The Creatures of Man (28 page)

"Okay, 502," the speaker responded. "Move out."

Cosman put the bus in gear and rolled forward. The inner door of the Westwall Emergency Lock folded aside as the bus approached. When it was passed, the door closed and the outer door, a hundred feet ahead, swung apart. The bus passed through it and into the swirling blackness of the outdoors.

He heard Haddon gasp at the sudden darkness and wondered if this was the man's first mission. "The smoke thins when we get a few hundred yards from the Dome," he said, keeping his attention on the dashboard instruments.

"How . . . ?" Haddon started, then apparently thought it better to leave his question unasked.

Cosman nursed the bus along, partly by feel and partly by the radarscope which revealed the position of the guidewall along the edge of the ramp. After a couple of minutes he brought the bus onto the South Sandusky Dome expressway, switched on the autopilot, and sat back.

"Your first mission, Haddon?" he asked.

"Well . . . the first real one. I've had mock-up training, of course."

"Okay. You know where the coffee is?"

"Oh, certainly!"

"Fine. That's part of the second driver's job. Go get us some. Make mine black."

"Mine with white and sweet," said Mabry.

Haddon got up and moved out of the cockpit, back into the passenger section. Cosman and Mabry watched him go; then the driver looked up at the gunner. Mabry shrugged elaborately and chuckled. Cosman spread his hands in a gesture of hopelessness and the gunner chuckled again and nodded.

After a moment Mabry asked, "How close can we get on the expressway?"

"To within a couple of miles, I think." Cosman got out his road map, triangulated the position he had been given for the downed plane, and marked the spot on the map. "Yeah. A little less than two miles. Plenty of old roads there. We probably won't need to use the tracks to get in."

Haddon returned with the covered coffee mugs in time to hear the end of that.

"Is it in . . . dog country?" he asked.

Mabry answered, "Everything outside is dog country, bud. Everything except the Bog."

"Oh." Haddon handed a mug up to the gunner, then brought Cosman his.

"In fact," Mabry went on, "even inside the Dome seems to be dog country."

Cosman frowned. Old Mabry had his good points, but holding his tongue wasn't one of them. Remarks like that one shouldn't be made. They could get a guy in trouble. Especially in front of a stranger like Haddon, who might blab.

"No coffee for yourself?" he asked to change the subject.

"It might tense me up," said Haddon, peering at the blank blackness of the windshield.

Mabry guffawed. "Good thinking, bud! You gotta stay loose to be a rescueman. Some folks say the dogs pick the people who smell afraid to pull down. So don't get in a sweat and you'll be okay."

Haddon turned to look up at the gunner, and Cosman could see the look of dislike in his eyes. "You don't know what you're talking about!" Haddon sniffed.

Mabry laughed, pulled his mask aside, took a long swig of coffee, and replaced the mask.

Cosman activated the windshield washer and switched on the headlights. The heavy trucks rumbling past the bus on the fast inside lane now became visible . . . huge dark forms running on their automatic controls, each one sending its spout of black exhaust up to mingle with the thinner smog of the dawn-touched sky.

"Won't the lights tell the dogs this is a manned vehicle?" Haddon asked uneasily. "I mean . . . not that I think the dogs are
intelligent,
or anything like that . . ."

"For whatever reason, the dogs never bother a bus on its way to a rescue," Cosman replied evenly. He was becoming angry in spite of himself. This effeminate kid Haddon did not belong in rescue work, that was for damned sure. The Labor Draft Board had either goofed badly or was scraping the bottom of the barrel. And old Mabry wasn't making things any better by putting the kid on.

And no copters on this mission. That was the worst annoyance of all. It was . . . surrender. It was letting the dogs have things their way, without even an attempt to fight them off. It was admitting defeat.

"Not that I think the dogs are
intelligent,
or anything like
tha-a-at,"
Mabry gurgled, mimicking Haddon, "it's just that they're so
fa-a-ast.
That's because they can metabolize smog when they ain't metabolizing people. You know why they ain't eaten me and Joe, boy?"

Haddon, with tightly pursed lips, kept a frigid silence.

"Because we're too sexy!" Mabry answered his own question. "The dogs don't bother good breeders, and they know that's me and Joe, because they can smell woman-sweat on us. Right, Joe?"

"If you say so, Mike," Cosman said with what he hoped was discouraging indifference.

"So if you want to last long, boy," Mabry ran on, "you better get yourself a broad to rub against. That's what it takes to stay alive, boy, and it might even make a man out of you. Ain't that right, Joe?"

"You're doing the talking, Mike, not me," Cosman grunted.

This silenced Mabry for a while. Then he grumbled, "Everybody's afraid to know anything, too damn scared to put two and two together. Well, everybody can go to hell, far as I'm concerned!"

"Some people think they know it all!" snapped Haddon. Cosman winced, because that remark would start Mabry up again just when the old gunner had settled into a glum silence.

"Some people know a few things," Mabry replied. "Me, I used to read, back when it was still all right to read. I read about evolution, for one thing. . ."

"Big deal!" snorted Haddon.

"They didn't teach you as much about evolution as you think, boy. They told you about the origin of species in school, didn't they? But did they tell you that for a hundred years after evolution was discovered nobody saw a new species get originated? Thousands and thousands of species, but not a single new one in a whole century! What do you think of that, boy?"

"I don't think of it at all!" Haddon said.

"Well, you ought to. Because after the smog rolled in, there were new species all over the place. That was something old Darwin didn't figure on, kid . . . that species changed when the world around them changed. Because they
had
to change. So now there's dogs who don't just breathe smog. They can live on the stuff when meat's scarce. What do you think makes 'em so strong?"

"You're blabbering nonsense!" Haddon retorted with desperation in his voice. "Dogs breathe smog because they're used to it! That's all."

Mabry chuckled and yawned. "I sure could've used a couple hours more sleep," he said.

Cosman glanced at Haddon. The young man's face was pale with fear and anger. Well, the kid would have to learn to ignore old Mike's crackpot theorizings, as he had himself, if he became a regular in bus 502.

Because it was no good, trying to figure out the dogs. The best thing was not to even think about them. A guy could drive himself nuts wondering how dumb animals could do what the dogs did . . .

He took the bus off autopilot and swung it off the expressway onto a cracked, weed-grown ramp. There was a lot of light outside now, with the sky a lighter gray than it ever was over the Dome, even at midday. He glanced at the map again, picking out the markings which were likely to still represent recognizable roads that would lead to the vicinity of the plane.

"Ain't you going to get a copter to talk us in?" asked Mabry.

"No copters this trip," he grunted.

"Ah! The brass hats must be wising up," said the gunner with evident satisfaction.

"You mean we're . . . unprotected?" Haddon quavered to Cosman.

"We'll be okay," Cosman assured him. "Mabry can work that gun on the roof as fast as he can his mouth, when he has to."

Mabry laughed. "That I can, kid. And it's a great kick, shooting at our betters. I just wish they wasn't so damn hard to hit!"

Slav had returned, and Glitter hunched down beside him as they watched the humans help each other climb out of the plane. Clog, Blackeye, and Paddler were inside, having dropped through the acidcut hole in the roof, snarling and snapping at the laggards. But there was no smell of fresh blood; the dogs inside had not had to slash anybody to get their obedience.

Brist had been inside, too, but he had leaped back through the hole to stand on top of the plane. He was looking down at the people milling around outside and barking happily. He was a young dog, feeling the vigor of full adulthood for the first time, and was plainly excited.

Glitter called Slav's attention to him, and her mate rose to walk indifferently past the humans, who drew back nervously at his approach. He stared up at Brist and growled warningly. A dog alone on top of the plane would be a perfect target, not only for a copter but even for a bus gunner.

Brist gave a nonchalant yap, but after a moment he skittered back to the tail assembly and jumped to the ground.

Thinking of copters, Glitter looked at the ground around her. She spotted several stones of about the right size—small enough for a dog to grasp by the teeth and sling high in the air, but large and heavy enough to reach the rotor blades through the heavy down-current of air, and damage those blades when they struck them.

All the humans were out of the plane now, and the dogs were beginning to move among them. They had stood in a tight clot at first, but this broke up as they drew apart to give the dogs plenty of room. Soon they were sufficiently scattered for the sorting-out process to begin and so thoroughly mingled with the dogs that a copter gunner would not dare try to shoot.

The sorting did not take long, and the results were somewhat disappointing. As Glitter had noted the first time she looked into the plane, most of these were young people . . . good breeding stock. But there were the four older ones, who ought to be tough and tasty, plus a hulking young female who did not have the breeder smell.

These five were gradually herded away from the others but did not seem to realize immediately what was happening. When they saw the distance between themselves and the other passengers, they created the usual uproar. Two of the old ones, a male and a female, fainted, but both revived quickly when jaws closed on their shoulders to drag them away.

Another of the old ones flung off his filter mask and started running in the general direction of Cleveland Dome. Three of the dogs trotted after him, knowing he could not go far.

The young female clenched her fists but allowed herself to be herded away. Glitter guessed that one would try to fight when slaughtering time came.

The remaining humans by the plane were silent during all this. Now one of them giggled loudly, and then all of them were laughing and making words to each other. They tried to clot up again, but a few growls from the dogs kept them in their places. The female who was clutching a small child sat down on the ground, looking fearfully at the nearest dog as she did so, but plainly too weak to stay on her feet. The dog, Highleg, ignored her. Soon the other humans were sitting, too.

Brist was making a show of his discontent with the small number of humans the sorting had yielded. Glitter watched him with more amusement than admiration—and he was plainly playing for the admiration of all the bitches in hearing distance as he yowled about how he could eat a whole human by himself, and be ready to eat another tomorrow.

He was a robust young dog, without doubt, but Glitter suspected that Slav could make him scamper if the need ever arose.

The roar of the approaching bus brought the humans to their feet, and Glitter found herself a safe position in their midst. She wondered briefly at the absence of copters. If any were coming, they would have arrived before the bus. So there would be no copters, with crews to augment the meat supply if the copters dropped low enough for the gunners to aim and for their rotor blades to be smashed with slung stones.

"I hear a mutt yowling," remarked Mabry. "We getting close?"

"We must be," said Cosman. He was homing on the plane's radio beam now, and had a good idea of its location. The trick was to reach the spot while staying on low ground—in hopes that Mabry could get a good shot at some dog on a hillside—while avoiding getting the bus stuck in mud or bog.

"Hey! I saw somebody on the ground!" yelled Haddon.

"Where?"

"The headlights swept over him! Can you swerve back to the left?" Cosman slowed the bus almost to a stop and eased it to the left. The lights caught the prone form of a man, not more than twenty feet away but invisible in the smog until the bright illumination struck him.

"Dog meat," Mabry muttered.

"I guess so," said Cosman. He pulled the bus up alongside the motionless form and switched on his exterior speaker.
"Hey, mister!"
he called into the mike.

The man made no move. Cosman noticed that he was not wearing a filter mask. After a moment he shrugged and started the bus forward again.

"Aren't you going to bring him in?" Haddon demanded.

"Can't do it. He's probably dead, anyway."

"We don't
know
he's dead," Haddon persisted.

"Okay, would you like the job of going out and dragging him in?" Cosman demanded crossly.

Haddon was quiet for a moment. "What would happen if I did?" he asked.

"The dogs would be all over you."

"Oh . . . But I didn't see any dogs."

"They're there. You didn't see the man till the lights hit him, did you."

"No."

"Okay. Just keep in mind we're out here to collect live people, not dead meat. And we don't jeopardize them by trying to take away a body the dogs have claimed."

"That's one way dogs ain't changed," Mabry threw in from his perch. "Try to take a bone away from one and you got a fight on your hands."

"Don't you see anything on your infrared?" Cosman asked him with impatience.

"Nope, not through this muck. Yeah . . . there they are. We're heading straight for them!"

Cosman slowed the bus to a creep. He heard the people yelling before he could see them. Then there they were in his lights, standing and waving their arms, and the dogs slouching about among them.