The Long Mars

They bumped along an uneven track, past clumps of forest of low, gnarled trees, like ferns perhaps, and fields roughly delineated with straggling dry stone walls. What looked like grass was cropped by animals: not sheep or cattle or goats, but things like fat deer, and a kind of beefy flightless bird. Some of the fields were tended by workers who went upright, on two legs, swathed in rags and bearing walking staves. Maggie didn’t get too close a look. At first glance they looked human – and after all, humans came in a variety of body shapes. But look again at these workers and, elusively, subtly, they didn’t appear quite right, the head too large, the waist too low, the eyes set too wide apart.

Her companions took in all this, Hemingway in nervous silence, Mac with a kind of resentful glare. Maggie was growing sure that there was something specific he was keeping from her about his experience here.

Wu Yue-Sai was making notes on a small tablet.

Many of the farms had been looted, burned out, destroyed, Maggie saw from the begi

Given the size of the place she saw very few inhabitants, and fewer up close. But one child stood as they passed. Dressed in rags, she held out an empty bowl, her request obvious. It was a scene you might have seen in the aftermath of any human war, Maggie thought. But the child’s eyes glittered, her ears were swept back, and a pink tongue lolled from a wide mouth.

At last the truck rolled up beside a more extensive ruin, a fire-blackened crater surrounded by scraps of scorched wall. There was a dog, a big one, bigger than a Saint Bernard, lying in the shade of one fragment of wall. He raised his head to watch them approach. He wore some kind of belt around his waist, Maggie saw.

‘Welcome to the Palace of the Granddaughter,’ said Ben Morton.

And the dog spoke.

‘He-hhr name Pet-hhra. Long dead.’ The language was clearly comprehensible English, but spoken with a growl, like a coarse whisper from the back of the throat.

A canine sapient. Maggie had been briefed about this, had even seen recordings. Nothing prepared her for the reality, though. Not even the talking cat in her own sea cabin. That was obviously artificial, a smart technological toy. This, though . . .

Her culture shock got worse when the dog stood up. He got up on his hind paws, almost like a trained animal in a balancing act. But then the movement became more fluid, his anatomy seemed to adjust somehow, and he was standing, a biped as fully developed as Maggie was, his waist low but his lower legs supporting him easily. He wore a kind of short kilt, and that belt from which, she saw now, tools dangled. His face did not have the obvious projection of a dog muzzle; it was flat, proportioned something like a human’s, but the nose was broad, black nostrils flaring. His ears were sharp and lay back against his scalp, and his eyes were wide apart, unblinking, fixed on her. A predator’s gaze. Maggie had a sense of age, from the slightly awkward stance, from grey hairs around a wide mouth. Age, and injury; one forearm looked almost withered, and he held it against his chest.

He wasn’t a dog. He was humanoid, as she was, but moulded from canine clay, as she was from the ape.

She’d asked for this encounter. But not for the first time she wondered whether, in the end, she was going to have the intellectual strength, the imaginative capacity, to face the true strangeness of her long mission, if she felt so overwhelmed by this first encounter with the alien.

‘You’re a beagle,’ she said.

‘So we h-have been called, by you. My name to you – B-hrr-ian.’ He pulled his lips back, revealing very canine teeth, in what might have been an approximation of a grin. ‘I ss-it to meet you like ghh-ood dog. Yes? Now I call.’ He tipped his head back and howled, a suddenly very wolf-like sound; Maggie heard the call echo from the remains of the buildings.

Morton raised an eyebrow at the visitors. ‘Brian’s one of our main contacts here. One of the more, umm, humanized of the local beagles. He has a distinctive sense of humour. Mordant, you might say.’

‘Mo-hrr-dant? Not know that wo-hhhrd. Look up later.’

‘We’ve given him English language dictionaries, grade school stuff, and other teaching aids. We’re learning a great deal from him.’

‘And I too lea-hhrn,’ Brian said to the bemused visitors, like the other half of some bizarre trained-animal double act, Maggie thought. ‘My job always-ss to learn, when Pet-hhra was alive. G-hranddaughter. Killed in wa-hrr. For he-hrr, my learning useful. Learn of kobolds, learn of humans. Yet she despised me,’ he said, and he hung his heavy head and shook it. ‘Poo-hhr B-hrrian.’

Mac snorted in disgust. ‘Christ. It’s like he’s begging for a treat.’

‘Ignore him,’ Morton said. ‘Just showing off. He’s useful but he can be a real asshole. Can’t you, Brian?’

Brian laughed, an oddly human sound. ‘Ass-sshole? You come sniff me then, Ben-

Now a newcomer arrived, evidently in response to Brian’s call, another dog, even bigger. It raced in on all fours but then stood tall, graceful, lithe, even as it slowed before Maggie. This one had clear, ice-blue eyes, was heavily muscled, and stood straight, almost to attention, Maggie thought.

She glanced at Morton. ‘Is this the one?’

‘We found a volunteer, who seemed to be the type you were looking for.’ Morton’s shrug said, Sooner you than me. ‘He’s all yours.’

Plucking up her courage, Maggie stepped forward and stood before the beagle. He smelled of musk, of dust, of meat; he smelled of animal. And yet his gaze was cool, clear. She said, ‘They call you Snowy.’

‘Yes-ss,’ he said clearly. ‘My t-hrrue name—’ A guttural growl.

‘You understand why I asked for a volunteer? You understand what’s to become of you, if you come with us?’

‘Ride to scentless wo-hhrlds.’ He looked up at the sleek form of the Armstrong, and gri

Wu said, ‘Ah! I understand. A beagle crew member. A fine experiment.’

‘The whole journey is an experiment, Lieutenant,’ Maggie said. ‘Call this one an experiment in cross-sapience understanding.’

Mac stared at Maggie. ‘You’re kidding.’

‘Mac, I didn’t tell you before because I knew you’d object—’

‘We already got Chinese military perso

‘Ignore him,’ Maggie said to the beagle. ‘Welcome to the crew of the USS Neil A. Armstrong II, Acting Ensign – umm, Snowy.’

‘Than-khh you.’ And he threw back his head and howled.

As they made to depart, Brian beckoned to Maggie, a very human gesture. ‘Wait. Come ss-see my t-hrreasure.’ He hurried into the shelter and emerged with what Maggie recognized as a picture – a painting, more likely a print. It was scuffed, dirty; perhaps it had survived a war. But its subject was clearly visible.

Mac grunted. ‘“Dogs Playing Poker”. Old cigarette ads.’

‘Gift from Sally Lin-ssay. Good shh-joke, she say. Good joke, good?’ And he laughed, in a painful imitation of the human.

‘Let’s get out of here,’ Maggie said.

‘You come back-chh. Have mo-hhre pic-sshtures. Play poker-hhr?’

‘So, Captain,’ Mac said as they began the ride back to the ships, ‘does Ed Cutler know about this damn beagle you’re bringing aboard?’