“I’m not talking about Meyan, now,” the headman’s sister said. “It came clear to me when Gault’s sheep vanished. You had harsh words with him the day before that happened, didn’t you?”
“He said I hadn’t carded my quota of wool, but I’d done all I could. I wasn’t shirking. My hands were aching the way they sometimes do, so I told him I couldn’t.”
“That’s not all you said.”
The old woman sighed heavily and lowered her head.
“What else did you say?” Ryenne prompted her.
“He got angry with me and said I wasn’t doing my fair share of the village work anymore. I tried to tell him about my hands. They get stiff, you know, and my knuckles swell sometimes. He didn’t want to hear it. He didn’t care about the troubles of an old woman with no children to help her and a husband long dead, so I said he was a poor headman and didn’t deserve any wool at all.”
A self-satisfied smirk crossed Ryenne’s face. “And the next day, three of his sheep go missing. Don’t you think that’s strange?”
“Well, a bit maybe, but the old male was an outlier. He often strayed away from the rest, and the two pregnant ewes could have just wandered off to find a quiet spot to have their lambs. They do that sometimes.”
“All three of them the day after you had harsh words with my brother? I don’t think so. The demon in you is a powerful one. It called others of its kind to ride those sheep and spirit them away because it felt your hatred for Gault.”
Galinda slumped even more at her post, leaning on it for support. “I didn’t know,” she mumbled softly. “I didn’t mean to.”
The strange interaction between the two women just got stranger. Did Ryenne somehow convince the pathetic old woman that she was responsible for these things? How could she have? None of it made any sense, at least not to the android attempting to listen attentively without appearing to, but it seemed to make a good deal of sense to the villagers.
MO-126 increased the sensitivity of his audio receptors in order to eavesdrop on the nearby villagers nodding and mumbling among themselves. Their seemingly unanimous consensus was that Ryenne’s mystical sensitivities detected a hidden truth. The headman’s sister was undeniably a woman blessed by the gods and the old woman was obviously possessed by an evil demon. The android dog briefly wondered if they all suffered from a form of mass delusion, perhaps caused by some kind of brain-eating virus.
“What do you say, Trader?” Gault asked. “Has my sister the right of it? You travel between villages. You must have seen cases such as this.”
“Tell him it’s all nonsense,” MO-126 urged his companion. “Tell him he has to let the old lady free. We can find out what really happened to the lost sheep.”
“I confess I have not,” the trade android replied, ignoring his partner’s silent pleas. Silent to all but him, that is. The villagers could not detect radio transmissions. He could. To them, the very idea would seem like magic.
“Well, I suppose my sister is unique. She has always been…” the village headman paused to find the appropriate word and finally located one that would do…“different.”
“She’s always been crazy, he means,” MO-126 said to Tork. “Tell him!”
“She does seem to have a rare ability,” the humanoid android said to the headman. “The way she linked all of those events and came to the conclusion she did is not something most people could do, I suspect.”
“Well, that much is true,” the android dog said. “She should swap places with Galinda. Ryenne’s the one that’s dangerous.”
“Shut up, MO-126,” the trade android transmitted.
“True,” the headman said, unknowingly agreeing with the artificial canine on that single point. “I know I never would have made those connections. But now that she has, well, I suppose it all makes sense.”
MO-126 briefly wondered if he could shock the village leader back to reality by biting him but concluded he could not. The headman lived in a different reality. It might not be quite as far away as his sister’s, but in the headman’s world, demons could live in an old woman and steal sheep. In the android’s, people could be irrational and sheep could wander off on their own without any supernatural assistance. The two realities touched in some places, but they were lightyears apart in others.
The trader surprised his furry partner when he asked what would happen to the old woman, a question probably prompted more by idle curiosity than by any concern for her welfare.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Ryenne answered. “The demon must be driven from her.”
“How will you do that?” Tork asked her.
“I’ve been giving that some thought,” she replied. “The demon is there because it’s comfortable. We have to make it uncomfortable. It feels what Galinda feels, so I think we can make it want to leave her.”
Translated, that meant they would beat, starve, and leave the old woman tied to a pole until Ryenne, through mystical means of her own, determined it was safe to release her.
“I see,” the trader said. “Well, I wish you good luck with that. For now, I have some things I’m sure you need—fish hooks, needles, rope, and some new tools. Let’s go back to my gond and I’ll show you what I brought.”
“Why didn’t you tell Gault his sister is nuts?” MO-126 said to Tork as they turned back toward their pack animal.
“Because we are not here to educate the primitives. We’re here to support the project, and so are they. Don’t let yourself be distracted from that. Their belief in demons doesn’t harm the project; in fact, it supports it. As long as they continue to try to understand things in ways like this, they’re not likely to put their simple, idyllic life at risk, are they? Look around. Clean air and water, abundant natural food, no wars…. The people here are fortunate. They don’t need to understand any more than what they already do. That’s good for the project, it’s good for the corporation, and it’s good for them.”
“It’s not good for that old woman.”
“Actually, I think she might disagree. She thinks they’re helping her by exorcising the demon. She’ll thank them for it.”
“If she survives.”
“Well, there is that. I don’t suppose she will, but the life of one primitive is a small price for what the corporation has given them.”
MO-126 glanced back to the woman tied to the pole. She sat with her back against it, eyes closed and lips trembling as some of the villagers taunted her from a safe distance. This simply was not right. Three stray sheep should not be difficult to find, and once they were returned, everything would be fine.
“I’m going to go look for those sheep,” the mobile observer android said.
“Don’t!” Tork said.
His furry partner disobeyed his instruction. “If I’m not back by tonight, find a way to give Galinda some water and maybe some food.”
“I am not going to get involved. I don’t need a black mark on my record when I’m looking for a job after I leave here.”
“Who’s to know?” the android dog said. “Besides, I’ll bite you if you don’t.”
“Not funny,” the trader signaled. He continued to urge the other android to return, but MO-126 did not acknowledge him. Their integrated short-range communication systems would allow them to stay in contact reliably at a distance of a few kilometers. Even if MO-126 ventured farther than that, the signal would be relayed by the project’s satellite system. He could not pretend he did not hear him, but this did not mean he needed to listen.
~*~
He did not know the time and location of the sheep’s disappearance, but it seemed logical to begin a search near where he saw other sheep earlier that day. The sheep, the shepherd, and the dog he noticed there before were gone now. MO-126 welcomed their absence because he would not need to be concerned as much about behaving like a normal dog.
He reached the peak of the hill and stopped, stood stiffly, and tuned his olfactory, auditory, and visual sensors to their maximum sensitivities. At these se
ttings, the soft rustle of the high grass in the mild, springtime breeze sounded like the waves of an angry ocean pounding the shore. His simulated breathing wheezed like an asthmatic gond. This, at least, he could do something about, and he made a conscious effort to stop it. Voices from the village a kilometer away reached him. If he concentrated, he could make out individual conversations, but these did not concern him now. A slow visual scan of the surrounding area showed numerous signs of sheep, from closely cropped grass to dung. A long sniff revealed their strong, musky smell equally in all directions. None of these observations provided clear evidence of the three wayward animals.
Assuming they simply wandered off unnoticed, he set off at a slow trot directly away from the village, staying to the grassy slopes where the sheep normally grazed. Their smell remained strong as far as two kilometers from the village, but then it began to thin.
He paused to sniff the air once again. Unfortunately the breeze came from the direction of the primitives’ settlement, and its smells of irregularly washed humans and even more irregularly washed animals overpowered the weaker odors ahead. A spot of grass downslope appeared to have been grazed, so he paused to examine it and detected the scent of sheep laid down no more that two days ago from the glands on their feet. MO-126 suspected the villagers seldom herded their sheep this far. Most people stayed within sight of their homes, and the shepherds from the village would be no different. Few people ever traveled farther than ten kilometers from the village in which they were born. This behavior suited the needs of the corporation, and its agents took some effort to ensure that new human settlements were not established any closer than five times that distance to existing ones.
He proceeded down the gently sloping hill, his nose to the ground as he followed the scent line. It continued away from the village, going another kilometer. The olfactory trail turned almost ninety degrees for no apparent reason. He lifted his head to see what might have caused the wayward sheep to change direction. In the distance, the soft pink blossoms of a wild copse of redfruit trees stood out against dark green leaves in the setting sun. A brook gurgled from somewhere beyond them.
He scanned the area in infrared, ignoring the signs of numerous small animals. An abundance of birds, squirrels, rabbits, and other creatures inhabited the shady, well-watered grove, but he searched for something bigger.
The heat signature of a relatively large quadruped appeared on the other side of the wild grove, and then another. He focused on them and increased the magnification. From this distance, their infrared images were little more that bright orange blobs on the far side of the trees, but there was no doubt in his electronic mind. They were sheep, including three lambs. He watched them a few moments.
Suddenly, something passed between him and the sheep. He refocused his visual sensors and saw a dog just beginning to enter the trees. Where did that come from? He should have noticed it before now, especially since four others accompanied it. They must have been behind the small hill to his right approaching quietly from downwind.
Few large predators were native to this planet and most of those were aquatic. The corporation included only smaller predators in the bio-matrix transfer from humanity’s home planet, and those were primarily to keep down the population of other imported animals necessary for a human-adapted ecosystem. The transplanted fauna did include dogs. The primitives and their dogs shared a symbiotic relationship on their home planet, so they were deemed essential for practical purposes as well as to comply with galactic legal requirements. None were intentionally released into the wild, but as the centuries passed, feral packs did emerge. The dogs currently stalking the sheep were all larger than MO-126, with longer fur and bigger teeth. The one nearest the trees clearly outweighed him by a considerable margin. They were definitely hunters, and the lambs were undoubtedly their intended prey.
He stood stiffly, raised his tail and the hair along his spine, turned his ears forward, and barked threateningly. ‘Piss off, poop-head. I was here first.’
The pack leader responded by lifting a leg and watering a tree. Then it stared at his challenger. This was Dog for, ‘Yeah; you and what pack, shorty?’
MO-126 did not expect to be able to scare them off this easily, but it cost him nothing to try. He needed to get those sheep back safely to the village. It could save the old woman’s life, and adding three new lambs to the flock would make that even more likely.
The wild dogs appeared to be a family pack consisting of a breeding pair and three of their offspring, probably from the previous year. The largest male continued to stare at the strange new dog in its territory, obviously expecting him to back down. Despite the wild dog’s larger size, MO-126 could probably best him in a one-on-one fight. The android might even prevail against all five, but not without taking damage. Because they were a family, challenging the leader for dominance of the pack would be unlikely to work. Somehow, he must convince them that tonight’s menu offered better or at least cheaper options than lamb.
He again scanned his surroundings in infrared and soon located something that might provide a solution. He ignored them when he saw them before because they were not what he sought. Now, much to their misfortune, they were, and one hid motionless just where he needed one to be.
He sprang forward, quickly achieving a speed his biological counterparts could not hope to attain. He ran straight toward the large pack leader. It bared its teeth and stood its ground. The others in the pack growled and barked but remained where they were, taking their cues from their leader. A moment before they would have collided, MO-126 spun, kicking dirt and grass into the face of his opponent and continued at a right angle to the left of his former track. The wild dog barked and growled but did not attempt to follow.
The large rabbit, immobile and ostensibly hidden in the tall grass about ten meters away, did not have a chance. MO-126 grabbed it in his jaws before it could have even realized its peril, and he shook it to break its neck mercifully. With his prey clamped in his teeth, he rounded back the way he came and tossed the carcass to the pack leader, barely slowing.
He scanned the area again and found another likely offering. He retrieved this one in much the same way and added it to the bribe. Then, he retreated a respectful distance, turned toward the largest dog and waited. This was not normal canine behavior, so he could not predict how the pack leader would respond. Still, a free meal was a free meal. The dog should have no reason to turn it down and no need to hunt with a nice brace of rabbits already at its feet. MO-126 hoped it would see things this way.
The biological dog sniffed the offerings suspiciously and then nudged them with his paw.
They’re dead rabbits, you stupid mutt, MO-126 thought. I didn’t enjoy getting them for you, but I did. Take them and go away.
The pack leader growled. MO-126 lowered his ears and tried to appear submissive without acknowledging defeat. This was also not normal dog behavior, but the real dog seemed to accept the gesture. It collected both rabbits in its mouth and trotted away with all the dignity of a king accepting his due tribute. The rest of the pack fell in behind it, and they disappeared behind the hill from which they recently emerged.
~*~
MO-126 slowly made his way through the trees. The ewes must have given birth yesterday, one to a single lamb and the other to twins. The little lambs nursed as he watched, wagging their tales rapidly. An old, neutered male, a wether, stood protectively nearby.
They should be accustomed to dogs, but MO-126 would be a stranger to them, and he did not want them to run. With night falling, this seemed as good a place for them as any. A stream provided water and protection on one side and there were trees to browse on the other, which is probably why the tiny flock came here. Sheep normally grazed ground vegetation, but they did like tender twigs and bark as a change of pace now and then.
The android dog decided he would watch over them that night from a comfortable distance in case the wild dogs returned. In the morning, he would bring the sh
eep and their lambs back to the village. With two legs and a couple of functional hands, he could toss ropes around their necks and lead them home, but as this option did not exist, he would have to herd them. He felt confident he could manage. If real dogs could do it, he should be able to as well.
He sat on his haunches a few meters into the trees and made himself comfortable. He needed to make a call.
“I found the sheep,” he sent to Tork. “I’ll bring them to the village tomorrow. How’s the old woman?”
“About the same as when you left,” the trade android replied. “I still think this is a bad idea.”
“Why? The village gets their sheep back and an old woman gets to live a few more years.”
“Those are both transitory and relatively unimportant matters. The return of the sheep could undermine the prestige of their holy woman.”
“Ryenne? Why is that a bad thing? That woman is crazy.” He refrained from telling Tork that Galinda’s life probably mattered to her; and to say it was transitory, well, from a far enough perspective, everything was. This did not mean nothing was important.
“Yes, but that crazy woman helps these people make sense of their lives,” the trade android said.
“She helps them make nonsense, you mean.”
“Perhaps to us but not to them, and who is to say it’s wrong? No one, not even those of us who consider ourselves intelligent and well informed, has a complete understanding of the universe. The most we can achieve is some partial understanding of it that works for us. A universe with demons in it works for the primitives.”
“I’ve known you a long time, Tork, and you’re not clever enough to have come up with that on your own. You got it from Corporation indoctrination files, didn’t you?”
“Well, yes. It’s part of the Trade Interface package, but that doesn’t mean it’s not right.”
MO-126 shook his head and realized he needed to be more careful about acquiring human mannerisms. His companion was not there to see the gesture, so he could not reprimand him for it. “I’ll tell you what’s not right. It’s not right to let someone die if you can help prevent it.”
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