“Is … Honorius out there, too? Or under here somewhere?”
“No. He was dealt with a long time ago.” Deacon Giuseppe made pounding motions.
“I see.” The Pope wondered if he could talk to … talk to the Son of God. Or the son of someone, anyhow. Did he have Aramaic enough for that? Or possibly Hebrew? How the Rabbi of Rome would laugh—or cry—if he knew! “Does every Pope do this? Endure this?”
“Every single one,” Giuseppe said proudly. “What better way to connect to the beginning of things? Here is the beginning of things. He was risen, you know, Holy Father. How much does why really matter?”
For a lot of the world, why would matter enormously. The Muslims … The Protestants … The Orthodox … His head began to hurt, although the wound didn’t. Maybe talking with … him wasn’t such a good idea after all. How much do I really want to know?
“When we go back up, I have a lot of praying to do,” the Pope said. Would all the prayer in the world free him from the feel of teeth in his throat? And what could he tell his confessor? The truth? The priest would think he’d gone mad—or, worse, wouldn’t think so and would start the scandal. A lie? But wasn’t inadequate confession of sin a sin in and of itself? The headache got worse.
Deacon Giuseppe might have read his thoughts. “You have a dispensation against speaking of this, your Holiness. It dates from the fourth century, and it may be the oldest document in the Vatican Library. It’s not like the Donation of Constantine, either—there’s no doubt it’s genuine.”
“Deo gratias!” the Pope said again.
“Shall we go, then?” the deacon asked.
“One moment.” The Pope flogged his memory and found enough Aramaic for the question he had to ask: “Are you the Son of God?”
The sharp-toothed mouth twisted in a—reminiscent?—smile. “You say it,” came the reply.
Well, he told Pilate the same thing, even if the question was a bit different, the Pope thought as he left the little chamber and Deacon Giuseppe meticulously closed and locked doors behind them. And, when the Pope was on the stairs going back up to the warmth and blessed light of St. Peter’s, one more question occurred to him. How many Popes had heard that same answer?
How many of them had asked that same question? He’d heard it in Aramaic, in Greek, in Latin, and in the language Latin had turned into. He always said the same thing, and he always said it in Aramaic.
“You say it,” he murmured to himself, there alone in the comfortable darkness again. Was he really? How could he know? But if they thought he was, then he was—for them. Wasn’t that the only thing that counted?
That Roman had washed his hands of finding absolute truth. He was a brute, but not a stupid brute.
And this new one was old, and likely wouldn’t last long. Pretty soon, he would feed again. And if he had to try to answer that question one more time afterwards … then he did, that was all.
IT’S THE END OF THE
WORLD AS WE KNOW IT,
AND WE FEEL FINE
My agent and friend, Russ Galen, sent me a book about urban wildlife: the creatures even city folk are likely to see, such as foxes and coyotes and crows and mockingbirds. That’s where I first found out about Belyaev’s experiments with foxes. By pure happenstance, there was a National Geographic article a couple of months later on domestication. That went into more detail about Belyaev and his work, and about its genetic basis. Between the two of them, they gave me the idea for this story.
It’s the future. Call it a few hundred years from now. Close enough. Maybe a little more, maybe a little less. Just how much matters less than you think. That’s kinda the point, y’know?
What am I talking about? Hang on. You’ll see.
Here’s Willie. He’s lying on the grass in his back yard, playing with his pet fox. The fox’s name is Joe. If the fox had a last name, it would be Belyaev. But it doesn’t, so don’t worry about that. Willie has a last name, one he hardly remembers. You don’t need to worry about that, either. Willie sure doesn’t.
Willie sits up. He pulls a red, rubbery ball, just the right size, out of a pocket on his shorts. He tosses it into the air. Joe sits there watching, panting, making little excited yappy noises. Willie tosses the ball up again. Joe stares, his dark eyes shining.
Willie throws the ball halfway down the yard. It bounces a couple of times on the grass, then rolls almost to the flower bed at the far end. Joe’s after it like a shot. He grabs it in his mouth and shakes his head from side to side as if he’s killing it. One of his ears is floppy. It flaps as he shakes the ball.
Then, head high, bushy tail proud, Joe trots back to Willie and drops the ball in front of him. He can’t yell Do it again!, but every line of his plump little body says it for him. Willie picks up the ball. He doesn’t care about fox spit, or much of anything else. I mean, who does, these days?
Away goes the ball. Away goes Joe, fast as he can. Back he comes, ball in mouth. Drop. Wait.
This time, Willie gets cute. He makes the throwing motion, but he hangs on to the ball. Joe’s faked out of his shoes, only he isn’t wearing any (neither is Willie). The fox bounds across the lawn after … nothing. When he gets to about where the ball oughta be, he looks every which way at once, trying to figure out how the hell it went and disappeared on him.
Willie falls out laughing. It’s the funniest thing that’s happened to him since, well, the last funny thing that happened to him. Which wasn’t very long ago, in case you want to know.
When Joe’s just about to go, like, totally batshit, Willie calls, “Here it is, silly!” He throws the ball for real. Joe captures it and kills it extra good, as if to pay it back for fooling him. Then he brings it over to Willie. He’s ready for more. You bet he is.
They kind of look alike, Willie and Joe. Yeah, and your Aunt Margaret looks like her basset hound, too, after twelve years together. Not like that, though. Like this.
We’ll do Joe first. You think fox, you think sharp-nosed chicken thief and bunny cruncher. Joe isn’t like that. Sure, his umpty-ump great-grandparents were, but so what? Your Aunt Margaret’s basset hound’s umpty-ump great-grandparents pulled down moose in the snowy forests right after the glaciers melted. Between them and him, there’ve been some changes made. And there’ve been some changes made from those chicken swipers to Joe.
He’s plump. I already said that. Partly it’s on account of Willie feeds him too much, but only partly. Plump is cute, and cute is what his breeders were after. His floppy ear is also cute. So is a tail that perks up when he sees people. He likes people. Since the days of his umpty-umps, liking people’s been bred into him.
His fur is longer and thicker and fluffier than your wild woodsrunning fox’s (yes, there still are wild woodsrunners, though not right around here). He has white patches all over, almost like a calico cat. His muzzle is maybe half as long as umpty-ump grandpa’s, and quite a bit thicker. His teeth are scaled down, too. They don’t have to work as hard as teeth did in the old days.
He’s cute. I already said that before, too. I know. But he is. I mean, he’s really cute.
And so is Willie. If you want to get mean about it, Willie looks kind of elfy-welfy. Being mean is such an old-time thing, though. He’s got big eyes, a snub nose, and features that look as if you left ’em out in the sun a skosh—only a skosh, mind you—too long. Purely by coincidence, he has red hair, close to the color of Joe’s. Not even slightly by coincidence, he has a couple of white streaks running through that red hair. Oh, yeah—he’s on the plump side, too.
Cute. For sure. USDA prime cute, if you want to know the truth. Not that there’s a USDA any more, but you get my drift.
Willie keeps throwing the ball. Joe keeps fetching it. Finally he just wears out, poor little guy. He brings the ball back one last time, drops it out of his mouth, and flops down on the grass, totally beat. He pants and pants, tongue hangi
ng way, way out.
Willie pets him. Joe’s tail thumps up and down. He rolls on his back and sticks all four legs in the air. Willie rubs his tummy. Joe wiggles like jello. He doesn’t just dig it. He digs it bigtime.
So does Willie. Willie digs everything he does bigtime. If you don’t, why do it to begin with?
Here. Wait. I’ll show you. Willie waves his hand. Out of nowhere, music starts to play. No, don’t ask me how. It’s the future. They can do stuff like that stuff here. Take a look at Willie. Is he digging it, or what?
Remember how once, just once, you scored the best dope in the world? Remember how you smoked till your mouth and your throat were all sandpaper and your lungs thought you’d gone down on a fireplace? Remember how you put on your headphones—took three tries, didn’t it?—and cranked Dark Side of the Moon or “The Ride of the Valkyries” or whatever most got you off all the way up to eleven, man? Remember what it was like?
Of course you don’t remember. You were wasted, you fool. But you sorta remember how awesome it was, right?
Okay. Willie’s like that all the time, only more so. And everybody else in the future is like that, too. And those people don’t need to pay big bucks to keep Mexican druglords in supermodels and swimming pools and RPGs, either. They don’t need the dope. They’re just like that. All the time. Naturally.
How? We’re getting there. Trust me.
Belyaev! I just met a fox named Belyaev!
Old Belyaev had a farm, ee-eye-ee-eye-oh!
As a matter of fact, Dmitri Belyaev did. A fox farm. Outside of Novosibirsk, of all places. Even in the future that holds Willie and Joe, Novosibirsk is nowhere squared. Nowhere cubed, even. In the middle of what they called the twentieth century, Novosibirsk was nowhere cubed and behind the Iron Curtain.
Belyaev didn’t care. Or if he did care, he couldn’t do anything about it, which amounts to the same thing. He was trying to find out how people way back when turned wolves into dogs and the aurochs into Elsie the Borden cow and … well, and like that.
So he used foxes.
Foxes are—duh!—wild. Or they were when Belyaev started messing with them, anyhow. They don’t like people. They’re scared of people. A lot of evolution over a lot of years has made sure of that.
But some foxes don’t like people less than others. Some foxes are less scared of people than others. Belyaev took the least unfriendly foxes he could find and bred them to one another. Then he did the same thing with the next generation. And the one after that. And the one after that, and the one …
Foxes have litters every year. It’s a long-term experiment, yeah, but it’s not like domesticating sequoias.
Or even people. We’ll get there, too. We really will.
You can do stuff like that. Belyaev did it for science. Way back when, Ugh and Mrong and Gronk had no idea they were doing it. They’d never heard of science. They did it anyway. And it worked. If it didn’t work, no Pluto. No Foghorn Leghorn. No Elsie, either, or Milky White if you’re into musicals, or even Mr. Farnsworth, come to that.
It worked for Belyaev, too. It worked faster than he ever figured it would. By the fourth generation, he had foxes that wagged their tails when people came up. They whimpered for attention. They let people hold them. Hey, they wanted people to hold them.
They started looking different, too. Some of them had floppy ears. Some had white patches in their fur. Their tails curled up instead of hanging low. Every so often, some were born with shorter bones or fewer bones in their tails. They got shorter, blunter muzzles. They were turning, yes, cute.
How come? Well, changes in behavior, like, go with changes in biology. Hormones run growth and growth patterns. Hormones run aggression, too. Belyaev’s tame foxes had lower stress-hormone levels in their blood. They had more serotonin—the big calmer—in their foxy brains. They were mellow, man.
Hormones run growth. And what runs hormones? Right the first time—genes.
Stay tuned. We’ll be back.
Willie’s taking Joe for a walk. Other people are out and about, too, walking their dogs and foxes and potbellied porkers and what have you. No, nobody’s out walking her cat. This is the future, sure. I know. It’s not Never-Never Land, though.
Joe says hi to other foxes about how you’d expect. He sniffs ’em here and there to see how they smell interesting and where they smell interesting. He’s been fixed, so he doesn’t try to hump the foxy female foxes he meets, but he gives ’em an olfactory once-over, all right. He doesn’t remember why they smell so good, but he knows they do.
Dogs are a different story. Joe doesn’t want much to do with dogs. Once upon a time, dogs were wolves. Something way down deep inside Joe remembers that, too. So does something deep inside the dogs. A lot of them, even ones no bigger than Joe is, think they’re supposed to have him for a snack.
It doesn’t happen. Willie doesn’t let it happen. Neither do the other people. They joke about it, and smile, and laugh, and pat one another on the back or on the arm or on the head. They all kinda look like Willie’s cousins. They’re short-featured. They’re smooth-featured. They’re plumpish—not fat, but for sure plumpish. They have streaks and patches of white in their hair.
Dogs and foxes are nothing for them to get their bowels in an uproar about. It’s the future. People don’t sweat the small stuff. People don’t hardly sweat the big stuff, either. What’s the point? Ain’t no point.
Well, ain’t no point unless maybe you’re Fritz. Fritz lives down the street from Willie. He’s kind of funny-looking. People talk about it all the time, only not where he can hear them. His nose is a little too long and a little too sharp. His chin sticks out a little too much. He looks more like you and me than he’s got any business doing, is what I’m saying.
He acts more like you and me than he’s got any business doing, too. He’s loud. He’s brash. He’s quarrelsome—he gets into fights, and this at a time and in a place where nobody, and I mean nobody, gets into fights. He has not one but two big, mean dogs. He only keeps them on the leash when he absolutely has to. Otherwise, he lets them run around loose and scare all the other pets in the neighborhood.
They scare the bejesus out of Joe. They would have done worse than that to him one time if he hadn’t run like blazes back to his own house. They chased him as far as they could, baying and growling and making like the wolves their umpty-greats were way back when.
They’re on the leash now, though. Fritz got into trouble not too long ago. He’s walking soft right now. He’s trying not to give the mostly automated Powers That Be any more excuse to come down on him. He may be funny-looking, Fritz, but he isn’t dumb. He isn’t bad, either, not really. He’s just … different.
He’s different the same way his dogs are different, only more so. It’s no wonder he has dogs like that, is it? Like draws like, sure as hell.
But he’s on his best behavior right now. Joe kinda sits behind Willie’s heel, just in case, but Fritz doesn’t let his dogs—their names are Otto and Ilse—make any mischief. He smiles at Willie. Even his smile seems odd. His teeth are too big and too sharp, and it looks as though he’s got too many of them even if he doesn’t.
“How’s it goin’, Willie?” he rumbles. His voice sounds deeper than it ought to, too.
“It’s okay,” Willie answers. When is it not okay? Well, it’s not so real okay when he has to talk with Fritz, but he can see telling Fritz as much isn’t the smartest thing he could do.
“Good. That’s good.” Fritz on his best behavior is almost harder to take than Fritz being Fritz. You can see the real him peeking out from behind the mask he puts on. He tries to act like everybody else, and the trying shows, and so does the acting.
But Willie is a friendly soul. Not many people these days aren’t friendly souls. People like people. People are supposed to like people, and most of them can hardly help liking people most of the time
. People are like that. They can’t help being like that. So, in spite of seeing the mask, Willie goes, “What’s up with you, Fritz?”
“Well, I’ll tell you, man,” Fritz says. “I’ve got this chance to bring in some serious cash, only I need me a little front money to help get things off the ground, know what I mean? How are you fixed these days?”
“I’m fine,” Willie says, which is true enough. In this day and age, you really have to work at it not to be fine. Some people manage, of course. They may not work quite the same as they did way back when, but nobody’s come up with a cure for human stupidity yet.
Take a look at Fritz, for instance. Although with Fritz, like I said before, it isn’t exactly stupidity. Fritz just … doesn’t quite belong where he’s at. If he were selling you aluminum siding or something, chances are you’d like him fine. Which is a measure of your damnation, is what it is. And, considering that Fritz is where he’s at, it’s a measure of his damnation, too.
If he were selling you aluminum siding, you can bet it’d fade and blister in the hot sun. He’d promise you it was top grade, and he’d be long gone, promising other people other things, by the time you found out he was full of shit. The warranty he gave you wouldn’t be worth the paper it was printed on, either. Surprise!
So he’s sizing Willie up now. He’s trying to look like he’s being all friendly and everything, but he’s sizing him up, all right. So much for best behavior. Sometimes you just can’t help yourself, not if you’re Fritz. “Listen, man,” he says, “with your money and my know-how, we could do all right together, y’know?”
“Maybe,” Willie says. He eyes Fritz the same way Joe eyes Otto and Ilse. Joe might like to be friends with them. Only he wonders whether he’ll get eaten if he tries. Willie kinda wonders that about Fritz, too. But only kinda. Joe may worry about dogs, but he’s fine with people. And so is Willie. People are fine with one another. Most people are, anyhow.
We Install Page 31
