Dogs of S.T.E.A.M.

by Ralph E. Vaughan

  “You know what I’m talking about, don’t you, Levi?” she said. “You’re part Dachshund, so you know how that predatory instinct can just take over. Tunneling down into the old badger’s lair, doing what needs to be done. It’s what we ‘badger-hounds’ do, it’s in our blood, it’s our inevitable nature. Even though you may be a mix, you know what I mean.”

  Levi stared at June with a gaze that, from any other dog, would have been a mild look. From a natural alpha, however, it was a silent accusation that a line had been crossed. If she had known what he had seen, what he had done before finding his way miraculously to the house on Fifth Avenue, and what he could still do, she would not have chided him so cavalierly.

  “Well, I’m just saying that back in the parks in Seattle, I would always chase the…”

  “Come on, June,” Yoda urged. “We don’t need your life story. What about the noise you mentioned to Scarper?”

  The Wire-haired Dachshund looked from Levi, grateful for Yoda’s interjection. She had always been the ruler of whatever roost in which she found herself, the dog with the most toys. It was quite a shock to learn of a world beyond soft laps, belly rubs and regular meals, a world in which she was not the center of the universe.

  “It was a weird sound, like a trill or a whistle,” she said. “It rose and fell. It was not a car alarm—I know what those sound like. It was hard to tell where it came from, but it seemed to be just east of south.” She gestured with her muzzle. “After a few moments it went away, just stopped, and that was all…” She paused a moment. “I don’t know, but…”

  “What is it, June?” Sunny asked softly. “Did you remember something else about the sound?”

  “No, not the sound…a cat.”

  “Cat?” Yoda frowned. “What cat? Scarper didn’t say anything about a cat.”

  “I didn’t tell Scarper about the cat in the tree…” June looked up into the branches, now not thinking of a fugitive rodent but trying to retrieve an image that now seemed more a dream than a memory. “At least, I think there was a cat in the tree.”

  “Which came first?” Levi asked. “The cat or the trill?”

  “The cat…I think; yes, definitely the cat,” June replied. “I was on night-watch, before the sound, when I felt like something was watching me. You know the feeling, right? No noise, no movement that you’re aware of, but you just know someone has eyes on you. I looked up. In my breed, the nose is the big deal—better to sniff out those deep lairs—but my eyes are pretty good too But it was a dark night, and you can see how thick the high branches are.”

  She looked up, inviting the detectives to appreciate the difficult conditions with which she contended, but when she looked back, all their gazes were trained steadily at her. That these dogs were capable of such intense concentration was very disconcerting to her. Levi, especially, was unnerving with his ancient eyes, black fur streaked with white, and a face the years had turned pale as a ghost. As a Dachshund-mix, even though his extra-long legs argued for a very strange ‘handsome stranger’ as Sire or Dam, they should have had more commonalities than differences, but she was beginning to think they had nothing at all in common. She shuddered at what he must have seen in his life, wondered if the rumors were true.

  “Anyway,” she resumed. “It seemed something was hiding in the darkness, so I braced for a tussle. I saw two yellowish-green gleams in the shadows. I didn’t know what they were. Not eyes, I figured, because eyes just reflect light, and these actually glowed on their own, but eyes they were—cat eyes. I saw a large cat, a molly, crouched on the branch, dark to the point of blending in with the night, but with thin silver lines zig-zagging through her fur. But, the thing is, well, it’s a little unbelievable…”

  “Go ahead, June” Sunny urged. “We need to know what you saw. No one will laugh.”

  June took a deep breath and said: “The cat was wearing a black hat, a white collar and a red bowtie.”

  Yoda laughed.

  June growled deep in her throat. She should have never told the pup Scarper about the weird trilling in the night. Who would have guessed he would go running to these three, that they would make her business their business?

  Sunny thrust her shoulder against Yoda’s side. He was big for a Pomeranian, but a leaf compared to eighty-five pounds of solid Golden Retriever. He caught himself before he fell over, but his laughter stopped immediately.

  “And then came the trilling?” Levi asked, his voice firm but mild, and without a trace of ridicule.

  “Yes, it was very startling, and I shifted my gaze from the cat,” she replied. “The trilling stopped. I looked back, the cat was gone.”

  “Where do you think the cat went?” Levi asked.

  “I have no idea,” June admitted. “She did not go past me, and I would have heard her had she jumped in any direction from the branch. The sound was gone, the cat was gone—the trill there was no denying, but I guess I half-convinced myself the cat had maybe never been there, that maybe I imagined it…which is why I didn’t mention it to Scarper, not that I should have mentioned anything about it at all, I guess.”

  “What do you think now, June?” Sunny asked. “Was she really there? Or do you think maybe it was a trick of the night?”

  “No, that molly-cat was there,” June said confidently. “Telling you about it brought it all back, and it was just like I told you.” She glared defiantly at Yoda. “Hat, collar, bowtie, and all.”

  * * *

  “Maybe it was the Cheshire Cat,” Yoda suggested.

  “Keep your voice down,” Sunny warned.

  “We’re far enough away,” Yoda replied. “She may have a great sniffer, but her ears are nothing like mine.”

  “You mean, like radar dishes?” Sunny said, smiling.

  “Hey!” Yoda protested.

  “Besides, you should show more respect when interviewing,” Sunny continued. “We depend upon informants like June to keep us up-to-date with what’s happening in the neighborhood, and beyond. Her story fits in with others we’ve heard this morning.”

  “Except for the Cat Who Wasn’t There,” Yoda pointed out.

  “The cat is by far the most interesting part of her story,” Levi said. “It supplies an element of causality that’s been lacking in the reports from other dogs and cats.”

  “You mean you believe her?” Yoda asked, mouth agape.

  “The description is too specific to be an illusion,” Levi pointed out. “If she had seen a play of shadow and light, the description would have been correspondingly vague.”

  “She might have made it up,” Yoda suggested.

  “Yoda has a point,” Sunny admitted. “She seems the kind of dog who needs to be the center of attention.”

  “June is a pragmatic hunter, totally given over to the nature of her breed , by choice,” Levi said. “When she said she was in the tree watching, she meant exactly that, looking for things that exist, not enjoying the freedom of the night or the interesting smells that are so different than what you find in daylight. She did not imagine the cat, because she has no imagination. What she saw, she described; and what she described, she saw. She lacks the nature to imagine it. A hunter with an active imagination is a hungry dog, always drawn off scent by whatever she imagines is just out of sight.”

  Yoda glanced back, saw the gnarled old tree and the Wire-hair Dachshund still waiting for the squirrel to descend from the hidden heights of the tree. The dog gazed upward, as immobile as a lawn statue thrown up in the tree as a prank.

  “Speaking of hunters,” Yoda said. “Shouldn’t we do something about that squirrel? Yes, I know about Natural Law and all that, but, really—it’s not like she doesn’t get fed out of a can, and often.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about the squirrel,” Levi said.

  “Levi, how can you…” Yoda started to protest.

  “It doesn’t matter how long June stands there waiting for the squirrel she treed,” Sunny interrupted. “While she was distracted, the squirr
el leapt into the high branches of the adjoining tree.”

  “Lucky,” Yoda breathed.

  “Luck had nothing to do with it,” Sunny said, glancing at Levi.

  “When I gazed at June, she had no choice but to stare back, a hunter’s response,” Levi explained. “What even the best hunter forgets is that as she watches for her prey, her prey watches for her. June claims her nature is to hunt…”

  “An excuse to act out,” Yoda sneered.

  “…never realizing it is the squirrel’s nature to survive,” Levi continued. “June will do as she wants, what she justifies because of her presumed nature, and no one can change that. First Dog and Anubis acknowledged the primacy of Natural Law, but there are limits. If you assume the burden of Companions, as charged by First Dog, and exist within ordered society, as Anubis taught, then blind adherence to Natural Law will eventually lead you to ruin.”

  “Huh?” Yoda said.

  “Shunned and homeless,” Levi said.

  “I don’t get it,” Yoda complained.

  “Natural Law is fine for life in the wild, as a feral dog far from the haunts of Companions,” Sunny explained. “But practiced in a neighborhood like this, well, it makes you look like a dog out of control, not trusted by other animals, driven away by Companions. The Shelter is full of dogs who thought they could walk on both sides of the street, and not pay a price.”

  “I hope June doesn’t comes to a bad end,” Yoda said. “She may be full of herself and quite snarky, but I think she is essentially a good dog.”

  “She’ll find her way, I hope,” Levi said. “There are lots of good dogs and cats in this neighborhood. She’ll be watched over, as much as can be done, but the ultimate choice is hers. Besides…”

  “Besides, what?” Yoda asked when Levi did not finish.

  Levi chuckled.

  “What?” Yoda demanded.

  “If being full of oneself and acting snarky were crimes, where would you be?” Sunny said, smiling.

  Yoda growled softly. “Levi, what did you mean about that cat in the weird get-up being an ‘element of causality?’ Do you think she made the trilling sound somehow?”

  “Not in the sense of being the source, which is something June would have noticed,” Levi answered. “But there is some sort of link between the molly-cat and the trilling. She appeared before the trill started, and apparently vanished when it ceased. If there is no connection, then we are faced with a huge coincidence.”

  Both Yoda and Sunny sighed. They knew how Levi felt about coincidences. His distrust of them was usually justified.

  “I think the whole thing is kooky,” Yoda announced. “Not just the Vanishing Cat, but the trilling sound in the night.”

  “June may be the only witness to the cat, but too many others heard the trilling for us to discount it,” Levi said.

  “But what does it mean?” Yoda complained.

  “We don’t know…yet,” Sunny admitted. “But we will.”

  “The trilling might just be a sound in the night,” Yoda pointed out. “It might not mean anything.”

  “Since we now know it involves a very peculiar cat, we can surmise that it does means something,” Levi said. “Before, we just had a pattern of sounds heard. Now, we have a mystery.”

  That morning, when the three dogs started their routine patrol, they were looking for nothing but the usual—incursions by outlaw packs of dogs or clowders of cats, traces of inimical feral wanderers, lost pets, and evidence of cruelty or oppression. All that changed when the Sunshine Boys, two yarders at the corner of Fifth and Davidson, told them of the mysterious trill heard in the deep of the night, a tale repeated time and again. By the third report, from a hobo cat passing through the area enroute to National City, they knew something out of the ordinary had occurred while they slept.

  Though the Three Dog Detective Agency went everywhere in the South Bay in pursuit of justice, their nominal territory was a great rectangle, bounded on the north by E Street, on the south by H Street, and east and west by Hilltop Avenue and Broadway, a matter of eighteen city blocks, each block a quarter-mile square, with small streets, courts and alleys in-between. They could not walk all the miles of streets every day, but they did what they could. It was important to be seen by animals who needed to know someone was watching over them, but perhaps more important to be seen by would-be predators, to warn them the neighborhood was protected.

  Today, however, once the ubiquitous nature of the trilling noise became apparent, they made a special effort to travel all the roads and alleys they could, even little dead-end streets usually worth only a cursory glance. It was an impossible task, of course, so they enlisted the efforts of their associates, the cats Smokey and Groucho, and the Fifth Avenue Irregulars. They were keen that every animal who spent the night under the stars, voluntarily or not, be interviewed. All involved in the effort were instructed to submit the results of their interviews, with an emphasis on direction and distance of the trilling, to Kim and Little Kitty at the big brown house on Fifth Avenue.

  Unfortunately, there had been no time to inform the office cats about the project. Still, Levi and the others had full confidence in Kim’s ability to cope with the situation. Little Kitty, however, was another matter—she always was—but they knew that once Kim set Little Kitty to inputting information into the computer to generate a map, the Calico would be in her element.

  She liked nothing better than playing with a mouse.

  The morning had all but slipped away by the time they started wearily home and encountered June on her arboreal vigil. At the time, it seemed the luckiest break of the day in their efforts to understand the nature of the mystery trilling, but, of course, they had not at that time heard of Ajax’s weird encounter with a unique dog, under circumstances that could only be termed unearthly.

  * * *

  Artemus Gordon awoke suddenly in the night. He shook off a fitful and disturbing dream, that of a cat with glowing acid eyes and a giant dog with a snake-like tail. He heard a trilling noise rise and fall like ocean waves, northward. The sound chilled him. He did not know why a sound should fill him with fear, but it did.

  And he knew it had something to do with his dream.

  Cautiously he slipped out of his bed and padded to the living room window, looking north. He was a big dog, a Gordon Setter with a rich mahogany coat, except on his chest and above his eyes, where his fur was dazzling white. Despite his fifty pounds, he moved with a stealthy grace.

  He was the only creature awake in the ramshackle house. His Companion slept noisily, deep in a beery sleep. The rooms smelled of alcohol and rancid grease.

  He moved low behind the curtains, slowly raising his head above the sill. He did not know why, but he felt that openly showing himself at the window, even at such an hour, would be a mistake.

  At first he saw only the potholed street, cracked walkways with weeds growing up, and dark houses, some with boarded-up windows or police-tape, marking the scene of some earlier violence, an average street in Otay. The only things missing, this lane being off the main drag, were serpent-eyed cars prowling the night and Companions at the corners, watching for police, ever ready to commit sudden mayhem with blade or bullet.

  The persistent trilling drew Artemus Gordon’s attention from a dismal and dangerous life. Across the street was the Otay Baptist Church, or at least what remained of it. The building had always been boarded up, surrounded by a rusty chain-link fence, abandoned by Companions who had lost all faith and hope. At one time it had probably been brilliantly white, shining like a beacon upon a hill, but not even Companions recalled those days anymore. By day, it was an eyesore, but in the dark it looked almost predatory.

  Tonight, however, the old building was tenanted. Faint lights moved behind boarded windows, seen through cracks. In the high steeple, long bereft of bell—the cracked and dented voice of the church lay half-buried by a shattered walkway—greenish lights swarmed. It also seemed to be the source of the trilling nois
e.

  As Artemus Gordon watched, shadows flowed through the street toward the church. Dogs and a few cats leaped over the fence and gathered around the building. He had heard there was a crawlspace that allowed entrance within, but had never had the guts to check out the old story himself.

  He had never had the guts to do lots of things, he told himself.

  He lowered his head, till only his eyes were above the sill.

  What in the name of Anubis is going on? Even as he framed the question, he knew he did not want to know the answer.

  The trilling hurt his ears, it was so high pitched. It must be audible to every dog in Otay and Chula Vista to the north. He did not recognize the dogs answering the unearthly call, but he knew their type, brutal and street-wise, not a single dreamer among them.

  Artemus Gordon was a dreamer, always had been, visualizing times and places where a dog could live free and happy. He knew they were impossible dreams, but the dreams helped him endure the wretched life he led, tied to a dreadful Companion, surrounded by dogs and cats who would hurt him if they could.

  The trilling suddenly ceased.

  He then saw two things. The first filled him with wonder, but the second turned his blood to ice. A dog flew down out of the sky and into the steeple. He quickly closed his astonished mouth, fearful a whimper would escape, for he saw now the acid-eyed cat and the snake-tailed dog of his dream striding around from the back of the church. Dogs and cats submitted before them.

  Then they all vanished around the back.

  Artemus Gordon was trembling and despite his best efforts he whimpered softly, like a whipped cur. How he hated his weakness.

  What did it all mean? He did not know the answer to his own query, but he knew none of it portended any good. Something evil this way had come, but he felt helpless before its immensity. There was nothing he could do, and no one to whom he could turn.

  As he had learned from bitter experience, no one cared what happened to dogs, especially in Otay.