An Oath of Dogs

by Wendy N. Wagner

  “At least the last guy could have decorated.”

  She tucked the bowls under her arm, forced herself up from the sagging couch, and trudged into the tiny kitchen. Her legs and back felt like they’d been immobile for a year. The attendant who’d greeted her on this side of the wormhole had promised that electric stimulation applied in the last two weeks of the journey would help her muscles defrost more effectively, but clearly there was only so much technology could do.

  Still, she was on Huginn. After a year of application hassles, nearly a year’s transit via wormhole and long-distance ships, she was here on this big green moon. She rolled her shoulders and made a mental note to find some resistance bands or weights. She liked the sense of lightness that came from living at just under one g, but it wasn’t doing her bones any favors.

  Hattie pawed at Standish’s leg, reminding her of her task. She turned on the tap and filled the dog’s bowl with water that wasn’t recycled or reclaimed and didn’t stink of iodine, plastics, or chlorine. Real water. And outside her window was greenery, not more humanity.

  Standish grabbed her craft bag and plopped onto the floor, inwardly giddy. She could hear Hattie lapping up water in the kitchen. That was the only sound — not sirens, not someone in another apartment snoring or fighting or fucking. Just Hattie.

  A grin crept across her face. She felt good. Her backside might hurt from the drive and her stomach might be churning from cryo, but she felt good.

  She reached for her hand unit and thumbed it on. Not a lot of signal in here, but enough to make a call. She jabbed the first number in her contacts list.

  The screen jiggled a moment and then resolved into a woman’s beaming face. Her hair was gold today, the beaded braids clicking and clacking around her deep-brown skin. She tossed them back, but they immediately tumbled forward around her eyes. “You made it!”

  The sight of her best and only friend never failed to soften Standish. She stretched her fingers out to the screen, the closest she could get to putting her arm around the other woman. “Thanks to you, Dewey. You backed me every step of the way.” She balanced the hand unit on her knees so she could pull out her latest crocheting project.

  Dewey pressed her fingers to her own handset for a minute. “Yeah, well, I knew you’d like this place. It’s not like working on a space station. Things are clean. People care.”

  There was a subtext to her words, and they both knew it. Each was silent for a second, the past suddenly present. It had taken Dewey an hour to get the medics to come to Standish after the crawler accident, and it ate at her as badly as it did Standish. Nothing was direct on a space station. Nothing was personal. Those tin cans operated just like Earth, but with twice as much red tape and half as much air.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t meet you at the spaceport. I can’t believe your ship got scheduled to arrive at the same time as the Muninn launch.”

  Standish leaned closer to the screen. “What’s Muninn like?”

  “It’s got no atmosphere, but scientists still want to live there. Luckily, there are some fine scientists to be found on that rock.” Dewey’s eyes widened. “Girl! I just realized! You haven’t seen my new tatas!”

  Standish laughed as the screen pulled back to reveal Dewey’s deep-cut pink tee, the front stretched over a phenomenal rack. “Nice! They’re better than mine!”

  “Even my fakes were better than yours, Kitty.” Dewey laughed and brought her face back into focus. “But seriously, I owe these to Huginn. You know how long I’ve been waiting to see a decent cosmetic surgeon. That’s the perk of living in a successful colony.”

  Space stations had acceptable medical facilities, but they were low on frills. Plastic surgery was a luxury for everyone up there, no matter how much a difference it made in people’s lives.

  Standish patted her leg and Hattie came to sit beside her. “I just wanted to thank you for bringing me here. It’s amazing.”

  “It’s great, isn’t it?” Dewey hesitated, then took a breath. “You sure you’ll be OK here? I know how big changes can throw off a treatment plan.”

  “Dewey—”

  “No, seriously. You were really starting to pull things together back on Earth. I don’t want this to set you back.”

  “Look, the agoraphobia is practically a thing of the past. Hattie has saved me.” Standish glanced at the dog. “Speaking of, I’d better get her a walk. I think she’s suffering.”

  “You keep her next to you all the time.” Dewey raised her voice. “Hattie, you hear me? You stick to my girl like you’re her other half.”

  Standish hung up, laughing. Dewey was always overprotective. But she was onto something about Hattie. Sometimes Standish felt like she and the dog really were two halves of the same whole — a whole immeasurably better than the broken thing that was Standish.

  Hattie whuffed. Standish rubbed the sleek white dome of her head. “Let’s take you outside, you good dog.”

  The dog trotted out of the kitchen to stand patiently at the door. Standish put away the yarn, reached for her raincoat, and hesitated. There was no curtain over the plexiglass window in the door, and the greens and grays of the world outside stood at attention. Her chest constricted a little at the sight. It was a small open space, but still space.

  She squeezed her eyes shut. Her shrink back on Earth had warned her that these moments would come frequently the first few weeks on Huginn. She reached for Hattie and pulled her close, breathing in the faint corn chip smell of her.

  Standish forced open her eyes and gripped the doorknob. “Come on, girl.”

  They stepped out into the open air. The gray clouds pressing down on her felt comforting, but the drizzle had a bite to it. Standish made it to the shingled beach of the lake shore before she gave in and put on the raincoat.

  Hattie squatted to do her business. Standish risked looking past the dog toward the lake, which spread itself in dark, silken folds the color of steel.

  Canaan Lake ran like a long wavering gouge in the forested hills. At this time of day, the gravitational pull of Wodin had shifted the bulk of the lake’s mass toward the east side, exposing the beach all the way out to the muddy lake bottom. On the far side of the lake, the hills climbed straight out of the water toward the clouds.

  She could do this, Standish reassured herself. She could stand outside under the gray sky and look at the lake like anyone else and think about the weather and the town’s inhabitants. It wasn’t easy to draw in a deep breath, but she was still breathing and she was still standing outside and she was still patiently waiting for Hattie. She hadn’t had to run back to the house and hide under the bed.

  “Excuse me? Miss?”

  Standish whirled around. “What do you want?”

  The boy’s smile wobbled. The homespun linen of his clothing and the flat straw hat pushed back on his head announced his background: Believer through and through.

  “Crap, I’m sorry. I’m just… shit, I’m sorry, kid.”

  He glanced from Standish to the dog and back, and then his eyes went round and he swept the hat off his head. “Excuse me, ma’am.”

  “It’s OK. I’m the one who bites, and I swear I’ll be good.”

  “You’re the new communications manager? At Songheuser?”

  “I am. Kate Standish. And this is my dog, Hattie.”

  He stared at the dog a second, then swallowed. “Yes’m. They said a new lady was coming.” He cleared his throat. “I don’t know if you’ve made plans already, but the old communications manager, Mr Chambers, he always bought his produce from our farm?”

  “Produce?” Standish shook her head, confused.

  “Oh, nothing fancy. We grow salad greens, potatoes, apples. Cabbage and Brussels sprouts year round. Most of the other farms are growing about the same things. But you won’t find better potatoes, ma’am, and that’s the truth.” He paused a moment, and then was compelled to add: “Mr Williams has plums on his farm, but they aren’t in season yet.”

&nb
sp; Standish blinked at him a moment. Potatoes. Apples. She had always bought such things in a tin. Freeze dried, if she was off-planet. She hadn’t eaten fresh food since she’d left her parents’ house.

  “It’s all right, ma’am. I understand if you want to order from another farm. I’ll just be on my way.” He turned away, his head low.

  Standish put out her hand, then pulled back. She wasn’t sure about the Believer protocol for inter-gender touching. Maybe it was immoral to people like him. She would have to look into Believer manners. “No, please. I’d love to order my produce from your farm. I was just… thinking about my bank balance. I’m not sure when payday is, you know.”

  The boy grinned over his shoulder. “Oh, I’ll come by on the 16th. It’s the day after Songheuser cuts paychecks, so that’s when everybody in town pays their bills.”

  “Everybody?”

  “Sure. If it weren’t for Songheuser, even the churches would have a hard time staying afloat.” He clapped his hat back on his head. “I’ll bring your first produce box tomorrow, ma’am. I’m sure glad to add you to our list.”

  “Thank you—” Standish broke off. “I don’t know your name, or the name of your farm.”

  “Jemison. Of the Leavitt family farm.” He paused. “I’m glad you said you wanted our farm box. You know, we’re the only ones in Canaan Lake that keep dogs? I don’t imagine anyone else would have come to ask you if you wanted produce.”

  Standish’s mouth went open, but he had already climbed onto an ancient-looking bicycle and begun pedaling away before she collected herself enough to find words. Bajowski had tried to warn her, she realized. Hattie really wasn’t welcome in Canaan Lake.

  APRIL 23rd —

  Last month’s Prayer Breakfast brought in the final thousand dollars we needed to finish paying our passage on the Roebuck. Well, that and a huge donation from the Indochinese Branch Headquarters. I don’t care where the money came from — I’ll just be glad to see the lines smoothed out from Matthias’s face. He even smiled the other night. Praise to be to God! I hate seeing him like this.

  There are enough funds now for all eighteen families to go to Huginn. When I took the news to our last meeting, everyone cried and threw up their arms and embraced each other. Pappy Morris picked me up and threw me in the air, and Orrin — Pappy’s oldest son, and one of Matthias’s best friends — fell out of his chair laughing.

  While Matthias and Elder Perkins have been sorting out our funds, I’ve been focused on matters closer to home. It hasn’t been easy, selling off all our livestock. Most of the local Believers are either coming with us or are strapped for cash. All our neighbors and kinfolk have been scraping up their last dimes and pennies to send us to the stars. Matthias will be greatly disappointed by the amount of money I’ve earned us. I had to give our sheep and dogs (except for my Soolie, of course) to my parents. They are getting old, and I know they couldn’t manage cows, or I would have sent them some.

  It’s easy for Matthias to be excited about this trip, but it isn’t so easy for me. His family is long gone, those still alive as distant in their hearts as their locations. But my parents are alive and well. My brother and his wife — still Believers, unlike Matthias’s sister — live only a few hundred miles away at the Seattle center. They are cheering for me, but they are sad, too. I will never see them again. I may never talk to them again. It might be years before communications are settled between Huginn and Earth, no matter what Songheuser Corporation says.

  I do not trust Songheuser. I know they are eager to open up Huginn to all kinds of mining and harvesting, but I don’t see how our people fit in with their plans. They say we will provide valuable nutritional support for their workers. Well, I suppose every community needs farmers. But I have never seen an operation so concerned with the bottom line. They have no faith, not a one of them.

  But I do. I might be nervous about our trip, but I remind myself that I am in the hands of God. Were we not told that we must be fruitful and replenish the Earth and subdue it? Huginn may not be Earth, but it is a new land, and we owe it to God to treat it as we would this planet. He made it just as He made the Earth.

  Sometimes I am excited, Diary. We will be among the first colonists on the new world. My feet will step where no human’s ever have, a place made by God for our discovery. How blessed am I to see such a miracle?

  Empathy and common sense are the realm of the dog. They can communicate well enough with their postures, their scents, and their simple vocalizations that they function effectively not only as pack animals but within their adopted pack of humans. It is a sign of the dog’s pronounced social intelligence.

  Of course, social intelligence is not the only kind of intelligence. The human mind can process a vast and varied number of subjects, slipping between modes of thought with ease.

  Still, to the mind of God, our own cognition is as limited as a dog’s is to an ordinary man’s.

  — from THE COLLECTED WISDOM OF MW WILLIAMS

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE BEACH WAS STILL DARK, and from here the town’s lights were yellow squares of brightness. But it was later than it seemed: dawn took a long time coming here, the sun’s light competing with Wodin’s shadow. There wasn’t much time to enjoy the morning before Standish needed to go seek out her new office. First day on the job. Wasn’t that nerve-racking?

  Standish stooped to give Hattie a treat. She brushed her damp hands off on the back of her pants and stretched tall. Her last shrink had suggested yoga, and little as she liked admitting it, all that vinyasa-pranayama-chakra balancing nonsense seemed to help with the anxiety. She was glad she’d gotten up early to squeeze some in, especially after the dream she’d had last night. She rubbed her hands on her pants again, remembering the way they’d gone white and shaggy in her dream.

  The creepy-ass dream.

  Hattie sniffed at some green stuff caught between a couple of rocks. Smell was so important to her, such a critical component of her experience of the world. Standish usually found such notions mysterious, but in her dream last night — her most vivid dream in years — she had moved in a world defined and shaped by smells. She had felt so much more alive in her dream body, with its combination of dog parts and human parts, a body made equally of herself and Hattie. Just thinking about it made her feel weird and itchy now.

  She shook out her wrists as if she could shake off the sensation. Her conversation with Dewey had triggered the dream, she supposed. And the change to a new planet, ever-so-subtly different from Earth in a thousand ways, was probably challenging her brain and making it more sensitive to all its senses.

  But now wasn’t the time to wonder about adapting to Huginn. She ought to get moving. It would suck to be late to work on her first day, and she didn’t even know where to find her new office.

  And it would be her new office, hers and hers alone. Communications manager! She’d never been in charge before. She wasn’t sure whether to curse Duncan Chambers for dying or be excited for the pay raise.

  She left the beach and squelched her way up the road leading between blocks of identical houses, pushing down the queasy fingers of agoraphobia. There were no sidewalks, and the side street had turned to mud. It was a relief to turn onto the solid pavement of Main Street and follow it toward the mill, which began just past the block with the second bar (the Night Light, according to a sign shaped like a candlestick) and the cafe with the log cabin facade whose parking lot overflowed with battered utility vehicles. A tall chainlink fence surrounded the mill’s buildings and machines. Only a slender glass-faced skybridge connected the town to its biggest employer. It hung over the street like a disfigured umbrella.

  The mist became a pelting rain. Standish huddled beneath the skybridge, not sure where to go. Her office could be in either the tall, industrial building on the mill side of the street or the white-and-glass box connected to the umbilicus of the skybridge. A trip to either building meant a dousing in this weather.

  “Kate Sta
ndish?”

  She turned to face the business office and the man standing under the awning of the glass-fronted building. He wore a security guard’s blue uniform, the sleeves rolled up high enough to show off his biceps. His smile was more than welcoming as he opened an umbrella and came to her side.

  “You must have studied my dossier,” she teased. Flirting she was good at; she might not be looking for friends, but fuckbuddies were always welcome.

  He chuckled. “That’s my job, isn’t it? But in a town this small, every new resident sticks out like a second thumb.” He led up the stairs and then pushed open the front door of the office building. “They’re expecting you.”

  She followed him inside. She had to squeeze into the lobby space — a narrow room with a scuffed horsetail wood floor that probably cost a cool two mill back on Earth — where a table burdened with coffee things and pastries took up most of the space, and chattering people filled the rest. The smell of damp clothing fought with burnt coffee for domination.

  “Kate Standish! So glad you’re here!” A petite and very sharply dressed black woman pumped Standish’s hand. Her hair stood out in a short orange frizz around her head. “Niketa Shawl. HR.”

  “Niketa organized this,” the security guard drawled, leaning in toward Standish’s ear. The room was almost loud enough to merit the closeness.

  A man with a big gut slipped between Niketa and the older redheaded woman at her side. Standish recognized him from her interview, although he either looked younger on camera or had aged terribly in the last year. “Joe Holder, Head of Operations. It’s good to see you here on Huginn. If you have any questions about the place, I’m in the office right next door.”

  Her department head had the office next door. Well, at least she knew where to find him when she needed to ask for a day off.

  Other names, other faces all pressed themselves forward. Even in the chaos, she noticed Peter Bajowski wasn’t there. Someone urged a cup of coffee into her hand. Twice someone stepped on Hattie’s tail, and then spent too long apologizing. Standish bit into a pastry and tasted real butter, a flavor out of her childhood and thought forgotten. Everyone was smiling at her, paying attention to her, eager to talk to her. She knocked back a quick gulp of coffee and choked.