The man stared at him silently for a moment, and scrubbed the bristles on his chin with one splotched and bony hand. “So that’s it, is it?” he said. “You want me to unlock the cylinder, so you can make another generation of whining, dirty pups.”
“Yes, master.”
“You want your whelps to outlive me.”
“No, master!”
Volumes of unutterable things contended in Roland’s mind. He felt shame, and horror, and a bottomless despair; and at the same time he knew that these were the things he was intended to feel, and he was glad. For a dog, however fine, is a dog; a man, however base, is a man.
The master said slowly, “What do you want then, Roland?”
“I want you to live,” said the dog, and his voice broke. The slow, seldom tears of his race coursed down his cheeks.
The man was silent for a moment; then he turned away. “All right, bring it here to me,” he said.
The female was waiting halfway down the ramp; two more were behind her. They shrank timidly at his approach, but their eagerness held them. He had no heart to reprimand them as they deserved.
“Did he—?”
“Yes!” said Roland. He hurried down the ramp, and the females followed him. More of them appeared at each stage of the descent, some racing ahead of him, some clustering behind. The corridor was filled with their involuntary yelps and whimpers of delight.
In the food room a dozen of them were waiting for him, grouped around a cabinet against the far wall; they made a lane for him as he approached. Carefully, with ceremony, he unlocked the case and drew out the long cylinder, bound around with the wire and wax of the master’s seal.
The king of the world sat in his throne of ebony and silver, and stared at the blank, meaningless face of the sky. Behind him, down the ramp that always smelled of dog no matter how it was disinfected, he heard the faint far echo of canine glee.
Roland had told them all about it, he thought. He felt hurried, cheated of his chance of decision. It was necessary to give them renewed life, he knew; he would suffer, otherwise; he would die painfully and alone.
But he could not prolong his life without sparing them also; and that was bitter as gall. Better to end all at once, dog and man . . .
Roland came in breathless, joy in his eyes, holding the cylinder carefully in his hands. Wordless, he held it out.
The man took it—a slender tube of silvery metal, dotted with line-up slots and the sockets of other components, and laced about with wire and the red wax of his own seal.
How long ago had he done that? A hundred, two hundred years—he had known even then that this day must come.
He glanced at the waiting dog—and remembered to his astonishment that in the days of his youth, this dog’s ancestor and image had been his dear friend. They had been closer than brothers. He had mourned for years after that dog’s death.
How was it possible that things had so changed? He looked at Roland again, saw the broad, crinkled brow, the worshipful eyes. There had been no change here. It was incredible, to think how faithful that race had been. Millennium upon millennium, from the dawn of history until this day—all the thrown sticks retrieved, the households guarded, the blows accepted without anger. The weight of that loyalty seemed to him abruptly a crushing thing. What had his kind done to deserve it? And how could they ever repay?
It was Man, it was he himself who had changed. Man was the hopeless debtor, the flawed, the half-made. The dogs were worthier . . .
And would survive.
In an instant that vision of the dog-world that had forgotten Man came back to him, and his guilt receded, twisted upon itself, became a slow, bitter wrath.
He clutched the control cylinder in his fingers, as if their feeble strength could break it.
“Master—” said Roland falteringly. “Is anything wrong?”
“Wrong?” he said. “Not for you. Your whelps will inherit the Earth. A bunch of—dirty, flea-bitten mangy dogs.”
The words were not enough; they came out in the quavering, impotent whine of an old man. He raised the cylinder, perhaps to strike; he did not know what he meant to do.
“Master? You will unseal the cylinder?”
Tears of rage leaked from the man’s eye-corners. He said thickly, “Here’s your damned cylinder. Catch it, and you can have it!” And then the thing was done: he had flung out his arm with all its waning strength, and the cylinder was turning in the air, beyond the parapet.
Roland acted without thought. His hands and feet scrabbled on the flagstones, his muscles bunched in a pattern as old as the race; then he felt the smooth ivory of the balustrade for an instant under his feet.
He snapped once, vainly, at the cylinder as its arc passed him. Then there was nothing but the rushing wind.
The king of the world sat on his throne, and listened to the bitches howl.