Грег Иган - The Year's Best Science Fiction, Volume 1

Dogs are better than machines at untangling this kind of mess. But all this broken human detritus, and the storms growing greater and more frequent now year by year, and the endless desire for more perfect work: these things make the job too tricky for a dog’s nose. A normal dog’s, at least.

This is why I am the solution. It’s why I am a good dog, better than Mack was. It’s why Carol should do things my way.

Carol’s voice carries over the DAT. “Devin and I are a hundred yards out. If the trail crosses the freeway, Sera, do not follow. That’s an order.”

Before I can respond, the wind twists through my nostrils: Girl.

That trickle of target scent wraps itself around my olfactory center. My target is my primary objective. I send Carol my heading as I run, an automatic part of my brain remembering fieldwork directives. I am required to communicate relevant information to my handler, but I am only required to follow handler commands within reason. I find very few of my handler commands reasonable today.

Deep in the scent cone now, I hardly see, not thinking with that part of my mind. Scent is brighter than any color in this muted, cloud-heavy weather. It is a viscous, thickened path, easy to follow. I can turn my head now and I don’t lose the trail, but feel it pull and contort through time and space. It strengthens this way, grades off in the other, torques around on itself. I know that if it was untwisted, it would move differently. I understand how it bent and broke over time. It is all a trick of the wind.

I come to an eddy. A lesser dog—a normal dog, like Mack—would hesitate or lose themselves. I move through the scent-trap and scrabble over a broken segment of roof. The trail shimmers on the other side, where the ground is cool and sodden beneath my paw pads.

Five yards farther, an oscillation in the wind unfolds back through time and I move with it through a heavy stand of pines, thick with bright acid resin smell. I have my teeth in it, I can feel the track itch behind my

Girl

Indication, I ping. I push beneath a wind-felled pine and its broken-wood smells. Needles brush against my face. Target scent strong.

Carol’s voice: “Where are you?”

Question irrelevant. She has GPS access.

Twist of track to the left through

Old Girl smell relevant

Other child smells a broad collection of small human life scents in this patch of forest Broken boards rotting garbage leaf mold

Girl

I step up and over another felled tree rich smell of rot and my ears move on their own because there is human sound close by I push my head deep into the space beneath the tree with the old smells and the deep Girl smell and

Alert

Girl

Target acquired primary objective

Yes

I am a good dog

Target Girl wheezes quietly she says “Help” I breathe her scent deeply

Alert

But will Carol

“Acknowledged,” Carol responds. “On our way.”

Good yes

I am a good dog

I send Carol my GPS coordinates again to reconfirm even though I can see from the DAT that she is approximately one hundred yards across the rubble field. “Help me, doggy,” target Girl says. Her voice sounds like the wind, soft and leaky. That’s a good Is Like. The rot-scented tree pins her in a rubble of boards and magazines and a blanket in a dense stand of brush and pines, some distance from the neighborhood. Her one small free hand reaches for my mud-slicked head. “Good doggy,” she says. “I’m stuck. Help.”

In this dense visual screen it may be difficult for my team to locate me. I back out of the target Girl’s location and head toward the forest’s edge.

“Doggy,” she whispers. “Wait, doggy, no, wait.” There’s a gurgle to her wheeze, perhaps a punctured lung. Which is why she can’t cry for help, at this distance from habitation. She is likely in dire physical danger. Only an EI dog could have found her so quickly.

I trot out of the stand of pines and up onto the nearest high ground—a culvert near the road. I can hear target Girl now, since I am listening for her. “Come back,” she sobs. “Doggy, help. Please. Come back.”

Her weak voice will be easy for my excellent ears to locate for my team. Alert, I ping again, though I don’t need to. I allow myself a nice wag.

I am a good dog.

Sound carries strangely in storm-thickened air. From my place in the command tent I can clearly hear the baying voice of some small hound at least a mile away. However, the generator running out behind the team’s trucks sounds like it belongs to another time and place, and wind chokes the traffic noise from the freeway. I can still hear the difference between trucks like Carol’s and the smaller cars, and the sounds of big semitrucks like the one that hit and killed Mack. I know the sounds of those trucks well.

I lie with my head on my paws so that I look like I am resting and not eavesdropping. Overhead the wind rips at the surface of the command tent roof, which ripples and bucks. It is like there is a giant dog up there, digging and worrying at it, trying to get in.

Not a bad Is Like .

Is Like is a game I made up at ESAC. I didn’t make it all up myself; my trainer Dacy taught me the beginning. Though what Dacy taught me wasn’t quite the same. She taught me that “sit in the training center” Is Like “sit in the parking lot” and “find the box with this smell” Is Like “find the person with this smell.” So Dacy gave me the idea. I made up the part where I keep playing it forever in my head.

The way I play the game, it isn’t always about training. It doesn’t even have to be about real things. It can just be about thoughts. It keeps my mind busy when Carol leaves me in my crate, or tied to something, like I am now.

“I won’t do this anymore,” I hear Carol say to Anders, our team leader. She stands with her back to me on the far side of the command tent, well within my hearing range. I can tell she’s angry by context and by her elevated blood pressure, but I don’t know why. The search was successful and finished quickly. Our team performed well. Since Mack has been dead for almost two months now, the changes I had hoped to see in Carol’s behavior have slowly surfaced as she begins to forget how she used to work with Mack and learns, instead, how to work with me. She is a slow student, but there is still progress.

Medics load the target Girl into an ambulance in the parking lot. I hear a trio of vulture drones descending to snatch video of the gurney. The hair on my neck prickles with dislike. I am not afraid of drones. I simply find that they occupy the “uncanny valley.” Uncanny valley is a concept that Dacy told me about that means “both too much and not enough like me, and therefore unsettling.” Dacy also warned me many humans have the same uncomfortable reaction to EI animals.

I don’t know why, when I look exactly like a medium-yellow Labrador retriever. Yellow Labrador retrievers test extremely well with the public. When a Labrador finds a disaster victim, the positive cultural associations the victim has with the breed comfort them. Yellow is the best color, as well, because in dark areas I am easily identifiable. This is information that I learned on Modanet, after Dacy told me about Labrador retrievers when I was a puppy.

However, human reactions to dogs can be unpredictable. For example, the way they treated Mack. He often gave the team physical attention they didn’t want. Mack was smart for a normal dog, so I wonder why he chose to ignore their requests. They said things like, “Eww, Mack, get your slobbery Kong off of me, you dork,” and “Mind your own business, you big oaf.” Wouldn’t the humans on team like him more if he complied? He didn’t even have the excuse of being a yellow Labrador; he was an overlarge German shepherd with a dark and heavy face. Dark German shepherds don’t test nearly as well with the public, so I am not sure why everyone liked him so much.