The Fountain of Age

by Nancy Kress

  Then she was pulled off, yelping and snapping and howling.

  Not-Too had Mangy in her jaws. Twice as big as the poodle, she shook Mangy violently and then dropped her. Mangy whimpered and rolled over on her belly. Not-Too sprinted over to me and stood in front of me, skinny legs braced and scrawny hackles raised, growling protectively.

  Dazed, I got to my feet. Blood, mine and the dogs’, slimed everything. The floor wasn’t trying to reabsorb it. Mangy, who’d never really liked me, stayed down with her belly exposed in submission, but she didn’t seem to be badly hurt. The grub was still latched onto the end of her tail like a gray tumor. After a moment she rolled onto her feet and began to nuzzle the grub, one baleful eye on Not-Too: Don’t you come near this thing! Not-Too stayed in position, guarding me.

  Green said—and I swear its mechanical voice held satisfaction, no one will ever be able to tell me any different—“These dogs behave correctly.”

  The other cages held grubs, one per cage. I reached through the front bars and gingerly touched one. Moist, firm, repulsive. It didn’t respond to my touch, but Green did. He was beside me in a flash. “No!”

  “Sorry.” His tone was dog-disciplining. “Are these the masters?”

  No answer.

  “What to do now? One dog for one . . .” I waved at the cages.

  “Yes. When these dogs are ready.”

  This dog is ready, Blue had said of Mangy just before she was tumbled into the floor. Ready to be a pet, a guardian, a companion, a service animal to alien . . . what? The most logical answer was “children.” Lassie, Rin Tin Tin, Benji, Little Guy. A boy and his dog. The aliens found humans dangerous or repulsive or uncaring or whatever, but dogs . . . You could count on dogs for your kids. Almost, and for the first time, I could see the point of the Domes.

  “Are the big masters here? The adults?”

  No answer.

  “The masters are not here,” I said. “They just set up the Domes as . . . as nurseries-slash-obedience schools.” And to that statement I didn’t even expect an answer. If the adults had been present, surely one or more would have come running when an alien blew into its nursery wing via a garbage delivery. There would have been alarms or something. Instead there was only Blue and Green and whatever ’bots inhabited whatever place held the operating room. Mangy’s skin and ears and tail had been altered to fit the needs of these grubs. And maybe her voice-box, too, since her barks now had that weird undertone, like the scrape of metal across rock. Somewhere there was an OR.

  I didn’t want to be in that somewhere.

  Green seemed to have no orders to kill me, which made sense because he wasn’t programmed to have me here. I wasn’t on his radar, which raised other problems.

  “Green, make bread.”

  Nothing.

  “Make water.”

  Nothing.

  But two indentations in a corner of the floor, close to a section of wall, held water and dog-food pellets. I tasted both, to the interest of Not-Too and the growling of Mangy. Not too bad. I scooped all the rest of the dog food out of the trough. As soon as the last piece was out, the wall filled it up again. If I died, it wasn’t going to be of starvation.

  A few minutes ago, I had wanted to die. Zack . . .

  No. Push the memory away. Life was shit, but I didn’t want death, either. The realization was visceral, gripping my stomach as if that organ had been laid in a vise, or . . . There is no way to describe it. The feeling just was, its own justification. I wanted to live.

  Not-Too lay a short distance away, watching me. Mangy was back in her cage with the grub on her tail. I sat up and looked around. “Green, this dog is not ready.”

  “No. What to do now?”

  Well, that answered one question. Green was programmed to deal with dogs, and you didn’t ask dogs “what to do now.” So Green must be in some sort of communication with Blue, but the communication didn’t seem to include orders about me. For a star-faring advanced race, the aliens certainly weren’t very good at LANs. Or maybe they just didn’t care—how would I know how an alien thinks?

  I said, “I make this dog behave correctly.” The all-purpose answer.

  “Yes.”

  Did Green know details—that Not-Too refused to pull me from oily pools and thus was an obedience-school failure? It didn’t seem like it. I could pretend to train Not-Too—I could actually train her, only not for water rescue—and stay here, away from the killer Blue, until . . . until what? As a survival plan, this one was shit. Still, it followed Laws #1 and #3: Take what you can get and never volunteer. And I couldn’t think of anything else.

  “Not-Too,” I said wearily, still shaky from my crying jag, “Sit.”

  “Days” went by, then weeks. Not-Too learned to beg, roll over, bring me a piece of dog food, retrieve my thrown boot, lie down, and balance a pellet of dog food on her nose. I had no idea if any of these activities would be useful to an alien, but as long as Not-Too and I were “working,” Green left us alone. No threats, no presentations, no objections. We were behaving correctly. I still hadn’t thought of any additional plan. At night I dreamed of Zack and woke in tears, but not with the raging insanity of my first day of memory. Maybe you can only go through that once.

  Mangy’s grub continued to grow, still fastened onto her tail. The other grubs looked exactly the same as before. Mangy growled if I came too close to her, so I didn’t. Her grub seemed to be drying out as it got bigger. Mangy licked it and slept curled around it and generally acted like some mythical dragon guarding a treasure box. Had the aliens bonded those two with some kind of pheromones I couldn’t detect? I had no way of knowing.

  Mangy and her grub emerged from their cage only to eat, drink, or shit, which she did in a far corner. Not-Too and I used the same corner, and all of our shit and piss dissolved odorlessly into the floor. Eat your heart out, Thomas Crapper.

  As days turned into weeks, flesh returned to my bones. Not-Too also lost her starved look. I talked to her more and more, her watchful silence preferable to Green’s silence or, worse, his inane and limited repertoires of answers. “Green, I had a child named Zack. He was shot in the war. He was five.” “This dog is not ready.”

  Well, none of us ever are.

  Not-Too started to sleep curled against my left side. This was a problem because I thrashed in my sleep, which woke her, so she growled, which woke me. Both of us became sleep-deprived and irritable. In the camp, I had slept twelve hours a day. Not much else to do, and sleep both conserved energy and kept me out of sight. But the camp was becoming distant in my mind. Zack was shatteringly vivid, with my life before the war, and the Dome was vivid, with Mangy and Not-Too and a bunch of alien grubs. Everything in between was fading.

  Then one “day”—after how much time? I had no idea—Green said, “This dog is ready.”

  My heart stopped. Green was going to take Not-Too to the hidden OR, was going to—”No!”

  Green ignored me. But he also ignored Not-Too. The robot floated over to Mangy’s cage and dissolved it. I stood and craned my neck for a better look.

  The grub was hatching.

  Its “skin” had become very dry, a papery gray shell. Now it cracked along the top, parallel to Mangy’s tail. She turned and regarded it quizzically, this thing wriggling at the end of her very long tail, but didn’t attack or even growl. Those must have been some pheromones.

  Was I really going to be the first and only human to see a Dome alien?

  I was not. The papery covering cracked more and dropped free of the dog’s tail. The thing inside wiggled forward, crawling out like a snake shedding its skin. It wasn’t a grub but it clearly wasn’t a sentient being, either. A larva? I’m no zoologist. This creature was as gray as everything else in the Dome but it had legs, six, and heads, two. At least, they might have been heads. Both had various indentations. One “head” crept forward, opened an orifice, and fastened itself back onto Mangy’s tail. She continued to gaze at it. Beside me, Not-Too grow
led.

  I whirled to grab frantically for her rope. Not-Too had no alterations to make her accept this . . . thing as anything other than a small animal to attack. If she did—

  I turned just in time to see the floor open and swallow Not-Too. Green said again, “This dog is ready,” and the floor closed.

  “No! Bring her back!” I tried to pound on Green with my fists. He bobbed in the air under my blows. “Bring her back! Don’t hurt her! Don’t . . .” do what?

  Don’t turn her into a nursemaid for a grub, oblivious to me.

  Green moved off. I followed, yelling and pounding. Neither one, of course, did the slightest good. Finally I got it together enough to say, “When will Not-Too come back?”

  “This human does not behave correctly.”

  I looked despairingly at Mangy. She lay curled on her side, like a mother dog nursing puppies. The larva wasn’t nursing, however. A shallow trough had appeared in the floor and filled with some viscous glop, which the larva was scarfing up with its other head. It looked repulsive.

  Law #4: Notice everything.

  “Green . . . okay. Just . . . okay. When will Not-Too come back here?”

  No answer; what does time mean to a machine?

  “Does the other dog return here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does the other dog get a . . .” A what? I pointed at Mangy’s larva.

  No response. I would have to wait.

  But not, apparently, alone. Across the room another dog tumbled, snarling, from the same section of wall I had once come through. I recognized it as one of the nineteen left in the other room, a big black beast with powerful looking jaws. It righted itself and charged at me. There was no platform, no place to hide.

  “No! Green, no, it will hurt me! This dog does not behave—”

  Green didn’t seem to do anything. But even as the black dog leapt toward me, it faltered in mid-air. The next moment, it lay dead on the floor.

  The moment after that, the body disappeared, vaporized.

  My legs collapsed under me. That was what would happen to me if I failed in my training task, was what had presumably happened to the previous two human failures. And yet it wasn’t fear that made me sit so abruptly on the gray floor. It was relief, and a weird kind of gratitude. Green had protected me, which was more than Blue had ever done. Maybe Green was brighter, or I had proved my worth more, or in this room as opposed to the other room, all dog-training equipment was protected. I was dog-training equipment. It was stupid to feel grateful.

  I felt grateful.

  Green said, “This dog does not—”

  “I know, I know. Listen, Green, what to do now? Bring another dog here?”

  “Yes.”

  “I choose the dog. I am the . . . the dog leader. Some dogs behave correctly, some dogs do not behave correctly. I choose. Me.”

  I held my breath. Green considered, or conferred with Blue, or consulted its alien and inadequate programming. Who the hell knows? The robot had been created by a race that preferred Earth dogs to whatever species usually nurtured their young, if any did. Maybe Mangy and Not-Too would replace parental care on the home planet, thus introducing the idea of babysitters. All I wanted was to not be eaten by some canine nanny-trainee.

  “Yes,” Green said finally, and I let out my breath.

  A few minutes later, eighteen dog cages tumbled through the wall like so much garbage, the dogs within bouncing off their bars and mesh tops, furious and noisy. Mangy jumped, curled more protectively around her oblivious larva, and added her weird, rock-scraping bark to the din. A cage grew up around her. When the cages had stopped bouncing, I walked among them like some kind of tattered lord, choosing.

  “This dog, Green.” It wasn’t the smallest dog but it had stopped barking the soonest. I hoped that meant it wasn’t a grudge holder. When I put one hand into its cage, it didn’t bite me, also a good sign. The dog was phenomenally ugly, the jowls on its face drooping from small, rheumy eyes into a sort of folded ruff around its short neck. Its body that seemed to be all front, with stunted and short back legs. When it stood, I saw it was male.

  “This dog? What to do now?”

  “Send all the other dogs back.”

  The cages sank into the floor. I walked over to the feeding trough, scooped up handfuls of dog food, and put the pellets into my only pocket that didn’t have holes. “Make all the rest of the dog food go away.”

  It vaporized.

  “Make this dog’s cage go away.”

  I braced myself as the cage dissolved. The dog stood uncertainly on the floor, gazing toward Mangy, who snarled at him. I said, as commandingly as possible, “Ruff!”

  He looked at me.

  “Ruff, come.”

  To my surprise, he did. Someone had trained this animal before. I gave him a pellet of dog food.

  Green said, “This dog behaves correctly.”

  “Well, I’m really good,” I told him, stupidly, while my chest tightened as I thought of Not-Too. The aliens, or their machines, did understand about anesthetic, didn’t they? They wouldn’t let her suffer too much? I would never know.

  But now I did know something momentous. I had choices. I had chosen which room to train dogs in. I had chosen which dog to train. I had some control.

  “Sit,” I said to Ruff, who didn’t, and I set to work.

  Not-Too was returned to me three or four “days” later. She was gray and hairless, with an altered bark. A grub hung onto her elongated tail, undoubtedly the same one that had vanished from its cage while I was asleep. But unlike Mangy, who’d never liked either of us, Not-Too was ecstatic to see me. She wouldn’t stay in her grub-cage against the wall but insisted on sleeping curled up next to me, grub and all. Green permitted this. I had become the alpha dog.

  Not-Too liked Ruff, too. I caught him mounting her, her very long tail conveniently keeping her grub out of the way. Did Green understand the significance of this behavior? No way to tell.

  We settled into a routine of training, sleeping, playing, eating. Ruff turned out to be sweet and playful but not very intelligent, and training took a long time. Mangy’s grub grew very slowly, considering the large amount of glop it consumed. I grew, too; the waistband of my ragged pants got too tight and I discarded them, settling for a loin cloth, shirt, and my decaying boots. I talked to the dogs, who were much better conversationalists than Green since two of them at least pricked up their ears, made noises back at me, and wriggled joyfully at attention. Green would have been a dud at a cocktail party.

  I don’t know how long this all went on. Time began to lose meaning. I still dreamed of Zack and still woke in tears, but the dreams grew gentler and farther apart. When I cried, Not-Too crawled onto my lap, dragging her grub, and licked my chin. Her brown eyes shared my sorrow. I wondered how I had ever preferred the disdain of cats.

  Not-Too got pregnant. I could feel the puppies growing inside her distended belly.

  “Puppies will be easy to make behave correctly,” I told Green, who said nothing. Probably he didn’t understand. Some people need concrete visuals in order to learn.

  Eventually, it seemed to me that Ruff was almost ready for his own grub. I mulled over how to mention this to Green but before I did, everything came to an end.

  Clang! Clang! Clang!

  I jerked awake and bolted upright. The alarm—a very human-sounding alarm—sounded all around me. Dogs barked and howled. Then I realized that it was a human alarm, coming from the Army camp outside the Dome, on the opposite side to the garbage dump. I could see the camp—in outline and faintly, as if through heavy gray fog. The Dome was dissolving.

  “Green—what—no!”

  Above me, transforming the whole top half of what had been the Dome, was the bottom of a solid saucer. Mangy, in her cage, floated upward and disappeared into a gap in the saucer’s underside. The other grub cages had already disappeared. I glimpsed a flash of metallic color through the gap: Blue. Green was halfway to the opening, d
rifting lazily upward. Beside me, both Not-Too and Ruff began to rise.

  “No! No!”

  I hung onto Not-Too, who howled and barked. But then my body froze. I couldn’t move anything. My hands opened and Not-Too rose, yowling piteously.

  “No! No!” And then, before I knew I was going to say it, “Take me, too!”

  Green paused in mid-air. I began babbling.

  “Take me! Take me! I can make the dogs behave correctly—I can—you need me! Why are you going? Take me!”

  “Take this human?”

  Not Green but Blue, emerging from the gap. Around me the Dome walls thinned more. Soldiers rushed toward us. Guns fired.

  “Yes! What to do? Take this human! The dogs want this human!”

  Time stood still. Not-Too howled and tried to reach me. Maybe that’s what did it. I rose into the air just as Blue said, “Why the hell not?”

  Inside—inside what?—I was too stunned to do more than grab Not-Too, hang on, and gasp. The gap closed. The saucer rose.

  After a few minutes, I sat up and looked around. Gray room, filled with dogs in their cages, with grubs in theirs, with noise and confusion and the two robots. The sensation of motion ceased. I gasped, “Where . . . where are we going?”

  Blue answered. “Home.”

  “Why?”

  “The humans do not behave correctly.” And then, “What to do now?”

  We were leaving Earth in a flying saucer, and it was asking me?

  Over time—I have no idea how much time—I actually got some answers from Blue. The humans “not behaving correctly” had apparently succeeding in breaching one of the Domes somewhere. They must have used a nuclear bomb, but that I couldn’t verify. Grubs and dogs had both died, and so the aliens had packed up and left Earth. Without, as far as I could tell, retaliating. Maybe.