“Shhhhhhhhh.”
Then later, “Quiet, Shep.”
Another interval, then another. “Chasing rabbits, girl? Hush. We’ve got a journey ahead tomorrow.”
Journey?
She opened one eye. Timmons was hunched in his chair by the fire, hands hanging in a loose clasp like an open clam.
He was getting old, Shep noticed. She noticed that a lot lately. How thin and white his hair was. How thin and white he was. And how the skin between his fingers and thumb when he reached for her face was slack and soft.
“Good girl, Shep,” he said.
She heaved herself up and went to him, rested her chin on his knee and waited for him to scratch her nose. He obliged immediately. But soon the crick in her neck forced her to lay back down on the floor at his feet.
“Good dog,” said Timmons.
Shep whined.
~ * ~
“Wake up, Shep. Good girl. Time to go.”
It was morning. She knew this because the lights were off and a milky blur filled the windows. As close to daylight as they got nowadays. Dust covered everything, covered the world, covered up the light and the days and the seasons.
Timmons was holding out the lead and harness.
“I’m sorry, girl. We gotta do this, it’s the law.”
Insistent. He slipped the harness over her head and buckled it over her back while she struggled to rise. The stiffness in her elbows slowed her down.
She made a low growl that she hoped sounded like “where are we going?”, but Timmons didn’t answer.
They left the apartment and walked out across unscented turf to a covered carriage, black and gleaming like stone. A chestnut horse fronted it, and gave Shep a disdainful look as she approached. She stared imperiously back. Not because it was a horse, but because it was working class when she herself was clearly something better.
A man stepped from behind the carriage. A stranger with a wet face. Not wet like water; wet like drunkenness and want.
“There by nightfall?” he asked. “Only, the horse will need tending by then.”
He said it like a challenge.
“Leave it with me,” said Timmons. “I know animals.”
The man chuckled. An odd sound, his laugh; a toneless, nasal thing, like he was trying to breathe through water. Shep stifled an instinctive growl.
“See that,” he nodded, indicating Shep. “Haven’t seen a dog in years.”
He hunkered down in front of her and she let out a whine, then a grunt as his hand landed smack on her skull. He rubbed at her ears and pulled at the loose skin of her neck.
“Quiet, isn’t she?” he observed. “Unusual breed.”
“Last of her litter, too.”
The man stank of sweat like onions. He was lean and rough. Calloused on his hands, face and elbows. Shep thought maybe he was a turtle hiding out as a man. There was something determined about him. But little that was slow, she sensed. She suffered the pull of his fingers on her ears.
“What was she before her mash? That what you call it?” the man asked.
Timmons nodded. “A scientist. A man.”
“Yeah? My mother-in-law, she was undistinguished, if you don’t mind me saying,” replied the man. “Wealthy, though. Got herself mashed into a litter of kittens. Fitted her brain all neat into theirs. Most of ‘em made it, too. They were five-gen. You types had it pretty much right by then, eh?”
Timmons nodded. “Shep here is one-gen.”
“No! Thought they were all done for by now?”
“You just don’t hear about them. We keep them pretty close.”
“She a toy?”
Timmons shook his head. “No, she’s not cleared for work with children. We didn’t do the same extensive pre-mash testing as now ...”
The onion-stink man made cluck-clucking noises with his tongue. “Too monstrous, eh? The kids I mean.”
He laughed that drowning laugh again.
Timmons had a sad droop of a half-smile on his face.
“She’s fine with me,” he said. “I’m Timmons, by the way.”
“Hendricks,” said the man, and gave a kind of bow. Like he was proud Timmons had even bothered to ask.
He turned to the horse and gave the address.
“Sure,” said the horse, eyeing Shep again.
Voice box, thought Shep resentfully. She clambered up the ramp and settled against the carriage floor. From the window she saw the bald Sun rise with clockwork smoothness, lighting the dusty air with opulent fire as it slow-dived upwards.
She dozed again, woke and dozed all day. Once she thought she saw a child’s face, his mouth a perfect frozen O of terror, his pale hair clamped to his skull and his skin white under ice. She whined and rose with a start, ignoring the stab of pain in her back. But there was no child. Only the Moon, its engine bearing it skyward after its stint as the Sun. Moon and Sun were one globe. Artificial stand-ins for the real things, which had long disappeared behind dust and the detritus of human waste.
The carriage rolled on. Her uncut nails clattered on the floor as she turned in three tight circles and then fell rather than sat, back legs stiff and unwieldy.
“Steady on,” said Timmons affectionately. He reached to smooth her brow and scratch her snout.
Shep made a hooting sound. “Roow? Ooow?” she asked.
“Who? You mean who are we visiting?” asked Timmons. He ran the back of one hand down the length of her jowls. “The sister of your mash-human. She knew you when you were Joseph Shepherd. We need to ask her ...”
He drifted back into one of those sad smiles.
Shep settled with her head on his foot, lulled to sleep by the steady rumble of the carriage.
When she woke next it was because Timmons had moved his shoe out from under her. There was a thin line of drool smearing his toe and she whined in apology.
Timmons was at the carriage door.
“I had no idea how remote your home was!” he called, jumping to the ground.
“Remote all right. Last remote place on God’s dull, brown Earth, eh?” came a voice that creaked and split with age.
Shep reached the carriage doorway and spied an old woman with gnarled shoulders and a loose housedress like a tent. She looked sure and cautious.
“This is Shep,” said Timmons.
“Ha. Shep, is it?” said the woman, reaching out a hand, like they all did, to scratch at Shep’s skull. Her fingers were like needles. “Bernese, eh? Bernese mountain dog. Swiss breed.”
“That’s right. You know your animals.”
“I do that. Don’t see a lot of ‘em anymore. Labs take them all for mash, of course.” She eyed Timmons bitterly. “Too many human brains they want preserving, they reckon. Can’t keep up with demand. Can’t afford to feed them all! But I remember when them was just good, old-fashioned pets.”
“The Bernese were bred for their stable neurology.”
“Right, right. Out of my league that neuro-mash stuff,” said the woman. “Well, how you getting down from there, old thing?”
Timmons pulled out the ramp and the woman let out another ha! of exclamation.
“New-fangled things,” she said. “And I suppose the horse is mashed, too?”
“I am,” called the horse, making the woman laugh in a long series of ha-ha-has, bending forward so her gnarled back rose above her head.
“All this work on the brain,” she said. “Still most people in poverty, farming’s all to hell, food’s to be stolen from fields when farmers ain’t looking. Had me a good worker last year. Poisoned himself on potato plant. Go figure! Not the potatoes themselves, the berries. Ate the berries. Starving, he said! Died on my own lawn. Nothing to be done. No doctors out here. Well, come in then.”
She gestured them to the door of her home. It was a modest place with a narrow front, three concrete steps, slit windows with a pale wash of light behind them. Only on the first floor, though. All the other windows were closed and dark.
“Local scientist asked if I wanted to mash the boy’s brain. His brain! Got no animals for it, I told him, and no funds. Besides,” she led them into the narrow corridor, “if he had a good brain, wouldn’t have eaten those berries.”
Timmons said politely, “Of course, it was your brother’s work which made that question possible at all. Before Joseph, there was no neuro -”
“Yeah, yeah, heard it before,” said the woman. “Straight through to the back. Front room’s a mess, I’m afraid. Hardly ever get up the stairs anymore, so down here’s all there is for me. Back courtyard. Not too cold out there yet.”
~ * ~
Shep was shivering, her belly on the cold pavement, the bare Moon clicking across its programme above her. Timmons rested a hand on her neck. He was silent, lost in his head. She recognized this posture from the times he was working, trying to undo a knot in his mind.
When the woman returned she was carrying a tray with teapot and cups, plus a plate of flat biscuits. Shep didn’t recognize the woman. A fault of time, she figured - time either acting on the woman’s face or Shep’s memory.
“Ms Holly, do you mind if ...?” said Timmons, reaching for a biscuit and gesturing towards Shep.
“Feed the dog my good biscuits, eh? Well, fair enough. Don’t know that Joseph ever liked biscuits, truth be told.”
Shep sucked the crumbs from her teeth.
“You weren’t much in contact with your brother in his later years, I understand?”
“Later years,” said Holly. “Early years. Most of the years! Nearly twenty years between our births. Different mothers, of course.”
She handed Timmons a cup with a delicate painted flower along its side.
“But I’m sure you must be aware of his pioneering work in neurology?” Timmons persisted. “He fashioned the entire process for mashing human brains to animal hosts -”
Holly bit into a biscuit triumphantly, crumbs littering her lips and spilling unheeded to her chest.
“I know it,” she said. “Left nothing for his family, you understand? Don’t know why he was so hung up on the brain. S’pose he was always trying to save his kid brother, eh? You know Joseph’s history, I’m assuming.” She leaned back, lost inside her own memories. “Brain the seat of the soul, and all that. Did he say? Why, that is. Did he say why?”
She looked vulnerable and hollow. An old woman in a floral housedress with a stained apron and stale biscuits in her pantry, unaccustomed to company. Shep rose from her spot on the floor and moved to Holly’s side, allowing the woman’s sharp fingers to find her neck. She felt a sudden wave of sympathy. Everything in the world seemed old nowadays, and Holly was just part of it.
“I’m sorry,” said Timmons. “I was a junior when your brother was head of the lab. I didn’t know him well.”
Holly nodded. “Didn’t like to fraternize, did he? Like that with family, too.”
“You say his younger brother died? Your brother?”
Holly nodded, coughed, choked, spat a wave of crumbs into the air. She teared up and her face went red, and Timmons leaned forward in alarm lest she collapse. But in a moment the scene righted itself and Holly took a slurp of her tea.
“Henry, yes.” She coughed. Continued, “Younger than Joseph, a year older than me. I don’t remember him too well. Guess I was, what, three? Joseph was an adult by then. Twenty-something, I guess, meant to be looking after us, but he liked to sneak out all the time. Henry always followed. Wanted to be like his older brother. Some boys have that. Can’t fight it. Wasn’t a thing Joseph could say to stop him.”
Holly told it to Timmons like she’d been there herself, but Shep didn’t need the explanation. She saw it all in her mind, like a series of old photographs. Henry on the crust of the lake in winter, Henry bending to touch the ice and then falling headlong, a spray of water like a cloak fanning out to mark his fall.
“They found him,” Holly asserted. “Four months too late, they did. The doctor said he must’ve found an air pocket. Small one. Suffocated in it. Darnedest thing. Wasn’t drowning that killed him, it was the lack of oxygen to his brain.”
Shep whined.
Holly reached to lift Shep’s chin and peer into her eyes. She smelled of cookie dough and damp walls.
“Still in there, Joseph?”
She smiled.
“Shep’s the last of the litter,” said Timmons.
Holly nodded. “All this work to save his brain. And it was his liver that killed him. Joseph, I mean. If he’d turned all his science on the liver instead, might still be alive!” She gazed thoughtfully at Timmons. “So, what d’you want from me?”
“Permission.”
“Aha. For?”
Timmons hesitated. “To let Joseph rest.”
There was a whistle from Holly, a low, impressed noise. She leaned back so Shep couldn’t see her face anymore.
Shep turned to look at Timmons but he wouldn’t meet her gaze either.
“You want to put the dog down?”
“She’s old.”
“We’re all old.”
“Some months ago, she attacked a child.” Timmons rubbed at his eyes. “It was ... savage. His parents fund - or have funded, at least - a lot of the work in our lab. The child suffered head injuries. He’s still in a coma.”
Shep wracked her brain, but there were dozens of children’s faces in her memory. She couldn’t distinguish one from another. Only Henry was clear, blue with death and cold in the thawing lake.
“You want to destroy the dog for destroying a child?”
“She’s become dangerous.”
“So’s your science, if you ask me. So’s your penchant for killing animals. That not important? And is it that she hurt a child, or is it that she hurt the wrong child?”
She held up a hand to stop his answer. “I’d like to think it’s all about the, what, the sanctity of human life, eh? But it’s not that. No. It’s the sanctity of the chosen human lives, the ones you think worth saving, the ones worth mashing. Nothing for the rest of us, though.”
Timmons said quietly, “It’s not ... We think the bestial part of the brain is overwhelming Joseph. Wiping him out. We think Joseph is dying already. The brain is so malleable, you see, and the science so new. Joseph was a genius. If he’d lived we might have made more progress -”
“So,” Holly interrupted with a triumphant laugh, “the dog is trying to survive. That what you’re saying? The dog is eating the man.”
Timmons didn’t nod, didn’t move, didn’t acknowledge what she’d said at all.
“The one-gens were pure experiment. We’ve enabled them to continue as long as they can. To see how long the brain will retain its original mash. Other generations are put down earlier -”
“When you’ve had your fill of them? When they’ve fulfilled the purpose you chose them for? How humane.”
Timmons didn’t answer.
Holly humphed. “And Joseph’s real brain? You kept it?”
“Lost -”
“Lost?”
“In an attack on the labs. Anti-research groups,” Timmons continued.
“That’s what got me out of research, you know,” Holly said. “Animal rights groups.”
“These particular ones weren’t pro-animal,” said Timmons. “They were religious -”
“Ah! The ones that claim the brain is the seat of the soul, hey? Wowsers,” Holly spat. “They don’t like researchers playing God. Full of self-righteousness, like everybody in this game. They’re right, though.”
“About the soul?”
“About Joseph. Playing God.”
Shep snuffled and coughed, and Holly reached down again to stroke her ears. This time with more gentleness. When Holly next spoke, her voice had a new calm to it.
“An entire litter of pups,” she said. “And what happens to the soul, do you reckon? Does it split, or are they replicas of the same soul? Does each soul carry the same stain?”
She grinned, an unsettling sight. The teeth in her head were discoloured and narrow, and the lines from her eyes to her hairline crowded her skin and turned her face into a loose mask.
“Such arrogance,” she murmured. “To think animal nature is lower than human nature. To think we can use animals as ready-made teacups for the human brain.”
When Timmons didn’t respond, she added quietly, “Never struck you as odd, how many children’s bodies Joseph was able to source? For his research?”
“In times of poverty,” Timmons’ voice was cold, “children -”
“Are cheaper?”
Holly’s hand was still.
Shep watched them stare at each other unblinkingly, their silhouettes stark against the smoky dark sky.
Timmons rose to his feet. “Thank you,” he said, “for your hospitality.”
“Well. Not at all.”
She saw them to the door, Shep limping with the pain in her hind legs. As Timmons operated the ramp to the carriage, Holly leant down and addressed Shep one more time.
“Best thing for you, old girl,” she said. “Joseph was so afraid of death he couldn’t look away from it. But you don’t need that, hey? Just need to rest. Nothing to be afraid of there.”
Shep let out a soft whine. There was a comforting familiarity in Holly’s presence and she found she didn’t want to lose it.
“Joseph told me once,” she said more loudly, “when I complained about the experiments on kids. He told me research is never clean. Progress relies on sacrifice. And a refusal to be reasonable, that’s what he said. Think there’s anything in that? Gotta be unreasonable to push progress forward, so he said. Can’t take things lying down.”
Timmons was harnessing a resisting horse.
“Up, Shep,” he said, lowering the carriage ramp. Then to Holly, “I’m sure I couldn’t say.”
He climbed into the carriage and slammed the door behind him. Holly rested her hand on the window, staying them.
“Reasonable men,” said Holly, “couldn’t do what you do.”
Shep turned to Timmons, but he was staring at his host with blank eyes.
“Funny thing about Bernese, though,” she nodded towards Shep. “They’re quiet. Rarely bark. Good with cattle. Good with kids, too. Not vicious. Not a vicious bone in their bodies. Can’t see how you’d ever call them bestial.”
She moved off and raised her hand in a wave.
~ * ~
“There, there, girl.”
Timmons slumped in his seat, finger across lip, eyes fixed on the haze masking the horizon. She nudged his leg and he shushed her, but offered nothing more in the way of comfort. Shep whined once to herself and slept, the rumble and clump of their progress rocking her to sleep.
When she woke the sky was boiling pink and the desert beneath it was a blurred red. She rose stiffly, dull pain in her ribs and elbows.
Timmons was dozing, his chin on his shoulder and his arms slack at his sides. He looked washed out, as if dawn and wakefulness might never find him.
Shep sniffed the air. She growled.
Onions.
“What -” Timmons roused, but the rest of what he’d meant to say was lost behind a muffled cry.
The carriage came to an abrupt stop that sent Shep skidding. Timmons too had to hold onto his seat against the momentum.
Two men moved into the carriage, oxygen masks on their faces. One moved fast towards Timmons and pushed a cloth to his face. Timmons fought blindly, his cries becoming more distant until they stopped.
Shep moved to stand, splinters of pain shooting through her back. She landed a bite on the leg of the nearest man, and he yelped and lashed out with his foot. She was sent skidding to the far side of the carriage where she hit the wall hard. She let out a yelp and swerved back to the fray. But the other man leapt on her with a cloth in one hand, pressing it to her snout.
Timmons had fallen to the side, mouth open. Shep tried to call out, but her vision rolled and she fell choking into a darkness deeper than sleep.
~ * ~
When she came to she was on her side. The uneven floor dug into her ribs, bruising her with each roll and lurch of the vehicle. Loud music was playing and there was a stink of vegetables. She was in a van, she realized, its high windows covered in dark cloth. Impossible to tell if it was day or night.
She stiffened at the sounds of voices.
“Is he for my birthday?”
A child’s voice. Shep tried to rise but her first few attempts were thwarted by the rough roads. Her back creaked and refused to bend, her claws scrambled for purchase. She struggled, finally, to a sitting position.
“That’s right, son.”
There was a man at the steering wheel. No mash-driver for him. She could smell animals, though, beneath the reek of onions.
Onions.
She craned forward. The smell was unmistakable. Sure enough she spotted Hendricks, their onion-stink stable owner. The man who’d given them the horse and carriage. She whined to herself. Where was Timmons?
She moved closer to the back of the seat. From there she could make out the halo of hair that marked the child sitting beside the driver.
“He’s a she, son,” said Hendricks. “She’s very rare. And smart! Ever seen a dog before, Huck?”
There was silence from the boy, but his hair spun in the Moonlight.
“What about in books? You seen dogs in books?”
“Sometimes,” said Huck. “Sometimes they bite.”
Hendricks chuckled, wet and snide. “Those are old books. Dogs don’t bite anymore. They’re just like people now.”
“Yeah?”
“Good people,” Hendricks assured the boy. “Hand-chosen for their brains. Well, not your grandmother, she chose herself. But this one, this dog, was a scientist.”
There was a photo hanging from the rear-view mirror, a boy with a grin as wide as his face, eyes screwed up against the light. With the Moon behind the photo like that, the boy looked blue. Like he was suffocating, Shep thought. She tensed.
She edged closer, the radio masking the clack-clack of her nails. There was a growl trapped in her throat, but she held it there.
“She’ll keep you company when Daddy’s at work. See?” Hendricks was saying.
“Okay.”
Beyond the windscreen the night loomed starkly. To the right, Shep saw the rough earth edge of a cliff rising above them. On the other side of the car, nothing. Just night and the Moon.
“It’ll be just like having a grown-up looking after you.”
“Okay,” said Huck again.
Shep eased in close. Her snout was just above the boy’s head. She could smell the sweat in his hair and the dirty synthetic clothing he wore. He needed a bath, she thought with unaccustomed clarity. He should be clean.
A sneer pulled her lips above her teeth. She watched the small skull beneath her, the tender mechanisms of its little brain sliding in and out of place. She eased back and placed her front legs on the seat.
The growl escaped her then.
The man turned in a daze, the smile still on his face.
Shep pushed forward, aiming to snap her jaw around the boy’s neck.
Protect the brain, she thought. Protect and preserve the brain.
The pain in her back snagged her and she came up short. Her jaw clamped down hard on the child’s skull and the impact sent a shudder all the way to her chest.
She’d never liked the taste of blood.
The boy screamed and screamed. He tried to pull away but Shep was too strong. She shook him almost gently, trying to work her way to his neck.
He was screaming without pause, his hands held out stiff in front of him.
“Let go,” shouted Hendricks. “Let go of my boy!”
He had one hand on the steering wheel. With the other he landed a punch to the side of Shep’s head. She grunted but held fast.
He punched her again. Again and again until her grip loosened.
The boy tipped forward, exposing the back of his neck and Shep dived for him, grabbing hold of the skin beneath his hair. Her back erupted in a fierce pain like fire.
But at least after that the boy stopped screaming.
Hendricks’ face had gone slack. He wasn’t watching the road, Shep noted. He was staring at Huck with the expression of someone waking from a dream.
“Huck,” he whispered.
He reached for his son with both hands.
Shep tried to shout a warning, but it was muffled against the boy’s neck.
Free to follow its own nose, the van slid towards the edge of the road and off and out, arcing across the empty air towards the Moon.
* * * *
Deborah Biancotti is a Sydney-based writer. Her first published story won the 2001 Aurealis Award for Best Horror Short Story and her first collection, A Book of Endings, was shortlisted for the 2010 William L. Crawford Award for Best First Fantasy Book. Her fiction has appeared in Clockwork Phoenix, Eidolon 1, Ideomancer, infinity plus, Australian Dark Fantasy And Horror and Prime’s Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror. She has new work coming out from Twelfth Planet and Eneit Presses, a novella from Gilganiesh Press and an essay in Scarecrow Press’ Twenty-First Century Gothic. She is wrapping up her first novel.