The reason that Daddy had returned to Earth yet once again, despite the unhappy associations one would have expected him to have from his last sojourn there, was that after a slight hiatus he was at work on a new novel that was to be a sequel to A Dog’s Life. His work proceeded in absolute privacy, a privacy that even in the most self-transcendent moments of being Leashed he would not allow his Master to intrude upon. For this would have been to cast doubt upon the value of the work as an authentic human creation.
The days of his research project passed into weeks, the weeks into months. Motherlove grew more and more vocal in her boredom, and since Daddy was not usually about during the day for her to complain to, it fell upon Pluto and myself to bear witness to her wrongs and play endless rubbers of three-handed bridge with her. It was not a very gratifying occupation for two boys our age (I was seven; Pluto, ten), and we tried to be out of her way whenever possible. We spent the daylight hours roaming the woods and exploring the innumerable lakeshores and riverbanks of the area. It was impossible to get lost, for we had a homing device that could instruct us how to retrace our every step. We observed none of the cautions that Motherlove was always inventing for us, and I’m sure that if we had been lucky enough to meet any Dingo children we would have been delighted to befriend them and join their wild games. Pluto and I were quite sick of each other by this time. Partly it was the difference in age; partly the isolation (in two months almost anyone becomes unendurable). I also think that a fundamental antipathy between Pluto and myself extends right down to the core of our pineal glands (which organ, Descartes tells us, is the residence of the soul).
And so it came about quite naturally that it should be Pluto and I who discovered the car—his late-vintage Volkswagen—overturned and just beginning to smolder as we got there. The windshield was shattered into opacity with buckshot, and the driver’s seat was dark with blood. Even as we watched the automobile caught fire, and we had to back away.
It did not take a woodsman to follow the spoor of Daddy’s blood to the edge of the forest. Apparently he was still alive then, for there are evidences of a struggle all along the path into the wood. Once or twice we called his name aloud, but the woods remained as silent as death. Is there a better analogy?
It was another day before the search party from Shroeder Kennel found the traces of the pyre. The ashes were scattered all about the meadow. The Master of the Shroeder Kennel identified the bloodstains on the edge of the clearing as Daddy’s and Daddy’s alone, and the ear that they found nailed to the oak tree was likewise identified beyond the shadow of a doubt. The severed ear was given to Clea. It was perhaps exactly what she’d always wanted of Daddy. She had a special locket made to contain it—a sort of reliquary.
As for the bulk of him, one could assume that the Dingoes would have been thorough in disposing of the remains. It was popularly believed (and I’m not sure myself that it isn’t true) that the Masters could have resurrected a body from utter hamburger.
A monument was built to him on the site of the murder. It was a statue of Woof and Mr Manglesnatch. Beneath the bronze figures was a plaque with the inscription:
There was, as well, a quotation from his noveclass="underline" “Ah, what bliss there is in servitude!” The monument was later disfigured by Dingoes in ways too hideous to be recalled.
Chapter Two
In which I am neglected shamefully by my Master, and I bloody my brother’s nose.
The Masters: let me say a few words about the Masters.
Perhaps my dear readers will tell me that there is no need for me to put in my two-cents’ worth on a topic so threadbare and tired as the Mastery. It is considered good form these days to leave the subject alone, just as in the third and fourth centuries A.D. one did not bring up the subject of the Trinity with strangers. Whether the Son was of one substance with the Father, or of like substance, or perhaps of only similar substance was a matter best left to each man’s private conscience. The analogy extends farther than I first intended, for the Masters were our gods and though now their altars have been overturned, there is still something a little holy (or unholy, which is almost the same thing) about their empty shrines and temples. When gods die, they become demons and are then, if anything, more troublesome than before.
But since most of the figures involved in the present controversies on the essential nature of the Masters had not had the benefit, as I have, of direct experience of them, I can justly claim a sort of apostolic authority—a distinction that few of the controversialists will begrudge me, I am sure.
As nearly as we can know them, the Masters can be said to be a pure electromagnetic phenomenon—formed of a “substance” that cannot be called either “matter” or “energy” but which nonetheless displays a potentiality for either. No, that isn’t quite right, since I’ve not mentioned the neutrino. The neutrino is a sub-atomic particle that has a mass of 0, a charge of 0, and a spin of +½. Well, the Masters, according to the best authority (theirs), can be identified more or less exactly (it depends on a few other things) with that spin.
As a direct consequence of these wonderful properties, the power of the Masters approached (should I not rather say “approaches”?) cosmic proportions, and their knowledge approached omniscience. They were not quite infinite, but then what is? Considered simply as a field of force (or as a potentiality for such) they were, corporately, of a scope and dimension equal at least to the magnetic field of the Earth. Beside them mankind is insignificant and laughable—or so it often seemed in those days. Like Jehovah in his earlier, more anthropomorphic days, it was no problem at all for them to take over the management of Earth from us. They were, if not altogether omnipotent, potent enough for all our purposes and, presumably, for most of theirs.
In the strictest sense of the word, the Masters were unaccountable. One could only accept them, reverence them, and hope for the best.
The best that one could hope for was the Leash. Despite the hundreds of volumes written about it, the Leash has always eluded description: the tides of knowledge that sweep through the mind; the sense of being in communion with the most transcendental forces, of being a spoke from the hub about which the universe is spinning; the total certainty that it affords; the ecstasy and the consuming love. Naturally it didn’t always reach those proportions. Sometimes it was no more than a mild, diffuse sense of well-being—just the absence of anxiety. But if the Leash had never been more than a tranquilizer it could never have bound man as firmly as it did and made him love his servitude.
What was the Leash then, in fact?
First let me say what it was not. It was not a “telepathic link” with the Masters, any more than the tug of a leather leash on the jeweled collar of a poodle is speech. It was the Masters’ means of communicating with us, truly—but they could communicate no more to us than our minds were capable of receiving, and I can assure you that the depths of the Masters will never be fathomed by even the best of our divers.