The Puppies Of Terra

Chapter Three
In which I meet Darling, Julie, and fly away to Swan Lake.

I have always considered that my adult life began at the age of ten. Before that age my memory can only reconstruct a chronology of events from a few key images. Everything is suppositive, as it were. But from age ten on, I can remember whole days exactly as they happened.

The whole day I would take most pleasure in remembering is the Fourth of October, 2027, a Wednesday. On Wednesdays in good weather Roxanna would take Pluto and me out into the country, beyond the dome of the kennel. We drove along the dusty country roads in a special little cart operated by solar tap and covered with an invisible but nonetheless reassuring bubble-shield so strong that not even the Masters themselves could break through it once it was switched on. Not that we had to worry about such an eventuality (we would have been only too happy if a Master would break in and Leash us), but the Dingoes had become more and more of a nuisance since the incident three years before of my father’s assassination. Several pets visiting Earth for their pleasure had been done away with in similar ways, with nothing left to bury but ashes. In half an hour we would arrive at a deserted farm, where, in the shade of overburdened apple trees, we would pursue our studies or, if Roxanna felt indulgent toward us, explore the old farm buildings, and rusting machinery. We never went into the house itself though. The aura of Dingoes still clung to it, and in any case Roxanna had absolutely forbidden it.

Only years later did Roxanna admit to us what we had known all along—that this had been her parents’ farm, abandoned during the Great Collapse of 2003, when the economy of those humans who were still holding out against the Mastery fell completely into ruin. The Skunks (their name was still legible on the mailbox) had volunteered themselves and their children for the nearest kennel—Shroeder, as it happened. The children had been accepted, but the parents had been judged unfit and sent away, as by that time most older volunteers were. The Masters had no more need of wild pets (who could never be perfectly domesticated), for now they were breeding their own and (so it seemed to us pets) doing a better job of it than Man ever had.

It was principally from kennel rejects like the Skunks that the society of Dingoes, as we know it today, has evolved, and this no doubt accounts for the scent of sour grapes that clings to so many of them and even, a little, to Roxanna—as I think I’ve already pointed out.

It was late in the afternoon, and Roxanna, tired of reading, was fanning herself with a perfumed handkerchief and reminiscing to Pluto about her country childhood and how different the world had been then. She told about her father’s drinking bouts on Saturday nights and how he would come back home and beat Roxanna’s poor mother terribly. She had never witnessed these beatings, but she had heard them and assured us they were terrible. For Pluto and myself, such tales confirmed our worst imaginings about the Dingoes. I, having but recently bloodied my brother’s nose, was persona non grata and accordingly I had gone up into the branches of the apple tree, higher than Pluto dared climb, to work problems in calculus, which I had just begun to study. Suddenly there appeared as in a vision, suspended in the air before me almost near enough to touch, a girl of about my own age. Wisps of heliotrope spiraled about her bare, sun-bronzed body, and her white hair gleamed in the dying sunlight as though it were itself luminescent.

“Hello,” she said. “My name is Darling, Julie. Darling is my last name, but you can call me Julie if you like. Don’t you want to play with me?”

I couldn’t reply. I was stunned—as much by her loveliness (yes, I was only ten, but children are not insensible of these things; perhaps not so insensible as we are) as by the shock of meeting a stranger in those unlikely circumstances.

She took a step toward me, smiling (Darling, Julie has always had the loveliest, cheek-dimpling smile), and I realized what would have been immediately evident to any well-brought-up pet: that it was her Master’s unseen presence that supported her. For him, anti-gravity would be a moment’s improvisation. But our Master’s neglect had made even such commonplaces as flight seem rare and wonderful to us.

“Aren’t you Leashed?” she asked, seeing that I hesitated to step off my branch and meet her halfway.

“No—none of us are.”

By this time Roxanna and Pluto had become aware of our visitor, but since they were a good ten feet below Julie and me, it was awkward for them to join the conversation. It was awkward for me, for that matter, but I blustered on.

“Would you like an apple?” I asked, picking one from the abundance about me and offering it to her. She stretched forth her hand, then with a guilty look drew it back.

“My Master thinks I’d best not,” she explained. “He says that sort of food is for Dingoes. You’re not a Dingo, are you?”

“Oh no!” I blushed, and Julie laughed.

“Well, you look like a Dingo to me.” I should have realized at once that this was all teasing, for there could be no serious doubt of our domestication. Dingoes wear clothing, and pets (who never have to be ashamed of their bodies) only dress for the theatre or a pageant or (like Roxanna) out of perversity. “If you’re not a Dingo, why don’t you step off that silly old tree branch and prove it?”

From the first I’ve always behaved like a fool for Darling, Julie. I did just as she suggested and began falling, in obedience to Newton’s laws, directly toward Roxanna. Then, with a funny little internal somersault, I felt myself caught up in the anti-gravity belt supporting Julie. Julie swooped down, giggling, and caught hold of my hand, and in the same moment I felt the meshes of the Leash close over my mind. Beneath us, Roxanna had fainted. Pluto was trying to revive her. Each time he slapped her face, she groaned deliciously.

“What a silly game,” Julie commented. Then, letting go my hand, she leaped into the accommodating air to a height of thirty feet and hung here, secure as a ping-pong ball suspended by a jet of air.

“Try and catch me!” she shouted, and then sailed off on a long parabola that ended behind the sagging roof of the old barn.

“What about me?” Pluto protested. “I want to fly too.”

“You’re probably too old, but I’ll ask her,” I promised. Then I flew off to catch Julie, and Pluto saw no more of me or Julie for a good two hours. She led me quite a chase, high into the clouds, skimming the branches of the nearby scrub woods, skipping like stones over the smooth waters of Lake Superior. We were both delightfully exhausted before she let me catch her.

When I had caught my breath back, I asked her what kennel she came from.

“Oh, it’s a new kennel out in the asteroids. You’ve probably never heard of it. Not yet,” she added patriotically.

“And what are you doing here? I mean, the Skunk farm isn’t really a crossroads. Why come to Earth at all, if you’ve got a nice kennel in the asteroids?”

“Well, my Master needs more stock, and he brought me along to help him choose. Things are cheaper on Earth, and my Master has to count his pennies. That’s what he tells me anyhow. As far as I’m concerned,” she finished loyally, “I’d rather live at Swan Lake than anywhere else in the universe.”

I wanted to say that I felt exactly the same way, but instead I put in a good word for Shroeder’s rugby field and tennis courts.

Julie suddenly grew dejected. “Oh dear, then you won’t want to come back with us! I’d been hoping so much…”

“Ask me. Don’t jump to conclusions.”

“Will you come back to Swan Lake with me? Please!”

Her Master’s voice resonated in my mind, echoing Julie’s plea: Will you?

Her Master? No—now he was mine! I didn’t have to answer Julie’s question for our Master conveyed my happy assent to her mind. Her own delight bounced back like a well-returned ball in a friendly game of tennis.

“What about my brother? You’ll want him too, won’t you?” (It’s amazing how accomplished a hypocrite one can be at ten years of age.)

“Well, naturally! After all, you’re both Whites.”

I was more than a little shocked. Aside from Uncle Tom’s Cabin, I had never come across examples of race prejudice. “Some of my best friends—” I began indignantly.

“Oh, not that kind of White, silly! Tennyson White. The most famous novelist in the last fifty years. And you’re his sons. The only ones, I might add, who haven’t been snapped up by top kennels. I wouldn’t say a word against Shroeder, you understand, but I really think you can do better. Why, the two of you are worth all the other pets in that kennel taken together!”

Now, of course, I realize that that kind of talk is undemocratic and subversive, but then my tender mind, depraved by the false values of the Mastery, was flattered by such a compliment. I even thanked Julie for it.

“I’ve told you my name. But you haven’t told me yours.”

“White Fang,” I said, still swollen with pride.

“Fang, White. That’s a funny name. I don’t see you as ‘Fang, White’, at all. I think I’ll call you Cuddles instead.”

I should have objected then and there, but I was anxious lest I offend her and lose my ticket to the asteroids. And that’s how it happened that, for the next ten years of my life, I was known as Cuddles to all my friends.

When Julie and I returned to the Skunk farmhouse, we found that Roxanna and Pluto had tired of waiting for us and returned to the kennel in their bubbletank. Julie and I took a direct route, skimming the treetops of the twilit woods, protected against the chill of the October evening by our Master’s thoughtfulness.

Within a few minutes of our return, Julie’s Master had negotiated the transfer of myself and Pluto from the Shroeder Kennel to Swan Lake. Roxanna protested that he could not interrupt our literary studies at this crucial point. We must either remain at Shroeder or she must be allowed to accompany us to the asteroids. I leave it to the reader to imagine which course Roxanna had in mind. But to all her pleadings and threats, the Master of Swan Lake was coldly indifferent. Roxanna’s pedigree was worthless; her physical person possessed an at-best-problematical beauty; her literary attainments extended no farther than her appreciation of Proust, an author for whom the Master of Swan Lake had the lowest regard. Roxanna cried; she fainted; she tore her hair. It was all to no avail. At last, when Pluto had gathered together all his scraps of poetry, and we were ready to go, Roxanna bade us farewell with a curse.

The trip to the asteroids was made that night as we slept. What means our new Master employed to transport us, I could not say. Nothing so crude as a spaceship. The Master’s technology was a spur-of-the-moment thing, and I will admit, for my own part, that mechanical engineering isn’t really that interesting to me.

We woke to the subdued luminescence of kennel walls that we had known all our lives. The walls shifted to livelier color schemes in response to the quickening neural patterns of our waking minds. For a moment I feared that we were still back at Shroeder.

But there was this difference: instead of the relentless drag of Earth gravity, a gentle gravitational pulse, a relaxed ebb-and-flow, seemed to issue from my own heart.

I felt the Leash of my new Master close more tightly over my mind (for the next ten years it would never entirely desert me, even in sleep), and I smiled and whispered my thanks to Him for having brought me away.

Julie was awake now too, and with a wave of her arm and a flourish of synthetic horn-music, the walls of the kennel dissolved, and I beheld the boundless, glowing landscape of the asteroids.

I gasped.

It is yours, said a voice in my head that would soon come to seem as familiar as my own.

Hand in hand, Julie and I sailed out over this phantasmagoric playground, and the spheres of heaven played their music for us. Exotic blossoms exploded like Roman candles, discharging hoards of rich perfume. Colors wreathed us in abstract, joyous patterns, as the two of us bounded and tumbled through the shifting fields of gravity, like starlings caught in a dynamo.