Dogsbody (12 page)

“Yes,” agreed Clive. “I went and talked to the chap at the museum last Saturday, and he was sure it was just a meteorite. He said they tried to locate it, but the impact was too diffused. All the seismographs
in the area went mad, and they all gave different readings. And listen to this, Basil—never mind that festering dog.”

Basil had grown tired of Sirius staring at him. He was making snarling noises and threatening to hit him.

“This is important,” said Clive.

“I’m going to put the Rat outside the door first,” said Basil. He seized Sirius by his collar and dragged him to the yard door. Sirius braced his legs and resisted, but the hold on his collar, as always, defeated him. He was thrust outside and the door slammed after him.

“What did you do that for?” Kathleen said in the kitchen.

“I don’t want Rats around me—or festering Irish morons either,” said Basil.

Sirius looked anxiously toward where Sol was westering. “Basil and his friend are trying to find the Zoi too. How can I stop them?”

“I don’t think you can,” said Sol. “I’ll do my best to distract them, but boys are the very blazes. They poke and pry and end up finding things long after everyone else has given up looking. The museum people gave up long ago.”

“I hope that was all Clive was going to say,” Sirius said.

When Kathleen let him in again, he sneaked up to Basil’s room, not very hopefully. He thought he ought to find out how much Basil knew about Zoi. And, to his joy, the door came open when he nosed it. Basil had been in too much of a hurry to show Clive his Remains to remember to close it properly. Sirius went over to the bookshelf and examined the books. He knew humans kept most of their knowledge in books—they were generous like that—and what Basil knew would be there somewhere.

After some thought, he selected one with a picture of a rock on the back, and another with what he supposed was meant to be a galaxy. Between them, they seemed to cover the case. He wished he had Tibbles to get them out for him. He had to do what he could himself, stabbing with a clumsy paw, backed up with his nose. The galaxy-book came out easily enough. He trotted with it to Kathleen’s room and laid it on the floor by her bed. Then he came back for the rock-book. The books were looser by then. The rock-book came out with half a shelf-full of heavy volumes. Sirius leaped from among them with his tail tucked under him and trotted away very hastily and guiltily indeed.

“Who’s been spilling my books about?” Basil demanded. “Was it you, Robin? If it was—!”

Being accused, Robin naturally looked guilty. “I never went near your books!” Basil cuffed his ears, and Sirius felt very uncomfortable. The worst of it was that there was no possible way he could have owned up, even if he had wanted to.

When Kathleen went to bed, she was very surprised to see the two books lying on the floor. “Those are Basil’s! How did they get here?” She picked them up and examined them for clues. Sirius did his best to seem casual. He had carried them as carefully as he knew how and—he hoped—had not left the faintest dent of a toothmark anywhere on them.

Kathleen could not find anything to tell her how the books came to be on her floor. “Oh well,” she said. “We may as well read them before we put them back.”

Sirius grinned widely as he scrambled onto the bed and made
himself comfortable. He had known he could trust Kathleen to read the books. She had few books of her own, and a passion for reading. Once, she had even read him a book of Duffie’s on how to make pottery.

She began on the rock-book, because it was on top. “
Schist and gneiss
,” Kathleen read, “
are igneous
formations of the Pre-Cambrian era.
Oh, Leo, I don’t think this is very interesting.
Metamorphic rocks of high mineral content are to be found as follows
—Leo, I don’t know how to say half of this. Shall we try the other book instead?”

She picked up the galaxy-book. It was written in slightly easier words and soon had both of them fascinated. Kathleen was awed and amazed at the thought of stars and planets wheeling around through infinite space. Sirius was amazed at how much humans had discovered, sitting on Earth and whizzing around once every day. They had contrived to measure this, record that and calculate what they could not see. They had a picture of the universe which bore about as much relation to the universe Sirius knew as a Police Identikit picture did to a real person. But he was astonished they had a picture at all.

“It’s about luminaries,” he explained to Tibbles, when she came through the window to join them. “Do you know about them?”

“The bright people who come and talk to our Sun sometimes?” she said. “They’re a bit big to notice me. I’d have to be as big as Earth before I could get to know them. And I don’t understand the language anyway. Does the Earth count as one of them?”

“Earth is a planet,” Sirius told her. “It spins round the sun.”

“That accounts for it,” Tibbles said, humping up into a tuffet
under Sirius’s nose. “The top of my back itches. Just along my spine.”

“Accounts for what?” Sirius asked, licking obligingly.

“The way Earth speaks our languages,” said Tibbles. “I knew that it must be different.”

“Do listen to this, Leo!” Kathleen cried out. “It’s about the Dog Star.
Sirius, Alpha Canis Major, often called the Dog Star, is only some eight and a half light-years distant from our Solar System. Since it is twice as hot as our sun, its brightness and characteristic green color make it a notable object in our winter sky.
Why didn’t I know that before? I should have called you Sirius, Leo. It’s exactly right for you. I
wish
I’d known! You’re in Canis Major—that’s the Great Dog—and that’s Orion’s dog, Leo. I
knew
about Orion, too! My daddy showed me Orion’s belt once, when I was little. You’re in the same stardrift as the Great Bear—and us, I think, though it doesn’t say very clearly—and you’re a lovely bright green. Oh—and you’ve got a Companion that’s a white dwarf, about half the size of our sun. Tibbles, you must be his Companion.”

Sirius could not avoid sighing heavily. Someone from Castor had his green sphere now, and his Companion too.

“Don’t be sad,” said Kathleen. “I was just joking. It’s far too late to change your name now. You’re still Leo.”

She went on to read of the other stars. Sirius sighed once or twice more, as he recognized friends of his from the book’s descriptions: Betelgeuse, Procyon, Canopus and Aldebaran, Rigel, Dubhe, Mizar and Phad. He wondered if he would ever see them again. But he was glad to see, from the way the book talked, that
Basil was unlikely to have learned anything helpful about Zoi. The people who wrote the book might be able to measure spheres, and their effulgence, and their distance apart, but they seemed to think they were as lifeless and mechanical as the marbles Robin sometimes rolled around the yard.

8

T
hough Sirius was now sure Basil had no idea it was a Zoi he was looking for, he still knew it would be a disaster if Basil found it. As soon as he was out of the yard next day, he went straight to the cleared space where he had first felt the Zoi. It seemed a very likely place for the Zoi to have fallen. But there was nothing. Sirius roved around among the dry weeds and the heaps of rubble without feeling the slightest twinge from the Zoi. So he decided to visit the four moronic hallo-dogs again. They might be stupid, even for dogs, but they fascinated him.

As he went along the street, Rover, Redears and Patchie all greeted him as they had done before.

“Hallo, hallo, hallo! Hey, dog! Hallo!”

But he found he had misjudged Bruce. “Hallo!” Bruce said, hurling himself against the netting around his gate. “I
am
glad to see you again. I wanted to talk to you. The others are such fools, and you look sensible. Why do we all look so alike?”

“I don’t know,” said Sirius. “I hoped you’d know. Were you all found floating in the river, by any chance?”

“I’ve no idea,” said Bruce. “Is that where dogs come from then?”

“No,” Sirius said patiently. “They get born. Didn’t you see that mother dog with puppies on television the other night?”

“Oh, yes,” said Bruce. “It did make me wonder. Why did you ask about the river then?”

“Because I can remember being picked out of it,” said Sirius.

“Good lord! You must have a good memory!” said Bruce. “That must have been months ago.”

“But haven’t you heard the people you live with talking about where you came from?” Sirius asked.

Bruce confessed that he did not know very much human talk. “I can follow if they speak slowly,” he said. “But they will gabble so. All I can usually pick out is the important words like
walk
, and
supper
, and
biscuit
, and
bath
.”

“Is
bath
important?” asked Sirius, who had never had one.

Bruce shivered. “Yes. When they say it, they’re going to put you in horrible deep warm water and rub smelly bubbles into you that hurt your eyes. They say it when they think you have a flea. Don’t your people do that?”

“Certainly not!” said Sirius. “No one in my house would dream of such a thing.”

“You are lucky,” Bruce said wistfully. “You’re lucky to be allowed out too. How do you manage it?”

“I open my gate,” said Sirius. “Can’t you open yours?”

“Not this latch,” said Bruce. “I could open the two they had before this one, so they put this one on to stop me. I’m being rather slow learning it, I’m afraid. But I’ll see you outside one day.”

“I’ll see you,” Sirius promised, and he went trotting off, thinking
that he rather liked Bruce and feeling pleasantly superior to him—particularly about the baths.

Alas for Sirius. He had now been loose in the town for three weeks. He had talked to innumerable stray dogs and searched for the Zoi in many unsavory places. The next day he began to itch. He itched terribly. He sat down every hundred yards to scratch, but he still itched. He itched when he got home. He sat on the hearthrug and scratched, with his heavy leg thumping rhythmically on the floor. Tibbles sat beside him, elegantly scratching too. Up on the dresser, Romulus and Remus were scratching as well.

“Drat you!” said Tibbles. “I think you’ve given me—”

At that moment, Duffie leaned forward and stared incredulously at a small brown something crawling on her wide leg. “
What?
” she said. She caught the small brown thing between her finger and thumb and waved it about. “This,” she said dramatically, “is a flea. That Filthy Creature has fleas. Kathleen, if they are not got rid of by bedtime, it goes down to the vet tomorrow. Bathe it. Hoover the living room. And do it at once!”

“Oh dear!” Kathleen jumped up at once. “Yes, Duffie. What in?”

“The bath, of course. And make sure you clean it thoroughly afterwards,” said Duffie. “I’ll deal with those cats.”

“Drat you!” wailed Tibbles, as Duffie snatched her up.

Duffie went on to collect Romulus and Remus too. She held them draped head to head in a bundle and marched off to the kitchen with them. From the sink came dreadful rinsings and desperate yowlings. Sirius, trembling all over, was hauled upstairs by Kathleen and Robin, and Basil actually left his Remains to come
and push him from behind. The bath was filled. Sirius backed away from the rising steam, rumbling with terror. He braced his legs. But the whole family seemed to agree with Duffie for once. Mr. Duffield came through the door behind him before he could back himself out through it.

“In you go, horse,” Mr. Duffield said.

Sirius, to his terror and acute humiliation, was lifted as if he were a mere cat and plunged into warm water. It was a dreadful experience. He was quite sure it was killing him. Three times he almost got out, and three times the four humans thrust him back in. They were soaked to the skin. Mr. Duffield hit him a number of times, harder every time. But Sirius would rather have been hit than stay in that bath. He struggled in a frantic green rage, his eyes blazing and his teeth bared.

“Good lord, Rat! It’s only water,” said Basil.

“
Leo!
” said Kathleen. She was profoundly shocked. She had never seen him look like this before.

Sirius gathered he was upsetting her. He did his best to be less angry, but he was still terrified. He shook all over, until at last they had finished and let go of him. Then he came out of the bath like a sea wave, bringing most of the bathwater with him, and fled downstairs, soaking everything on the way. Duffie was in the living room, grimly powdering the struggling cats. She received the rest of the water all over her as Sirius shook himself. The cats fled helter-skelter. Duffie seized the poker and drove Sirius out into the yard, where he crawled into his shelter and crouched shivering. Robin and Kathleen tried to get in after him with bath towels, but he hated being dried
as much as he hated the bath. If it had not been Robin and Kathleen, he would have bitten them. He snarled and he growled, and he upset Kathleen completely. She burst into tears.

“She’s made Leo hate me. He’ll never forgive me.
Listen
to him, Robin!”

The snarling made Robin quite scared, but he said stoutly, “He knows it’s not your fault. After all, he could have bitten us.” It made him feel better to point that out. It also brought Sirius to his senses and made him deeply ashamed of frightening them. He came shivering out of his shelter and licked them both apologetically. “There! See?” said Robin, and Kathleen hugged Sirius, wet as he was, until she made him grunt.

Then he went indoors and started scratching again. The bath had done no good at all.

“Powder it,” Duffie said frigidly.

Kathleen left off vacuuming with the Hoover, and powdered Sirius till he sneezed. That seemed to do very little good either. Kathleen looked across the room at Duffie’s grim face and was really frightened. “What shall we
do
?”

“Try one of those flea collars,” Robin suggested. “A boy at school told me they worked like magic.”

Next day was the start of the Easter holiday. Kathleen hastened out before Duffie was up and bought a peculiar transparent collar, which she fastened around Sirius’s neck alongside his usual one. It smelled of something queer, but he soon grew used to it. And it worked. It would have been hard to say if Kathleen or Sirius was more relieved. Sirius was comfortable again before evening. Duffie
told Kathleen that That Creature could stay as long as he wore a flea collar in the future. Kathleen was glad, but she had another worry instead.