The Year's Best SF 08 # 1990

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

  “I do not know how” said Nik Nok and his voice was thick and white.

  “Hold my tail up out of the way. I will tell you if you are doing something wrong.” She suddenly caught her breath and held it.

  “Does it feel good” she asked him.

  “Like nothing I have ever felt and better even than when I used my hand before!” he told her.

  “Wait wait” Disha said “it is too tight yet.” But then she whined and snuffled and sounded very excited herself, and Nik Nok found the going easier. I hoped that they had forgotten I was watching them for I did not want to foul soot—either like the Cat, or even like Disha! For if you start out violenting Democrazy one time why not do anything you want then?

  He held the fur on her side with one hand and the going was easier. His other hand kept stroking her tail and rubbing it against his bare belly.

  “Does this feel like this always” he asked.

  She sighed only “will of Democrazy.”

  I closed my eyes at the Blast Femmy and listened only. I was reminateing when I had last had a lady, and it was long ago and usually I cannot reminate it, but the scent remimbered me. I lay quiet and listened to Disha and Nik Nok.

  The Boy cried out suddenly, not even afraid of a Junkyard Dog hearing him but when afterward he started to pull out she said “do not dare stop! Keep going even if you are finished for I am not.”

  “But how” he asked “I am not hard anymore.” I opened my eyes again because maybe the horror was almost over, and I wanted to see what it looked like when you violented Democrazy.

  “Damn you just keep going I am almost there, you are hard enough.” So of course he did. At last it happened to Disha too, but she did not cry out as he had. She went stiff all over and her tail stood straight up against his stomach.

  He bent over to lay his body against her back and his head on hers and still stayed in her. He licked Disha’s ears very gently.

  “I have been with many other Dogs before” she said “and you are so much better for you took much more care with me than they do. They are all only interested in pleasuring themselves and something happens and they get big and lumpy and cannot pull out. But that never stops them from trying. They cannot do it slow and gentle like you do.” Nik Nok said nothing but he did not look as happy as he might, for perhaps he saw to the future then.

  Chapter ten love and Democrazy

  “And there is more about you” she added “but I cannot say what it is, the thought of you is like gas that has floated up to my heart and is pushing everything else aside and nearly bursting out my chest.”

  They held each other as mates. I think they had forgotten all about me and Progrets and the Hidden Den.

  “Let’s stay here forever Disha” said Nik Nok, “we can do it again as soon as—”

  But Disha got a junk look on her face, and she looked at me and I almost turned and ran even though she is my friend. She is still a Dog and I only a Skunk, and she is more equal.

  I tried to talk but I was too afraid.

  “I know that you saw but you cannot talk about what you have just seen” snarled Disha, and all I could do was shake my head. They had violented Democrazy and I was afraid.

  Now Nik Nok looked frightened, for he had not thought about the Winds of Law before he foolishly fell in love.

  “But why not? Do we not love each the other?”

  “Love” sneered Disha, “what does love have to do with the Will of Democrazy? We are cranimals now, for all of our friends on venture path cannot stand the thought of what we have done and it is eat or be eaten. So if this Skunk talks we shall be goners you and I.”

  I curled up in a ball shaking, meaning I would not say anything and betray my friends to Democrazy and thus I too became victim to the Winds of Law, as you will see at the novel ending.

  “Let us stay” said Nik Nok, “and never return to face the bath of Democrazy.”

  “No beautiful” said Disha to Nik Nok, “for we must eat and go back to today’s den. We set out again when the sun sinks. Have you forgotten our quest?”

  With a wasteful look he looked down at himself. He had fallen out of her. His ling was still wet from inside Disha and he wiped it with his hand and rubbed some on his nose so he could smell her all the way back.

  That is how I found out about love in the streets.

  Chapter eleven a junk waffle

  When we got back King Rat said it was all right to stay if we gave him some Cat, which we did and then he let us stay the day inside the exon.

  It was hot but even so all three of us huddled next to each other. We needed each other’s solstice.

  So it was that I jumped in fear when I suddenly heard a junk howl from outside, across the hardground and the paths and the metal autobiles that we were going to cross the next day, even towards the other mountains.

  The scream scraped like a falling wall and rumbled like thunderbum “damn all of you die horrible!” it said, and then “it is not the Junkyard Dogs what we learned to mean to me!”

  It was junk, through and through and I wondered if he would try to break into the exon and get us. It was death and dismembrane. It was howls and horrors, junk city, junk waffle, Junkyard Dog!

  Soon his howls came closer, and he said things that did not mean anything but fear and death except maybe to another junk: “anyone we caught we could eat once—kill them! Do not let them—I tore all living creatures in piece!”

  In between these cries I heard him run around and around the exon moaning like a cub with stomach rot and coughing like a redstone mountain falling down in an earthshake, and even that made me afraid and by the way they shivered I knew Disha and Nik Nok were too. You never know what these Junkyard Dogs will do for they are mad and do not drink water and if they bite you you become junk yourself.

  We heard each curly nailed paw tickity-tickity scrabbing the hardground, round and round and round until it was as if brats were throwing stones, bounding chinks of redstone in a circle to pen us inside.

  Then “I held onto the fur on hunks of metal!” he suddenly hissed from right beneath our windrow!

  We got up as quiet as we could and crouched by the door because he might smell us and try to get in at us. I had even heard of a Junkyard Dog leaping straight through a glass windrow! for after all they cannot feel pain, being junk anyway and outside Democrazy.

  Something tugged at my mind about some of the things he said. Then, when he sang like a jay from just underneath the windrow “not so fast, Mr. Dinner!” I knew what I reminated.

  The junk things he said were our own words turned, like a poison snake into something other, frightful.

  The junk had been stalking us and listening the whole time. My watchy feeling had been true.

  We listened hard and tried to track him as he trotted around and around crazily, but the Winds of Law and the Santa’s Anus kept howling too and knocking things over so it was hard to tell which was which.

  There was too much to see in the exon. There were tables and broken windrows and spilled blackoil, and three very frightened Dogs Boys and Skunks slunking around trying to watch and listen at each and every windrow.

  We strained and looked but he never stepped out and showed himself. Of course we imagined he was everywhere and sometimes it even seemed he was here in the exon with us, but it always turned out to be just one of the three of us knocking something over.

  Then a thump on the roof and “my favorite place, the hardgrover moon!” he croaked from above.

  We all fell to silence and held our collectivist breaths.

  I for one could hear the junk panting and wheezing on the roof. Slowly he walked to one side, tickity-tickity. Slowly he walked back, scritchity-scritchity, tickity—and stopped.

  “I know you” he whispered, so clear we could hear the hair stand on our backs. “Anyone we caught we could eat once” he added, so quiet we could hear pieces and drips of junk spatter on the metal roof.

  Then with a terribl
e creak like the roof caving in and dropping him there among us, he leaped and was gone. There was a frightful bulge, left there in the roof right in the middle of the den.

  I do not know how long we stayed up and shivered but we never heard anything more from him that day.

  Chapter twelve Law and Custom

  We made good time towards the other mountains and climbored over many crickley hills of autobiles and metals. We were so tired that after we found a dead Rat and ate lunch we were too beat to even play chase and bounce with our other ball, and we plodded again as soon as we had swallowed our food.

  I kept listening hard for the Junkyard Dog but either he had decided to let us alone which I doubted or he was very, very good at stalking.

  I was afraid it was the latter. None of us heard anything we could say was surely him but many a scrape and click that could have been his flank against a wall, and could have been his claws on top an unbroken piece of hardground but could have been anything else either.

  My feeling was stronger than ever. We were all uneasy but could not sit around worrying about a Junkyard Dog so we tried to ignore him and run on.

  I knew that Disha and Nik Nok wanted to be alone so I kept my distance. I listened though, for a Skunk has good ears. Mostly I listened for the Junkyard Dog but I heard every word that Disha said to Nik Nok, or vice verses.

  Disha said that even though everybody is all for Democrazy nobody agrees what it is, so we hide what we think for fear we will be too different and become company dinner, and this is Custom. Even back before there was Law to enforce the will of Democrazy there was Custom, and Custom is stronger even than Law.

  I kept hoping they would both see the light and allow Custom and Progrets to get in the way of animal love.

  Custom says we can eat only what we can eat and that we cannot love anybody who is too different. If you break Custom, it is company dinner for you, boy, just like happened to Taggo. But his violentation provided us with a lovely feast, so you see what goes around comes around and Progrets is always satisfied. This is some of what the two of them said, Disha and Nik Nok:

  “What love can this be” he said “when we can never be together with friends, and cannot make children?”

  But she said “I have made many pups already and the last thing I need now is more when I cannot always feed what I have.”

  He said “but does this love violent Democrazy? What will happen to us?”

  She said “sometimes two people that can touch each other are more important than the Custom of Democrazy, for love itself is Progrets and even Democrazy must obey.”

  She said “before the plague that did us all there was hardly any love. Love can only live between equals. Back then everyone was either lesser or greater than everyone else so how could there be true love? Now there is perfect equality and Democrazy and we can finally love.”

  But as Disha said this last I thought I heard the ghost of a sour chasm, for she knew as well as did I what Democrazy would think of her love for Nik Nok.

  He said “what is love really?” I thought Disha would answer because she is wise and a Dog but she just walked on, thinking.

  At last I could not keep my silence, and I answered for her what my mother had heard from a Zoocamel long ago:

  I said “love is knowing each other like worms know the dead.”

  Disha stopped. “That is pretty good for a Skunk” she admitted and said “this cannot happen when one is more than the other, because how can the lesser know the greater? And how can the greater respect one who is less than she?”

  Nik Nok asked “is this how it was before the plague that did us all?”

  Chapter thirteen Disha has a tail

  “In the days before the plague” she said “the Dogs could not talk or even think, and neither could the other animals. This I know, this I know. Men were all that were intelly and they were even more intelly than the Dogs and Men are now. They set about to make some of the fourlegs intelly too.”

  “Some say” she said “they only wanted servants and they could not use each other as they always had because of Servile Rights, but I have always admired the early Men and I prefer to think they truly believed we should all be crated equally. This I know, this I know.”

  “In any case” she said “they did it, and they did it by crating an unnatural plague that would do us, Dogs and Cats and other mamuals. This I know, this I know.”

  “I am not sure what a plague is” asked Nik Nok, and I listened hard for I had never understood that explanation either as often as Disha had shown this tail.

  “A plague is a little bug that crawls into every bump and hole in your body” she admitted. “Whenever you get sick that is caused by these bugs, and that is a plague.

  “Anyway, they deliberately fected some of us Dogs with this plague and then sat back on their haunches to see what would develop. This I know, this I know.”

  “And this is where Progrets and Democrazy came from” whispered the Boy out of rivulance.

  “What developed” she smugged “is that one of these plague Dogs escaped. The men were not as smart as they thought and Fang the Savor got away with the plague bug still fecting him.”

  “This I know, this I know” said both I and Nik Nok at once.

  “The Dogs were first and then next the plague fected the Rats and the Skunks and the Coons and the Zoomals and everything else. The Cats were last for they were always so full of themselves licking their body that they kept licking the bugs right off until they wised up! And that is why Dogs are first and Cats are last and all others fall in between.”

  “This I know, this I know” we supplied for her.

  I had forgotten all about the Junkyard Dog, so intent was I on Disha’s tail.

  “Ah but Men are a different story” she continued finally. “For the rest of us it was a climb up the hill for more intelly, but the Men had the easy route and came down the hill backwards. We met Democrazically in the middle, for the plague has finally made us all equal … the furries and birds and scales and frogs and even some of the fish, who are getting more intelly all of the time.”

  “Until at last today” she whispered “when I can love you truly as my grandmother could never love your grandfather. This I know, Nik Nok. This I know.”

  “What is the use of more intelly” asked Nik Nok angrily “if the Old Men did not have love? I am glad for this plague even if I am stupider than men were before! I am glad for our love Disha.”

  She stopped and bit at a flea on her hind leg for a mome.

  “Even” she snuffled “if you can no longer understand the things of Men?”

  “Things?”

  “The autobiles and the glass mountains, the redstone dens, the hard-ground, telephone trees, walls and builds and all? If you can no longer understand them?”

  “Then” he said “they are not the things of men anymore” and there he had her.

  Chapter fourteen our junk fears are real eyes

  “These things of men are not any of them as warm and pretty and furry as you” said Nik Nok and I began to get an easy because here again was love against Democrazy.

  “You will not always have me” Disha warned “Dogs do not live as long as men do for that is something the plague did not change.”

  “I am here now” he said “and you too and what is tomorrow? Maybe I will die first if that Junkyard Dog is still shuddowing us.”

  I wondered which was worth more, love or Progrets and I could feel my tail raise in horror. Is wonder a crime against Democrazy?

  Then all at once I heard a sound I must have been listening for all day and dreading, a rumbling cough like a redstone mountain falling down in an earthshake, a moaning like a cub with stomach rot and out of the shuddows of a heap of dead cars staggered the Junkyard Dog in the flesh, what was left of it!

  All three of us froze in terror and I felt urine trickle down my leg. I also raised my tail and sprayed my wad but I doubted the Junkyard Dog would care about
how he smelled as long as he got to bite us, all three!

  He staggered forward stiff-legged and I thought, maybe he is already dead but does not know it yet.

  In little sharp words he said “you might think my sex will eat me … and the part of her I was in squeezed Democrazy.”

  “Go away” Disha said with tried authority, but “I am who I have been and can eat once anybody I have caught” answered the Junkyard Dog.

  “Go away!” I whimpered for I could not find my voice. I felt like the silent Coon.

  “If you were stupid enough you is Progrets’” said he.

  And with that he lunged at us and we three broke in all four directions and I ran up a wall of dead autobiles before I even knew it was blocking. Then I looked back and saw Disha. She had frozen in fear and could not move and she stood nose to nose with the Junkyard Dog who was dripping white at the mouth. I do not know why she did not run or why he had not bitten her yet. I shivered in fear.

  But then I heard a cranky squeak and Nik Nok rose from the build he had hidden behind. He found his voice and charged the Junkyard Dog screaming like a Commonest.

  It broke the spell. Disha unfroze and bolted away but oddly the Junkyard Dog did not charge the Boy instead and tear him to shreds like I thought, he turned instead and with a deaf move slashed Disha as she ran by. She screamed and skittered away but I could see the blood flowing from her hind leg. The junk ran in circles three times laughing like a falling pile of autobiles.

  Disha shook, tail between her legs. Nik Nok only stared, his face the color of my stripe. We all knew what would happen to her now.

  “Well if I am already bit” said she sounding strange and quiet and queerly calm “then you can no longer frighten me, Junk. This I know, this I know.” And she leapt upon him as if she were junk herself and they fought tearing and biting and the Junkyard Dog had the worst of it for Disha tore off his ear and opened up his throat.

  He fell to his knees and still had mind enough to submit but he was a goner anyway. My throat lumped, because I knew Disha was a goner too. Worse, she would finally be like him and might even bite me then too or Nik Nok. I knew she would never allow that to happen, but there was only one thing that could stop it and that was the Duk Duk path.