Short Story: Man's Best Friend
Space: the canine frontier
Image credit: NASA
I’ve promised short fiction as part of my offerings from this newsletter, and here’s the first. Written back in 2014, it’s one I’m really happy with, though it was interesting to revisit it after a few years for editing tweaks. For me, it would nestle happily within the pages of a pulp science fiction from the 1950s.
Man’s Best Friend
By James White
TUESDAY was yellow sludge day.
Rex hated Tuesday. But then, he hated just about every day that happened by. He hated the seconds, the minutes, the hours, those days, the months they fuelled and the years those months grew up to be. He’d describe them all as ditchwater dull. But then, Rex had never seen ditchwater. The only water Rex ever saw was served directly in a tube from his ComPact 300 Sustenance Delivery System. It tasted of chemicals. This was preferable to it tasting like its source: the toilet. Oh, the joys of recycling!
At the start of this cycle (morning was such an old-fashioned term) Rex was awakened from a deep, narcotic-induced sleep by the cheery beeping of his onboard computer system. With a simulated voice announcing the date and time, plus a schedule of the duties to be carried out for the day, it was intended to offer some human contact. In this respect, it failed miserably. It was like being locked in a metal tomb with an electronic demon attempting to kill him with boredom. Rex, somewhat unsurprisingly, hated it. He could hardly avoid it, though; there weren’t many places to go when your current location was a tiny advanced listening post on the outskirts of the solar system. No ship was attached to Post 192, and signals from Earth took months to make the trip. The only way to get a real-time chat was using the Gravi-Pulse relay system, which sped the communications up using some complicated scientific process Rex was only obliquely aware of. And that required most of the Post’s energy, which was why it would only be employed should something – or someone – arrive that Earth needed to know about urgently. In the ten years that he’d been out here, nothing of the sort had occurred. Rex had seen nothing, heard nothing and was seriously beginning to think the whole gig was a big joke. That he’d signed up for the Astro Programme without really thinking it through. “Join The Corps!” screamed the posters. “See The Galaxy! Do Your Part!” A moustachioed Colonel who appeared to have stepped from a Cluedo game had interviewed him. The Colonel made some noise about “opportunities for thrusting young men, rich in life’s bounty”, and Rex had bought the deal hook, line and sinker.
Here he was, then, at the start of yet another mind-crushing cycle. Nothing much to look forward to (he’d seen every Holovid and heard every book-on-digifile a thousand times) except watching his screen and trying to resist opening one of the airlocks and stepping outside for an exciting, if short, spacesuit-free walk. He’d had his share of exciting moments, though: there was the time he thought an alien battle fleet was approaching, and he was halfway through cranking up the Gravi-Pulse when he realised it was, in fact, the mushy remains of a nutribar he’d dropped on to the screen while doing something else. You can understand, then, that he stepped into the waste unit without much enthusiasm. Picking one of the hundred or so magazine titles available as text on a small screen, he sat down and began to read.
Which is where Rex’s life suddenly took a rather interesting turn. The irony of it was that he never got to experience most of it.
Deep within the waste unit’s complex innards, a minor problem was steadily growing worse. Unnoticed by the usually efficient onboard nano-repair droids (most of whom were currently engaged in the nanobot equivalent of a smoke and a nice cup of tea), the piping system that fed a device designed to freeze and eject Rex’s waste matter had become corroded. Then it had become backed up.
Then it exploded. Just as he was reading, for the 700th time, about the grooming habits of Today’s Fashionable Woman, Rex was enveloped in a cloud of freezing gas and unprocessed faeces. Before he could react, the gas had performed its designed task and hardened into a shell. The malfunction spread, leaving the Post’s command system little choice but to jettison the unit. With a brief scan to confirm the lack of life readings, the entire waste unit was punted free of the hull and left to drift nearby. Satisfied that it had followed regulations every step of the way, the command system attempted to inform its human controller. Which was when it discovered that he was, according to the readings, no longer aboard. Alarms and claxons whined and howled like a lost child at the mall.
Now imagine for a moment that you’re watching a really, really expensive film. It is at this point that the camera zooms out into space and performs a glorious, sweeping pan across the local area. Rotating on one axis, the shot gracefully locates a sun-eclipsing cruiser, the head of a swarming fleet, making its way swiftly towards Post 192 and its little shittelite. The lead vessel is a thing of beauty, a testament to its makers and a truly wondrous sight to behold. It’s just a shame that the nearest person who could behold it is frozen in a state of hibernation.
Zooming once more, the camera penetrates the hull of this travelling marvel and stops before the striding feet of High Priest Haruff.
Haruff, essentially an upright Collie wearing a monk’s robes, walked quickly down the corridor connecting the living chambers of the huge Sirius 5 cruiser to its bridge. His sensitive nose twitched as he took in the many smells surrounding him. The loud, clanging alert hurt his ears. He’d spent a pleasant morning meditating, and hoped that this interruption was a worthwhile one. He told the captain, a proud-looking being that resembled nothing so much as an Alsatian, exactly how he was feeling. The captain snorted.
“Your eminence, I wouldn’t have called you here were it not a matter of utmost urgency!”
“Spare me the pleasantries, Captain Rowf. I’ve no time for them.”
“As you wish. Our sensors have finally located the source of the Great Insult.”
“You have made certain?” Haruff was all business; there could be no room for doubt in this matter.
“We have. We are currently at the edge of the offenders’ system. I predict we will be in firing range of their home planet within the hour.” Rowf had a triumphant gleam in his eye. Haruff disliked him intensely. He knew how many arses Rowf had sniffed to get this assignment. He was a liability.
“And what of the… other issue? The prophecy?” Haruff was hesitant to broach it. He knew the military types often looked upon it as nonsense.
Rowf reacted predictably. He sneered. “This is a mission of war, your grace. We are not on a religious quest.”
“Curse your hindquarters! You know the prophecy is important to our people!” Haruff literally quivered with indignity. Rowf merely laughed.
“Calm yourself, your religiousness. We have scanned, but found no sign of the object.”
“Keep scanning. Inform me the moment you find anything.” Rowf replied by turning back to the view screen that dominated the bridge.
The fleet of one thousand ships, the entire Sirian population in one huge convoy, swarmed through the solar system. Without warning from its farthest listening post, the Earth was entirely unprepared for the new arrivals. Picking off tiny colonies from the skin of Jupiter’s moons and Mars with the ease of a toddler scraping scabs, the vast collection of vessels arrived in orbit of the planet they had designated Terror 1. There were to be no terms, no negotiations and no allowances for mercy. The Sirians merely re-broadcast the message that had so offended them. So every person on Earth was left to wonder at the strange vision that danced across the sky: a recording of an American man playing fetch with an ordinary Earth dog. Some recognised it as a message that had been included in a deep space probe years before. They realised that the probe had done its job, and drawn an alien species to Earth. Millions were excited. Millions more were worried.
Everyone died.
Laboriously, the grand Sirian armada turned itself around and began the leisurely journey to its next destination, its grand mission accomplished.
Haruff was deeply asleep when the message intruded upon his dreams. But the excitable, insistent voice of his assistant awakened him instantly. They had found what they believed to be the prophesied object.
On its way back through the solar system, one of the fleet’s religious vessels had chanced upon a crystalline structure that resembled one of the most famous Sirian legends. Once it had been brought on board, it slowly began to melt. The stench that emerged would have knocked most humans flat. To the Sirians, however, it was a pungent, transcendent message.
Sadly, events soon took an extremely devout turn. To whit: opposing interpretations of the Great Smell developed. Haruff’s people believed it was sent by the great Wolf God and was his message to the faithful. The smell had been captured and was broadcast to all the ships.
But once the crystal finished melting, and Rex’s body had slumped from within, there sparked a new wave of belief. Buried within the Sirian religious structure, hated and feared by the mainstream, was the thought that perhaps the bipedal creature in the original offending message was the One True God. Rex’s preserved but utterly brain dead body was stolen by what Haruff would describe as fanatics. Electronic stimulation led to a few mumbled words, which were quickly taken as the New Blessing: “Harrruph… Urgh… Ehhh…”
Arguments began to flare up. Dissidents on both sides blew up ships to make their point. Though given this was a space-borne colony, exploding vessels to try and convert fellow Sirians to a particular cause was a rather self-defeating idea. A squabble became a spat, and that moved swiftly on to become the first (and last) great Holy War of the Sirians. Brother canine fought brother canine. Sister canine was at first not permitted to fight, the males fearing that they’d only get hurt, or be in the way, or cry, or something. Which is why, when the proverbial dust settled, in this case, the burning remains of the losing battle cruiser falling among Saturn’s rings, only one ship was left operational. And it was almost entirely crewed by female members of the species. The freshly rechristened Siria’s Glory limped from the site of that climatic clash back to the one place the crew knew they could safely live while they literally licked wounds and rebuilt their society.
Which is how the remaining members of Sirian society came to live on the now deserted, rubble-strewn planet once known as Earth. Thankfully for the canines, the world was still habitable and after a few decades, they were well into the task of re-populating the species and struggling their way back to former glories. A hundred years passed in a blaze of invention and growth. New ships were built, but with the limited resources available, the Sirians opted to stay within the solar system. Before long, listening posts had been established, cannibalised from the old Human stations. Not exactly the most luxurious or heavily contested assignments among the star fleet’s crews, but necessary nonetheless. Volunteers were soon staffing these isolated little cans, including one situated at the furthest reaches of the New Sirian System. CommFang 6 had only one crew member aboard: a pug-like creature named for the One True God. Rex Tailbiter was hardly the best of the best. But he’d do. If only the menu wasn’t so bland in these postings!
Take Tuesday. Tuesday was yellow sludge day.
Rex hated Tuesday.