He knew where he was, even before he swept through the last of the rooming house section and came to the edge of the rolling university campus. Then, for a moment, the dawning memory in his mind spun and twisted at the ruin the elements had made. But it was the lack of familiar smells that bothered him most. Even at the end, there had been the eternal odor of the chemistry laboratory, and now even that was gone.
The big gate was open. His legs had begun to bunch for the leap and scramble over it, and the tension in them died slowly. He slowed to a trot, lifting his head in a double bark that rasped the unused muscles of his throat. A huge tree had fallen across the path, but a section had been cut away with an ax. Rotted chips sounded underfoot as King passed by.
Then he was darting around one of the big redstone buildings, heading down the path that led to the back of the campus. There most of the great tree boles still stood, with even their nakedness too thick a screen for his eyes to penetrate. He charged through the rubble of sticks and rabbit bones that filled the path there and took a sudden left turn, to come to a skidding halt.
The two-story Promethean Laboratory building still stood, and across the fence beyond, some of the familiar houses were s.tuT there. King teetered toward one of them, back toward the laboratory, and then again toward the house. He let out two high-pitched barks, and cocked his ears, listening. There was no answering sound.
A sick whine grew in his throat, until the wind suddenly shifted.
The smell was stronger this time. It was wrong—incredibly wrong—but it was beyond mistake. Doc was here! And with the instinctive identification of wind direction, he knew it had to be the laboratory.
The door was closed, but it snapped open with a groan of hinges as King hit it in full leap. He went rolling over and over across the floor of the littered hall, clawing against the stone tiles instinctively, while his mind rocked at the waves of human scent and the human voice that was beating into his ears!
The smell was so strong to his unaccustomed nostrils that he had no directional sense; at first the echoes along the hollow corridors also made it hard to locate the voice. He cocked his ears, studying it. It was wrong, like the smell—yet it was the voice of Doc!
“…as wrong as before. It didn’t matter. It was better than-starving like rabbits under the biocast. They were falling within minutes after the cable….”
King dove through the passage and into the room beyond. The voice went on without pause, coming from a box in front of him. And now the metallic quality under it and the lack of the random ultrasonic overtones of a real voice registered on him. It was only another false voice—another of the things men had, but which he had almost forgotten. Doc’s voice—without Doc!
The sound dropped to the bottom of his awareness. King swung around the room. There was something in the scent that made his neck muscles tense, but he knew Doc was there. His eyes adjusted to the glaring light inside, while his nose tried to cut a trail through the thickness of the odors. Both senses located the source at the same time.
Beside the big machine with the slow-spinning rolls of tape there was a bed covered with ragged blankets. A hand lay on the edge of the tape machine, twisted into the controls, and an arm led down to the figure below on the bed.
King’s tail flailed the floor, and his legs doubled for the leap that would carry him into Doc’s arms. He never made the leap. The scent was wrong and the figure too motionless. King’s tail grew limp as he crouched to the floor, inching his way forward, his whine barely audible. He raised his nose at last to the other hand that lay dropping over the side of the bed, and his tongue came out.
The hand was cool and stiff, and there was no response to welcome King’s caress.
Slowly, cringing, King drew himself up to look down at what lay on the bed, and to nuzzle it. It didn’t look like Doc. Doc had been young and alive, clean-shaven and with dark hair. The body was too thin, and the long beard and hair were stark white. Yet the odor said unquestionably that this was Doc—and that Doc was old—and dead!
Standing with his front feet on the bed, King lifted his muzzle upward, his mouth opening while the deep, long sound ached in his-chest. But no sound came. He brought his face down to that of Doc and nuzzled again, whimpering. It did no good.
For a long tune he lay there, whining and crying. The voice went on and something ticked regularly on the wall. There was the sound of the wind outside, faint here, but rising steadily. Once King heard his own name used by Doc’s voice from the box, and his ears half-lifted.
“…King and the other three. Probably starved by now, though, since there are no land animals left for them to feed on. King was a smart dog, but…”
His name wasn’t repeated, though he listened for a while. Later, the voice stopped entirely, while the tape hummed a few more times, clicked, and began flapping a loosened end that knocked-over a bottle of pills beside Doc’s frozen hand. It clicked again, and slowed to silence, leaving the ticking of the clock the only sound in the room.
Abruptly, tKere was a rustling noise. King shot to his feet, whirling to face the source, just as a large white rat scuttled from the shadows near the door. It went rigid at his movement, coming slowly to its hind feet, its eyes darting from King to the body of Doc. It let out a high squeak.
The dog dived for it, snarling. But a thread of familiarity was clutching at his mind, slowing his charge. The rat twisted around and through the door, quavering out a series of squeaks. It went scuttling along the hall, through the opened door, and across the steps to the wasteland beyond. By the time King reached the outside, it was heading for the great tower across the street and halfway to the rocket field.
King could smell its spoor mixed thickly with that of Doc as he leaped the fence and followed. He heard it squeal once more as it saw him, and heard its claws scrape against the rotted metal of the tower as it scurried up beyond his reach.
But he was slowing already. The tower was dead now, with the great ball of fire gone from its top, but the memory of the tingling, itching false smell that had plagued him while the fire glowed was rising in his mind to drive him back. He hated it as Doc had hated it—and there was still fear for what it had been. He stopped fifty feet beyond the massive girders, bristling as he backed around it.
The concrete hut under it was broken now though, and the guards were gone. He saw some of the guns scattered about—or what was left of them, in the jumble of sand and human skeletons that still lay around the tower. Some of the skeletons were farther back, mixed with axes and other guns. An arm was still tangled with a shred of rope that connected to a faded metal sign. Where the great cable had been, a blackened line curved toward the tower, pitting the metal more deeply.
Somehow, King knew the tower of the tingling fire was dead. But he had waited too long. The rat had scrambled down and was heading toward the rocket field. He started after it again, halted, and reluctantly turned back toward the laboratory.
There was pleading in his whine as he found the body of Doc again, which still bore the smell of death. Instinct told King that Doc was dead, and would never be anything but dead. Yet there was the half-remembered smell of his brother Boris, after the sweet smells and the prickings, lying on the table while Doc and the men stood around. Boris had smelled dead—and Boris had walked again, smelling freshly alive. Before that, there had been the dead rats that would not stay dead. And the rabbits—though when the rabbits finally smelled dead, they were all dead, and no more rabbits lived.