Authors: Patricia Anthony

Conscience of the Beagle (21 page)

BOOK: Conscience of the Beagle

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CLEAR NIGHT.
Steady
wind. If I close my eyes I imagine I smell the sea. But over the tips of my boots, the glittering necklace of Hebron and a carpet of stars.

A four-legged glowing shape emerges from the star field. When the dog reaches me, he plants his paws on the chaise lounge and shoves his nose into my crotch. I laugh and push him away.

The dog’s warm. And insistent. A scrabble of his back legs. He lies down, side to my warm side. Head crooked in my arm.

I scratch under his chin. He pushes against my hand. Greedy. “Damned pain in the ass,” I murmur. “Dudley? Hear me? You’re a goddamned pain in the ass.”

I raise my eyes and follow the glowing trail of a transport, a slow shooting star. Track it until it’s blotted out by a dark shape between me and the sky.

“Hi.” The only phosphorescence on the shadow is what splattered on his legs during the walk from his house. Since Vanderslice lost his innocence, he doesn’t play his childhood game anymore . . .

He sits on a chair next to me, in the rectangle of light from the kitchen. “Hey. Bodyguard. Enjoying your vacation?”

I stretch.

“I’Il keep you busy when you come back. Full itinerary.” He pauses. “You know, I want to promote you some day. Maybe as Minister of Internal Safety. But I want you to learn to relax a little . . .”

“I understand.”

“Dyle? I can’t have Tennyson become like
—”

“I understand.” Still afraid of me. And maybe he should be. I grew up wrong. “I’m happy with what I’m doing.” Stars in my own fields. Nothing, not even memories, moving in the dark.

He clears his throat. “Where’s Tal?”

“Left about an hour ago.” Still sore from her. A good sort of pain. “She never stays long.”

“Well, she’s dedicated to her causes.” He pities me. But he shouldn’t. No one else loves her like I do. When I let her out of the cage, she gives me the best part. I take her inhibitions. I change her face.

He says, “The third probe came back today.”

Above us, emptiness. On the horizon, Hebron. More beautiful, and easier to love, from a distance. Everything is.

“The scientists are divided. Some think the moon will leave the solar system. Some think it will eventually become a satellite of Jupiter.”

I press my cheek against the top of Dudley’s head. The moon off on a search for its missing mate. No, it won’t stop for Jupiter.

“We resettled the people from Moon Base on Turner’s World. They wouldn’t have wanted to come here, I guess.”

For a transcendent moment, we were magicians. Now you see that blue ball in the sky. Now you don’t. Nothing but desperation up our sleeves.

A chuckle. “I retrieved some HF files from the moon and found a story you’ll like.”

I turn on my side, toward Vanderslice. Dudley resettles himself with a grunt, lifts a proprietorial leg over my chest. I let it stay.

“Before he was reconstructed, Hoad Taylor worked on a case where a man was strangling young boys. Maybe you remember. After killing them, he . . . uh, voided his bowels over the dead bodies.”

“He shit on their faces. Ivan Carr. I remember reading about that.”

Vanderslice pries at a bottle. The distinctive smell of Tennysonian beer drifts on the breeze.

“So when they arrested him, Taylor comes bursting into the interrogation room. Carr was cuffed with his hands behind him. So Taylor asks the guy’s name. The suspect gets to the ‘I’ in Ivan, and Taylor slams this . . . uh, piece of excrement, into Carr’s mouth. Everybody’s shouting, and the suspect is trying to get away. But Taylor makes him swallow it. Some of the witnessing officers swore it was Taylor’s own, well, turd I suppose is the appropriate word here.”

I listen to Vanderslice’s lonely laughter. When it’s over, I say, “Dog crap.”

“Oh. He tell you the story?”

“Beagle would have thought his shit was too good for Carr.”

He seems hurt that I don’t find his story funny. The wind dies. The malt smell of beer lies heavy on the air. One step backward. That’s all it would have taken, and he had everything timed. One step, but he couldn’t. Easier to die than face aftermaths.

“John. Don’t you understand? Everything Beagle did was premeditated. He waited. And then made Earth swallow his shit.”

Vanderslice shakes his head. “He didn’t know what he was doing.”

“He knew.” I lift my mug from the table. Take a sip. The coffee’s cold. “You find out how he died?”

“Early onset Alzheimer’s.”

The answer’s so fitting, so sad, that it makes me shiver.

“Dr. Taylor knew what he would die of from childhood. It was there in his DNA scan. Before the symptoms started, HF downloaded him. A few years later he started forgetting the access code to his apartment. The logon to his net. Then his criminology patterns started showing up with holes in them, stupid mistakes he should have caught. Irascibility is one of the symptoms. HF tried to get him to retire, but he refused to acknowledge what was happening. He stayed on, trying to work.”

“Did he opt for Release?”

“Release forms require that you be sound of mind, remember? They eventually euthanized him.”

For five months I’ve thought he destroyed Earth for us. For Tennyson. Or even for what was right. But maybe Beagle had reasons of his own.

Dyle. I
—

I’m sorry.

Vanderslice gets up. “Well. Better be going. Got a speech to prepare and ad spot to record.” Dudley jumps from the chair, nearly dumping me over.

I steady myself. “How’s the election coming?”

“God. Tal doesn’t understand that change takes time. She actually threatened me. Can you believe that? Said that if I didn’t get her demands passed this first term, she’d withdraw her support next election and run herself.” He laughs, and I don’t like the sound of it. “Well, we’re not ready for that sort of thing here, are we? Besides, she has all those political liabilities.”

Me. A political liability. Can’t bring herself to marry. Doesn’t want that cage, no matter how large and how comfortable I could make it. But she can’t stop seeing me, either.

He sighs, runs a hand through his curly hair. “Everybody at each other’s throats. Bickering. Outright fights. Democracy’s a pain in the butt. I should keep this planet a dictatorship.”

He knows I wouldn’t let him. That’s the very reason he hired me. “You’re kidding.”

A nervous pause. His eyes shift. “Only a little.”

He scratches Dudley on the head. He won’t fire me now. Scared of what I’d do. And still wise enough to be scared of how power might change him. “Think you’ll win?” I ask.

“I’m ahead in the polls. And I’ve got a lot of important people helping my campaign.” The glow from the kitchen illuminates that disarming, photogenic smile. “You see, I know where all the spitballs are buried.”

He walks away. A few yards into the stars, he pauses. “It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t make him do it. He didn’t understand what would happen. It’s easier to believe that.”

He knew. That’s why he didn’t want me with him. I was afraid he wouldn’t have the heart to kill, yet he murdered them. Every single one.

“Dyle? It’s easier.”

An indecisive moment. Then Vanderslice turns and ambles off.

Doesn’t he realize? Beagle was the smartest of us all. The loss of his brilliance haunted him. HF hurt him. Omniscience must have made him feel safe.
Dyle? l
—

And when it came to winning, nothing stood in his way.

I remember how time ran out, and shut my eyes hard against the last sight of that face.

Dyle? I have to.

Those sad gray eyes. Those cheeks like fallen angels.