Eighteen
Spike said And he did that.
Lassie said
I said And I did that.
Rin Tin Tin said
(This will be a little difficult to explain.
(Sherlock limped deeper into Irontown, dazed and confused, though the bleeding had stopped. He doesn’t remember a lot from that time until he stumbled onto a pack of wild dogs.
(It could only happen in Irontown. In the rest of the world, runaway or abandoned dogs and other pets are quickly rounded up by bobbies and either returned to their owners, adopted out, or euthanized. But the Heinleiners and other Irontown residents were so dedicated to the idea of minding one’s own business that so long as a dog didn’t bite someone or crap in the public walkway or make a nuisance of herself in some other way, they let her alone. They even set out food and water for these feral animals. Individual dogs would often bond with a human who treated them kindly and leave the street life. But others chose to remain wild and free. The pack Sherlock encountered was composed of such animals. But there was one crucial difference. Many of them were CECs.
(Sherlock has seldom socialized at all, and never with another CEC. He was hardly prepared for what that was like. By interfacing with the computers they were able to communicate in a way that was sort of like telepathy. And it presented some real challenges for me, as the interpreter.
(Obviously they did not speak to each other in words. But they were able to convey ideas and, especially, feelings in a way that no dogs had ever done before. They could share fairly complex information with each other. As an example, when Sherlock first found the pack, they saw that he was hurting badly. The alpha, αSpike, a Dalmatian, and the rest of the pack knew where there was a veterinarian who would treat dogs. They told Sherlock this, guided him to the right place, and scratched on the door. He collapsed on the floor once he was inside.
(The vet’s name was Sorenson, and she knew that some of the αSpike pack were CECs. She had some experience of them and was able to learn from αSpike that Sherlock had a master, but was separated from him. The dogs were not able to make her understand that Chris Bach had been kidnapped and was in trouble, but she did understand that Sherlock did not want to find a new home. He just wanted to be treated and released. She agreed, treated and bound up his wounds, injected him with some substance that energized him considerably, gave him a Bowser Bow-wow Bacon-flavored Doggie Snack, and sent him on his way.
(And the great search for αChris was under way. — PC)
αSpike said
I said
αSpike said
I stayed on my back. I said
αSpike said
I said
With that, I was accepted into the pack.
I was happy that the vet, Dr. Sorenson, took care of my stabbing wound. She also put some medicine on my other scrapes and bruises. Then I departed with αSpike and the rest of our pack.
I did not know I could talk to other dogs. The voices and pictures in my head had always been cold and without feeling. But when I was with the pack, voices and feelings were warm and welcoming.
It was a good pack. But I could only talk to some of this pack.
αSpike was the pack alpha, and I submitted to him without question. I did not want to fight any battles with αSpike or anyone else. All I wanted to do was look for αChris. Also, although I am a very smart dog, I could see at once that αSpike was even smarter. αSpike could count to one two three four five… and up to twenty. That is how many dogs were in the pack. Twenty. That is a large pack, I think.
Not all the pack were smart like me. Here are the smart ones:
αSpike, a Dalmatian.
Sarah, a golden retriever. She was the alpha bitch. (Sherlock’s word, again, and I will not use it again. — PC)
Fritzi, a Doberman female.
βRin Tin Tin, the beta male.
Lassie, a collie. When I sniffed her ass I could tell she had recently been in heat, and was now going to have some puppies.
Oskar, a Rottweiler who was always looking for a chance to challenge αSpike for pack leader. I steered clear of him.
Then there were the dumb ones. These ordinary dogs hung out with us but they were not a part of our plans. They were a Chihuahua named Pedro, a Papillon named Henri, a Jack Russell terrier female named Jackie, and an Irish setter named Colleen. There were others but I do not know their names. Jackie and Pedro were always yapping around and making nuisances of themselves until Oskar snapped at them. That would shut them up for a little while. But they could not help themselves, and were soon running underfoot again. I have learned that a word for dogs like that is “high-strung.”
Our names came from our masters, like my name of Sherlock. I was named Sherlock by αChris. But most of the other smart dogs did not come from happy homes like I did. αSpike and Lassie and Rin Tin Tin and Oskar had escaped from a place called a laboratory, where humans had been doing experiments on them. I do not really understand what that means, but I do understand that the way of making dogs like me supersmart came from laboratories. I think that that is why αSpike is supersupersmart. They did something to him.
Lassie was the CEC dog who had a good clock in her head. She knew what time it was. She knew when we could find good things to eat.
Lassie said
Fritzi said
The others all agreed that Tony’s five-cheese ravioli with clam sauce was very good food.
Lassie said
The rest of the pack agreed that they were hungry, too.
αSpike said
Rin Tin Tin led the way. I learned that he had the best map in his head. I had no map in my head because we were in Irontown. But as we moved through Irontown, a map grew in my head. One day I might be able to find my way to places like Tony’s trattoria by myself.
The pack found our way to an alley that ran behind Tony’s trattoria. There were bins of garbage that smelled interesting. Tony came out the back door with a big bucket in one hand and a stack of steel dishes in the other. He set down the bucket and then he scratched αSpike behind the ears. αSpike tolerated this. I felt αSpike’s feelings, and I understood that αSpike did not like humans very much, but he knew how to get along with them. Then Tony started setting the dishes down.
Tony said, “I scraped all the food folks left on their plates into the bucket. Lots of ’em tonight. Plus a lot of stale bread and some meat that I can’t sell. But you ladies and tramps don’t mind, do you?”
He scraped the food into the dishes and went back inside.
αSpike went to a bowl and started to eat. We held back, then slowly approached the other bowls. The alpha always eats first, all dogs know that. But stupid little Pedro tried to eat from αSpike’s dish. Spike growled at him and nipped his ear. Pedro squeaked like a little mouse and ran away.
After Oskar had eaten, I sniffed at what was left in the bowl, and ate that. But a few minutes later, it came back up.
Sarah said
I said that I was, and she ate it.
The pack had a den where we could all spend the night. It was near a heating duct, so it was warm. I liked the warm air. It made my sores feel better. We huddled together, the smarties in one group and the dummies in another. I told them that I had not run away from αChris, my master.
I told them that I loved my master and that I wanted to find him.
I told them about all the good things αChris had done for me. I told them about being a private detective and about how αChris and I were partners. I told them how we went looking for people.
The smarties from the laboratory were very impressed. The smarties who had escaped from bad masters were also impressed. None of them had ever had a master who cared for them. None of them had ever had anything to do except look for food.
The laboratory smarties had grown up without the love of a human. They wished they knew what it felt like to be partners with a human. I tried to tell them. The laboratory smarties had grown up in small cages. They were smart, and so they were bored. There was nothing for them to do. αSpike was supersupersmart, and so he was even more bored than the others. He knew that even the dummies in the pack were bored if they did not have something interesting to do.
αSpike said
The other smarties agreed this would be a good thing to do. They were ready to go out sniffing at once.
αSpike said
Everyone agreed that this should be so.
Spike said
Everyone sat up and was excited at the idea of chasing balls. I was excited, too, but I knew I was still too sore to chase balls.
In the park, someone who loved dogs had set up a machine that threw balls far across the green grass in the park. I have learned that these balls were called tennis balls. I watched my pack chasing balls. When they captured them, they brought them back and dropped them back into the machine.
It looked like fun. But I wanted to find αChris. That was all I could think about. I hoped the game would end soon.
The game did end, and Lassie told us where the next good place to find food was. I do not remember where it was, but we knocked over some bins to get the food. I ate some bread with bits of cheese and ham, and I did not vomit this time.
Later we went back to our den.
Spike said
Oskar said
I told them…
(This is probably the part that is the least translatable of all the things I heard from Sherlock. Even dogs can’t describe to each other how one specific human smells. But Sherlock was able to say quite a few things that were part of Chris’s smell. Sherlock said it was a “shitload” of smells. None of them meant anything to me and they won’t mean anything to you, but as before, telling me how Irontown smelled, Sherlock would not just skip over it because of my scent-blindness. And amazingly, if Sherlock is to be believed, he managed to communicate a pretty good idea of the scent the pack should be sniffing for. — PC)
The days went by beyond my counting. They went by beyond even αSpike’s counting, and αSpike can count to twenty.
Irontown was bigger than αChris had known. We sniffed out many humans who smelled something like αChris, but every time one of the pack would bring me to smell him, it was not αChris.
The map inside my head grew and grew. We went to the edges of Irontown, and beyond into the mapped world. This was dangerous since there were dogcatchers when we left Irontown. Little Pedro was not quick enough to escape them. One day I looked back and saw him being picked up by a female human in a uniform. He was barking and barking and barking, but it did not do him any good.
Sarah said
αSpike said
Oskar said
Fritzi said
Oskar turned around and snapped at her. Oskar was like that. αSpike growled at Oskar, and Oskar put his tail between his legs.
One two three days later we lost Colleen. We had not expected to lose Colleen because she was an Irish setter, and big, although she was a dummy. She was too dumb to avoid being captured. After that, the pack stayed away from the outside world.
But in that same time we were joined by Nanook, a dumb Siberian husky; Rocky, a dumb Boxer female; and Neil, a smart St. Bernard. So the pack grew bigger.
I went back into the outside world by myself to see if αChris had returned. I went to our office, but my nose told me he had not been there in a long time. I went to our apartment. I went in and sniffed around, but he had not been there, either.
I stayed outside the door for one two three days. I only left to go out to piss and shit, and downstairs to the Nighthawk Diner to get some food. Whitey always fed me.
One day he said, “Where is Chris? I haven’t seen him in a while.”
I wished I could tell him, but I could not.
When I got back to the pack αSpike looked at me suspiciously. I could tell he was thinking about driving me out of the pack. Oskar’s ears perked up. Oskar was always looking for trouble.
αSpike said
I lowered my head. I said
αSpike said I said Nothing else was ever said about that. The map kept growing in my head. Every day we went looking and every day we came back to our den with nothing. I noticed something about the map. I said Rin Tin Tin said That was right. It was a hole. It was a very big hole. The hole was shaped like a hot dog. (By that Sherlock meant it was a long, fat cylinder. Sherlock’s analogies were often about food. I learned later that this particular hole — more like a void in the dogs’ maps — was something like five miles long and a mile in diameter. It defined one parameter of Heinlein Town. — PC) Rin Tin Tin said I said Rin Tin Tin said I did think about it, and saw at once that Rin Tin Tin’s map was much larger than mine. Much, much, much larger. As I looked at the map, I saw that it was not just of Irontown, but of the larger world outside. I had much of this map inside my own head. I could see the path I had taken to αChris’s mother’s dinosaur farm. I could see many other places I had been. Rin Tin Tin said I said Rin Tin Tin said I did think, and in my thinking the map in my head shrunk. It got smaller and smaller and I could see train lines linking different cities. I could not see details any longer. Then it kept shrinking. Then I saw that the map was curved, and it kept curving until it was a ball. I knew the ball had to be very, very large, but I could not understand just how large. Then there was another ball, bigger than the first one. I have learned that this ball was known as Earth. The ball we were in was called Luna. Then the map got smaller and smaller until there was another little ball. I have learned that this ball was called Mars. There were more and more balls with names like Saturn and Neptune, Pluto and Charon. Rin Tin Tin said I said Rin Tin Tin said I did not really understand. I still do not really understand. I am a very smart dog, but this was too much for me. It was even too much for Spike, and he is a supersupersmart dog. But the next day I went with the pack to one of the doors. We all sniffed around. Sarah put her nose right to the door, which was open just a little bit. We all noticed it when she came alert. Sarah said I went over and sniffed, and she was right. It did not just smell like αChris, it was αChris. We moved the pack to a new den, where we could look at the door that led into the ship. I was so excited I could hardly eat. I knew that I would soon be seeing αChris. The door was on a big open space that usually had a lot of people coming and going. There were trucks selling food and a place that sold ice cream. We begged some leftovers from some of the places. But we tried to keep out of sight as much as we could. Not many people came and went through the door. When someone did, one of us would try to get close enough for a sniff. If the scent was close enough, I would walk over and get a closer look and sniff. It was one two three days before he came out. I was asleep, and Fritzi woke me up. We looked across the open space, and I saw him. My heart leaped with joy. Then I saw that two humans were holding his arms and his hands were tied together. I felt the hair rising on the back of my neck. Fritzi was running around the plaza, gathering the pack. The pack came to me. αSpike said I said And I charged. I could hear the pack running behind me. I saw αChris was being taken to the ice-cream store. There were people sitting on chairs at tables and eating ice cream. αChris turned, and I saw the look of joy spread across his face. I recognized one of the humans who had taken αChris so long, long ago. I intended to rip his leg off this time. I barked my fury at the men, and I leaped.
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