An Oath of Dogs

by Wendy N. Wagner

  I couldn’t help seeing Craig Thomas’s mutilated body with the flesh carved off the bones.

  Ms LUPO: You don’t argue that you set charges with the intent to destroy Songheuser’s timber processing facility. But how did you convince the others to go along with you?

  Ms BAYER: As a group, we all agreed that the government of Huginn is a shill for the corporations, and those companies are run by people utterly unlike those of us living on the moon. Look at the way we in GreenOne have changed. Are we even the same species as the people on Earth?

  Ms LUPO: Let me get this straight. You believe that certain people living on Huginn have become physiologically different from humans living on Earth?

  Ms BAYER: Lady, I turned green and started growing moss for hair. Is that normal where you come from? Huginn does things to you when you start to believe.

  — from the oral transcript of THE PEOPLE VS BELINDA BAYER

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  STANDISH PUT DOWN THE DIARY, troubled by the writer’s words. Poor Hepzibah. She had loved her husband and her life. She’d loved her dog. And she’d lost all of it because Songheuser had failed to send the right boxes to the right place. There was something else about the diary that bothered Standish, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. She didn’t want to read any more tonight, that was for sure.

  Standish reached for her hand unit and reread the terse message she’d gotten from Peter. She couldn’t understand why he’d go to Space City this afternoon, but after seeing him racing away from the forest she had to imagine there was something serious going on. She sighed. She wished he’d stayed in Canaan Lake. After what happened to Shane Vogel today, she didn’t want to be alone.

  Hattie looked up from the foot of the couch, her eyes pleading for fun. Standish got up and peered outside. The clouds had returned after sunset, she realized. The sky was sealed up tight, the stars put safely away.

  “Let’s go for a walk, girl.” She snapped on the dog’s lead and took her outside. An idea struck Standish, and she headed away from the lake, toward the knoll at the end of town.

  Mount Hepzibah: the hill looked prouder and taller now that she knew who it was named for. Standish and the dog passed by the lights of the bars and the diner and then through the little residential area at the end of town. The cemetery hill climbed steeply from the last of the back yards, its bulk announcing the city limits.

  Standish knew enough of the town these days to take Cemetery Drive through the last of the houses, bigger, nicer models than the quickie-prints where she lived. She’d heard Joe Holder lived on Cemetery Drive; he must make a lot more money than she did. She unlatched the wrought-iron gate and slipped inside the cemetery.

  Large concrete containers filled with azaleas and other terrestrial plants greeted her inside. The smell of fresh-clipped grass still hung in the air. She could have been back on Earth instead of halfway across the galaxy.

  The cemetery’s design encouraged the feeling. She’d visited a historical cemetery in Oregon that looked just like this one, the headstones sitting on grassy terraces that wrapped around the curved side of the hill. Some terraces had cement sidewalks and shallow stairs to connect them to the tier above and below; some didn’t, and the paths were just wide strips of grass. In some places, the sidewalks just ended in the middle of the terrace, as if the builders had stopped for lunch and forgotten to come back.

  She climbed to the first tier of headstones and admired the brightly painted crosses at the foot of almost every grave. There seemed to be far too many for a town of Canaan Lake’s size, but she supposed the bulk of them belonged to Believers.

  If it was their time to die, they died.

  She stooped and stroked Hattie, wishing dogs appreciated hugs. Then she drew herself together. She’d come here for a reason.

  She pulled out her hand unit and shone its light on the nearest headstone. The names in Hepzibah’s diary had always bothered her. How many Matthias Williams could live in one town, even in a span of a hundred-plus years?

  She had to wipe away fallen horsetail fronds before she could make out the text:

  “Modesto Chavez, Day 4, Leap Week, 2199,” she read out loud, and then shook her head at the convolutions of the Huginn calendar, a blatant attempt to make day-to-day life feel more like what the settlers had left behind. Maybe some day they would rename their months and their days to make them something wholly, uniquely of this world.

  “Come on, Hattie. Most Believers are Anglo, I’ve noticed. Let’s keep going.” Standish looked around, wondering which way to go.

  One huge headstone marked off the center point of the cemetery, she realized. Whoever had been buried there must have been important. The stone stood nearly her own height, surrounded by dozens of smaller crosses and several statues of the little blue saint. Her fingers went to her throat and touched the tin of the necklace Chameli gave her.

  “Watch your step,” a voice growled.

  “Excuse me,” she gasped.

  A figure unfolded from the ground to her right, a wizened old man with tufts of white hair. He rubbed at the small of his back. “You on graveyard patrol tonight?”

  “No, I was just taking a walk.”

  He fixed his gaze on Hattie. “You going to let her dig?”

  “Oh, no! No, Hattie is a good dog. She doesn’t dig.” Her heartbeat was slowing now, but she still felt nervous of the strange man.

  He spat over his shoulder. “I was just checking the infill on Rob McKidder’s plot. I don’t think the dogs have been back since they dug him up.” He sighed. She realized the man must be Caretaker Frank. Peter had pointed him out on her first day in Canaan Lake, but she hadn’t seen the man since. “Was going to fill in that hole in the Believer side, but it was a long day.”

  “Hole? In the Believer side?”

  He waved a hand to the far side of the cemetery, where the number of crosses and figurines redoubled. “Been there a while, but I keep forgetting about it. The Believers never complain.” He stooped to pick up a rake. “I’m going down to the Night Light. You want to come?”

  “No,” she said. “Thank you. I’m not drinking today.”

  “Suit yourself. Just remember to close the gate behind you.” He set off and she watched him a moment before turning back to the great headstone. God, she hoped her job never made her as weird as that.

  She made her way down the path and paused in front of the big stone at the center of the cemetery. “Hepzibah Williams.” Someone had left flowers on the grave, gladiolas, still fresh.

  On the tier above Hepzibah’s grave, a dark hole stood out from the smooth grass. The hole looked a few weeks old, the sides sunk in and a few small grass shoots coming up in places. She got close enough to read the name on the stone and felt goose bumps rise on her arms.

  Orrin Morris.

  She scrambled up to look more closely at the hole and the graves around it. FRED EAMES, APRIL 3, 2212. ALICE CAMPBELL, SEPTEMBER 19, 2260. MEI LIN VOGEL, DECEMBER 20, 2243. She picked up her pace, nearly running along the row. The dates got older the closer she got to Hepzibah’s stone: ROBERT SOUNDS, FEBRUARY 15, 2158. CHEYENNE FERGUSON, JUNE 13, 2156. SHANE VOGEL, MARCH 19, 2157.

  It didn’t make sense. Maybe that was Shane’s grandfather, but Mei Lin Vogel? What were the odds of two Mei Lins marrying into the Vogel family in the past twenty-five years?

  Standish tripped as she darted down to the next row and fell on the grass. She pushed herself to her knees using a headstone.

  “Matthias Williams,” she gasped. She brushed a clump of lichen away from the lettering. The stone was nearly sixty years old. She stumbled to the next one. “Matthias Williams,” she read again.

  And then someone tapped her on the shoulder.

  She whirled around, a scream in her throat, and the scream froze because it was him, Matthias, his face serious. “Wh—” she began and had to try again, “What are you doing here?”

  “We’re burying Shane tonight,” he said. “I ca
me early to put flowers on my wife’s grave.”

  She remembered the gladiolas beside the tall headstone and felt her mouth go dry.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” he warned her. “Not tonight.”

  “Why are there two Matthias Williams buried right here?”

  He straightened up. “Actually, there are four,” he said. “And five Orrin Morrises and six Shane Vogels. Three Robert Sounds. Three Mei Lin Vogels.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s what Duncan asked.” He studied her face closely. “Where did he hide the diary? I went through his whole house and I never found it.”

  “It was in the crawlspace,” she admitted. Her heart was pounding so hard her chest hurt. “Did you kill Duncan?”

  “No.” He sounded infinitely sad. “But I didn’t save him, either.”

  She looked from him to the stones around her. Only the one had flowers in front of it. Only Hepzibah’s. “What are you?” she whispered.

  “We acted as dogs,” he said, and it sounded like something he’d told himself a thousand times. “We acted as dogs, and we became as dogs. And God won’t let us forget it.”

  Standish dug her fingernails into the palm of her hands, suddenly more angry than afraid. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It means you need to get out of the cemetery, Kate. It’s not safe tonight.”

  And then a bright yellow light flared in the sky and an explosion rocked the ground under their feet.

  THE ROAD back to Canaan Lake had never seemed so dark before. Peter slowed the UTV to a crawl, the headlights pitched to their lowest setting. The road’s twists and turns were covered in a dense, eerie fog that seemed to creep inside the UTV and Peter’s very skull. His brain felt thick and damp, his heart miserable. His presentation to Mark had done nothing.

  How a man like that could be powerless, Peter couldn’t understand. The office itself reeked of importance. Sitting in the uncomfortable chair facing his desk’s vast acreage, Peter could look out the window and catch a glimpse of the governor’s mansion, an unsubtle reminder of the power Songheuser wielded over Huginn as the first and wealthiest of the extractions corporations.

  The first sign something was wrong, Peter realized now, was that Mark’s secretary hadn’t been eager to let Peter beyond the bland waiting room. The young man had kept Peter waiting nearly an hour, and when he’d finally gotten inside the office, sunset had filled the big window, spilling pinks and oranges across the desk and staining Mark’s face. Despite the special effects, he looked grayer than ever. The bags under his eyes had grown since his last conversation with Peter.

  “You knew the compound was dangerous, didn’t you? That’s why you wanted me to test it and not some company lackey.”

  “Peter, what are you doing here?” Mark tried to stand up and fell back into his seat again. While his office still looked like something out of The Great Gatsby, all early-twentieth-century money and power, Peter saw that Mark’s pinched face no longer belonged. Peter had always thought of his boss as an unflappable society boy aimed effortlessly at success, but at this moment, he saw that Mark was just another academic outmatched by the sharks of the business world. Men like Peter and Mark didn’t belong on the same courts as company execs. They didn’t have the bloodlust for it.

  “They said they changed the formula. They said it wouldn’t cause any more problems.”

  “Any more problems? It’s caused problems before?”

  “That’s classified information.” Mark waved Peter toward a chair. “Did you bring the results from your first tests?”

  “Right here.” Peter tossed a memory chit down on his desk. “That chemical might work in a lab, but in a real-life setting, it’s a killer. It could wipe out the entire ecosystem if we keep using it. And I’m not sure what kinds of effects it will have on Earth biologicals. What if it got in the water supply?”

  Mark slipped the chit into his top drawer. “I see.” His voice quavered.

  “You see? No, you don’t see! You’ve got to stop this, Mark! You’ve got to stop this before it gets out of hand.”

  Mark spun his chair around to face the smoldering pinks of sunset. There was a dry rash like some kind of lichen spreading across the back of his bald head. “I don’t know if I can.”

  “You’re the head of forestry for the whole company. They have to listen to you!”

  Mark’s head dropped. “Victoria Wallace doesn’t listen to anything. The only thing that matters to people like her is the bottom line.”

  “Even humans can’t handle the level of toxic mold spores I saw in those test sites. If they use this, people will die!”

  Mark turned around. “What makes you think Songheuser cares?”

  “They have to care about the horsetails. If we wipe them out, where will Songheuser’s money come from?”

  “I’ve got two other company foresters saying the compound causes no problems when used in uninhabited areas. If the compound really works, what do you think will matter more to Songheuser: protecting a few towns or getting bigger, cheaper harvests out of the unexplored middle of the continent?”

  “But the workers—”

  “There are always more workers, Peter.” Mark looked ready to cry. “If anybody is going to help your town, it’s got to be somebody outside of the company. Somebody with connections to the government. Someone who might actually care.”

  Peter had no idea who that person could be. But Standish’s friend Dewey might.

  STANDISH STUMBLED BACK FROM MATTHIAS. The brilliant yellow in the sky behind him had collapsed on itself, turning to a truculent orange glare.

  “The mill,” she said. “They’ve blown up the mill!”

  She broke into a run, the repeating tombstones and Matthias’s weird words forgotten. Two dozen people had died in the Jawbone Flats attack, and they’d only lost the degassing facility. The explosion here looked big enough to destroy the entire mill. She had to help.

  She passed a knot of Believers at the cemetery gate. A blonde woman who might have been Vonda Morris called after her, but Standish only ran faster. Her boots pounded on the concrete of the sidewalks — sidewalks, they didn’t have those at her end of town — and Hattie’s claws clicked behind her. Lights turned on in a house just ahead, and a familiar figure stepped onto the front porch.

  “Joe!” she shouted. “Can you give me a ride?”

  He threw open the passenger door of his UTV and hurried around to the driver’s side. She and Hattie squeezed inside. Joe fired up the rig, his face pale, his lips tight. She had never seen him without a smile before.

  Sirens came on, impossibly loud, and Standish realized she had no idea where they came from or that Canaan Lake had any kind of emergency response. Was there a firehouse? She hadn’t done any work orders for one.

  “The volunteer fire department.” It was like Joe was reading her mind. “I hope they get there before we do.”

  A big yellow rig pulled out in front of them, its lights flashing and its eight wheels spraying mud. Joe raised his hand unit. “Unit 1, this is Joe. I’m behind the VFD’s pump truck. I need stats from our fire suppressant system.”

  Someone cleared their throat. “We can’t tell, sir.” A crash overpowered the voice.

  “Repeat, Francesco.” The hand unit gave a little crackle. “I said ‘repeat’!”

  They swung to the right as the pump truck made its wide turn into the mill’s yard. Joe slid the UTV to a stop in front of the office’s front steps. He turned to Standish. “Get down to the security office. If they’ve got any spare backpack fire rigs, you sign one out and go wherever they send you. And leave that damn dog behind.”

  She jumped out of the UTV, one hand gripping Hattie’s collar tight. The stink of molten plastic already burned her eyes and nose. This was no place for a dog.

  Across the street, something popped and boomed, and a chunk of metal streaked past them to smash through the window beside the front door. Hattie yelped in fear. Standish
hoisted the dog into her arms. Glass crunched under her boots as she marched to the staircase with the dog in an awkward grip.

  “Please don’t run away, please don’t run away, please don’t run away.”

  She didn’t realize she was whispering it like a mantra until they hit the basement level and her own wheezing voice sounded over the sirens and the explosions. Here it was practically peaceful.

  Standish dropped the dog and held her between her knees while she unlocked her office door. Her hands were shaking. Her whole body was shaking. It sounded like the end of the fucking world out there and she was going to go back out in it. She urged Hattie inside the office and dragged the dog bed under her desk. The office seemed safe enough, but Standish knew it was an illusory safety. If that skybridge went up, the whole building would be in danger.

  “I’ll be back.” She pushed the dog down into the bed and hugged her tight. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you, Hattie. I promise. Because I can’t live without you. You know that, right?”

  The dog pushed her nose into Standish’s face, licking nervously.

  “I’ll be back. Now stay!”

  Standish opened the office door as narrowly as possible and squeezed out quickly, not certain the dog would follow a command in a situation like this. She was tremendously scared, and Standish couldn’t blame her. Standish didn’t lock the door behind her. If the building caught fire, she’d need every second to get Hattie out.

  The hallway was no longer empty. People ran in both directions, most of them sturdy men she recognized as Brett’s friends and coworkers. She ran behind one and they both crowded into the security office. Someone was shouting at their hand unit.

  “Fall back, Francesco!” She recognized the voice as Brett’s, wound high-pitched with nerves. “Man, get out of there!”

  An explosion sounded, its shock waves rattling the building even in the basement. She grabbed the door frame. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

  “We need all hands at the chip pile,” Brett shouted. “Grab a backpack and get moving.”