The Plague Dogs (13 page)

"But the other dog," said Mr. Powell, "eight-one-five? What happened there?"

"It had pooshed oop wire along bottom with it noase," said Tyson. "Coople o' staples had pulled out, and it moosta scrambled oonder an' joined t' oother dog."

"That's not going to be so easy to explain," mused Mr. Powell. "That was an important dog, too, that eight-one-five. Adult domesticated dog—they're never easy to get hold of for this sort of work. It had had a tricky brain operation and was waiting for tests. There'll be hell to pay."

"Ay, well, Ah thowt thee'd want to knaw as soon as possible," said Tyson virtuously. "Theer were nobody here yesterday neet"—and here he contrived to suggest (not unsuccessfully, since Mr.

Powell was almost young enough to be his grandson and unable—why did he try, one wonders?—to conceal the signs of his origin among people very much like Tyson) that he himself had been the only dutiful and conscientious employee of Lawson Park at his post on a Saturday evening—"but Ah coom oop first thing this morning to see if Dr.

Boycott were here. Ah'll joost have to be shiftin' along now." For if a search there were going to be, Tyson had no intention of spending his Sunday in participation.

"You say they must have run right through the block?" asked Mr. Powell.

"Well, theer were box of mice knocked ont' floor like, in pregnancy unit. Dogs moosta doon it, noothin' else could 'uv."

"Oh, blast and damn!" cried Mr. Powell, visualising the complaints from and correspondence with the general medical practitioners and other appointed representatives of the putatively pregnant young women. A sudden thought struck him. "Then they must have gone through the cancer unit, Tyson—the rat block?"

"Ay, they would that."

"I say, they didn't get into Dr. Goodner's place, did they?" asked Mr. Powell quickly.

"Nay, it were locked reet as ever. There's noon goes in theer but hisself."

"But you're absolutely certain—er, Mr. Tyson—that they didn't get in there?"

"Oh ay. He'll tell thee hisself."

"Well, thank the holies for that, anyway. That would have been the end, that would. Well, I suppose I'd better have a look round the place myself and then if they don't turn up I'll go out and see if I can find anyone who's seen them. I shan't tell the police—that'll be for the Director to decide.

Dammit," said Mr. Powell, "someone must have seen 'em—they've got those green collars on, plain as day. Very likely someone'!! ring up later. Well, thanks, Mr. Tyson. And if you hear anything yourself, ring up and leave a message for me, won't you?"

Some say that deep sleep is dreamless and that we dream only in the moments before awakening, experiencing during seconds the imagined occurrences of minutes or hours. Others have surmised that dreaming is continuous as long as we are asleep, just as sensation and experience must needs continue as long as we are awake; but that we recall—when we recall at all—only those margins and fragments which concluded the whole range of our imagining during sleep; as though one who at night was able to walk alive through the depths of the sea, upon his return could remember only those light-filtering, green-lit slopes up which he had clambered back at last to the sands of morning. Others again believe that in deep sleep, when the gaoler nods unawares and the doors fall open upon those age-old, mysterious caverns of the mind where none ever did anything so newfangled as read a book or say a prayer, the obscure forces, sore labour's bath, that flow forth to cleanse and renew, are of their nature inexpressible—and invisible, therefore, to dreaming eyes—in any terms or symbols comprehensible to the mind of one Wive, though we may know more when we are dead. Some 6f these, however (so runs the theory), floating upwards from psychic depths far below those of the individual mind, attract to themselves concordant splinters and sympathetic remnants from the individual dreamer's mem-much as, they say, the fairies, poor wisps of nothing, to glean and deck themselves with such scraps and snippets of finery as humans might have discarded for their finding.

Dreams, then, are bubbles, insubstantial globes of waking matter, by their nature rising buoyant through the enveloping element of sleep; and for all we know, too numerous to be marked and remembered by the sleeper, who upon his awakening catches only one here or there, as a child in autumn may catch a falling leaf out of ail the myriads twirling past him.

Be this as it may, how terrible, to some, can be the return from those dark sea-caves! Ah, God!

we stagger up through the surf and collapse upon the sand, behind us the memory of our visions and before us the prospect of a desert shore or a land peopled by savages. Or again, we are dragged by the waves over coral, our landfall a torment from which, if only it would harbour us, we would fly back into the ocean. For indeed, when asleep we are like amphibious creatures, breathing another element, which reciprocates our own final act of waking by itself casting us out and closing the door upon all hope of immediate return. The caddis larva crawls upon the bottom of the pond, secure within its house of fragments, until in due time there comes upon it, whether it will or no, that strange and fatal hour when it must leave its frail safety and begin to crawl, helpless and exposed, towards the surface. What dangers gather about it then, in this last hour of its water-life—rending, devouring, swallowing into the belly of the great fish! And this hazard it can by no means evade, but only trust to survive. What follows? Emergence into the no-less-terrible world of air, with the prospect of the mayfly's short life, defenceless among the rising trout and pouncing sparrows. We crawl upwards towards Monday morning; to the cheque book and the boss; to the dismal recollection of guilt, of advancing illness, of imminent death in battle or the onset of disgrace or ruin. "I must be up betimes," said King Charles, awakening for the last time upon that bitter dawn in January long ago, "for I have a great work to do today." A noble gentleman, he shed no tears for himself. Yet who would not weep for him, emerging courageous, obstinate and alone upon that desolate shore whither sleep had cast him up to confront his unjust death?

When Snitter woke in the near-darkness of the shaft, it was to the accustomed sense of loss and madness, to the dull ache in his head, the clammy sensation of the torn and sodden dressing above his eye and the recollection that he and Rowf were masterless fugitives, free to keep themselves alive for as long as they could in an unnatural, unfamiliar place, of the nature of which they knew practically nothing. He did not even know the way back to Animal Research or whether, if they did return, they would be taken in. Perhaps the whitecoats or the tobacco man had already decreed that they were to be killed. He had several times seen the latter remove sick dogs from their pens, but had never seen him bring one back. He remembered Brot, a dog who, like himself, had been put to sleep by the whitecoats, but had woken to find that he was blind. Brot had blundered about his pen for several hours before the tobacco man, coming in at his usual time in the evening, had taken him away. Snitter could recall clearly the desperate and hopeless tone of his yelping. He himself had no fear of going blind; but what if his fits and visions were to increase, perhaps to possess him altogether, so that—He started up from where he was lying on the dry shale.

"Rowf! Rowf, listen, you will kill me, won't you? You coud do it quite quickly. It wouldn't be difficult. Rowf?"

Rowf had woken in the instant that Snitter's body ceased to touch his own.

"What are you talking about, you crazy little duffer? What did you say?"

"Nothing," answered Snitter. "I meant if I ever change into wasps, you know— maggots—I mean, if I fall into the gutter—oh, never mind. Rowf, are you still broken?"

Rowf got up, put his injured front paw gingerly to the ground, winced and lay down again.

"I can't run on it. Anyway, I'm bruised and stiff all over. I shall go on lying here until I feel better."

"Just imagine, Rowf, if all these stones suddenly turned into meat—"

"If what?"

"Biscuits dropping out of the roof—"

"Lie down!"

"And an animal came in, without teeth or claws, all made of horse liver—"

"What do you mean? How could that happen?"

"Oh, I saw it rain from the ground to the clouds—black milk, you know—"

"You've made me feel hungry, damn you!"

"Are we going out, like—you know, like last night?"

"I can't do it now, Snitter. Not until I feel better. Another battering like that—we'll just have to wait a bit. Tomorrow—"

"Let's go back to where it's lying," said Snitter. "There'll be a good deal left."

He pattered quickly over the shale towards the vaulted opening, Rowf limping behind him. It was afternoon and the red October sun, already sinking, was shining straight up the length of Dunnerdale beneath. Far below the tawny, glowing bracken and the glittering stealth of the tarn, Snitter could see cows in green fields, grey stone walls, red-leaved trees and whitewashed houses, all clear and still as though enclosed in golden glass. Yet the sun itself, which imparted this stillness, did not share it, seeming rather to swim in the blue liquidity of the sky, wavering before the eyes, a molten mass floating, rocking, drifting westward in a fluid that slowly cooled but could not quench its heat. Snitter stood blinking on the warm turf near the entrance, scenting the dry bracken and bog myrtle in the autumn air. The dressing fell across his eye and he tossed up his head.

"Was there ever a dog that could fly?"

"Yes," replied Rowf promptly, "but the whitecoats cut off its wings to see what would happen."

"What did happen?"

"It couldn't fly."

"Then it's no worse off than we are. I'll go as slowly as you like."

Rowf stumbled stiffly forward and the pair set off towards the stream. In the windless warmth of the St. Martin's summer afternoon, Snitter's spirits began to rise and he pattered about the moss, splashing in and out of shallow pools and jumping in pursuit like a puppy whenever he put up a wheatear or whinchat in the bog.

They had no need to search for the carcase they had left. Even before they winded it they could hear the raucous squabbling of two buzzards, and a few moments later saw them hopping and fluttering about their rip-work. As the dogs approached, the big birds turned and stared at them angrily, but thought better of it and flapped slowly away, sailing down on brown wings towards the tarn.

"It's little enough they've left," said Rowf, thrusting his muzzle into the fly-buzzing, blood-glazed remains. Snitter hung back, looking about him.

"It's not only them. There's been some other creature—"

Rowf looked up sharply. "You're right. I can smell it. But what? The smell— makes me angry, somehow—"

He ran about the rocks. "I'll catch it. The smell—like a horse-mouse. What d'you make of it?"

He was slavering as he spoke.

"Never mind," answered Snitter, pressing down with one paw upon the haunch he was tearing.

"It's not here now."

"Yes, it is. Watching, I think. Lurking. Not far off."

"Let's not leave anything here if we can help it," said Snitter. "Eat all you can and we'll carry the rest back to the rhododendrons—a good chunk each, anyway."

They returned to the cave in the late afternoon, Snitter with a fore-leg, Rowf half-dragging the rank-smelling remains of the haunch. For some time they lay in the sun, on the flat turf outside, retreating to the shaft only when the light was half-gone and a chilly breeze came rippling up the tarn from the west. Snitter scrabbled out a shallow recess in the shale to fit his body, lay down in it with a comfortable feeling of hunger satisfied and fell quickly asleep.

He woke suddenly, in pitch darkness, to realise that Rowf was creeping warily across the tunnel a few yards away. He was about to ask him what he was doing when, something in Rowf's movement and breathing made him hold himself motionless, tensed and waiting. A moment later he became aware of the same strange reek that they had scented near the sheep's carcase. He lay still as a fill) spider, letting the smell flow through him, seeking from it all that it could tell. It was not an angry smell, nor a dangerous smell: but none the less wild, yes and exciting, a sharp, killing smell, a furtive smell, trotting, preying, slinking through the darkness. And it was a quick-moving smell.

Whatever the animal might be, it was on the move, it was alive here, now, in the cave with them. This, of course, was the reason for Rowf's caution and crafty alertness, which Snitter had already sensed in the moment of his own waking.

Why had the animal come? To kill them for food? No, this, he knew instinctively, it had not.

Whatever it might be up to, it was trying to avoid them, although it smelt like an animal which could fight if it were forced to.

Because this was its home? But its smell was very strong and distinctive, and there had been no trace of it here yesterday. Then it could have come only in order to try to steal their meat.

At this moment there was a sudden, momentary clattering of loose stones in the dark and immediately Rowf said, "Stay where you are. If you try to get past me I'll kill you."

There was no reply. Snitter, feeling himself trembling, got up and took a position a few feet away from Rowf, so that between them the way out was effectively blocked.

"I'll kill you, too," he said, "and that'd be twice, so it wouldn't be worth it."

The next instant he jumped back with a sharp yap of astonishment, for the voice answering him was speaking, unmistakably, a sort—a very odd sort—of dog language. Barely understandable and like nothing he had ever heard, the voice, nevertheless, was undoubtedly that of an animal in some way akin to themselves.

"It'll de ye smaall gud killin' me, ninny. Ye'll not see three morns yerself."

There was a kind of wheedling defiance in the voice, as though the owner had not yet decided whether to fight, to run or to cajole, but was trying the latter and putting an edge to it for good value.

"Who are you?" said Rowf. Snitter could sense his uncertainty, and wondered whether the animal could also do so. "Are you a dog?"