” Matthias replied. “School is important, you know.”

  “So is traipsing,” Olive said. “I know more about the creatures and plants of Canaan Lake than anybody, except maybe Duncan Chambers, only he’s gone.” She shrugged. “Plus, I had to help Chameli with her colors. She pays me pretty well, and bills are due at the end of the month.”

  Standish’s eyes met Matthias’s. Standish liked the Whitleys — who wouldn’t? — but she didn’t like the sound of Olive worrying about bills. It wasn’t any of her business, Standish reminded herself. But it wasn’t Matthias Williams’s business to worry about Olive either, and she could see the concern filling up his eyes.

  He glanced at the sun. It sat low in the sky, and a phalanx of gray clouds moved toward it. The rain break hadn’t even lasted a full day. “I’d guess the school day is nearly over. How about I walk you home, Olive? I wouldn’t mind seeing your mama or some of your new artwork.”

  “I can drive you,” Standish said. “That’s a long way.”

  “No,” he answered. “You have your work to finish, Miss Standish. But I do have some papers for you — some things Duncan Chambers left at my place, a project we were working on together. I hope you’ll stop by in the next day or two. It’s the farm closest to the junction of the Main Road and the gravel access road.”

  “Of course,” she said, curiosity springing up inside her like a dog hearing the jingle of its leash. How did everyone know Duncan Chambers? He was the thread sewing everyone together in this town.

  “Let’s take my shortcut,” Olive said. “Goodbye, Miss Kate! Goodbye, Hattie!”

  She waved at the girl and called back: “Goodbye, Olive! Nice meeting you, Matthias.”

  He tipped his hat and slipped into the forest after the girl. The bracken rustled and settled behind them, and after a moment she couldn’t see either of them, only the dense greenery of the woods.

  Evil grows in us the same way a crack grows in a ceramic mug. Our flaws stretch thin in the course of our lives and only our faith can keep our fragile selves entire. When things go wrong here, there is no Satan whispering evil into our ears, tempting us to misbehave. There is only our own uncertainty in our belief.

  — from MEDITATIONS ON THE MEANING OF EVIL, by MW Williams

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE LITTLE MOON HAD SET, and it would be hours before the sun or Wodin nosed up in the sky. The lake lay evenly in its bed, not yet tugged eastward by Wodin’s hungry grasp. The leader of the dog pack sat on the beach, breathing in the quiet town. A few blocks away, a clatter announced another dog knocking over a compost barrel. The leader ignored the noise. His nose had something to tell him.

  There were new smells these days that he wanted to understand. Some came and went, bitter and bright smells, like the fear-stink of humans or the harsh burn of the bad-smelling bright-light place on the other side of town. But there were two pleasant scents he kept running into, and those smells had called him to the lake’s rocky shore. The scents twined together, each one balancing the other like halves of a whole.

  He touched his nose to the ground again, drawing in the perfume of fresh urine. Definitely a dog. A female.

  But everything about her scent confused him. He could not make sense of what she had been eating or where she had been. She was alone, he knew that much. She had no pack to help her hunt or to watch her back.

  He would have to change that.

  PETER LOCKED the office door behind him. He liked HQ on Saturdays, the halls quiet, the lights dialed low. The terrariums didn’t require daily maintenance, but he enjoyed monitoring them, and he liked the energy of the weekend office. The building felt imbued with a quiet purpose, as if the work inside slumbered, ready to flourish once the work week rolled around again.

  The whole place reminded him of the chrysalis sitting on his windowsill, waiting, a vessel for change ready to unfold at the perfect moment. He’d done some reading on butterflies and moths, but he had to admit he was no closer to solving the mystery of the little caterpillar than he’d been the day he’d found it in the woods. It might be a simple anomaly, or it might represent a major adaptation, the kind of adaptation that allowed alien invaders to get a toehold in a new ecosystem. The thought troubled him. Molds and mildews were bad enough, but at least no higher-order life forms had found a niche here on Huginn. He hated the idea of his beautiful fungal world being chewed to bits by bugs and beasts that didn’t belong here.

  Peter paused on the landing, knowing where his thoughts were leading and not sure he wanted to accept their course. He’d thought more than once about using his free time to continue studying Sector 12. The company might not approve of the activity, but they wouldn’t fire him for it. And there was nothing else to distract him from the work — his only friend on-planet was likely dead, and he hadn’t had a lover since his disastrous attempt with Niketa. If he was going to be alone, he might as well be doing something to advance his career.

  He ran back up to his office for his field pack and then hurried to the basement, past the operations office with Joe Holder’s latest motivational poster spread across the door. He glanced out the glass door leading to the motor pool. The rain had let up a little, and he could see the pink of stray rock-eater lichen growing around the closest edge of the parking lot.

  It looked like a sign. He’d been spinning his wheels since he got to Huginn, following orders, waiting for Duncan, waiting for direction. No longer.

  Outside, the air smelled of the breeze coming off the lake, tangy and electrical. He drew it in deep. This was what being alive tasted like: wild, free, and purposeful.

  Peter waved at the security guard sitting in the gate house at the far end of the parking lot and then looked around for his favorite rig. He’d never bothered buying his own UTV, hadn’t even considered getting a moped. The town of Canaan Lake measured four kilometers from one city limit to the other, and Songheuser didn’t mind if he used the company rigs for trips to Space City. Most of the other employees felt differently, of course. A ten-year loan from Nicolay Scott’s car lot didn’t seem to bother anyone else. Maybe they hadn’t had to sell their abuela’s farm to pay off her creditors. Maybe they hadn’t married a woman who ran up credit card bills until they nearly lost their hard-earned condo. Peter preferred freedom these days, and he didn’t mind using a borrowed UTV.

  He had grown used to getting his favorite model whenever he felt like it, though. But the spot where he’d parked the newest UTV, the white one with the blue interior, stood vacant. He tapped his ID on the door handle of another rig and waited for authorization, wondering just who had beaten him to the lot. He tossed the field pack onto the bench seat — he preferred the bucket seats on the newer models — and slid inside. The vehicle started easily enough, but as he rolled toward the gate, he knew he’d got
ten the one with the crap suspension. It would be a rough drive out to Sector 12.

  “Hey, Lou,” he called, sticking his head out the window as he waited for the guard to raise the gate arm and let him out. The dreadlocked guard looked up from his hand unit, carefully tucked a stylus into his shirt pocket, and then got to his feet.

  “Dr Bajowski. Nice morning, huh? I heard we might get a couple of sun breaks before the afternoon downpour.”

  “I sure hope so.” Peter smiled. He liked Lou’s relaxed take on his job. It was a pleasant relief from guys like Brett Takas, who guarded the office like it was the governor’s mansion. “Hey, did you see who took the newest rig? The white one with the blue interior?”

  Lou laughed. “Someone took your favorite, huh?”

  Peter felt a twinge of embarrassment. “Something like that.”

  “Well, she couldn’t have known. The new lady,” Lou added in explanation.

  “Kate Standish?”

  “The one with the dog, yeah.” Lou tapped a button and the gate arm lifted. “Too bad — she only beat you by about half an hour.”

  “Thanks, Lou,” Peter called back as he rolled through the gate. “Good luck with the sun breaks!”

  The cabin jolted as he hit the first pothole in the driveway. He bit back an urge to curse Kate Standish for getting up early. It wouldn’t make his backside feel any better.

  HUGINN, Day 52

  Today was a disaster. I write this sitting in the kitchen shack, with the utero tanks waiting in the cellar below. The weather remains far colder than the climate survey suggested. We’re going to have to incubate some of the livestock now, instead of waiting for the fields to establish — we need the meat too badly. Rations are tight enough that the littles are beginning to look more like scarecrows than children.