An Oath of Dogs

by Wendy N. Wagner

  “And that never happened before?”

  “Maybe. But it never mattered, so I let it go. Until I learned it could matter.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “Do you know Bob Sounds?”

  She shook her head impatiently.

  “About six months ago, he… changed. He started avoiding me and Orrin. Then one day, I saw that he had a big white streak in his hair. We’ve lived here a hundred years and none of us have aged a day. He hadn’t, not until then.”

  Standish shook her head. “Well, what made him change?”

  He clasped his hands in front of him. “A group of Believers from the south coast moved up here, and Betty was with them. When he met Betty… well, he found a new reason to be a man.”

  She opened her mouth and closed it again.

  He looked up at her, his face pained. “I loved Hepzibah. I know I loved her. But somehow when we came here, I forgot how to care about anyone. And then one day I realized I had lost a friend because I was too lost in my own world to notice he was in trouble. I’m not going to let what happened to Duncan happen to anyone else I care about.”

  On the coffee table in the middle of the room, Standish’s hand unit buzzed.

  “Matthias, I—”

  The hand unit buzzed again.

  He glanced at the coffee table. “You should get that.”

  “Yeah.” She got to her feet and stomped to the table. “Shit. It’s Joe Holder. He needs me to fix his cable.” She made a face. “I cut his cable so I could sneak into his house and spy on him. To help solve Duncan’s case.”

  He stood. “Then you’ve got to go.”

  She looked at the door. Sunlight filled the entire square of the front window. “I can’t go out there, not without Hattie. I can’t do it.”

  “We have to find out what happened to Duncan. It matters to all of us, even if I’m not sure why. Even the dogs want to know what happened to him. That smell out there, they can’t resist it. And it has something to do with Duncan.” Matthias took her hand. “So you’ve got to go. You can do this, Kate.”

  “I don’t know how. I’m scared.”

  “Sometimes we have to do the things that scare us. They might still terrify us when we get done, but at least we know we’re really alive.”

  She gave him a weak smile and reached for her toolbox.

  PETER HEADED to the lake shore. He wasn’t stupid enough to take Main Street back to the office, not when the whole town wanted him in a jail cell. When he’d made a food run to his house in the cover of Wodin’s shadow, he had just turned up his hood and kept his head down, hoping like hell no one would recognize him if he kept moving. Now that it was time to get back to work, people were moving about, milling around in the street looking for something to fill the hours while the mill was closed. There was a strange undercurrent of tension in the town, as if everyone was holding their breath, waiting.

  The gray waters of the lake were a welcome respite from it. He wished he could stay here all day, watching the wind stir the water and the trees. But hiding from this problem would only make it worse. He had to let Mark know about the missing notes. He’d checked his house, just in case he’d taken them home without thinking, but they were really and truly gone.

  He paused and drew in a deep draft of cool, mineral-scented air, letting it clear his mind for a moment. This was what he had to fight for.

  The tree scooters might have brought him to Huginn, but just living on the moon had come to mean everything to him. The crispness of Huginn kept him on his toes, the newness always challenging him to learn more, to work harder. He had never lived anyplace that had made him feel so alive.

  He hadn’t blown up the sawmill, would never do something so horrible — but he had to admit he understood why people had. There had to be a better way to live here than just pillaging and terrorizing the land. Humans were guests here, and they needed to act like it.

  “That’s him.” The man’s voice came from behind him, sending the skin between Peter’s shoulder blades crawling. He looked backward and saw three big men making their way down to the beach path. A hard-faced woman followed, a wrench in her hand.

  He picked up his pace, looking around for some avenue of escape. He’d passed Standish’s street a minute ago, and now he was in the forest proper, the thick undergrowth that had filled in the original settlers’ plots. The path would bend in about a hundred meters and make the shortcut to Songheuser’s back door, but right now it was tightly hemmed in by Judas grass and bracken. If he was going to get out of here, he needed to move fast.

  Risking one more glance over his shoulder, he saw the others had quickened their step, and his heart gave a jolt. He’d hoped they were just out to scare him, but the way they walked, the intensity of their expressions, suggested something worse. He saw a dreadlocked man fall in behind the woman with the wrench and felt a pang of recognition. Even Lou the Security Guard had judged him guilty.

  “Get him,” the woman snarled, and the men broke into a run.

  Peter ran. Their boots were impossibly loud on the dirt path. Their breathing sounded in his ears, the panting of wild animals, and he wondered if Rob McKidder had heard that sound the night he’d died. Peter dodged an outstretched tree branch and ran faster. He could see the white roof of the office up ahead, just a hundred meters away.

  Something slammed into his back and he went down. His face skidded across a rock and then he was on the ground, the air driven out of him by the massive weight of the man who’d tackled him.

  Fingers curled in his hair and lifted his head.

  “You’re not getting away with this,” the woman said. She had the spidery build of a spacer. “You think you can just walk around this town like we don’t know what you did?”

  “My brother’s dead because of you!” The man holding Peter’s hair slammed his face down in the dirt.

  “I ain’t going back to Ganymede,” someone else said, and a boot drove into Peter’s hip with an explosion of pain.

  “Lou! What the hell are you doing?”

  Peter’s head was dropped.

  “We’re… Nothing, Brett. We’re not doing anything.”

  “Get the fuck out of here!”

  The weight shifted off his back and then feet pounded back toward the lake. Peter lay still, breathing. Thank God that kick had missed.

  A pair of boots appeared in front of Peter’s face. “Do you need help?”

  Peter pushed himself to his knees and waited for his lungs to recover from their smashing. His whole face throbbed, and his eye felt like it wanted to swell shut.

  “You look like shit.” Brett sounded conversational as he hoisted Peter to his feet. “Let’s get you some ice for that face.”

  “Thanks,” Peter said. He touched his lower lip and found it swollen, too. “You’re really something, Brett.”

  “I’m just doing my job,” Brett said. “You’re on Songheuser property, which means the company is liable for you.” He gave Peter a hard look. “You might not have set that bomb, Bajowski, but you encouraged those ecofreaks, and people know it. You might think about heading back to Earth for your own safety.”

  Peter followed Brett into the security office and took the ice pack the man offered. There was a picture on the desk behind Brett — a photo of Brett and Rob McKidder with Joe Holder behind them. Joe’s arm was slung around Rob’s shoulder, and he was smiling like a man who’d won some kind of major prize. They each held a leather bird by its ankles, and Rob had an air bolt gun swinging jauntily in his free hand.

  “You must be a hell of a shot,” Peter said. “Those things move fast.”

  “Well, mine was roosting, but Joe — he shot one down that was on the wing. The man’s a legendary shot. He and Rob used to go out all the time hunting leather birds. They know the forest like the backs of their hands.” Brett frowned. “You’re going to need another ice pack.”

  He stooped to riffle through the first aid drawer, but
Peter couldn’t take his eyes off the photo. Rob McKidder and Joe Holder. His mind was spinning.

  JOE MET her at his front door with circles under his eyes and a coffee stain down the front of his shirt. He caught Standish glancing at it and looked down. “Shit,” he said, in lieu of “hello.” “I’ve got to change before Victoria sees me like this.”

  “Did you even get a chance to sleep last night? You look worn out.” Standish followed him into the pleasant foyer, feeling some of the tension fall out of her as she escaped from the sky. She jammed her ballcap — no Hattie, but it helped block her view upward — into her back pocket and looked around herself. Prints of vaguely familiar paintings hung on the wall in gold-colored frames, and a faux marble-topped bureau sat beside the doorway with a scented candle poised beside a row of key hooks. The place was a far cry from her two-room plastic shack.

  “No time for sleep. Between talking to the cops and trying to organize repairs, there isn’t time for anything.” He trudged into the kitchen and reached for a stainless steel pot. “Coffee?”

  The kitchen had cheerful yellow curtains with chickens on them, and a ceramic rooster stood next to the sink. Standish had never stopped to think if Joe lived alone or had a wife or what. It was hard to imagine him outside of work. “Yes, please.”

  “Now I’ve got to deal with this crap.” He dumped powdered creamer into his mug and stirred hard enough to slosh coffee onto the counter. “My wife can’t be home alone all day without a sure way to get a hold of me. You know how the signal is around this town — can’t depend on it for shit.” Standish’s expression must have expressed her confusion. “My wife’s an invalid,” he explained. “Posie Eames sits with her most mornings, but she’s alone in the afternoon. She can mind for herself, mostly, but she gets lonely. And what if something happened? If the power went out or her chair tipped over?”

  “Joe?” a voice called out from the next room. “Joe, who are you talking to?”

  “Just the cable girl, Eileen!” He put down the coffee. “I better check on her. The cable line’s in here, anyway.”

  Standish followed him into the comfortable living room. A blond woman smiled at Standish half-heartedly as Joe knelt down beside her wheelchair. Her neck trembled as he leaned in to kiss her cheek.

  Standish turned away, more than a little embarrassed to see her boss so exposed. He looked so tender and kind as he adjusted the blanket on his wife’s lap. There was no sign of his forced laugh, the one that echoed through the halls at work. Standish hunkered down beside the entertainment center and ran her fingers around the cable jack. “Any other jacks in the place? If there’s a short in one, it can mess with the others.”

  “There’s one in the bedroom, second door down the hall.” He began talking about snacks with Eileen, whose voice quavered softly.

  Standish slipped into the hallway. She’d hoped Joe would have just sent her with a spare key or left the front door unlocked like most of her work requests. Having him here made it nearly impossible to search his house for clues. She stood in the bedroom doorway and shook her head. The pinkness of the place was overwhelming.

  “Eileen’s favorite color is pink,” he explained from behind her.

  “I thought it might be yours,” she joked. She wanted to go through the drawers and look under the bed, but with his eyes on her she had to go straight to the smaller entertainment center on the wall and pretend to inspect the jack.

  “It’s cryo sickness,” he blurted. “From the trip here. Less than half a percent of travelers get it. Knocked me on my ass when it happened to Eileen. We woke up, and she couldn’t move. They treated the paralysis, but she’ll never get full control of her muscles again. The nerves are wrecked.”

  She sat down on the floor. He looked like he might cry. “Jesus.”

  “Hell of a thing.” He took a breath, steadying visibly. “I don’t know what I’d have done if it wasn’t for Victoria’s help. She got us the best doctors. Songheuser took care of everything. If it weren’t for her, Eileen would be in a hospital bed in Space City with machines breathing and eating for her.”

  “Sounds like you owe her a lot.”

  “Yep.” He joined her beside the entertainment center. “I’d do anything for Victoria Wallace. She’s a great woman.”

  “I can see that.” Standish got to her feet. “I’m going to guess your problem is with the cable juncture outside your house. Probably got hit by a rock or something. These old cable boxes go out all the time.”

  “All right. I’ll see you out.” He patted her shoulder with his heavy paw. “You’re all right, Standish. Especially without that dog around.”

  “You don’t like dogs?”

  “Not anymore. I keep catching glimpses of them in the trees. Like they’re watching me.”

  Her fingers closed on the front door, and she looked back over her shoulder. “What do you mean?”

  “You know how some people smell good to mosquitoes? They’re always getting bit when nobody else does? Well, I’d swear there was something about me that smelled good to those dogs. I thought Rob was crazy when he told me they were sniffing after him, but I think he was right. I started keeping my hunting bolt gun in my rig all the time, just to be safe.”

  “I guess you’re irresistible.”

  Joe gave her a strange look. “I guess,” he said.

  She went to the cable box and waited for Joe to close the front door before she reconnected the cable, all the time thinking about Matthias and the smell the dogs couldn’t resist.

  HUGINN, day 199

  I

  what is that sound?

  Language contains and expands our human understanding of the world. We create it and are created by it. What we say and what we believe become, in very real ways, ourselves.

  — from THE COLLECTED WISDOM OF MW WILLIAMS

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  THE SKY ROARED and the walls of the shed rattled. The caterpillars in their boxes scattered in a blind panic, crawling over and under each other and twisting in the leaves she gave them for feed. Then the roar resolved into the grumble of engines and Hepzibah recognized the sounds of a shuttle. She put down her diary and got to her feet. It took all her strength, and she had to stop and lean against the wall, gasping. Something felt broken in her chest.

  It went very silent outside. She cautiously opened the door. On the lake shore a shining silver shuttle sat, and a boarding ramp lowered from it like a butterfly tentatively extending its proboscis. There was no one in sight and no animal noises.

  “Hello?” a man called from the mouth of the shuttle. “Matthias Williams? Dr Robert Sounds?”

  The door of the kitchen shed swung open and Matthias stumbled out. Blotches of blood and dirt stood out down his shirt front, and a length of filthy white linen hung over his shoulder. The kind of linen they used as a funeral shroud. He flung it away from him with a look of revulsion and Hepzibah clamped a hand over her mouth. The cemetery. It had all been dug up, and now she knew who had done it.

  She drew a ragged breath and was glad she had nothing in her stomach to vomit up.

  “I’m… Matthias Williams.” It was half-croaked, as if his voice had been stripped from him.

  “Kurt Conrad, Songheuser Corporation. Our accounting department caught our little shipping mistake.” The man descended from the shuttle, smiling broadly. “We’d like to make it right with you.”

  “Food? You brought food?”

  “Well, yes, we’ve got some of your supplies. Some has gone missing, I’m afraid. But we’ve drawn up a very generous reparations package that I’ll need you to sign off on before I can make the delivery.” The company man frowned. “Are you all right? You look a bit ill.”

  Doc Sounds came out of the kitchen shed, his face twisted with anger. “Reparations? My wife starved to death. How do you repair that?”

  “We realize you people have had a rough time...”

  Doc Sounds gave a sound that could have been a laugh or a sob
. “A rough time.” He scrubbed a filthy hand across his face. “A rough time!”

  “Nineteen people have died,” Matthias said. “Some of them children. It’s been like hell.”

  “Now you have the power to change all that,” Conrad said. “You just have to sign a few papers and promise never to tell anyone what happened here, and everyone will be well cared for. It’s an extremely generous—”

  “No!” Hepzibah burst out of the shed, coughing hard. “Your filthy money can’t fix this. Not tell what’s happened? Songheuser should be crucified for what they’ve done. All this is their fault. All of it. Even the Godforsaken things.”

  “I know it is, Hepzibah” Matthias said. “But they’ve got food, and we need it bad.”

  “If you make this deal, it’s like you’re saying the truth doesn’t matter. That good and bad and morality and God’s word don’t matter. Animals put survival over what’s right. Is that what you want to be? An animal?”

  He gripped her by the forearms. “If you think I’m going to just let you starve to death when I’ve got a way to save you, you’re crazy.”

  “Is that what you thought when you started cutting up the bodies in the cemetery?” She yanked away from his grasp. “You make me sick.”

  “You don’t get to judge me, Hepzibah. That’s God’s job.”

  “He’s judging you right now, Matthias.”

  He pushed her out of his way. “I’ll sign anything you want, Mr Conrad, as long as we get those supplies.” He put out his hand, and Hepzibah saw that his palm was as rough and dark as a dog’s paw. Her legs went out from under her, and she began to sob.

  STANDISH THREW open Peter’s office door. “Thank goodness you’re out of that stupid jail.”

  He looked up from his desk tablet, revealing the gash across his cheekbone and his split lip.