“Ceremony. Part One: Worship of the Muse. First, an oration composed by Plutonium Keats White. Ahem! Art! Art is a thing of futile beauty. It has no part in our lives, or very little, and it is as unsuitable at moments of great stress as it is silly on occasions of state. It has an affinity to death. Its greatness is the greatness of a king resigned to his fate. It is defeatist. It is not the sort of thing you would inculcate in children, for”—and here he stared down at me in his gravest manner—“it might kill them in too large a dosage. Art is the way we delay our departure, but it is no way to start the day.”
He seemed to have finished, and I clapped—rather mildly, I’m afraid. “It’s nothing like Proust,” I assured him. “And I don’t think you could say Joyce influenced it very much either.”
“Quiet! That was only Part One. Part Two is called ‘The Sacrifice’, and for that part you have to get down on your knees and hold out your hands so I can tie them together.”
I laughed, thinking he was making a joke.
“On your knees, you little son of a bitch!” he screamed at me.
I cannot say what my reply was to this strange demand, except to suggest that I had first discovered the expression in a novel by J.D. Salinger.
It is difficult to say which of us was responsible for the fight. Pluto did come storming down from the pulpit in what was for him a berserker rage. He did strike the first blow. But all this while I continued to shout “(Salinger)!” at him, and he could claim to having been provoked.
Pluto was thirteen, I a mere ten; Pluto was quite five feet tall, I only a bit over four. But Pluto was a creampuff, and my three years of gymnastics made the contest almost even. He kicked and bit and flailed about and made some really splendid loud noises, but before I’d even warmed to the task he was in retreat. I managed to put a good rip in his foolish “vestment” and dyed it a noble red with the blood from his noble nose. At last he admitted that everything I’d said about him was true, and I let him get up from the floor.
He ran straight to the power station to signal our Master on the emergency switch, something no other pet had ever dared to do, since the Master of Shroeder didn’t like to be bothered. I am amazed—to this day I am amazed—that it was I who was punished and not Pluto. He started the fight.
A bloody nose! What is so dreadful about a bloody nose?
It was not a dire punishment. In some ways it was scarcely a punishment at all. It was just done to guarantee that I would be less inclined to shed blood in the future. I was conditioned, irrevocably, to respond to the sight of blood, be it ever so small a gout, with nausea and vomiting, succeeded by fainting. In all my years as a pet, my conditioning was never put to the test, but later there would be occasions, bloody occasions…
But I am getting ahead of myself. Everything in due order.
Chapter Three
In which I meet Darling, Julie, and fly away to Swan Lake.
I have always considered that my adult life began at the age of ten. Before that age my memory can only reconstruct a chronology of events from a few key images. Everything is suppositive, as it were. But from age ten on, I can remember whole days exactly as they happened.
The whole day I would take most pleasure in remembering is the Fourth of October, 2027, a Wednesday. On Wednesdays in good weather Roxanna would take Pluto and me out into the country, beyond the dome of the kennel. We drove along the dusty country roads in a special little cart operated by solar tap and covered with an invisible but nonetheless reassuring bubble-shield so strong that not even the Masters themselves could break through it once it was switched on. Not that we had to worry about such an eventuality (we would have been only too happy if a Master would break in and Leash us), but the Dingoes had become more and more of a nuisance since the incident three years before of my father’s assassination. Several pets visiting Earth for their pleasure had been done away with in similar ways, with nothing left to bury but ashes. In half an hour we would arrive at a deserted farm, where, in the shade of overburdened apple trees, we would pursue our studies or, if Roxanna felt indulgent toward us, explore the old farm buildings, and rusting machinery. We never went into the house itself though. The aura of Dingoes still clung to it, and in any case Roxanna had absolutely forbidden it.
Only years later did Roxanna admit to us what we had known all along—that this had been her parents’ farm, abandoned during the Great Collapse of 2003, when the economy of those humans who were still holding out against the Mastery fell completely into ruin. The Skunks (their name was still legible on the mailbox) had volunteered themselves and their children for the nearest kennel—Shroeder, as it happened. The children had been accepted, but the parents had been judged unfit and sent away, as by that time most older volunteers were. The Masters had no more need of wild pets (who could never be perfectly domesticated), for now they were breeding their own and (so it seemed to us pets) doing a better job of it than Man ever had.
It was principally from kennel rejects like the Skunks that the society of Dingoes, as we know it today, has evolved, and this no doubt accounts for the scent of sour grapes that clings to so many of them and even, a little, to Roxanna—as I think I’ve already pointed out.
It was late in the afternoon, and Roxanna, tired of reading, was fanning herself with a perfumed handkerchief and reminiscing to Pluto about her country childhood and how different the world had been then. She told about her father’s drinking bouts on Saturday nights and how he would come back home and beat Roxanna’s poor mother terribly. She had never witnessed these beatings, but she had heard them and assured us they were terrible. For Pluto and myself, such tales confirmed our worst imaginings about the Dingoes. I, having but recently bloodied my brother’s nose, was persona non grata and accordingly I had gone up into the branches of the apple tree, higher than Pluto dared climb, to work problems in calculus, which I had just begun to study. Suddenly there appeared as in a vision, suspended in the air before me almost near enough to touch, a girl of about my own age. Wisps of heliotrope spiraled about her bare, sun-bronzed body, and her white hair gleamed in the dying sunlight as though it were itself luminescent.
“Hello,” she said. “My name is Darling, Julie. Darling is my last name, but you can call me Julie if you like. Don’t you want to play with me?”
I couldn’t reply. I was stunned—as much by her loveliness (yes, I was only ten, but children are not insensible of these things; perhaps not so insensible as we are) as by the shock of meeting a stranger in those unlikely circumstances.
She took a step toward me, smiling (Darling, Julie has always had the loveliest, cheek-dimpling smile), and I realized what would have been immediately evident to any well-brought-up pet: that it was her Master’s unseen presence that supported her. For him, anti-gravity would be a moment’s improvisation. But our Master’s neglect had made even such commonplaces as flight seem rare and wonderful to us.
“Aren’t you Leashed?” she asked, seeing that I hesitated to step off my branch and meet her halfway.
“No—none of us are.”
By this time Roxanna and Pluto had become aware of our visitor, but since they were a good ten feet below Julie and me, it was awkward for them to join the conversation. It was awkward for me, for that matter, but I blustered on.