“Um,” said the boy eloquently.
“Woof,” replied the android dog.
Some of the sheep turned their wooly attention to him for a moment, saw he wasn’t moving or even looking at them in a threatening way, and then went back to their grass salads.
“Thanks for herding them away, Doggy. I need to take them home now, if you don’t mind.”
“Woof,” MO-126 said again. He didn’t mind at all, but the boy would probably need help. The android dog rose to all four feet slowly so as not to frighten the skittish sheep or the sheepish boy.
The stupid-looking kid spread his arms and tried urging the sheep back toward their enclosure. They ignored him, for the most part, seemingly reluctant to leave their new found grazing spot. The android dog barked sharply and darted toward them. This got them moving. Now, it was just a matter of getting them to go in the right direction. This also provided few problems, and soon the boy closed the gate behind them. The matter of the broken fence was also being tended to. The old man returned with a younger one, and they began making temporary repairs with rope and tree branches. It wasn’t much of a fence, but it should suffice to deter sheep. The gond stood complacently tethered to a tree some distance away.
“Good job,” the man said to the stupid-looking kid. “I thought getting them back might take all day. Where did that sheepdog come from?”
“I don’t know,” the boy said. “He just showed up.”
“Hmm. Well, if no one claims him, I’ll take him. He seems useful.”
MO-126 considered the offer and rejected it by taking a step closer to the boy, all the while glaring at the old man and growling softly.
“Um, I think he wants to stay with me, Gumper,” the boy said.
The old man eyed the android dog with a bemused expression. “Yes, I see that. Well, just as well, but I’m not going to pay you any more because you have a dog, hear? Same as before, one copper coin a week for watching the sheep and doing odd jobs.”
“That’s fine,” the boy agreed.
“Off you go now. You can come back tomorrow. Bring the dog, if he’s still with you.”
The boy nodded and ran back to the main part of the village. MO-126 went with him to the small hut he shared with his grandmother, or an old woman he called ‘Granny,’ in any case. The boy’s presumed grandmother called him Kolby. Only the two of them lived in the small, four-room house. They never mentioned any other family.
Kolby wanted to bring his new dog inside that day, but his grandmother protested, so MO-126 stayed outside and went with the boy the next morning to watch Gumper’s sheep. He learned later that the old man was his grandmother’s cousin, and the other man, Beaty, was Gumper’s son.
The next day proved much the same as the one before, as did the day after that and the day after that for several weeks. MO-126 was not quite sure why he stayed, but he found the sameness of each day, the stability of the village, and the simplicity of the people living here restful. Eventually, Granny warmed to him and allowed him in the house. The rabbit he brought them for dinner that night may have helped.
The string of days gradually became a velvet chain of years that comfortably tied him to the first place he ever truly thought of as home.
~*~
One early autumn day about a year later, MO-126 and his boy walked in the woods along a small stream, hunting for wild grapes, berries, or anything else edible to bring home to supplement their sparse larder. A lone, elderly redfruit tree stood above the thistles and brambles on a small hillock nearby. A girl about the same age as Kolby was sitting in it.
“What are you doing, Laura?” he asked as they angled near. The village was too small for anyone not to at least recognize everyone else, and those of similar ages knew one another by name.
Pale-blue eyes looked down on them through long, straight hair and the branches of the tree.
“I’m investigating a mystery and you’re interrupting me,” she said conversationally.
“What mystery?”
“I don’t wish to tell you.”
“Why not?”
“You’ll laugh.” It sounded more like a prediction than a concern.
“Why? Is it funny?”
“No. But you’ll think it is, and I don’t need the distraction.”
Kolby shrugged. “Well, Okay.” He turned to walk away, paused and said, “Do you need help?”
She cocked a quizzical expression. “Why would you want to help?”
MO-126 wondered much the same thing. There was no doubt that Kolby was a nice boy, but he remained a bit young to have much more than idle curiosity about girls. At this age, the two genders tended to regard their opposites as little more than annoying.
“I don’t know. Because you look like you’re not having much luck by yourself, I guess.”
After a moment, she said, “I seriously doubt you’ll be of much help, but do you have any idea how trees make fruit?”
“You want to know why trees make fruit?”
“Not why. How? Why is easy.”
“Oh, right. The gods put the fruit on the trees so people—”
Her heavy sigh stopped him. “Trees make fruit to spread their seeds to grow more trees. What I don’t know is how they do it.”
Something about the girl, her voice, her appearance, or her attitude reminded the android dog of someone. He searched back through his memory until he came to a spot about two thousand years and two hundred kilometers away where he met a young woman sitting on a beach with a bowl and a sliver of magnetic stone. Paysha was older at the time than Laura was now, but equally curious. There might even be some physical similarities. Perhaps they were distantly related. It was not impossible.
“They do it slowly, I imagine,” Kolby said.
“Of course they do it slowly, but….”
“I can help you watch, if you want,” he said.
“No. There’s no point. I’ll have to figure it out a different way. It obviously happens too slowly to see. I’ll think about it later. Oh, and thank you for not laughing.”
“You didn’t say anything funny.”
She stared at his open, innocent face and smiled. “Can you help me down?”
They spent the next hour gathering some of the better looking fruit from the tree and berries from the bushes around it. They spit the spoils evenly and went their separate ways.
~*~
Two years later, Kolby remained a stupid-looking kid, but he had pretty much grown into his teeth. He was still short for his age and other children sometimes bullied him because of his size, because of his looks, and because, even in this poor village, he and his grandmother were poorer than most. MO-126 wished he could do something about that, but here people measured wealth in goats or sheep or acres of land, and Kolby and his grandmother could claim none of these. He thought about trying to find a wild goat or two and bring them back, but this would be far too unlike normal dog behavior not to raise questions and, of course, wild goats were wild. They could be difficult to deal with. Most likely, any he brought back would simply end as a rather tough, stringy dinner, which would not be a complete failure but would not help them in the long run.
A possible solution presented itself from an unlikely source. A strange little old man wearing a pastel yellow robe with a rope tied around his waist as a kind of belt came to the village one sunny afternoon. MO-126 recognized him. Well, not him, personally, but he knew what he was. A Tsong monastery stood about a day’s walk northwest of the village, and this man was obviously a Tsong monk, although those he met before called themselves Listeners. He knew there were also monks collectively known as Counselors, Teachers, and Wise Ones. He was not sure if these labels represented ranks, specializations, or duties, but he was fairly sure the Wise Ones were nominally at the top of their fuzzy hierarchical pyramid.
Humans like to pretend that they understand the universe, so the cleverest among them invent all sorts of things from physics to philosophy, reason to relig
ion so that they can believe they do. Tsong was a bit closer to the latter, but unlike many, it was a fairly benign belief system. It made no outrageous demands, did not claim to possess absolute Truth, required no sacrifices of the more bloody variety, and, in its purist form, it recognized no gods. It did have something they called the Tune, or sometimes the Cosmic Tune, which was more a name to describe the flow of natural events than it was a deity, as far as the android dog could understand it, but they never attempted to persecute those who did not dance to it.
The wrinkled visitor walked calmly to the center of the village and simply stood there smiling while a small crowd gathered around him as if expecting him to do a trick or provide some other kind of entertainment. MO-126, Kolby and Gumper were among them. The boy watched with rapt attention at seeing someone new and a bit strange, and the android dog regarded him with suspicion. The Listener’s gaze lingered uncomfortably on him a couple times.
He willed himself to look more doglike, and the Tsong Listener returned his attention to the people around him.
“My name is Safron,” he eventually began. “I come to you from the Tsong Monastery of Hill Flower.” He waved an arm in a generally westward direction.
“Sing us a tune!” a voice from the crowd shouted.
The benign smile never slipped from the Listener’s face. “The tune that can be sung is not the Cosmic Tune. The dance that can be danced is not the Cosmic Dance,” he said as if quoting. In the ensuing silence, he paused for a deep breath. “I hear Harmony here, although with a few sour notes, perhaps.” His glance shifted unerringly to the young villager who spoke earlier, which caused others to laugh, if a bit nervously.
“I have been sent to invite you and others I may pass in my travels to participate in a herding event that will take place at our monastery in a few weeks. The reason for this, other than to meet you and have people from different villages join together in one place and one time in peace and harmony, is because our old building needs a new roof.”
He went on to explain that the project required funding and that they were holding the herding event to raise it. Half of the entrance fee would go to the winner and the other half to the monastery for their new roof. He briefly described the contest—a trial of dogs and handlers to be judged by the monastery’s senior monks, their Wise Ones. He also said there would be food and entertainment available, which seemed to excite several people. Humans, MO-126 noticed, tended to find comfort in routine, but people also liked a break from it from time to time. The event the Listener described was probably the biggest diversion anyone here ever heard of or even imagined before. The monks were likely to get a good turnout.
After answering questions from a few villagers, he turned one more look toward the android dog as if wondering what he was.
MO-126 stared back at him. If there’s anything odd here, he thought, it’s you. I’m just a dog. I have the fur and the tail and a complete lack of useful thumbs, see? I can say “woof” in seven different canine dialects. All normal dog stuff. I’m not the one who’s been talking about cosmic tunes and harmonies and a bunch of other mystical musical stuff. Then, he reconsidered. He might be being a bit too sensitive, maybe even paranoid. The Tsong Listener was probably just estimating his potential as a contestant. Maybe he was making bets on the side, or something. Or perhaps MO-126 simply looked too intelligent for a normal dog. He could correct that oversight. He lifted a hind leg to scratch an imaginary itch and, for good measure, bent double to do a bit of undignified licking.
“What do you think, Doggy?” Kolby asked him. He always called MO-126 ‘Doggy.’ The kid really possessed no imagination, but the android dog liked him. He found him cute in a homely sort of way, nice to his granny, and he usually meant well. The android dog considered him one of the better examples of humanity, someone who would help if he could and not bother anyone if he could help it.
It actually did not sound like a bad idea. MO-126 felt confident he could do well in a sheep herding competition, and money was almost as good as sheep or goats because it often could be traded for them or other things with real value. The entry fee presented the immediate difficulty.
As it turned out, this might not be as big of a problem as he expected.
After the monk left, Gumper subjected the android dog to a long, calculating stare, and then turned to Kolby.
“You think your dog can win this?” he said.
“I’m sure he can,” the boy said.
“Yeah. I think so too. Here’s what we’ll do….”
Gumper volunteered to pay the ten copper pieces required for entry for half interest in the prize money should MO-126 win or extra work without pay from Kolby if he didn’t. It was hardly a generous offer, but it got them the coins they needed.
Twenty days later, Kolby, Gumper, MO-126 and people from villages all around the area gathered outside the Tsong monastery. Lines of tents, carts, stands, crude booths, and parked wagons from which the owners peddled their wares created temporary roads where hundreds of people mingled and shopped. Game agents and vendors called out what they offered in imaginative and enticing ways over the general din. Smokey clouds lingered above outdoor cooking pits, and the smells of charred meat and sweaty people filled the air.
“Close your mouth, boy,” Gumper said. “You’re letting flies in.”
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Kolby said, slack-jawed and wide-eyed, trying to take it all in. “Where did all these people come from? Why are they here?”
“I suspect most came to watch the herding event.”
MO-126 did not entirely agree. Most, he suspected, came to watch other people, which were, he must admit, somewhat more entertaining than sheep. He saw a few people with well-behaved dogs beside them, but most of those wandering among the makeshift businesses were accompanied only by other people, usually in groups of the same gender eyeing other groups of the opposite gender with varying degrees of subtlety.
Gumper asked a vendor trying to sell him a sausage on a stick where contestants for the sheep herding event needed to register. The hopeful purveyor of the greasy delectable used it to point in the general direction of the large stone monastery.
“Up there,” he said. “Them singing monks have a shed painted in black and white stripes where they’re taking names and coins. Can’t miss it. Sure you don’t want a sausage? Fresh! Make you a deal. How about three for the price of two? Can’t beat it.”
“Maybe later. We need to take care of this first.”
“Might be all sold out by then. They’re going fast,” the man persisted.
MO-126 wished he could tell them what the odor suggested was in the sausage, but it proved unnecessary. Gumper turned away and Kolby followed, leaving the sausage man free to accost another prospective customer.
A young monk, several of which wandered about the fair, approached them and asked if they were here for the trials. He reconfirmed what the sausage seller said and pointed to a line of colorful flags visible above the crowds and stalls.
A short queue of people and dogs stood in front of the black and white shed. MO-126 suddenly felt a bit less confident about his prospects of an easy win in the competition. Most of the handlers here were older than his boy, and the dogs were a mixed assortment of sleek and powerful animals especially bred and well-trained for the tasks awaiting them.
One of them turned an almost too intelligent face toward him. The android dog sent a silent signal using his short range communication system, just in case. He received no reply, but the real dog continued to eye him with a superior air.
Just some kind of canine dominance thing, then, MO-126 thought. He attempted to ignore the other dogs after this while at the same time standing a little more erect and trying to assume a nobler bearing.
The line crept slowly forward while vendors with fruit and drink and even little pies and pastries attempted to sell their comestibles to those waiting. They were having more success than the android dog expected. Gumper
even eventually broke down and bought a couple of ripe redfruit for himself and Kolby.
Three smiling monks with wrinkled faces and smooth, pastel robes awaited them when they reached the front of the line.
“What are the names of the contestants?” one of them asked Gumper.
“Kolby,” Gumper said.
“Is that the handler or the dog?” the Tsong monk asked.
“That’s the boy. He calls the dog ‘Doggy.’”
“Doggy, I see.” The monk provided no indication that he found this especially amusing because his smile did not change. MO-126 considered it possible that the monks’ ever-present smiles indicated that they found everything amusing.
The monk wrote the names on a sheet of parchment, which Kolby stared at with amazement. The boy knew about writing, of course, but his grasp of the subject was only slightly better than the one he held on general relativity or quantum mechanics.
“And the name of the village Kobly and Doggy are from?” the Listener asked.
This posed a tougher question and Gumper paused before he could come up with an answer. Place names were of little use to people who seldom traveled.
“Miston,” Gumper eventually said.
“Really?” Kolby asked him.
“Yeah. Can’t say I know why.”
Neither did the android dog. Human names for places, and even for most other things, seemed pretty arbitrary to him, but the monk dutifully wrote it next to their names.
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