The Plague Dogs (3 page)

"Rowf?" said the terrier. "Rowf? They've taken away all the rhododendrons and just left the maggots. O spin like a ball, isn't it dark? There's just this one star shining down my throat, that's all.

You know, my master—" The black dog sprang to its feet, and as it did so the flow of oxygen from the pipe cut out automatically. Teeth bared, eyes glaring, ears laid flat, it backed against its kennel, crouching into the straw and barking as though beset on every side .4Rowf! Rowf! Grrrrrr-owf!" ks it barked, its head turned quickly this way and that, ting an assailant.

"Grrrrr-owf! Rowf! Rowf!" All over the block other dogs took up their cues. "I'd fight you all right, if I could only get at you!"

"Why don't you shut up?"

"D'you think you're the only one who hates this damned place?"

"Why can't we have some peace?"

"Ow! Oow! That's the damned dog that wants to be a wolf!"

"Rowf!" said the terrier quickly. "Rowf, lie down before the lorry comes—I mean, before the leaves catch fire! I'm falling as fast as I can. Be quiet and I'll reach you."

Rowf barked once more, stared frenziedly round, then slowly lowered his head, came up to the wire and began to sniff at the other's black nose pressed between the mesh. A few moments more and he lay down, rubbing his big, rough-coated head backwards and forwards against one of the stanchions.

Gradually the hubbub in the draughty block subsided.

"You smell of the metal water," said the terrier. "You've been in the metal water again, so I tell, so I smell, well well."

There was a long pause. At last Rowf said, "The water."

"You smell like the water in my drinking-bowl. Is it like that? The bottom's dirty, anyway. I can smell that, even if my head is done up in chicken-wire."

"What?"

"My head's done up in chicken-wire, I said. The white-coats fastened it all round."

"When did they? I can't see it."

"Oh, no," replied the terrier, as though brushing aside some quite unreasonable objection, "of course you can't see it!"

"The water," said Rowf again.

"How did you get out? Do you drink it or does the sun dry it up or what?"

"I can't remember," answered Rowf. "Get out—" He dropped his head into the straw and began biting and licking at the pad of one fore-foot. After some time he said, "Get out—I never remember getting out. They must pull me out, I suppose. Why can't you let me alone, Snitter?"

"Perhaps you're not out at all. You're drowned. We're dead. We haven't been born. There's a mouse—a mouse that sings—I'm bitten to the brains and it never stops raining—not in this eye anyway."

Rowf snarled at him. "Snitter, you're mad! Of course I'm alive! Leave your face there if you don't believe me—" Snitter jerked his head back just in time.

"Yes, I'm mad, sure as a lorry, I'm terribly sorry. The road—where it happened—the road was black and white—that's me, you know—" He stopped as Rowf rolled over in the straw and lay once more as though exhausted.

"The water, not the water again," muttered Rowf. "Not the water, not tomorrow—" He opened his eyes and leapt up as though stung, yelping, "The whitecoats! The whitecoats!"

This time there were no barks of protest, the cry being too frequent and common throughout the shed to attract remark.

Snitter returned to the wire and Rowf sat on his haunches and looked at him. "When I lie down and shut my eyes the water comes suddenly. Then when I get up it isn't there."

"Like a rainbow," answered Snitter. "They melt—I watched one once. My master threw a stick and I ran after it, along the river bank. That was—Oh, dear!" After a few moments he went on, "Why don't you melt? They'd never be able to put you in the water then." Rowf growled.

"You're always talking about your master. I never had a master, but I know what a dog's business is as well as you do."

"Rowf, listen, we must get across the road. Get across the road before—"

"A dog stands firm," said Rowf sharply. "A dog never refuses whatever a man requires of him.

That's what a dog's for. So if they say the water—if they say go in the water, I'll—" He broke off, cowering. "I tell you, I can't stand that water any more—"

"Where's the gutter for that water, anyway?" asked Snitter. "That's what I can't understand.

Bunged up with (3D fallen leaves, I suppose. And the whippet's leg—they must have eaten that. I asked him the other day in the yard, but he didn't know. Said he was asleep when they took it away. Said he dreamt he was tied up to a stone wall and it fell on him."

"Dogs are meant to do what men want—I can smell that, without a master. The men must have some reason, mustn't they? It must do some sort of good. They must know best."

"It's a nuisance, but you can't bury bones here," said Snitter. "I've tried. The ground's too hard.

My head still aches. No wonder—there's a garden in my ear, you know. I can hear the leaves rustling quite clearly."

"Only I can't bear the water again," said Rowf, "and you can't fight it, not water." He began pacing up and down the wire. "The smell of the iron pond."

"There's always a chance they might lose it. They lost a sky full of clouds one day, you know.

They were all there in the morning, but they were gone by the afternoon. x Blown away—blown away like sheep's wings."

"Look, the wire's loose here, along the bottom," said Rowf suddenly. "If you come and put your nose under it, you can lift it up from your side." Snitter padded up to him on the other side of the wire.

A length about eighteen inches long had pulled loose from the horizontal iron bar dividing the floor of the two pens.

"I must have done that," he said, "chasing a cat—no. There used to be a cat once but they switched it off, I think." He pushed at the wire for a few seconds, then raised his head with a cunning look. "Rowf, we'll leave it till after the tobacco man's been round. Otherwise he'll only see me on your side and put me back, and that'll be the end of that. Let it alone, old Rowf."

"You're sharp. Listen, Snitter, is that the tobacco man outside now?"

"I'm mad as a gutter in a thunderstorm," said Snitter. "I fall and fall—my head falls and I fall after it. Can you smell the falling leaves? It's going to rain. Remember rain?"

As the latch clicked on the green-painted door half- way down the block, Rowf went back to his kennel and lay still as frost. Most of the other dogs, however, reacted vigorously and volubly. From all over the shed sounded scurrying and yelps, quick whines of excitement and resonant, harp-like rataplans of claws along wire mesh. Snitter leapt three or four times in the air and ran towards the door of his pen, jaws full of slobbering tongue and breath steaming in the chilly air.

The green door, which opened inwards, tended to stick against the jamb. A shoulder-heave from outside, which succeeded only in bending the top of the door inwards, was followed by the clank of a pail being put down and then by two heavy, rubbery kicks just above the threshold. The door burst open and instantly every dog in the shed was aware of the night breeze filtered through a pungent reek of burning shag. In the doorway stood the tobacco man himself, pipe in mouth and a pail in each hand, odorous of tobacco as a pine tree of resin, redolent from cloth cap to gum-boots. The yapping increased, the movement, noise and tension throughout the block mounting in contrast with the silent deliberation with which the tobacco man carried in the two pails, set them down, returned for two more and then for a final two. This done, he went back to close the door and then, standing in the middle of the six, took out his matches, struck a light, cupped his hands round his pipe and re-lit it very thoroughly and carefully, taking no notice whatever of the barking and jumping around him.

Snitter, muttering "That pipe hasn't got a chance—not a chance," put his front paws on the wire and cocked his head sharply to the right in order to watch the tobacco man as he fetched a five-gallon watering-can from a corner and, with a slow, unhurried clumping of gum-boots, carried it over to the tap, placed it underneath, turned the tap on and stood beside it while it filled. Old Tyson had once been a sailor, then a shepherd, then for several years a road man employed by the county council; but had taken the option of a job with Animal Research because, as he said, there were less weather wi't and aall in't woon plaace like. He was well regarded and indeed valued by the Director and senior staff, being reasonably respectful, if somewhat dour, in his behaviour, reliable, generally conscientious and no more given to sentimentality about animals than any other Lakelander. Also, being well on in middle age, he was steady and regular and not prone to ailments or to odd days off on account of family problems—which in his case had all been solved (or not solved) long ago. He understood dogs well enough, his attitude towards them being equally valid for the purposes of A. R. S. E. or for those of a Lakeland hill-farm—namely, that they were pieces of technological equipment which one needed to know how to maintain and use properly. Tourists' and holiday-makers' dogs annoyed him, being useless for any practical purpose, frequently disobedient and a potential danger to sheep. In spite of what seemed to the dogs his maddening deliberation, Tyson was in fact anxious to be off as soon as he could this evening, for it was Friday, he had been paid and was due to keep an appointment in The Crown at Coniston with a friend from Torver, who had told him—that he could put him in the way of a second-hand refrigerator in good condition and going cheap. He was, therefore, in as much of a hurry as was possible for him—the general effect rather resembling that produced in a tortoise when its lettuce is put down on the grass. This is not to suggest, however, that there was anything foolish or absurd in Tyson's demeanour as he went about his task. Tortoises are dignified and self-sufficient and, though admittedly slow, considerably more reliable than—well—than—what comes to mind?—than—er—well, than distracted princes, for example, who give wild assurances about sweeping to revenge on wings as swift as meditation or the thoughts of love.

Tyson entered each pen in turn, emptied the metal drinking-bowls down the gullies and re-filled them from his watering-can. Then he poured away what was left in the can, put it back in its place in the corner and returned to the pails. Four of these were filled with bloody messes of horse-meat and lights, appropriate portions of which (big or small according to the size of the dog) were doled out at Tyson's discretion to all those on "normal diet." As this part of his task progressed, the noise in the block (34) gradually diminished. When it was complete, he set to work to distribute the contents of the other two pails. These contained a number of separate paper packages, marked individually with the numbers of those dogs for whom special rations had been prescribed on account of the experiments in which they were taking part. Tyson took his spectacle-case out of his pocket, opened it, took out the spectacles, held them up to the light, breathed on them, cleaned them on his sleeve, held them up to the light again, put them on, emptied the packets out on the concrete floor and laid them in two rows. This done, he picked up the first and held it, above his head, towards the nearest light-bulb. Once he had read the number he had no need to look about for the destination, since he knew the dogs and their pens as surely as a huntsman his hounds.

Who can describe what drugs, what charms, what conjuration and what mighty magic those packages contained? They were indeed miracles of rare device. Some included, infused with the liver and offal, stimulants able to banish sleep, or to cause the consumer to perform, on the morrow, prodigies of endurance—to fight, to fast, to tear himself, to drink up eisel, eat a crocodile. Others contained paralytics which suspended colour perception, hearing, taste, smell; analgesics destroying the power to feel pain, so that the subject stood wagging his tail while a hot iron was drawn along his ribs; hallucinogenics able to fill the eye of the beholder with more devils than vast hell can hold, to transform the strong to weaklings, the resolute to cowards, to plunge the intelligent and alert head over ears into idiocy. Some induced disease, madness, or mortification of specific parts of the body; others cured, alleviated, or failed either to cure or to alleviate, diseases already induced. Some destroyed the unborn foetus in the womb, others the power to ovulate, the power to beget, to conceive, to gestate.

One might indeed believe that graves, at Dr. Boycott's command, would wake their sleepers, ope, and let 'em forth.

Actually that is pitching it a bit high—drawing the long bow, as they say—but at any rate no one could say of Dr. Boycott that he would not have attempted resurrection (3S) if he had thought there was a sporting chance. He was a qualified expert, initiative was expected of him, his subjects had no legal rights; and intellectual curiosity is, after all, a desire like any other. Besides, who in his senses could reasonably expect Dr. Boycott to ask himself, on behalf of the human race, not "How much knowledge can I discover?" but "How much knowledge am I justified in seeking?" Experimental science is the last flower of asceticism and Dr. Boycott was indeed an ascetic, an observer of events upon which he passed no value judgements He represented, in fact, a most ingenious paradox, noble in reason, express and admirable in action, his undemonstrative heart committed with the utmost detachment to the benefit of humanity. Something too much of this.

As he worked, Tyson spoke a few words to each dog—"Well, that's for thee, then. Get yon down."

"Hey oop, old lad. Layin' on straw'll get thee nowheer"—much unlike the common way of Lakelanders, who seldom or never speak to dogs except to summon them or to give—them an order or reproof. More extraordinary still, he more than once patted a dog or actually stooped down for a moment to scratch its ears. Though he himself could not have said why he acted in this uncharacteristic way, and if asked would have shrugged his shoulders to indicate that the question was not worth serious consideration, it is, of course, beyond argument that he understood very well, on his own level, the work and general purpose of the research station and the kind of effects upon animals which that work commonly had. Not even Dr. Freud, however, armed with the longest and most symbolical shepherd's crook in all Vienna, could have dragged from the silt to the surface any guilt which Tyson may, as an individual, unconsciously have felt; for clearly the Director and his colleagues knew more than he, both about the world's needs and about animals' capacity for suffering, and his orders, like his wages, came from them. If each of us insisted on stopping to weigh in every case the relative pros and cons of distress to others, whether human or animal, brought about by obeying our instructions, the world could never be run at all. Life is, as they say, too short.