Dog Tales Read online

  DOGTALES!

  Edited by Jack Dann & Gardner Dozois

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  eISBN: 978-1-62579-142-9

  Copyright © 2013 by Gardner Dozois and Jack Dann

  First printing: September 1988

  Cover art by: Ron Miller

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  Electronic version by Baen Books

  Acknowledgment is made for permission to print the following material:

  “Auto-Da-Fé” by Damon Knight. Copyright © 1961 by Galaxy Publishing Corporation for Galaxy Science Fiction. First published in Galaxy, February 1961. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Roog” by Philip K. Dick. Copyright © 1952 by Mercury Press, Inc. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February 1953. Reprinted by permission of the author’s agents, The Scott Meredith Literary Agency, Inc.

  “Do It for Mama!” by Jerrold J. Mundis. Copyright © 1971 by Jerrold J. Mundis. First published in The Ruins of Earth (Putnam). Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “The Hounds” by Kate Wilhelm. Copyright © 1974 by Damon Knight. First published in A Shocking Thing (Pocket Books). Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “The Howling Tower” by Fritz Leiber. Copyright © 1940 by Street & Smith, Inc. Copyright © renewed 1970 by Fritz Leiber. First published in Unknown, 1940. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Demon Lover” by M. Sargent Mackay. Copyright © 1984 by Mercury Press, Inc. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, June 1984. Reprinted by permission of the author, Alexander Mackay Smith.

  “A Few Kindred Spirits” by John Christopher. Copyright © 1965 by Mercury Press, Inc. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November 1965. Reprinted by permission of the author and the author’s agents, Scott Meredith Literary Agency.

  “Dogs’ Lives” by Michael Bishop. Copyright © 1984 by Michael Bishop. First published in The Missouri Review, vol. VII, No. 2 and the anthology Light Years and Dark (Berkley, 1984). Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Here, Putzi!” by Fletcher Pratt and L. Sprague DeCamp. Copyright © 1953 by Twayne Publishers. Copyright © renewed 1981 by L. Sprague DeCamp. First published in Tales From Gavagan’s Bar (Twayne). Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Desertion” by Clifford D. Simak. Copyright © 1944 by Street & Smith Publications, Inc. Copyright © renewed 1972 by Clifford D. Simak. First published in Astounding, November 1944. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “I Lost My Love to the Space Shuttle Columbia” by Damien Broderick. Copyright © 1983 by TSR Hobbies, Inc. First published in Amazing Science Fiction Stories, March 1983. Reprinted by permission of the author and the author’s agent, Virginia Kidd.

  “The Master of the Hounds” by Algis J. Budrys. Copyright © 1966 by Curtis Publishing, Inc. First published in The Saturday Evening Post, 1966. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “One-Trick Dog” by Bruce Boston. Copyright © 1987 by Davis Publishing, Inc. First published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, May 1987. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Friend’s Best Man” by Jonathan Carroll. Copyright © 1987 by Mercury Press, Inc. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January 1987. Reprinted by permission of the author and the author’s agents, Harold Ober Associates, Inc.

  “Wish Hound” by Pat Murphy. Copyright © 1980 by Charles L. Grant. First published in Shadows 3 (Doubleday). Reprinted by permission of the author.

  Magic Tales Anthology Series

  UNICORNS! edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois

  MAGICATS! edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois

  FAERY! edited by Terri Windling

  BESTIARY! edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois

  MERMAIDS! edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois

  SORCERERS! edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois

  DEMONS! edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois

  DOGTALES! edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois

  For Stuart David Schiff

  The editors would like to thank the following people for their help and support:

  Susan Casper

  Jeanne Van Buren Dann

  Patrick Delahunt

  Edward Ferman

  Virginia Kidd

  Trina King

  Pat Cadigan

  Brian Perry and Tawna Lewis of Fat Cat Books (263 Main St., Johnson City, New York 13790)

  Stuart Schiff

  Janet Kagan

  Jody Scobie

  the staff of the Vestal Public Library and the Binghamton Public Library

  Tom Whitehead of the Special Collections Department of the Paley Library at Temple University

  Alfred Williams

  Sheila Williams

  and special thanks to our editors, Susan Allison and Ginjer Buchanan

  Auto-Da-Fe

  by Damon Knight

  Dogs have been with us since the Upper Paleolithic Age. They shared our campfires, our hunts, and probably our caves. An excavation has unearthed the bones of a young girl who was buried with four dogs’ heads surrounding her, the heads facing outward—guarded by her dogs, even in death. That was some 25,000 years ago, and the little girl was one of our Cro-Magnon ancestors: the first modern Homo sapien. It’s not so different now between man and dogs. They still protect us, share our hearths and homes, keep us company, and look to us for food, love, and security. And so it will most likely continue to be, even in the far future.

  But the question is, will we keep our part of the ancient bargain?

  Damon Knight’s professional career as a writer, editor, critic, and anthologist spans almost fifty years. He has long been a major shaping force in the development of modern science fiction. He wrote the first important book of SF criticism, In Search of Wonder, and won a Hugo Award for it. He was the founder of the Science Fiction Writers of America, confounder of the prestigious Milford Writer’s Conference and, with his wife, writer Kate Wilhelm, is still deeply involved in the operation of the Clarion workshop for new young writers.

  He was the editor Orbit, the longest-running original anthology series in the history of science fiction, and has also produced important works of genre history such as The Futurians. His other books include the novels A for Anything, The Other Foot, and Hell’s Pavement, and the collections Rule Golden and Other Stories and The Best of Damon Knight. His most recent books are the novels The Man in the Tree, CV, and The Mirror. Knight lives with his family in Eugene, Oregon.

  * * *

  The king of the world sat on a balcony, listening to the wind blow around his tower. He was drunk. He would get drunker still, and then he would be sick, and the dogs would take care of him. By tomorrow afternoon, he would be drunk and sick again.

  The dog Roland lay near his feet—not quite near enough for a kick. The man felt his patient gaze like an itch, like the scab on an ill-healed wound that he could not scratch. Here we sit, he thought with blurred irony, the last man and the last dog. In a world of bitches.

  He glanced down at the dog, and saw the grizzled fur above the great bloodshot eyes, the hanging dewlaps, the yellow teeth. You’re too old, my lad, he thought with bitter satisfaction. You won’t last another century.

  Dogs and men, they all died eventually. The dogs lived five hundred years at most; all the art of their masters had not been able to give them more. But the race of dogs was not finished; the race of man was.

  There were fifty-nine dogs left, fifty-eight fem
ales, one male.

  There was one man, who could call himself the king of the world, or the Dalai Lama, or anything he liked, because there was no one left to dispute the honor with him. No one to talk to; no one to remember.

  He was nine thousand and some odd hundreds of years old. Long ago, in the first fraction of that life span, he had been given the organic catalysts that slowed down the process of maturity and decay almost to zero . . . not quite. At the age of one thousand, he had been a man of thirty, at two thousand, not quite forty. The golden years of full maturity, full powers, were multiplied until it had seemed they would never end.

  But the years of decay were multiplied too. He had been a very old man for over a millennium. For a thousand years he had been dying.

  The dogs kept him alive. They tended the machines, served him, did the work he was too feeble to do. The clever dogs, the faithful dogs, who would still be alive when he was dead.

  He thought with bitter regret of his mother. He barely remembered her; she had died four thousand years ago. She could have had a daughter! he told himself. She needn’t have left me to finish it all alone.

  Perhaps she had tried. He thought he remembered vaguely that she had, that there had been miscarriages. The human strain was grown thin and sickly with too much care. He himself might have been incapable of fathering a child, even in his years of strength; now it was too late to wonder.

  Not like the dogs, he told himself somberly. Bred for use, not for their own pleasure. I never wanted a child, when I was young. They think of nothing else.

  He glanced again at Roland, and the dog’s tail thumped against the paved floor.

  A knot of pain gathered abruptly in the man’s chest. He could well imagine the big-skulled whelps gathered around the fire in the evening, listening and looking while the older dogs told them of Man. He imagined their howls of dismay, when they learned there were no more men in the world.

  Century after century . . . perhaps in time they would forget there had ever been a race of masters. Perhaps their sorrow and their loss would turn to a vague sadness, a restless urge that would drive them as Man’s restless seeking had driven him. In time they might be great.

  And then all the works of Man would be forgotten, lost to eternity—merely the unimportant prelude to the reign of Dog.

  The thought sharpened his pain intolerably. He picked up the cool tube of the tankard that lay on the table beside him, and drew a long draft. The liquor lay heavily in him now. He was going to be sick soon.

  He drank again, and sucked air. “The tankard’s empty,” he said. “Fetch me another.”

  Roland was up instantly, wagging his foolish tail. “Yes, master,” and he was away, the tankard clutched in his clumsy fingers.

  Roland hurried, ignoring the tight band of pain at the base of his spine, the complaining twinges in his legs. However altered and bred, the canine body was not designed to walk erect. You took the gift, and you gloried in it, but you paid for it. That was where old age first struck: very old dogs could not stand at all, but crept miserably on all fours, and the shame of it, Roland thought, shortened their lives.

  The real agony came when duty pointed two ways at once; all else was of little account. For it was one thing to know what was best for the master—even to understand, in a dim corner of the mind, that the master was foolish, bitter, jealous, cruel. It was another thing to do what was best, when the master ordered otherwise. To obey was joy and utter necessity; even if the master commanded, “Kill me!”; even though the heart burst with remorse, a dog would obey.

  Thus it was joy to fill the tankard, to serve, and it was pain, for the liquor was a slow poison. And even this was nothing. There was the question of breeding, which must be settled soon now.

  Roland was the last male of his line. He knew how the others had died, one for clumsiness, one for a tail too big, others for a habit of drooling or for the wrong pattern of spots, or simply because the master was in a rage. He knew, even, that these deaths were not a matter of accident.

  But Roland was coming to the end of his potent term, and still the order to breed had not been given. The food machine was still dropping, into every morsel of food the dogs ate, the chemical agent that kept them sterile.

  The youngest bitch now living could not survive more than another three hundred years. The master, if he were well served, could live another thousand.

  As it had many times before, his mind skirted around the unvoiced thought of the death that would be the master’s—the lonely, miserable death of an outcast cur . . .

  The dogs must breed. The master must give the order.

  He filled the tankard and climbed the ramp, panting as the strain told on his tired legs. Near the doorway stood one of the females, waiting for him. She did not speak, but there was a question in her anxious eyes.

  Roland shook his head sorrowfully, and passed on.

  He put the tankard on the little table, laid the drinking tube near the master’s hand. The master did not appear to see him. Slumped among the cushions that filled the ebon and argent throne, he was gazing out into the sky. His bitter face was relaxed, almost peaceful.

  Perhaps he was thinking of the days of his youth, when he had roamed the whole world and made it his. Perhaps he was musing on the greatness his ancestors had known—the globe-girdling engines, the mighty cities, the depth and daring of intellect that had plumbed the last secrets of the universe.

  It was a good time; Roland dared delay no longer. His heart was thudding painfully and his throat was dry as he said, “Master, may I speak?”

  The man turned his head slowly and his red-rimmed eyes focused with surprise on Roland’s face. “You back?” he asked. “Where’s the tankard?”

  “Here, master,” said Roland, moving it forward. He waited while the man picked up the tube and drank. Then he said again, “Master, may I speak?”

  The man belched, and wiped his crusted lips with his hand. “All right, what is it?”

  The words tumbled out in confusion. “Master, I am the last dog. I am near the end of my breeding time. If we do not breed, you will be left unattended when this generation is gone.”

  The man looked at him with open hostility in his narrow eyes. “Well, breed, then,” he said. “Don’t come to me for permission to play your dirty little games.”

  Roland’s throat was hot with shame. “Master, to breed, I must stop the chemical in the food.”

  “Stop it.”

  They were playing a game, Roland knew. The master’s memory was bad, but not this bad. His spirits lifted a little, even though he had little hope. If it was a game, then it gave the master pleasure. He said, “Master, that is done by an automatic machine. The control cylinder is under your seal.”

  The man stared at him silently for a moment, and scrubbed the bristles on his chin with one splotched and bony hand. “So that’s it, is it?” he said. “You want me to unlock the cylinder, so you can make another generation of whining, dirty pups.”

  “Yes, master.”

  “You want your whelps to outlive me.”

  “No, master!”

  Volumes of unutterable things contended in Roland’s mind. He felt shame, and horror, and a bottomless despair; and at the same time he knew that these were the things he was intended to feel, and he was glad. For a dog, however fine, is a dog; a man, however base, is a man.

  The master said slowly, “What do you want then, Roland?”

  “I want you to live,” said the dog, and his voice broke. The slow, seldom tears of his race coursed down his cheeks.

  The man was silent for a moment; then he turned away. “All right, bring it here to me,” he said.

  ###

  The female was waiting halfway down the ramp; two more were behind her. They shrank timidly at his approach, but their eagerness held them. He had no heart to reprimand them as they deserved.

  “Did he—?”

  “Yes!” said Roland. He hurried down the ramp, and the fema
les followed him. More of them appeared at each stage of the descent, some racing ahead of him, some clustering behind. The corridor was filled with their involuntary yelps and whimpers of delight.

  In the food room a dozen of them were waiting for him, grouped around a cabinet against the far wall; they made a lane for him as he approached. Carefully, with ceremony, he unlocked the case and drew out the long cylinder, bound around with the wire and wax of the master’s seal.

  ###

  The king of the world sat in his throne of ebony and silver, and stared at the blank, meaningless face of the sky. Behind him, down the ramp that always smelled of dog no matter how it was disinfected, he heard the faint far echo of canine glee.

  Roland had told them all about it, he thought. He felt hurried, cheated of his chance of decision. It was necessary to give them renewed life, he knew; he would suffer, otherwise; he would die painfully and alone.

  But he could not prolong his life without sparing them also; and that was bitter as gall. Better to end all at once, dog and man . . .

  Roland came in breathless, joy in his eyes, holding the cylinder carefully in his hands. Wordless, he held it out.