An Oath of Dogs

by Wendy N. Wagner

  Cheyenne, weak as she is, helps me tend the big communal field after our other duties have been attended to. Half the fields have been abandoned for lack of hands to work them. We buried Mrs Morris this morning, Orrin’s ever-smiling mother. One of the Vogels painted the cross for her grave in all the colors of the rainbow. If she looks down on us from Heaven — if she’s not too busy playing with little Elka and singing with Pappy — Mrs Morris would be happy to see it.

  Vonda came to the funeral. It was the first time I saw her outside since the baby died. She looks strangely well after all that rest, better than she had looked even before the baby. The way she looks makes me want to check the food stores and count the livestock.

  She invited me to come sit with her after the funeral, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I’d rather sit in the silence of my own house.

  It is abysmally empty there. I know Matthias is doing his duty, and that is a comfort to me, but I cry for Soolie night and day. Oh dear Lord, why did I have to wake him to this nightmare? Matthias said I should break his neck, but I couldn’t. I begged Doc Sounds to do it, but out in the woods, where I couldn’t see or hear. Doc took him way, way out, but when he went to bring the axe down on Soolie’s head, Soolie ran away from him, and Doc couldn’t catch him.

  I couldn’t put Soolie down mercifully, and now he will starve out there or die of poison. Because I am a coward.

  There is no truer animal in all creation than a dog. A dog’s heart beats so steadfastly you could set the clock of the universe to it. If he can, I know Soolie will try to come back to me. No matter how sick, no matter how hungry, he will follow his heart home.

  But one thing has come out of this suffering. As I’ve prayed alone, I’ve realized I must not blame God or Matthias or our church for any of this. Our plans were made in good faith. It was Songheuser Corporation that left our rations, Songheuser that allowed Vonda to get inside that cryo tube even though she was pregnant, Songheuser that starved my Soolie for their own sick profits.

  I pray that God will punish the Songheuser Corporation for its wrongs.

  “HEY, Belinda.” Peter dropped onto the last stool at the bar, rubbing at bits of lichen that had crept under his collar. He’d managed to set up one of the test sites today, a nice patch of mixed small plants and Christ’s fingers. He had some other sites in mind, but the diversity in this one site would really please Mark. It felt good to be sitting down after hiking and stooping and squatting all day.

  The guy on the seat beside Peter picked up his beer and headed toward the back room.

  Belinda turned to face Peter. “Surprised to see you in here. It’s been a while.” She picked up a pint glass. “Beer?”

  “That’d be great. Any chili tonight?” He was too hungry to imagine heading home to cook.

  She hesitated just a moment. “Just burgers tonight. The cook took a trip to Space City. Sorry to let you down.”

  Peter watched her pour his draft. Her mouth was set tight, her shoulders, too. “What’s going on, Belinda?”

  She slid the ale across the bar. “Nothing. Just a busy night tonight. Some guys from the mill having some kind of meeting in the back room, drinking faster than I can switch out kegs.” She gave the back corner a significant look. “You’re probably better off eating at home.”

  Peter leaned back on his stool, trying to see into the other room. The neon beer signs did little to illuminate the space, and the pool table was uncharacteristically empty. He could hear plenty of voices, though. The establishment was packed, folks squeezed in at the bar and crowded around every table. He saw Julia from accounting and Niketa ensconced at a booth in the corner; for a second Julia’s eyes caught his, and then they whipped away. The only open seat in the joint was the stool beside Peter.

  “I’ve been coming here for four years,” he reminded her. “I drove you to Space City when you had to get stitches after that big bar fight. You can’t bullshit me.”

  She dropped a bowl of peanuts in front of him. “Keep your voice down.”

  He lowered his voice. “What’s going on?”

  She wiped at the counter, her voice practically a whisper. “That guy they caught at Jawbone Flats? He’s been talking. He said he knew Duncan.”

  “Everybody knew Duncan.”

  “They were… together. Together together. And this guy, he wasn’t just some random mill hand or a logger with a grudge. He worked for Songheuser in engineering. He still owed the company half his shuttle ticket, lived in company housing, helped organize the office holiday party. And all the time, he was planning to destroy the mill.”

  “What does that have to do with me?”

  “Everyone knew you were still hung up on Duncan. Niketa told the whole town.”

  “So now people think I killed Duncan because I was jealous?”

  Someone waved her over for drinks and she hurried to pour pints. Peter cracked open a peanut, the salt rasping at his worn fingertips. He wasn’t sure what was worse, the sheriff saying Duncan killed himself or the town gossips saying he’d done it. Someone had killed Duncan. Someone needed to be brought to justice.

  “I’m surprised you’d show your face in here, Pete.”

  Peter squeezed the peanut shell tight in his fist. Then he turned around, his face schooled into pleasantness. “Joe. How’s it going tonight?”

  Joe wasn’t alone. A group of mill workers stood behind him, most of them unfamiliar to Peter. He saw Paul Wu, out of his deputy’s uniform, standing at the back of the group, looking anywhere but Peter’s face.

  “Paul. I didn’t realize you’d made it back from Jawbone Flats. Glad you wrapped things up out there.”

  Paul didn’t answer. Joe took a step closer to Peter. “Paul’s been telling us a lot about the case. Like the fact that bastard wasn’t working alone. Creep hasn’t spilled any names, but it’s just a matter of time.”

  “I’ve never been to Jawbone Flats,” Peter said, feeling the peanut shell crackling in his palm. “So don’t go getting any ideas.”

  “Maybe you haven’t done anything yet, but that doesn’t mean you’re not planning something.”

  Peter slid off his stool. “I’m too hungry to listen to this shit.” He squeezed his way past Joe and the closest of his thugs, trying not to hurry, to keep his breathing easy, his eyes fixed on the front door. Then the toe of a boot struck his shin and he went sprawling, hitting the ground hard.

  Joe’s knees popped and crackled as he hunkered down beside him. “Ever think this town ain’t the right place for you? Not a lot of other fag boys these days. And if you think we’re going to let you fuck with our mill the way your limp-wristed buddy did in Jawbone Flats, you’ve got another think coming.”

  Peter didn’t say a word. He got to his feet and finished walking to the front door. He wanted to kick it open, but instead he pushed it quietly and stepped outside into the rain. The droplets soaked his hair and ran down his face in rivulets.

  He kept walking. His feet knew the way even if he’d left his brain behind him back on that bar stool. The mud sucked at his shoes but he didn’t slow down. There was one place he could go in this town, one person who had claimed to be his friend, and by God he could use a friend right now. The porch light was off, but a warm glow showed between the slats of the window blinds.

  The rain had saturated his clothes and now the cold seeped into his flesh. His energy was gone, burned off in his struggle to keep his anger under control. He had to rest his forehead against the door as he knocked at it. “Standish.” He knocked harder.

  He couldn’t hear anything, not even the dog’s nails on the plastic floor. “Standish!”

  The light flicked off.

  Then he noticed the scooter parked at the end of the block. It was Brett Takas’s.

  There was no point knocking any longer.

  AFTER ANOTHER TENSE workday spent gossiping about the threat of ecoterrorism, a crowd of people blocked the doorway at Heinrich’s. This went beyond the usual mad rus
h of Songheuser day shifters struggling out of their raingear; half the town had to be cleaning off their boots and looking for an open seat. Standish peered through the horde and managed to catch sight of Lou and Brett at a booth. Hattie made a pained sound as someone’s heel stomped on her foot.

  They finally made it to the bar, Standish stroking Hattie and feeling bad. She just couldn’t sleep at her place alone, and the thought of walking there in the dark made her skin crawl. It was easier to just eat at the bar and let Brett keep her company at night.

  “Busy night!” Julia squeezed in next to Standish. “I think they’re short-handed.”

  “Yeah, I don’t see Belinda anywhere. I thought she worked weeknights.”

  Julia shrugged. “I saw her on my way here. It looked like she was hiking on that trail behind the motor pool. Leather bird watching, maybe.”

  “Leather bird watching?” Standish raised an eyebrow. “In the dark?”

  “How should I know? I get the impression she’s into that kind of hippy crap. I’ve seen her behind the office two or three times with a spotting scope, looking like some amateur biologist or something. That Chameli Patel is into that stuff, too.”

  The bartender shouted something at Julia and she ordered a cocktail and burger. She was immediately distracted by the man beside her, who complimented her drink choice. Standish tapped her on the shoulder.

  “Like what?” Standish shouted.

  Julia waved her off. The bartender caught Standish’s eye, and she placed her order. She tried to catch Julia’s attention again, but she was too entwined with the man beside her, studying his hand unit like it contained the answer to the universe.

  Now, hours later, the conversation replayed itself in Standish’s head. Ever since last week’s incident with the dogs at her door, she’d found herself waking in the early hours of the morning, her brain suddenly activated. One night she found herself worrying over every detail of the night they’d discovered Rob McKidder’s body. Last night she had merely mulled over her conversation with Dewey in Space City. Tonight, it was apparently Julia and Belinda’s turn to haunt her brain. Why the hell was Belinda hanging out behind the Songheuser office building? If she was some kind of nature nut, she’d surely know there were better places to watch leather birds.

  Grumpy, Standish slipped out of bed. Hattie sat up from her place beside the door, but Brett didn’t move a muscle. Standish reached for her clothes, tossed on the chair in the corner. Her belt jingled and she froze. Brett had been working double shifts all week. It wouldn’t be fair to wake him.

  He rolled over but kept sleeping. Standish crept into the main room and eased the door shut behind her. She hurried to the kitchen, stepping into her underwear and pants as she went. Ever since the night Peter had stood on her porch, knocking like he was planning to break down her door, she’d been crashing at Brett’s house. She was careful to let him think it was all just happenstance, the two of them sucked together by coincidence and bedroom heat — she didn’t want him to do something stupid like offer her a drawer in his bureau. But she was glad he’d been amenable to some nighttime companionship.

  Peter trying to suck her back into their investigation. Dogs trying to break down her door. She couldn’t handle her place right now.

  Brett’s kitchen was neat and stylish, like the rest of his little house, and her to-go box from Heinrich’s was the only thing in his fridge that didn’t look like health food. She thought of the produce wilting in her own fridge and felt a pang of guilt. Maybe she’d bring it over here and get Brett to cook for her. She snagged the remains of the club sandwich and then headed out the front door.

  “Your breakfast is at work,” she reminded Hattie. “We’ll be there soon.”

  The dog’s expression was disapproving. Hattie didn’t like Brett’s place, where she was exiled to the floor and she had to take her bathroom breaks in the muddy side yard instead of along the beach.

  “This is all temporary,” Standish reminded her. “Just till I can order a stronger front door.” She ruffled the dog’s ears and then led her toward the comforting blandness of the office, where two security guards circled on every shift and cameras watched benignly over the exits.

  “Morning, Kate.” Joe Holder’s voice came from the shadows at the top of the stairs.

  “You’re up early, Joe.” It was barely six a.m.; Wodin still sat on the horizon like a big gray blimp. “And you know I prefer ‘Standish.’”

  He chuckled. “You spacers. Stiff as the military.” He gave a little grunt and she saw him stand up, rubbing at his lower back. A toolbox sat on the top stair beside him. “This door’s been sticking.”

  “Don’t you have people to do that for you, boss?”

  “Sometimes, a man has to do for himself. I thought of a few last-minute fixes to get the place ship-shape for Victoria.”

  “Victoria?”

  “Chief of Operations Victoria Wallace.” His grin spread. “My boss. We worked together back on Ganymede, oh, ten years ago. She’s the one that brought me here.”

  “I forgot we had a VIP coming in today.” She reached for the door handle. “Seems like a pretty big deal.”

  “The biggest thing we’ve had here in Canaan Lake since they put in the sawmill.”

  The door closed behind her, but she still heard his self-satisfied chuckle. She had never met anyone so easily pleased by their own wit. She was glad Holder’s work kept him out of his office most of the time. If she had to listen to that laugh on the other side of the wall all day, she’d go bugnuts.

  Standish checked the coffee pot — just sludge from the night guards — and popped her sandwich in the microwave while she filled a pitcher of water to take to her office. The kitchenette was still quiet, the hall leading to the main floor offices dark. She started another pot of coffee, took the sandwich and the water downstairs, and filled Hattie’s water dish right away. The bag of kibble sat on top of the second desk, the one that should have been Standish’s. The debris of Duncan’s former existence held the bag upright.

  Once again, the sight of all that mess needled Standish. She might not care if her desk was dinged up or that her couch was covered in dog hair, but she liked to know where all her shit was. A stack of old work requests slid off onto the floor as she lifted the kibble.

  “Damn it,” she growled. She gave Hattie an extra measure of duck-flavored mystery meats and dropped the bag on the floor. “Fucking Duncan.”

  She plopped onto the floor next to the dog food bag. “Fucking Duncan,” she repeated, pleased with the near rhyme. She picked up the work orders, which belonged in the filing cabinet on the other side of the room. She’d never worked at a station that kept paper backups, but power outages were common enough here to necessitate the antiquated system.

  This bunch looked nearly old enough to be shredded — most of them were three or four years old, their paper yellowed and faintly greasy, the same cheap shit the rest of the universe used. Horsetail wood made paper too fine for ordinary mortals.

  She put aside the oldest papers, which she really could shred, and noticed a brighter white poking out from the midst of the others. This page couldn’t be more than a few months old, but a bit of sticky resin, the kind of goo that came out of broken Christ’s fingers, had welded it to the page above. She pulled carefully.

  It looked like an ordinary work order, although some of the text was obscured by the fibers left behind from the other piece of paper. She found the date — February 1st, just four months ago. Rob McKidder’s flourish of a signature nearly jumped off the bottom of the page. Most people didn’t sign their name clearly enough to read, but he certainly had, and just the letters of his name made her skin feel prickly. A dead man had signed this, had sent it to another dead man. They had lived and worked and then one day they had simply stopped being, and now all that remained of them were bits of paper and their markers in the cemetery.

  She smoothed the work order and looked at it more closely. It felt like a
sort of memorial, studying what he had ordered for the company. This wasn’t his last request, but it was probably the last one that had passed through her office.

  “Fiberoptic line, fiberoptic transceiver, three portable generators,” — the next chunk was obscured with sticky stuff — “seven closed-circuit radios, and whatever sundries necessary.” She looked up from the paper. “Necessary for what, Hattie? This is the kind of crap you’d need for a new field station.”

  There was a note at the bottom, smeared graphite in Duncan’s spiky handwriting. “Clear out by April 15th, all except conduit (12 - 13).”

  The dates were Huginn dates, not the official company calendar, which counted days by fixed Earth hours; twenty-six day months made things convenient, if inaccurate, for old-fashioned types. At any rate, she could probably just recycle this note.

  But Standish held on to the work order, not looking at it, just thinking, letting her fingers play over the paper. 12 and 13. She remembered the clearing in Sector 13, big enough for a field station, and a road good enough to serve it.

  Clear out by April 15th.

  Why would someone build a field station and just tear it down? She folded the paper and stuck it in her shirt pocket. Her hand rested on it for moment, the crinkled paper hidden beneath the fabric, just as it had been hidden in the mess left on Duncan’s desk.

  A knock at the door made her start. She clambered to her feet as the door swung open.

  “Standish, you’ve got to meet Victoria.” Niketa beamed at her. “Joe and I insist.”

  People were piling in, filling the space with chatter. Some were Canaan Lake folks she recognized, but others must have come from Space City, and Niketa hurried to introduce them in a barrage of names that flowed over Standish without collecting in her brain. Joe Holder’s chuckle moved down the hallway and he squeezed inside, a blond woman at his heels.

  “Kate Standish is our new communications manager, Victoria. She’s been a terrific addition to the team.”