“But you are wonderful! You are a genius! Now I am proud that you are my brother. Come, we must make it a solemn union—we must swear eternal brotherhood in blood. Blutbruderschaft!” With these words St Bernard removed the leathern bracelet binding his right wrist and sliced across the exposed flesh with a jeweled dagger. “Now you,” he said, handing me the bloody instrument. “We will mix our blood, and then to the end of time…”
St Bernard was interrupted by my rather copious heavings (it had been a large feast), which I regret to say was the only thing I contributed to be mixed with his blood. I remember only his first oaths (“Wotan! Fricka!” etc.), for as soon as my stomach was emptied out I fainted dead away.
When I woke, I found myself moving through outer space. Pluto had been kind enough to explain to St Bernard my peculiar infirmity (though failing to mention his own part in that story), and St Bernard had insisted, as a sort of reparation, that we all accompany himself and Clea on their trip to Earth. Pluto and Julie had demurred, for they were even less inclined to the Wagnerian than I, but our Master, surprisingly, had overridden them. So we had set forth, the eight of us (six pets, two Masters) immediately, and in no time at all we were on Earth. The morning sun was glittering with immoderate intensity on the waters of Lake Superior, and there again in the middle distance was the cathedral tower of St John the Divine.
Can it be that I shall never again enjoy the easy pleasures of that time? That I shall never, never again see Swan Lake and fly about among the familiar asteroids? And can it be that this exile has been my free choice! O ye Heavens, when I remember you—as I do now—too clearly, too dearly, all the force of my will melts away and I long only to be returned to you. Nothing, nothing on Earth can rival, and very little has the power even to suggest, the illimitable resources of the Master’s pleasure domes. Oh, nothing!
It was paradise—and it is quite, quite gone.
Chapter Five
In which the worst happens.
As soon as her feet touched Earth, Darling, Julie fell into one of her sentimental moods and begged our Master to take us out to the Skunk farm, where she had first met me. I seconded her request, less from sentiment than out of a need to escape the presence of St Bernard (who had somehow got hold of the notion that he was in the neighborhood of the Black Forest). Our Master, as usual, indulged our whim.
While Petite ran off to explore the dark wood (which was in its way every bit as realistic as anything one could produce on the console), Julie and I sat in the lightest of Leashes and marveled at the changes that time had wrought not only in ourselves (for we had, after all, passed from puppyhood to maturity in the meantime, and the gleeful shouts of our own dear pup were ringing in our ears) but also in the scene about us. The roof of the barn had fallen in, and in the orchard and surrounding meadows, saplings had taken root and were flourishing. Julie gloried in all this decay, just as the young ladies of the eighteenth century must have gloried in the built-to-order ruins of the Gothic Revival. So great was her passion for returning to the past that she begged our Master to be unleashed!
“Please!” she whined. “Just this once. I feel so aloof, so anachronistic, out here in a Leash. I want to see what wilderness tastes like.”
Our Master pretended to ignore her.
“Pretty please,” she whined more loudly, though it had become more of a bark by now.
A voice in my head (and in Julie’s too, of course) soothed: There, now, gently. What’s this, my darlings, my dears, my very own pets? Why should you wish to throw off your nice Leashes? Why, you’re hardly Leashed at all! Do you want to turn into Dingoes?
“Yes!” Julie replied. “Just for this one afternoon I want to be a Dingo.”
I was shocked. Yet I must admit that at the same time I was a little excited. It had been so long since I had been without a Leash, that so primitive an idea appealed to me. There is always a certain morbid pleasure in putting on the uniform of one’s enemy, of becoming, as it were, a double-agent.
If I unleash you, there’s no way for you to call me back. You’ll just have to wait till I come back for you.
“That’s all right,” Julie assured him. “We won’t set foot off the farm.”
I’ll return in the morning, little one. Wait for me.
“Oh, we will, we will,” Julie and I promised antiphonally.
“Me too,” Petite demanded, having returned from her explorations, prompt to her Master’s bidding.
And then he was gone, and our minds slipped from their Leashes and into such a tumble and whirlwind of thought that none of us could speak for several minutes. Leashed, one can keep more thoughts simultaneously before consciousness, and with the Leash off we had to learn to think more slowly than in linear sequence.
A more vivid pink flushed Julie’s cheek, and her eyes were sparkling with a sudden, unaccustomed brilliance. I realized that this was probably the first time in her life as a pet—in her whole life, that is—that she had been entirely off her Leash. She was probably feeling tipsy. I was, and I was no stranger to the experience.
“Hello, Earthling,” she said. Her voice seemed different, sharper and quicker. She plucked an apple from the branches overhead and polished it on her velvety skin.
“You shouldn’t eat that, if you recall,” I warned. “There may be germs.”
“I know.” She bit into it, then, repressing her laughter, offered the rest of the apple to me. It was rather an obvious literary reference, but I could see no reason to refuse the apple on that account.
I took a large bite out of it. When I saw the other half of the worm that remained in the apple, I brought our little morality play to an abrupt conclusion. It was Julie who found the old pump and got it working. The wellwater had a distinctly rusty flavor, but it was at least preferable to the taste lingering in my mouth. Then, with my head in Julie’s lap and her fingers tousling my hair, I went to sleep, though it was the middle of the day.
When I woke the heat of the afternoon sun was touching me at every pore, and I was damp with sweat. The wind made an irregular sound in the trees around us, and from the branches overhead, a crow cried hoarsely and took to the air. I watched its clumsy trajectory with an amusement somehow tinged with uneasiness. This was what it was like to be mortal.
“We’re getting sunburnt,” Julie observed placidly. “I think we should go into the house.”
“That would be trespassing,” I pointed out, recalling how Roxanna had laid the house under her interdict.
“So much the better,” said Julie, for whom the romance of being a Dingo for a day had not yet worn off.
In the farmhouse, dusty strands of adhesive—cobwebs—hung from ceilings, and the creaking floor was littered with paper that time had peeled from the walls. In one of the upstairs rooms, Julie found closets and drawers of mildewed clothing, including some cotton dresses that would have been the right size for a ten-year-old. It was hard to think of Roxanna ever being that small—or that poor. I felt vaguely guilty to have opened up this window on her past, and when one of the dresses, rotten with age, came apart in my hands, a little spooky too. I took Julie into another of the upstairs rooms, which contained a broad, cushioned apparatus, raised about a yard off the floor. The cushion smelled awfully.