John Scalzi - Agent to the Stars

"Oh, all right," Michelle said. "You always know the right thing to say, Tom."

"That's why you love me, Michelle," I said. I hung up, set the phone down, and knelt down to rub Ralph's ears and coat.

"Hey, there, Ralph," I said, in the goo-goo voice you use with dogs,."Where's your little friend Joshua? Yeah? Your little friend? The one that I'm gonna kill for heading off into the woods when I told him not to go? Huh? Where is the little bastard, Ralphie?"

"Why the hell are you asking me?" Ralph said. "I'm just a dog."

I screamed for a really long time.

"Eeyow," Ralph said, after I stopped hollering. "That hurt. I would have been happy with a simple 'Welcome back.'"

"Joshua?" I asked.

"Of course," Ralph/Joshua said. "But I'm also Ralph now, too. Ralphua. Joshualph. Take your pick."

"Joshua," I said, "What have you done?"

"Tom, snap out of it," Joshua said, irritably. "It's obvious what I've done. Look, I'm a dog!" Joshua barked. "Convinced? Or do you want me to hump your leg?"

I know what you are," I said. "Now I want to know why you did it. I thought you liked Ralph. I thought he was your friend, Joshua. And now look what you've done." I gesticulated, looking for the right words. None came. I used the next best. "You ate him, Joshua!"

Joshua laughed, which sounded unbelievably bizarre coming from a dog. "I'm sorry, Tom," he said, finally. "Now I know what you're getting at. You make it sound like I was waiting for the right moment to body-snatch Ralph. It didn't happen that way. I told you before that the Yherajk don't do that sort of thing. Tom, Ralph was dying. And this was the only way to save him."

"I don't understand," I said.

"Well, if you promise not to yell at me anymore, I'll tell you. All right?"

"All right," I said.

"Good," Joshua said. Let's go into the living room. Could you do me the favor of getting me a beer?"

"What?"

"A beer, Tom. You know. A brew. Oat soda. Suds. I don't have any tendrils to open things with anymore. And just because I'm a dog doesn't mean I couldn't use a drink every now and then. I'll meet you in the living room." He padded out. I went to get him a beer, a bowl to drink it out of, and a couple of aspirin for myself, and then joined him in the living room, taking a seat in my lounger.

I downed the aspirin, took a slug of the beer to chase them down, and put the rest of it in the bowl. Joshua lapped it up. I reached over to pet him, but then I stopped. It didn't seem appropriate anymore. You don't pet thinking things.

"That's better," Joshua said. "Thanks, Tom."

"You're welcome," I said. "Now, what happened out there?"

"Ralph had a heart attack," Joshua said, and I watched his mouth as he spoke. His mouth hung open as the words came out — it was like he had swallowed a radio. "We were a couple of miles from here, going up a hillside. Ralph had been fine up until then. But on the way up the hill, I heard him give a little whimper. I looked back and he had collapsed. I went back to see if there was anything wrong, but I didn't see any cuts or bone breaks. So that's when I entered his brain, and found out he had a heart attack."

"How could you tell?"

"I could read where he was feeling pain," Joshua said. "His whole chest felt like it was being squeezed. Ralph was confused, of course; he's just a dog, after all. He didn't know what was going on."

"Why didn't you call me then?" I asked. "I would have come back and taken Ralph to the vet."

"Think about it, Tom," Joshua said. "You were in Venice Beach at the time, remember? By the time you got back here and hiked out to where we were, Ralph would have been long gone. And even if you had got back in time and had taken him to a vet, the vet would've just told you there was nothing to be done. And besides, he's not really your dog. You couldn't have done anything."

That stung. Joshua must have picked up on it. "I don't mean to imply that you had done anything wrong, Tom," he said, gently. "Just that there wasn't time. Even if there was, this was a better way. Ralph deserved better than to die on a vet table with strangers over him."

"So Ralph had a heart attack," I said, my voice slightly husky. "What did you do then?"

"The first thing I did was I cut off the pain," Joshua said. "I didn't want him feeling any pain. I also cut off his motor control, so he wouldn't go bounding off because he was feeling better. Then I sent a tendril into his chest to see how bad it was, and whether or not we could make it back to the house. As it turned out, it was pretty bad. Ralph was old and his heart was in bad shape.

"By this time, Ralph was pretty much out of it — his little brain was blipping all over the place, Tom. I didn't want him to die, so I did two things. First I called your assistant and told her that we'd be late. And then I inhabited Ralph."

"What does that mean?" I asked.

"Well, look at me," Joshua said.

"I mean, how it that different from Ralph just dying?" I said. "After all, it's not Ralph in there, Joshua. It's you."

"Not quite accurate," Joshua said. "All of Ralph's memories and feelings are still here. I distinctly remember being a dog and doing doggie things."

"But you're not Ralph," I said.

"No," Joshua admitted. "But on the other hand, Ralph didn't die. His personality just...melded into mine. From Ralph's point of view, he suddenly became a lot more intelligent. He's the dog with the 180 IQ. On my end, I now know the world from a dog's eye point of view. I, being Joshua, am obviously going to be dominant. But don't be surprised when I do something that reminds you of Ralph. It's all here, in one big package. Which is why I said, 'Ralphua.'"

"What did Ralph think of this, if you don't mind me asking?"

"He was good with it," Joshua said. "Though not in any way you'd understand. I basically let him know not to worry, and he basically let me know that he trusted me. Then he and I became we. Which then became me. And I'm pleased to be alive, so there you have it."

I leaned back in my chair. "This is making my head hurt."

"Have some more aspirin," Joshua suggested.

I looked back down at Joshua. He sat there like a typical retriever. "What did you do with your old body?" I asked. "Did you leave it up there on the hillside? Do we need to go find it and bury it or something?"

"Nope," Joshua said. "It's in here. Timesharing, as it were. Right now my old body is in Ralph's digestive system and in his blood vessels. He's not eating anything that I'm not eating, obviously, and my cells are doing the role of blood, transferring oxygen to his cells. See, look at my tongue," Joshua's doggie tongue rolled out, an albino sort of pink, "not nearly as red as it used to be. Anyway, this is only short term solution.— controlling two bodies is a lot of work, even when I have my old body more or less on autopilot."

"What's the long term solution?"

"Well, eventually my cells will take the place of all his cells," Joshua said. "It's more efficient, especially since I won't have all these damned specialized organs to deal with. The only thing I'll need to be concerned with is maintaining my shape and appearance, which won't be that difficult. It'll take about a week."

"What happens to the old cells?" I asked.

"I digest them."

"Oh, man ," I said. "You are eating him."

"Tom," Joshua said. "It's not nearly as gross as you think. And anyway, it needs to be done — I can't keep controlling both bodies, and my Yherajk body is more flexible."

"And none of this," — I waved my hands — "conflicts with your 'don't take over other life forms' thinking."

"Hmmmm, well," Joshua said. "It's a borderline case. The limitation is 'sentient life forms'. We could argue whether or not Ralph, character though he was, truly qualified as sentient. Now, I think he was — a low-grade variety, you know, but that's a matter of degree, not of kind. But I also feel that he gave me consent. Sort of. It's something that could be argued. But I don't feel wrong for having done it. Besides, I like being a dog. I marked every tree on the way here, you know. It's all my territory now."