The Puppies Of Terra

Chapter Ten
In which an execution is executed, followed by a controversy.

The scene is the prison of the Dingoes—not the teeming, raucous tumble of St Cloud (which had been, for all its squalor and inspissated misery, redeemed by the sheer bulk of the humanity packed within its walls)—not that, but a high and solitary chamber, aseptically white, odorless, soundless, sightless, boding. I say solitary, but I was not alone. St Bernard was confined in the same cell with me, but his state so mirrored my own that his companionship merely deepened my sense of being cut off, alone, doomed. Had there been a throng in that room with us, it would have been just the same—for in the courts of death all men are alone. Friends never come to stand beside a gallows.

The gallows…

No, let me for a while yet skirt that subject. Let’s talk about…

St Bernard. St Bernard was even more cast down than I. At least, his gloom was more tangible. Losing first the support of his Leash and then the solace of his beloved Clea (and the latter, through the agency of the contemnible Dingoes), his will had become de-elasticized. He no longer reacted against his environment; he did not plan new escapes; he didn’t even sing.

My only diversion from anxious speculation (and I shall leave it to my readers’ imagination to develop the subject that preoccupied me) was looking down from the cell’s single window at the semi-deserted streets below. The fivefold gallows in the foreground, though it did not inspire confidence, identified our prison as the St Paul Courthouse that my guard on the airplane had referred to so admiringly. The platform of the gallows was raised a dozen feet above street-level, and the main shaft that supported the cross-trees…

We’ll return to that subject. For now, let us focus our attention on that prospect beyond the gallows. All day long, civilian Dingoes passed by the Courthouse—the women in long, ungainly dresses and the men in unseasonably heavy suits—but their behavior was so unremittingly dull (mostly, they just marched, left-right, left-right, left-right, in long, slow, straight lines) that I soon grew tired of observing them and began instead to count the cars that went by.

This wasn’t so boring as you might think, for the various trucks, jeeps and tractors still in use among the Dingoes (rarely, if ever, did one see an ordinary car) presented a beautiful study in comparative ruination. Roaring and sputtering, spewing out black clouds of noxious gas, bouncing along the potholed road at their top speed of fifteen miles per hour, the procession of antique machines was worthy of the genius of Rintintin. (For those unacquainted with his work, an explanation: Rintintin of Eros is the greatest contemporary sculptor of mechanism. I was present at the premier—and only—performance of the reknowned “Death of a Helicopter”, an event that I shall always treasure in my memory and which I would describe at length except for the fear that it would be out of keeping at this moment.)

These machines were usually of an official nature, and those same insignia that I had seen scrawled on the telephone poles outside of Shroeder were painted on the sides of the trucks or on banners that streamed from the jeeps’ antennae. I was reminded of the heraldic devices of some crusading army: Resistor statant, sable on a field of gules; diode dormant on a quartered field, ermine and vert.

I would also give a little account of the architecture of the Dingoes, but the truth is I didn’t pay it much attention. Most of the time I looked at the gallows. The architecture of a gallows is very simple.

After two days in this limbo, I received my first visitor. It was Julie, but a Julie so altered in appearance that I thought at first she was a Dingo spy in disguise. (Prison does develop one’s paranoid tendencies.) She was wearing a high-necked, long-sleeved, floor-length dress in the Dingo style and her beautiful hair was concealed by an ungainly cork helmet such as I had seen on several persons passing below my window.

“Julie!” I exclaimed. “What have they done to you?”

“I’ve been repatriated.” She wasn’t able to raise her eyes to look into mine, and her whole manner was one of unnatural constraint. No doubt, this could be accounted for by the presence of the armed guard who was watching us from the open doorway.

“You mean they’ve forced you to…”

“Nobody’s forced me to do anything. I just decided to become a Dingo. They’re really much nicer than we thought they’d be. They’re not all like Bruno. And even he’s not so bad once you get to know him.”

“My God, Julie! Have you no shame?”

“Oh, don’t be upset. That’s not what I meant. Bruno’s too much in love with Roxanna to think of bothering me. Besides, he’s still laid up in a hospital bed.”

“That isn’t what I meant.”

But Julie went blithely on. “They’re going to get married as soon as he’s out of the hospital. Isn’t that wonderful? On the airplane coming here, after you jumped out and deserted me, Bruno was delirious and he told me all about himself. I can’t say I understood much of it. But do you realize that he actually likes you? He does. There he was all bandaged up, lying on the stretcher, and all of us thinking the plane was going to crash any minute, and he said: ‘I wasn’t smashed like that since God knows when. Good man! We’ll get along—White Fang and me.’ I thought it was just the delirium, but he was serious. He wants you to visit him and Roxanna as soon as you can. I explained that that might not be soon.”

“If at all.”

“That’s what Roxanna suggested. And she didn’t seem at all upset by the idea. She’s still very angry with you for hurting Bruno.”

“But I was trying to protect her!”

The story that Julie at last unfolded, in her rather scattery way, was this: Roxanna, when she had seen me strike Bruno with the axe, suddenly was made aware that she was in love with her tormentor. Her new-found love was every bit as passionate as the hatred she had expressed only minutes before. In the heat of the moment, she had been almost angry enough to use my axe on me, but Julie and the Dingoes who had been drawn to the scene had been able to stop her. Since then she had pursued her vengeance more deviously.

“And Petite,” I asked, “what did she do to Petite?”

“Oh, it wasn’t at all what I’d feared. She just read to her from this propaganda-book that all the Dingoes like. It’s called The Life of Man. She convinced Petite that it’s very naughty to be a pet, but the first thing Petite asked when she saw me again was ‘Where’s my Leash?’ She can’t adjust to the idea that she’ll never have it again.”

“Julie, don’t say that. Of course she’ll have it again. We all will. Haven’t you heard about Needlepoint Hill? Pluto and Clea are probably already back on Swan Lake or Titan, and in one week more, or two weeks…”

The mention of his home brought a profound groan from the lips of St Bernard: “Gott! welch Dunkel hier!”

Julie pressed her forefinger to her lips anxiously. “Hush! We aren’t allowed to mention that. It’s a sore point with the Dingoes.”

“What are they going to do with us, Julie?” I whispered.

She shook her head sadly, avoiding my intent gaze. “I can’t talk about that,” she said. “They forbade it. And anyhow, I don’t know.” Somehow, though, I didn’t believe her.

Julie spent the rest of her visit trying to justify the haste with which she had allowed the Dingoes to repatriate her, and since she had no apparent excuse but expediency, it was rather hard going.

At last I interrupted her: “Julie, please don’t take on about it. I quite understand that you’ve had to disassociate yourself from me. Heaven only knows what they intend to do with me, but there’s no reason for you needlessly sharing in that fate. Perhaps they mean to use me as a hostage; perhaps they mean something worse. In either case you’re lucky to be rid of me.” I was just beginning to hit my stride, and I would soon have brought myself to the point of tears, when Julie started to giggle.

To giggle! She tittered and snorted and snuffled like someone who can’t keep a joke, and she left the room bent double with the pain of holding back her laughter.

Hysteria, of course. It was a very sad thing to see the girl you love in such a condition and to be unable to help. But I didn’t think too long about that, since it was even sadder to think of me in my condition.

Shortly after Julie left, a guard came to our cell to ask what we would like for our last meal.

It was sundown, and from the windows of the cell I could see that a large crowd of spectators had already gathered about the base of the gallows. At ten o’clock a guard came to remove the two trays of untouched food (he wolfed down the choicest bits of the steak before he went out into the corridor), and then a chaplain informed us apathetically that we could confess to him if we wished.

“I only confess to my Master, thank you,” St Bernard informed him. Now that the ceremony of our execution was well under way St Bernard was able to pull himself together: he knew the rôle he was expected to play.

Our cell began to fill with guards. I was commanded to come away from the window, and my hands were bound behind my back. St Bernard submitted to his bonds peacefully.

“I’m sorry that you find yourself in this situation on my account, St Bernard. I didn’t want it to end this way—for either of us.”

“Shaddup!” said the guard. “You ain’t supposed to talk any more.”

St Bernard smiled. “Oh, there’s no need for you to be sorry, Brüderlein. For my own part, I have but one regret: I regret that I have but one life to give for the Mastery.”

“Shaddup you! Whyntya shaddup when I say shaddup?”

We were escorted by some dozen Dingoes to the main entrance of the courthouse, where we were met by the officer in charge of this execution. He bowed to us curtly and smiled a thin—but not unhappy—smile.

“Lieutenant Mosely!” I exclaimed. “What a surprise, sir!”

Without, a solemn tattoo was begun, the doors were swung open, and the crowd screamed its approbation.

“Now,” St Bernard shouted above the din, “more than ever does it seem rich to die.”

Despite this noble affirmation he seemed no more eager than I to mount the thirteen steps to the gallows. We were stationed in our places—each in the middle of a rectangle distinctly demarcated from the other boards of the platform. When I jiggled my weight, I could feel the trapdoor wobble. On the whole, I stood very still.

The chaplain approached us a last time. “Did you wish to make a last statement?”

“Yes,” said St Bernard. “I know not what course others may choose, but as for myself— Give me liberty or give me death!”

“And you?”

“I’m willing to compromise. Give me something somewhere in between. How about a stay of execution? How about a trial? I’m being denied my rights as a United States citizen!”

“God damn the United States!” St Bernard cried. “I hope that I may never see nor hear of the United States again!”

“What a terrible thing to say!” the chaplain scolded. “It would serve you right if that’s just what happened to you.”

It was not, however, to be St Bernard’s fate, for the band assembled in front of the gallows chose that moment to strike up the National Anthem. The men in the crowd took off their caps, and the women quieted. St Bernard sang the words aloud in his wonderful tenor voice. It was a rare last opportunity.

Lieutenant Mosely came forward and offered blindfolds. I refused, but St Bernard accepted gratefully. With the black cloth over his eyes, he looked handsomer and more pathetic than ever. There was an ominous silence, interrupted by a rapturous outburst from one of the Dingo women in the front row of spectators: “Cut off their balls! Cut off their balls first!”

Pursing my lips at this demonstration of poor taste, I glanced down at the bloodthirsty creature who had expressed these sentiments—and imagine my surprise when I saw she was the same woman who had showered me with flowers and kisses during the parade in Duluth! Perhaps I was mistaken though; perhaps she was only of the same physical type. A guard hushed her before the last riffle of drums.

Mosely lifted his hand.

St Bernard rose to the occasion: “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.”

Mosely lowered his right hand.

St Bernard dropped.

“But what about me?” I asked, even as the tears of pity rolled down my cheeks. Poor, poor St Bernard!

“You’ve got your stay of execution,” Mosely informed me glumly. “There’s someone who wants to see you first. You’re going there now.”

“Fine—but would you take the noose off first? Ah, that’s much better.”

I could not see where the limousine was taking me, for the curtains were drawn about all the windows in the back seat, but within minutes I found myself in a large and largely vacant underground parking area. Then, after a labyrinth of staircases, corridors, guards and passwords, I was at last left alone before an imposing mahogany desk. The desk and all the appointments of the room testified to the consequence of their possessor. In a subsistence economy like the Dingoes’, luxury is a potent symbol.

My attention was especially drawn to the portrait that hung over the desk. Done in the mock-primitive style popular in the sixties of the last century, it slyly exaggerated those features of the subject which were most suggestive of the raw and barbarous. His stomach, though monumental in itself, was seen from a perspective that magnified its bulk. The face was crudely colored, particularly the nose, which was a florid, alcoholic crimson. The violet-tinged lips were at once cynical and voluptuary. The picture was the perfect archetype of the Dingo.

Yet perhaps not perfect—for the eyes shone with an intelligence and good will that seemed to contradict the overall impression of brutishness. This one dissonance added to the archetype that touch of individual life which only the best portraitists have ever been able to achieve.

I was still engaged in studying this painting (and, really, it had the strangest fascination for me) when its original stepped into the room and came forward to shake my hand.

“Sorry to have kept you waiting, but my time hasn’t been my own ever since that damned sunspot.”

When he had left off shaking my hand, he did not immediately release it, but, keeping it still tightly clasped, looked me over appraisingly.

“You’ll have to get rid of that name of yours, you know. ‘White Fang’ just won’t do now. We Dingoes—as you call us—don’t like those doggish names. Your proper name is Dennis White, isn’t it? Well, Dennis, welcome to the revolution.”

“Thank you, but…”

“But who am I? I’m the Grand High Diode. As far as you’re concerned, you may think of me as a vice-president. The Diode is second only to the Cathode Himself. Are you interested in politics?”

“Pets don’t have to be. We’re free.”

“Ah, freedom!” The Grand High Diode made an expansive gesture, then plopped into the seat behind the desk. “Your Master takes care of everything for you and leaves you so perfectly free. Except that you can’t taste anything from the good-and-evil tree, why there’s nothing that isn’t allowed you.”

He glowered at me dramatically, and I had time to compare the portrait with the portrayed. Even the man’s wild, white locks seemed to be tumbled about his head according to the same formula that the painter had used to guide his brushstrokes. My admiration for him (the painter, not the portrayed) grew by leaps and bounds.

“The Masters appeared two-thirds of a century ago. In that time human civilization has virtually disappeared. Our political institutions are in a shambles; our economy is little more than bartering now; there are practically no artists left.”

“Among you Dingoes, perhaps not. But under the Mastery, civilization is flourishing as never before in man’s history. If you’re going to talk about civilization, the Dingoes haven’t a leg to stand on.”

“Cows were never more civilized than when we bred them.”

I smiled. “Word-games. But I can play them just as well.”

“If you’d rather not argue…”

“I’d rather argue. I’d rather do anything that keeps me from returning to the gallows. It was a most distasteful experience.”

“Perhaps you can avoid the gallows altogether. Perhaps, Dennis, I can convince you to become a Dingo?” The man’s thick, violet lips distended in a wolfish grin. His eyes, which were, like the eyes in the portrait, vivid with intelligence, glittered with a strange sort of mirth.

I tried my best to temper my natural disdain with a quaver of doubt. “Isn’t it rather late to join? I should think that most of the carnage must be over by now. Aren’t you nearly ready for defeat?”

“We’ll probably be defeated, but a good revolutionary can’t let that worry him. A battle that isn’t against the odds would hardly be a battle at all. The carnage, I’ll admit, is unfortunate.”

“And unjustifiable as well. Poor St Bernard had done nothing to justify—”

“Then I won’t bother to justify it. Dirty hands is one of the prices you pay in becoming a man again.”

“Are you fighting this revolution just so you can feel guilty about it?”

“For that—and for the chance to be our own Masters. Guilt and sweat and black bread are all part of being human. Domestic animals are always bred to the point that they become helpless in the state of nature. The Masters have been breeding men.”

“And doing a better job of it than man ever did. Look at the results.”

“That, I might point out, is exactly the view a dachshund would take.”

“Then let me put in a good word for dachshunds. I prefer them to wolves. I prefer them to Dingoes.”

“Do you? Don’t make up your mind too quickly—or it may cost you your head.” And, with this threat, my incredible inquisitor began to chuckle. His chuckle became a pronounced laugh, and the laugh grew to a roar. It occurred to me that the gleam in his eyes might as well have been madness as intelligence.

Suddenly I was overcome by a desire just to have done. “My mind is made up,” I announced calmly, when he had stopped laughing.

“Then you’ll make a declaration?” Apparently, he had taken the exact opposite of the meaning I had intended.

“Why should you care which side I’m on?” I demanded angrily.

“Because a statement from you—from the son of Tennyson White—with the strength of that name behind it—would be invaluable in the cause of freedom.”

Very deliberately I approached the mahogany desk where the man was sitting, wreathed in a fatuous smile, and very deliberately I raised my hand and struck him full in the face.

Instantly the room was filled with guards who pinioned my arms behind my back. The man behind the desk began, again, to chuckle.

“You beast!” I shouted. “You Dingo! You have the conscience to kidnap and murder my father, and then you dare ask me to make you a declaration of support. I can’t believe… If you think that…” I went on raving in this vein for some little while. And as I raved that incredible man lay sprawled on the top of his desk and laughed until he had lost his breath.

“White Fang,” he managed at last to say. “That is to say—Dennis, my dear boy, excuse me. Perhaps I’ve carried this a little too far. But you see…” And now he swept aside the thick white locks from the stub of his right ear. “…I am your father and not murdered in the least.”