Damon Knight - Orbit 17

As for Morgane, he never forgot for a moment that everything he was he owed to her. He had been particularly gratified at the swift change in her attitude toward him after his operation. Not only did it make him drunk with pride to have such a woman interested in him, it also enabled him to discover that he had long been devoted to her in the same way, without ever having admitted it to himself. And he quickly discovered as well what no one else apparently knew (the others evidently not being able to get their attention past the upper part of her figure), that she had long, beautiful legs, perfectly proportioned from hip to ankle. Not that she had much competition, but she was easily the most beautiful female at the Fun Palace, a miraculous exception to the bad-legs norm around the labs.

They did everything together. He shared all her meals, eating from a plate which she heaped full at her table (or the one in the Fun House cafeteria) and set on the floor for him. He helped her in whatever ways he could, the absence of dexterity not particularly bothering him. He had always been clumsy with his hands anyway, and now, like a convalescing amputee, he used teeth and feet with stubborn courage in unusual ways until he had developed the most improbable skills. He could reach most doorknobs, and made a practice of gallantly opening all portals ahead of his lady. By standing on his hind legs, he discovered he could take in the tops of tables, stoves, and sinks, and often did little chores around the kitchen and the laboratory.

For the rest they played a lot, rolled on the floor, took showers together during which she scrubbed him vigorously (“I don’t want them ever to say you’re a dirty you-know-what, darling”), and of course when they went to the Fun Palace he participated in more tests than ever before. To his relief, the tests these days took the form not of injections or implantations but of long interviews and IQ, memory, and perception examinations involving flash cards, buzzers, and colored lights, while he tapped out answers and reactions on a machine with a wide typewriter keyboard especially adapted to his condition.

And just as abruptly as he had discovered his momentous love for Morgane, he discovered his abiding hatred for Meeford. Like much other hatred in the world, it was a reasonless, witless emotion, based solely on a vague intuition that Meeford might have designs on Dr. Swoos himself and, things being what they were, would be in a better position to accomplish these designs if he ever got the chance.

Not that Morgane would encourage the likes of the lab assistant, surely. He was a thin, quick-moving, nervous fellow with a much too eager look about him. (Yet if Dr. Swoos should become attracted by Meeford’s mind, would she really care what he looked like?)

In any case, Heller lost no opportunity to bite Meeford about the legs, or thrust against him without warning. Several, times Meeford was sent sprawling, to Heller’s immense satisfaction, once while he was carrying a huge tray of Petri dishes.

Dr. Swoos was amused, but she was also eager to clear up Heller’s misapprehension on this score. “Honey, you’ve got to lay off poor Meeford. I know what you’re thinking, but you don’t understand. It’s not me he’s after, it’s my job. He’s terribly bright and ambitious and he’s been working with me now for over a year, so he’s convinced himself that anything I can do he can do, even operations of some intricacy. I, however, consider this a positive quality, not a negative one. If you’d had as many assistants as I have, you’d know most of them are shiftless, lazy rockheads who don’t give one good damn about the project. In this respect Meeford is a real jewel. If his big chance ever comes, Meeford’ll grab it and, I’ve no doubt, distinguish himself. And nobody will be prouder of him than I. It’s always flattering to be emulated.”

Heller was somewhat mollified and afterward found other ways to amuse himself around the laboratory. He would tap out love messages to Morgane on his machine, or stand in front of Smith’s cage watching the strange habits of the gorilla as he studiously picked nits out of his groin or swung by hairy arms from his trapeze. No one connected with the current project, least of all Heller, really knew what Smith was doing there in the lab. Evidently some group performing some prior experimentation had ordered him up from the animal supply department in the basement and failed to return him. No one even seemed to know how he’d come by the name of Smith, but like Heller before him, Smith had become a laboratory fixture, and by now no one so much as thought of challenging his presence there.

Overall, then, with such a devoted lady and such harmless diversions to occupy him, Heller shouldn’t have been having too bad a life. He might even have considered it an improvement over his old one, if only Dr. Swoos hadn’t been so unhappy part of the time. She continued to cry a lot when they were alone. He knew why, naturally, and felt distressed too, and sadly helpless.

And then a totally unexpected misadventure occurred which made them both realize that their problems were more serious than even Dr. Swoos imagined.

It was inevitable that the mutual trust of their relationship should lead them into carelessness. The red leash was so much stagecraft; Heller would have trotted devotedly at Morgane’s heels without it, and usually if they went walking late at night it was left at home, along with the matching red harness.

The campus of Windy Hill Poly lay, appropriately, on a hill, with the Fun Palace grounds at the upper edge of it and the small, sleepy college town below. There wasn’t much open in the town after dark, not even the drugstore, and not many errands could be done there by night strollers, unless perhaps they came after one of the daily papers in the drugstore’s coin-operated racks, which remained on the sidewalk.

But that was excuse enough for Morgane and Heller to be walking down the hill from their house one night when Morgane said, “Darling, I’m tireder than I thought. I don’t want to walk all the way down to town and back, especially if it turns out the morning papers aren’t on the racks yet. Would you mind running ahead to find out? If you don’t come right back, then I’ll know they’re there, and I’ll join you.”

Without hesitation, Heller obliged. Despite some folk notions to the contrary, his species has a lot of energy, particularly after a day or two of relative inaction, and his dash down the ten or so blocks of the long hill was swift and virtually effortless.

The morning papers weren’t there, and he was just turning around on the drugstore comer to dash back up the hill and save his beloved some steps when he realized he was not alone. Cruising the gutter alongside him was the orange pickup truck that was a pickup in more than the ordinary sense, for it belonged to the town dog catcher, or “animal control deputy” as he was called in officialese. There was a sinister-looking barred cage built onto the truck bed.

Heller was too terrified even to grunt. Instead, he tried to throw the catcher off the track by dodging up and down alleys, but his pursuer abandoned his vehicle and took off on foot, hellbent after Heller, running like a track star.

It was this astonishing alacrity in so unlikely a person as a dog catcher which made Heller first realize that the deputy was not the usual man on the job, to whom Dr. Swoos’s oddball pet would have been a familiar sight around town. No, this was a stranger, a younger man who had evidently chosen his first night on the job to make his mark. And he was so well organized that he had even remembered to bring along net and lariat from the truck.

It was only moments later that Heller, having run into a walled cul-de-sac behind a restaurant, felt the net descend and tighten.