I was beginning to feel out-mannered and out-classed on all sides. And there was only one of him! “Uh, thank you, sir. I’d be more comfortable in this outfit.”
He nodded serenely. Tal said, “We seem to be being followed.”
I turned, and Adrian laughed. Davy was trailing him down the aisle, narrowly missing his boots. He bent over and scooped up the little dog, deposited him in the crook of his arm, and walked back to the place he’d found him. There he kissed Davy on the top of his head, getting a pink, wet lick in the process, and set him down on the inside of the gate.
Tal looked at me. I started to whisper, but he shook his head. Adrian returned to us.
“An old friend,” he explained. “Shall we go?”
“By all means,” muttered Tal. We walked. I stole looks at my two companions, who were examining the floor with identical expressions of innocence.
At last Adrian turned to me. “Miss Gray,” he began.
He was interrupted by a shout: “Goddammit!” said a man’s voice. “Can’t you do anything right?”
“Thomas?” called Adrian. “Is there a problem?”
There was a moment of startled silence, then Thomas’s voice replied: “No, sir! Not at all, sir! Please stay where you are!”
Well. As though that line ever worked on any human bom. We all peered around the bend at the end of the stalls to see what was happening.
An ugly little brown dog—so different from the trim, well-proportioned, dappled harriers we’d seen so far— was dancing nervously at the far end, his teeth sunk into the arm-guard of a teenage boy in coveralls. A short, gray-haired man in boots (Thomas, I assumed) stood nearby looking disgusted.
As I watched, the dog dropped his hold on the armguard and backed away from his victim. Neither the dog nor the human seemed happy. Thomas said, “Two sorry examples of stupidity through overbreeding.” The dog’s head and tail drooped, mortification in every line; the boy protested, “It’s not my fault, Uncle!”
“Whose fault is it? Didn’t I tell you he wasn’t for training?”
“I wasn’t training him!”
“No, you were creeping up behind him with the water dish, and you know he’s got nerves like paper strips. Brains! I told my sister we need brains, not relatives! God damn it!”
He caught sight of us and stopped dead. He ducked his head politely toward Adrian and at once said, “I beg your pardon! I didn’t expect you’d have a lady with you, sir! Forgive me, madam!”
I nodded back as graciously as I could, wondering: For what?
Adrian said, “This is the troublemaker you mentioned?” I gathered he was referring to the dog, not the boy.
Thomas said, tiredly, “Sired off a Nevsky at last planet-call. I told them it was a mistake, but you know the committee—all for experimentation, since Grace Dugan took over. He’s too nervous to train, he ignores the pack half the time and wanders off by himself—he lives in a world of his own. If you ask me, Adrian, he’s barely aware he’s a dog.”
I found the thought amusing, but Adrian didn’t smile. He said, “Are you giving up on him, Thomas?”
“An inch away from it, sir.”
I said, “What happens if you give up on him? Does he become a pet?”
Thomas looked at me as though I’d lost my mind. Tal spoke up clearly, filling in the silence. “He lacks the aesthetic to be a lady’s pet and the training to be a gentleman’s. And he bites in moments of confusion.”
“So do I,” I said.
“In short, he has a glorious destiny as someone’s dinner,” finished Tal, in a voice which was not quite bored, although what it was, was hard to say.
I was taken by surprise. “You eat dogs here?”
Fortunately, the note of shock drowned most of the accusation in my voice. One does not enter into a partnership of allies with another species and then eat it. It was un-Graykey.
No one else seemed startled at the idea, though. Adrian said, “We certainly don’t eat our pets, Miss Gray, but I see no reason why an untrainable animal should have more claim on our mercy than one brought up for slaughter. He’s had a good life here; I can assure you that Thomas treats all the dogs most humanely.”
Humane had always struck me as an interesting word. However—
“May I have a few minutes, sir? Five or ten?”
He was too well-bred himself to show great surprise. “If you like. To what purpose?”
“I want to meet the dog.”
He confined himself to raising an eyebrow, then shrugged and gestured: Be my guest.
Thomas, who was looking at me with a more open lack of confidence, said, “His name’s Champ, madam. Wishful thinking.”
“Thank you, but I don’t want to use his name. Would you mind standing over there where he can’t see you? And ask your nephew to move as well?”
They did so, their dour expressions showing them to be exceptionally unthrilled with this invasion of amateurs in their domain. I approached slowly until I was about ten feet from the dog, then stopped and squatted down. I held out one hand, palm open and down, fingers relaxed. “Here, sweetheart,” I called softly. “Over here, darling. Come on …”
Tal and Adrian watched. This could be quite embarrassing. Still, that wasn’t the point.
After a moment I heard Adrian say quietly, “She’s a Graykey, isn’t she?”
He was addressing Tal, but it broke my concentration. I heard the faint note of surprise (false surprise?) in Tal’s reply. “Why do you say that?”
“The mark below her wrist. It’s a Graykey symbol.”
Well, I’d heard that Adrian read voraciously, and unstoppably, about the Outside. And the next question was, Do you have her contract?
Adrian didn’t ask it. He said, “You did know that she’s a Graykey?”
“Yes.”
I closed them out, bringing myself back to the neverending seeking of tarethi, the imperative to change and retain, the knowledge that nothing in the universe was alien to me.
By now I had left Three Cities and Standard behind, and was calling softly to the dog
