Dogsbody (11 page)

Sol was much lower down the sky than he expected. Another anxiety came over Sirius. “What time is it?”

“Half past three Greenwich,” said Sol. “What’s the matter?”

For a moment, Sirius felt he was being torn in two. The Zoi was here somewhere. He knew it was. But Kathleen would be home from school just after four. He had barely time to get back. He turned and set off trotting fast in what his dog sense told him was the way home. “The Zoi,” he said over his shoulder to Sol. “It’s somewhere quite near. But I can’t stay.” He was angry with himself.
The dog in him had cheated his green nature by lying cunningly low until the last moment. It had intended to go home all the time. “I can’t
help
it!” he told Sol angrily.

“Of course not,” said Sol. “You can come here tomorrow. I’ll try and trace the thing which fell nearest here.”

7

L
ike the wind, and straight as a die, Sirius made for home. He passed a number of people on the way who tried to stop him and talk to him. “Here, boy. Nice dog.” But Sirius was in too much of a hurry to attend. He went straight past their inviting hands without pausing or turning aside. He crossed roads, quickly but carefully. By the time he reached the lane behind the yard, Sol was behind the houses, at least another half hour down, and Sirius was almost too tired and puffed to trot.

“There you are at last!” said Tibbles.

Sirius looked up to see her, and Romulus and Remus, sitting in an anxious huddle on the wall by the gate. He was astonished—and touched and pleased—to see they had all been worrying about him. Then he was alarmed. “Has Duffie noticed I was gone?”

“Not
she
,” said Remus.

“Kathleen’s coming down the street in front,” said Romulus.

Sirius did not have time to think how to undo the latch. He
simply upped and trod on it, and sprang away backwards, hoping. The gate swung open. Sirius stumbled wearily inside.

“Shut it,” said Tibbles. “Unless you want that collar tightened.”

Groaning, Sirius faced the gate and wondered how he could shut it. The latch was within reach of his mouth. He could only try. He put his teeth around the unpleasant oily rusty-tasting metal and dragged backwards. The gate swung, and clicked shut. “Thank goodness for that!” Sirius made for his collar, lying at the end of its rope. If he had had time to think how to get it on, he would probably not have been able to do it. But he was in such a panic that his green intelligence swept aside his dog stupidity. Without thinking, he lay down, propped the empty collar between both front paws, put his head into it and pushed. Then he keeled over on his side, wanting only to sleep, and rather thinking he might die.

But there was no time to sleep, or to die either. Kathleen was there the next minute, undoing the rope, “There, Leo. I hope you weren’t too lonely. Walk!”

He was forced to stagger off to the meadow for a walk. His paws hurt, his legs ached, his back ached. He became convinced he was dying. He waded miserably into the river, and, when that failed to soothe his aches, he sat on the bank with his head hanging and eight inches or so of purplish tongue dangling from his jaws.

“Oh dear!” said Kathleen. “Leo, I don’t think you’re well.”

She brought him home. He fell on the hearthrug with a thump and went straight to sleep.

“Robin, something’s wrong with Leo,” said Kathleen. “I think he’s ill.”

“Distemper, perhaps?” said Robin. He and Basil rolled Sirius about, shouting, “Wake up, Shamus!
Rat!
” They woke Sirius up. He groaned piteously, to show them he needed to be left in peace to die, and fell asleep again. “Leave him,” said Basil. “He may sleep it off.”

Sirius slept until Kathleen’s bedtime, and only a strong sense of duty roused him then. He staggered to the kitchen, where he ate and drank hugely. Then he limped upstairs after Kathleen, wanting only to go to sleep again. Kathleen saw that playing games was out of the question. She read him the story of Bluebeard instead. Sirius could hardly keep his eyes open.

“Silly fool!” said Tibbles, stepping delicately in through the window.

“Yes. I’ll know another time,” said Sirius. Then he fell asleep and, to Tibbles’s disgust, he snored and twitched. He dreamed he was out in the street again, running with four dogs just like himself.

To Kathleen’s relief, Leo was quite restored in the morning. He bounded willingly out into the yard and did not seem to mind being tied up at all. “You
are
a good dog,” she said, and she hugged him uncomfortably before she left. As soon as she was well away, Sirius sprang up and slipped his collar off. He found that Tibbles had prudently bolted the bottom bolt on the gate again, but that was no trouble now. It went back with one swipe of his paw. He used his nose to lift the latch. Now he knew the Zoi was somewhere near, he told himself he would take things more steadily and search until he had found it.

As he was shutting the gate, Sol stepped up above the house.
“You must be right,” he said. He seemed irritable. Fierce little spurts of light shot from him. “Something did fall in this area somewhere. But it’s very odd. I just can’t see it—and I can see every stone and every blade of grass.”

“Could it have gone into the ground?” asked Sirius.

“It must have done,” said Sol. “So I can’t think why Earth hasn’t noticed it. It came down with a big enough thump. Yet there’s no damage. Is a Zoi something very small and dense?”

Sirius sat down and tried to marshal vague green memories. What
was
a Zoi like? The trouble was, it was something he had used every day for long ages, and it had become so familiar that he had barely noticed it. “I don’t think it was always the same,” he said doubtfully. “I—I can’t describe it.”

Sol spurted spiky annoyance. “You’re worse than the rest of them! Think, can’t you!”

“I can’t,” said Sirius. The warm dog thoughts sat just behind his eyes again, and he felt miserably stupid. “But I’d know it when I saw it.”

“Don’t droop like that,” said Sol. “I’m sorry. It’s not your fault I was sharp. I’ve been having a rather annoying time trying to find out about Zoi. Everyone tells me something different. The only thing they agree on is that I seem to have had a narrow escape. The thing must have gone right past me. They say I was lucky not to have my sphere go nova.”

“Oh, no,” Sirius said, out of his green memories, without having to think. “Whoever told you that didn’t know much about Zoi. They can’t act unless someone has hold of them.”

“Ah,” said Sol. His spurting plumes floated thoughtfully down around him. “Then the rumor that you flung this Zoi at that luminary is out, isn’t it? Do you think you can get on and find it before the wrong kind of person lays hold of it? I’ve no wish to have my sphere go nova.”

Sirius wondered who Sol had been talking to. He found himself bristling with queer suspicions. “What are you getting at?”

“I’ve a number of people in mind,” said Sol. “Humans and animals aren’t the only creatures to get born on Earth, you know. Some of the darker ones are pretty strange and rather formidable. I suggest you go back to where you caught that whiff of the Zoi and start from there.”

“All right,” said Sirius, still rather puzzled.

He went on his way at a swift trot toward the cleared space, wondering, as he went, what was really in Sol’s mind. He had a feeling Sol knew much more than he had said. But that went out of his head when he caught a tingle from the Zoi again. It came from behind him, and it was gone as soon as he felt it. Nevertheless, he set off toward it. He was almost back at the yard, when he caught it again—a swift, living tingle from quite a new direction. He set off that way, but it was gone. On the outskirts of the town, he caught it again, from a new direction. Thoroughly confused, he turned back.

“What are you doing?” Sol wanted to know.

“I’ve felt it three times—from a different place each time,” Sirius explained.

“Could someone be trying to confuse you?” Sol asked.

Sirius tried to consider this. It was not easy, because he was tired now, and the dog stupidity was down on his brain like a low cloud. “It could be the Zoi itself,” he said doubtfully. “It—it isn’t made of quite the same stuff as anything else. I can’t explain properly, but I know it can work in several directions at once.”

“I hope it is only that,” said Sol. “You’d better go at it systematically. Take one small area and search that. Then go on to the next. I’m sorry to bully you like this, but I think it’s urgent.”

Again Sirius was puzzled. “A month ago you were saying it wouldn’t hurt me to wait,” he protested. “What’s got into you?”

Sol gave a little flare of laughter. “Call it my fiery and impatient nature. No, seriously, now I’ve heard a little more about Zoi, I can see they’re a good deal more peculiar and powerful than I thought. This one could do a lot of damage, and I want it found.”

Sirius trotted back to the center of town. He thought he would sweep the town in a spiral, to see if he could pinpoint the Zoi that way first. But, finding himself near the street where he had tried to rob the dustbin, he suddenly felt ravenous. He climbed the steps of the old lady’s house and, in the most natural way, battered at her door with a heavy clawed foot.

“So it’s you again,” she said, opening it. “I might have known.” She put a gnarled hand under his jaw and looked at him. “Naughty dog. Out again. I don’t know what your name really is, but I’m going to call you Sirius, because of your eyes. I am Miss Smith. Come in, Sirius, and I’ll see what I can find. And I expect you’ll want a drink.”

It was the start of a long acquaintance. After that, Sirius visited
her nearly every day. It was not only because, poor though she evidently was, Miss Smith always had something for him to eat. He liked and respected her too. Apart from Kathleen, she was the only person who saw he understood English, and she called him by his onetime true name. Just as Kathleen did, she talked to him as if he was nearly her equal. And then he realized that she looked forward to seeing him and saved food for him specially. After that, he would no more have missed his daily visit to Miss Smith than he would have failed to be home in the yard before Kathleen was.

His search for the Zoi went on week after week. He felt it over and over again, always just for an instant, but he simply could not pin down where the feeling was coming from. The living tang came now from this way, now from that. Sometimes he did not feel it for days on end. He gave up chasing it when he did feel it. He always arrived at the outskirts of the town, only to feel it behind him, somewhere inside the town. At times, he almost agreed with Sol, that someone was deliberately confusing him. He took Sol’s impatient advice and searched the town, section by section. It seemed to him that if he could build up a picture of the town in his head, with all the places plotted on it where he had felt the Zoi, the middle of the plottings must be where the Zoi was.

It was very difficult. For one thing, his green nature became angry and bored. It seemed used to settling things quickly. To his surprise, it was his dog nature that helped him here. It was used to being bored, and it seemed to be able to stick patiently to its work, long after the luminary was howling with impatience. He began to see why humans had the word
dogged
.

But Sirius’s great difficulty was that neither of his natures could hold a useful picture of the town in its head. The dog saw it all as fragments, smells and the way to other fragments and smells. The green thoughts would try to bend it all into a sphere. But Sirius wanted a complete picture, flat and whole, the way humans liked to have things. The only one he knew of was in Basil’s room. Basil had an actual map of the town pinned to his wall. Whenever he could, Sirius nosed open Basil’s door and sat on the mat by Basil’s bed, staring at the map and trying to make sense of the symbols Basil had carefully painted on it.

Basil was furious when he found him there. “Get out, Rat! Beat it, or I’ll jump on your tail!” The room was full of tiny pieces of rock and bits of old pottery spread on half-made plans and charts. Sirius could have spoiled them all with one sweep of his tail. Basil did not know he had been careful not to. He shut the door and warned Kathleen to keep it shut. Sirius could not open the door for himself. In order to find out more about the map, he began, for the first time since he was a puppy, to attend to what Basil was saying.

Basil had a friend with glasses called Clive. Basil very much admired Clive—Sirius thought Clive was probably cleverer than Basil—and whenever Clive called, Basil became enormously enthusiastic about rocks and old pottery and imitated the way Clive talked. Clive called the bits and pieces Remains. Basil and he collected Remains of all kinds, and made maps of where they had found them. Many of the Remains were called fossils. Sirius thought they looked like playthings of Sol’s when he was an infant.
He could not see any value in them. He could see even less value in the pottery, which Clive said was Roman, though he supposed some of the old coins they had must have been valuable once. The pride of their collection were some blue beads they had found in the cleared area near the moronic hallo-dogs—Clive said repeatedly those ought to have been in the museum—and a small fat meteorite.

None of this was much use to Sirius. He had almost given up listening to them, when he discovered that it was Clive’s—and therefore Basil’s—ambition to find another meteorite.

“We know one fell near here,” Basil said earnestly. “Everyone heard it. They discussed it on television.”

“Yes, but I don’t see how it could land with a festering thump like that and shake all the houses, and then just disappear,” said Clive. “Unless it was a very small black hole—like the one they think fell in Russia.”

Sirius realized, to his horror, that they were talking about the Zoi. The hair on his back rose. If Basil got hold of the Zoi—well, if he was not killed by it straight away, he could wreck Sol’s sphere in seconds, and maybe other neighboring ones into the bargain. He saw why Sol was so worried.

“If it was a black hole, it would have gone right through the Earth,” Basil objected, looking uneasily at Sirius. The Rat had that habit of staring at him sometimes. “It would have showed.”