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thing that is not alive can be. The wolves come slinking, low and mean, their heat traces preceding and
hovering over them like a scudding cloud. Again, there are five, with an old gray leader, his left ear bent,
torn and ragged, like a leaf eaten by caterpillars. Swiftly, they are upon the pacas, chasing the little
rodents, yipping, cutting them off from their burrows, gobbling one or two down for every ten that
escape. Then the gray leader has had enough to eat. He raises up his head and, instantly, the others heed
him. Off they run, as silent and warm as they had come, but now followed by a robot.
Down the tundra meadow of the divide, through boulder shadows and over sprays of tiny wildflowers
nestled in the green, the wolves themselves shadows, with the robot another shadow, down, down the
greening land. Into the woods, along game trails the robot can barely discern, moving generally north,
generally north, the mu barely keeping pace with the advancing wolves, the pace growing steady,
monotonous even to the robot, until suddenly the gray leader pulls up, sniffs the air. The robot also comes
to a standstill some hundred feet behind the pack. If they have noticed the robot, they give no sign.
Instead, it is a living smell that the gray leader has detected, or so the robot thinks, for the wolves,
whining, fall into a V-shape behind the leader. The wolves' muscles tense with a new and directed
purpose.
And they spring off in another direction than the one they had been traveling, now angling west, over
ridges, against the grain of the wheel-spoke mountains. The robot follows. Up another ridge, then down
its spine, around a corner cliff of flaking sedimentary stone, and into a little cove. They strike a road, a
human-made track, and run along its edge, carefully close to the flanking brush and woodland. Winding
road, and the going is easier for wolves and mu. In fact, the robot could easily overtake the wolves now,
and must gauge how much to hold back to avoid overrunning them.
The track becomes thin, just wide enough for a vehicle going one way, with plenty of swishing against
branches along the way. Ahead, a house, a little clapboard affair, painted once, perhaps, blue, or the
blue-green tint may be only mold over bare wood. The ceiling is shingled half with asbestos shakes and
half with tin sheeting. Beside the house is a satellite dish, its lower hemisphere greened over with algae.
There is an old pickup truck parked at road's end. The road is muddy here from a recent rain, and the
tire markings of another vehicle, now gone, cross the top of the pickup's own tracks. All is silent.
Instead of giving the house a wide berth, the gray leader stops at the top of the short walkway that leads
to the front door. Again, he sniffs for scent, circling, whining. There is only a moment of hesitation, and he
snakes up the walkway and slinks to the door. The door hangs open. The other wolves follow several
paces back. Another hesitation at the door, then the gray leader slips over the threshold and inside. Even
with their leader gone into the house, the other wolves hang back, back from this thing that has for so
long meant pain or death to them and their kind. After a long while, the gray leader returns to the door,
yips contemptuously, and, one by one, the other wolves go inside.
The robot quietly pads to the door. Inside is dark, and the robot's optics take a moment to iris to the
proper aperture. There is a great deal of the color red in the house's little living room. The robot scans the
room, tries to resolve a pattern out of something that is unfamiliar. The robot has never seen inside a real
human dwelling before. But Victor Wu has. The wolves are worrying at something.
The wolves are chewing on the remains of a child.
Without thinking, the robot scampers into the room. The mu is a bit too large for the narrow door and,
without the robot's noticing, it tears apart the doorframe as it enters. The wolves look up from what they
are doing.
Wolves and robot stare at one another.
The robot adjusts the main camera housing to take them all in, and at the slight birring noise of the servos,
the gray leader bristles and growls. The mu takes a step farther into the room, filling half the room. It
knocks over a small table, with a shadeless lamp upon it. Both the bulb and the ceramic lamp casing
shatter.
I don't want to hurt you, but you must leave the child alone, the robot says.
At the sound of what they take to be a human voice, the wolves spring into a flurry of action. The gray
leader stalks forward, teeth bared, while the others in the pack mill like creek fish behind him. They are
searching for an exit. The small, young one finds that a living room window is open. With a short hop
from a couch, the wolf is outside. The others follow, one by one, while the gray leader attempts to hold
the robot at bay. The robot does not move, but lets the wolves depart. Finally, the gray leader sees from
the corner of his eye that the other wolves have escaped. Still, he cannot help but risk one feint at the
robot. The robot does not move. The gray leader, bolder, quickly jumps toward the robot and locks his
jaws on the robot's forward leg. The teeth close on blue steel. The gray leader shakes. There is no
moving the robot.
In surprise and agitation, the wolf backs up, barks three times.
I'm sorry to embarrass you. You'd better go. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]