He doesn't seem to grow any older while he's hibernating. This, and a bit more genetic high jinks, accounts for his good health at such an extreme age. And there's something else in the mix. Some say it's monkey genes, some whisper that it's human—but that, of course, would be illegal, so I'm sure it's not true. Ahem. Whatever the source, he does have a remarkable brain. He learns very quickly, responds to over two hundred verbal commands and about as many gestures, and has even demonstrated initiative and discrimination, as when he recognized the idling cop as a possible source of trouble. On the other hand, being from a line of actors, he might have inherited that ability honestly. He tolerates costumes of all sorts. He knows his part in twenty-five Punch and Judy plays and learns his cues in new shows with no more than two rehearsals. He can prance all day on his hind legs, climb ladders, walk a tightrope, jump through a hoop of fire. He gets horribly depressed if the show bombs and would walk by a raw sirloin to steal that extra bow. In short, a trouper down to his little toenails.
He's also something of a mathematical whiz, being able to count to five. I know this to be true because numbers six and above confuse and depress him. He'll worry for hours about the difference between a pile of six coins and a pile of eight coins. Ask him which is larger and he'll mope all day. But he can make change for a nickel.
I've often thought that, with just double the IQ, he could master the decimal system and become a stockbroker.
I counted the day's take as we strolled the eighteenth promenade of Cerberus Place, and realized this was going to be a big day for us.
"Looks like we've got enough, Toby," I said. "With a few shekels left over for some dinner." He understood only the last word of that, but he understood that word very well, and turned a back flip in celebration. Then he led me to the pushcart on the nineteenth level, no doubt recalling how we'd had to pass it by the evening before, a terrible day for the theater. I bought two hot pretzels and two steaming, juicy bratwurst on sourdough buns, slathering mustard, relish, and a little sauerkraut on the latter. I cajoled the vendor into giving us a cup of water and a plastic bowl, then carried the whole glorious mess to a nearby picnic table, where we sat down, just like citizens, and had our evening's repast.
Well, I sat. Toby stood on the table and watched me cut the brat with my pocketknife and put the slices in the plastic bowl. I added a dab of the pickle relish and more of the mustard.
"Is that enough mustard?" I asked him, and he barked once. "Enough" was the key word there; I don't think he knew "mustard." He knew he liked it, you understand. He just wouldn't recognize the word if I said it to him. Toby likes mustard, can deal with relish, prefers to leave the sauerkraut alone.
The one bark, you may have figured out, meant "yes." One for yes, two for no. Can you count to two, boys and girls?
"Too bad there's no wine, eh, Toby?" He didn't answer, too busy with his little muzzle in the bowl, chowing down. And I wasn't really complaining. For weeks we'd had mostly rice cakes. Twice I'd splurged on a jar of peanut butter. The brats were straight from heaven.
The business day was winding down around us. Cerberus Place was not a big mall, just another dozen levels above us, possibly half a mile across and two miles long. It looked to have been a natural surface feature at one time, roofed over, pressurized, heated, then terraced like a farmer contour plowing, tunneled, excavated, paved, lighted, landscaped, painted, decorated, and presto! Open for business. What nightlife there was seemed to be concentrated on the upper levels. Down here on the nineteenth the stores were closed, a few employees locking the doors and trudging off to the slideways, patrolbots and a few human security guards making their entrances. The vendor had shut down his grill and wheeled his cart away. Toby and I were left with the little pocket park to ourselves. I gazed out over the mall as I ate, registering nothing really novel. The floor was a manicured park, with tidy trees and streetlights lining the walking paths, a little railroad running around the edges. There were half a dozen freestanding apartment buildings in the park, all fifteen stories high, all mounted on turntables so the residents had ever-changing views. Rents would be high in those sparkling jewel boxes.
I could see a little amusement park down there. A carousel turned, the horses bobbing up and down with no one riding them. For some reason it made me sad.
We finished our meal. I poured a little water in Toby's dish and let him lap it up. He had mustard stains around his mouth, so I wet part of my handkerchief and dabbed at him until he was clean, then combed the hair on his head until it stood out as it was supposed to. He never trusts me on that; he began to bark, so I sighed and took out the small hand mirror and held it up for him. He studied his image until he was satisfied he was in a fit state to meet his public, then graciously allowed me to carry the wrappings to a garbage can.
Two of the human security guards had paused as they walked by our table. A person alone is suspicious to the cop mind. Two people together, of course, are probably planning something. Three is a gang, and five is a riot waiting to happen. You can't win. Can you count to five, Officer?
We set off for the Outland Lines freight office.
The second thing I hadn't counted on in my journey from Brementon to Pluto, after the eighty percent surcharge, was the new Wandering Thespian Harassment Assessment Fee. They didn't call it that, naturally—some bullshit about a Spaceport Improvement Luggage Excise—but that was the effect. There now was a duty on each piece of luggage you brought in to Pluto. I spent most of my first day on Pluto shouting at an endless series of obstinate officials. Result: no tickee, no luggee. The one bright point was that they couldn't simply confiscate my trunk, though it was plain in their eyes they all viewed this as an unfortunate technical oversight in the law, soon to be remedied. But they could damn sure keep it until I paid the fee. I left there with my tail between my legs—and my dog in my hand. Arguments that the tools of my trade, my means of making the money to pay their goddam extortion, were all in my trunk, fell on the usual deaf ears. But I told them that if I couldn't get my hibernating dog out of his box and feed him he would die in a week and I'd hit the spaceport, the city, the county, and most important, you, asshole, with a lawsuit the likes of which this stinking iceball of a planet had never seen. They leafed through their books of regulations and found nothing to cover the situation and so, grudgingly, let me open the trunk and get Toby out. While I did it I got my bedroll and my puppets, as well, and no one said anything.
All bunkum. Toby would have been fine for five months. I was dying to tell one of them that, but when we entered the freight office and announced I was ready to pay the ransom on my belongings, none of the officials there had been present at my disembarking. That's the way it is with these people, you know. You never see the same ones twice. I think they're composted at the end of the day, and new ones spring full-grown from the muck, like toadstools.
"All the world's not a stage," my father had been fond of saying. "Only the best part of it. Between shows, you'll need good luggage."
It's good advice, and I've always taken it to heart. In my career I've lived in nine-room hotel penthouse suites and plush-carpeted modular winnies trucked to location sites. I've owned luxury condos and homes in the most exclusive Disneylands. At times I've owned enough things to lease storage modules simply to accommodate the excess.
More often, everything I own could be packed into one trunk. It's a big trunk, granted, but if you think it's easy, look around your own surroundings and ask yourself if you could do it.