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

“It’s Reactor C,” Carol shouts. “Shit, we lost it.”

I can think of no other explanation than the reactor venting through its emergency shutdown, a procedure that I now fully comprehend from the dossier transfer. I confirm this against details that I seem to have always known, though they would have meant nothing to me this morning. A consequence of storing information in biological memory.

The roar and rattle continue for minutes, though such drama seems like it should be short-lived. Carol squats next to me, still looking up and down the empty tunnel. The violence of sound paralyzes us. The vent fans overhead run at extreme speed. It is like we are in the throat of some enormous howling beast that never runs out of breath.

After interminable seconds, the shaking subsides and then fades. The quiet is unnerving. I think about the Is Like I made just moments ago, without intending to.

The Array now has three reactors down. It is 50 percent off-line. One more reactor to critical failure.

Carol taps her radio. “Dammit,” she mutters.

We are not far from Reactor C. I remember the whiff of electrical fire. Target nearby, I tell her.

I go back to work.

I have never been asked to apprehend a target before. Search-and-rescue dogs find victims, mark locations, bring their handlers to the lost thing. Some avalanche dogs might dig a victim out from an embankment of snow. But we do not drag people out of danger physically—I weigh sixty-five pounds, it would not be effective—and we don’t apprehend criminals. SAR dogs use our noses to find what is missing, a subtler art than brute force.

But even though it is not something I am trained for, I am an EI dog. I am adaptable. And I have been asked to do this.

So when I almost stumble over my target ducking into a narrow crevasse between two small ducts that run along the tunnel from Reactor C’s outer control room, my speed in responding surprises me. I know exactly what to do. It isn’t the EI part of me; it is something deeper.

My body is hurry and heat. Adrenaline turns my joints to liquid fury. I hear a low snarl from my throat—not an angry sound, but eager, greedy. My front feet are extended, midair, head low, gaze locked on the thing that has only just noticed me. It is frozen in panic, then it’s not. I land in a clanging crash against the wall and grating as it skitters out from between my paws.

Carol shouts wordlessly behind me—or maybe there are words and I am too busy to make them out—but I gather my haunches beneath me and leap again. My olfactory lobe rings Rat Rat Rat and my blood simmers with something I can’t identify and part of me loathes. I am close to my quarry, inches, my neck and shoulders low to the ground and feet tucking up tight as I run. My teeth snick the air once, closing around an airy mouthful of Rat , but sink into nothing.

To bite. I want to bite it, like Mack and his stupid Kong. I am acting like an animal. I can hear it breathe, shallow quick panicked.

My target slips around a corner I didn’t even notice was there. My observational powers are shut down to a focus so narrow I am almost blind. I make a less elegant turn than my target’s, my mass carrying me wider and giving the bodydrone a chance to add distance. Boots clang behind me, Carol disadvantaged by her two legs.

Ahead there is a low nook, a crawlway for pipes and wiring. The rat drone dives into this space. I am just barely the size to fit, kicking and pushing until I am wedged in. My tail thrashes in the open passageway, trying to help me leverage my way in by canting my spine. I am fatally slowed in our chase.

But so is the drone: there is no way out. Or, not true entirely, because before I came in and blocked the light, I saw a small shaft running along the back. Probably part of the HVAC system. I also observed a joint in the shaft that was not properly sealed, a narrow crack allowing air to escape into the crawlway. I feel the breeze of it against my whiskers. This is where the bodydrone tries to squeeze itself now. It fights its way in, then backs out, squeezes in again, back end thrashing in the air. Stuck almost exactly the same way I am.

We are both stopped, at least for the moment. There is enough brain left in me to know that I don’t want to get permanently caught in this small, uncomfortable space with my elbows wedged against my rib cage. I see the space partially through heat and movement, but also through the bioenhancements given me via EI. EI dogs can see in almost no light, one of many ways I am superior to a normal dog.

So I can see the rat unstick itself from the tiny crack and turn around. It checks its panic, as I have paused my own mindless pursuit. It takes a step toward me, sits up on its haunches, and stares. For all the world, it looks as though it is considering me. Thinking.

The bodydrone driver gathering information. This rat is like a live thing, but it isn’t. It looks so very much like an animal, but there is someone else driving it. It’s a drone, and yet it moves exactly like a rat.

The hair on my back stands up, and because I am stuck it makes me want to get unstuck, to get out and away from this eerie thing. My hind claws scrabble at the brutal metal flooring, and the grating drags at the hair on my belly. My breath comes faster. I am stuck.

“Sera?” I hear, muffled, from the hallway. “What the hell are you—” Carol has reached me. Her voice helps me stop my writhing. “Ah, shit.”

The bodydrone takes another step. I can make out its eyes in the dark. Its rodent face is surprisingly expressive. Our eyes meet. It hesitates toward me.

It smells wrong. It smells like a rat. I know that this is my target because it doesn’t smell like a wild rat. It smells like a lab rat, a domestic rat. But it doesn’t smell like a drone. There’s something else, something familiar, to it.

I see thought behind its eyes.

The thing darts forward—I crush myself backward as far as I can—and a hot spike of pain scorches my nose. I yelp and the rat is gone and my limbs go stiff.

Spine goes stiff hair stiff

Rushing tingle in my neck in my bones I am downloading no don’t

My back legs kick out from under me, twitching.

“Sera!”

Don’t want

Hands on harness tugging against my shoulders, tight squeezing my elbows scraping out in front of me shoulders aching as I drag along the grating. Carol pulls me out of the bulkhead.

“Sera,” she says again. “Hey, hey. Shit. What’s wrong?”

My hind legs spasm. I shudder under Carol’s stroking hands.

“Sera,” she says again and again. “Sera, what’s wrong? Oh my god.”

My body jolts one final time as the information packet finishes forcing its way through me. Panting, I go limp.

“Sera,” Carol says. She tries her radio. “Shit. Sera.”

I am not convulsing anymore, just trembling. Trembling from what that rat transferred to me when it bit me.

I know something that I am not supposed to know. I know something I don’t want to know.

“Does anyone copy? Anders? Anyone? Shit, shit, shit.”

Carol stands over me. I lie on my side, trying to slow my breathing. Objectively I know I’ve had a panic attack in addition to experiencing mild neurological trauma, but understanding this doesn’t help me recover. My eyes would like to remain closed, my mouth slack. I know I am coming back to myself only when I move to a more comfortable position. Moments ago, I wouldn’t have noticed discomfort.

As soon as I can think, I have to govern my thoughts.

Carol crouches to rest a hand on my neck. The touch jerks me upright to rest on my elbows.

“Hey, shh.”

I am not helpless. I am a working EI SAR dog and I have a job. I can work, I ping. Carol looks at her DAT, then back at me. She stands up slowly.