Already Among Us Read online

  Two or three hours later, the Dobbys having gone to bed, I was sitting reading by the fire when I heard a voice at the door.

  I called, “Who's there?”

  This time it was a little more distinct, though still garbled, as through by a person with a faulty palate. I heard, “Socrates.”

  I threw the door open quickly. Socrates stood there, eyes gleaming, tail alert. I looked beyond him into the shadows.

  “Who's brought you, old chap?” I asked.

  Socrates looked up. His powerful jaws opened. I could see teeth gleaming whitely.

  Socrates said, slurring the words, but intelligible, “Me. Can speak.”

  I brought him in, shelving my incredulity. Sitting in the Dobbys' cozy room in front of a glowing fire, it seemed more fantastic than ever. Half to myself, I said, “I can't believe it.”

  Socrates had sat down on the rug. “True, though,” he said.

  I asked, “Does Jennings know?”

  Socrates replied, “No. Have told no one else. Would only make into tricks.”

  “But Jennings knows you can hear and understand things?”

  “Yes. Could not hide. Jennings whips until I learn. Easier to learn at once.”

  His voice, a kind of low, articulate growling, became more readily understandable as I listened to it. After a few minutes it did not seem at all strange that I was sitting by the fire talking to a half-grown but large mongrel dog. He told me how he had practiced human speech by himself, forcing his throat to adapt itself to the complexities, succeeding through a long process of trial and error.

  I said, in amazement, “But, Socrates, you are barely four months old!”

  His brow wrinkled. “Yes. Strange. Everything goes so fast for me. Big—old . . .”

  “Maturity,” I supplied. “Of course there have been 'talking dogs' before, but they were just stunts, no real intelligence. Do you realize what a phenomenon you are, Socrates?”

  The vast canine face seemed to smile. “How not realize?” he asked. “All other dogs—such fools. Why that, Professor.?”

  I told him of his birth. He seemed to grasp the idea of X-ray mutation very easily. I suppose one can always swallow the facts of one's own existence. He remembered very little of that first month of infancy. When I told him of the fate of the rest of his litter, he was saddened.

  “Perhaps best not to know that,” he said. “Sad to think I might have had brothers and sisters like me. Not to be always a trick dog.”

  “You don't need to be a trick dog, Socrates,” I said. “Look, we'll go away. I've got friends who will help. You need never see Jennings again.”

  Socrates said, “No. Not possible. Jennings the master. I must go back.”

  “But he beats you! He may beat you for going out now.”

  “He will,” Socrates said. “But worth it to come see you.”

  “Look, Socrates,” I said. “Jennings isn't your master. No free intelligence should be a slave to another. Your intelligence is much more advanced than Jennings'.”

  The big head shook. “For men, all right. Dogs different.”

  “But you aren't even Jennings' dog.” I said. I told him the story of Jennings' trickery; how he had sold Socrates to me and then refused to acknowledge the sale. Socrates was not impressed.

  “Always Jennings' dog,” he said. “not remember anything else. Must go back. You not dog—not understand.”

  I said halfheartedly, “We would have a fine time, Socrates. You could learn all sorts of things. And be free, completely free.”

  But I knew it was no use. Socrates, as he said, was still a dog, even though an intelligent one, and the thousands of years of instinctive slavery to a human master had not been quenched by the light that brought intelligence and reasoning to his brain.

  He said, “Will come here to learn. Will get away often.”

  “And be beaten by Jennings every time you go back?”

  Socrates shivered convulsively. “Yes,” he said. “Worth it. Worth it to learn things. You teach?”

  “I'll teach you anything I can, Socrates,” I promised.

  “Can mutate more dogs like me?”

  I hated to say it. “No, Socrates. You were a fluke, an accident. X-rays make monsters; once in a million, million times, perhaps, something like you happens.”

  The bushy tail drooped disconsolately. The huge head rested a moment between his paws. Then he stood up, four-legged, an outcast.

  “Must go now. Will come again soon.”

  I let him out and saw him lope away into the night. I turned back into the warm firelit room. I thought of Socrates, running back thought he night to Jennings' whip and I knew what anger and despair were.

  Socrates came quite frequently after that. He would sit in front of me while I read to him from books. At first he wanted to be taught to read for himself, but the difficulty of turning pages with his clumsy paws discouraged him. I read to him from all the books he wanted.

  His appetite was voracious, but lay chiefly along non-technical lines; naturally enough, in view of the impossibility of his every being able to do even the simplest manual experiments. Philosophy interested him, and I found my own education improving with Socrates' as he led me deeper and deeper into mazes of idealism, epistemology and sublineation. He enjoyed poetry, too, and composed a few rough poems, which had the merit of a strange non-human approach. But he would not let me write them down; now I can remember only a few isolated lines.

  His most intense interest was in an unexpected field. I mentioned casually one day some new development in physical research, and his mind fastened on the subject immediately. He told me he could see all sorts of queer things which he knew humans could at the best sense only vaguely. He spent nearly an hour one evening describing to me the movement of a strange spiral-shaped thing that, he said, was spinning around slowly in one corner of my room, now and then increasing and decreasing in size and making sudden jumps. I walked over to the place he indicated and put my hand through vacancy.

  “Can hear it, too,” Socrates said. “High, sweet noise.”

  “Some people have unusual senses and report similar things,” I told him.

  He made me read through every book I could find on paranormal phenomena, in search of explanations of the oddities that surrounded him, but they annoyed him.

  “So many fools,” he said wearily, when we put down one book that had painstakingly linked up poltergeists with angels. “They did not see. They only wanted to. They thought they did.”

  The Dobbys were a little curious at my new habit of reading aloud in my room, and once I saw them glancing suspiciously at Socrates when he changed his speech into a growl as they came into the house from the garden. But they accepted his strange appearances and disappearances quite easily, and always made a fuss of him when he happened to turn up during my absence.

  We did not always read. At times we would go out into the fields and he and Tess would disappear in search of rabbits and birds and all the other things that fascinate dogs in the country. I would see them a field away, breasting the wind together. Socrates badly needed such outings. Jennings rarely took him out, and, as Socrates spent all the time he could filch from Jennings' training activities with me, he saw no other dogs and had no other exercise. Tess was very fond of him and sometimes whined when we shut her out from my room, in order to read and talk undisturbed. I asked Socrates about her once.

  He said, “Imagine all dogs intelligent; all men fools. You the only intelligent man. You talk to dogs, but you not like pretty women, even though they are fools?”

  Then, for months, Socrates disappeared, and I learned that Jennings was touring the north of England, having a sensational success. I saw also the announcement that he was to return to Barcaster for a fortnight early in November. I waited patiently. On the morning before he was due to open, Socrates returned.

  He was looking as fit as ever physically, but mentally the tour had been a strain for him. In philosophy he had
always inclined to defeatism, but it had been defeat with a sense of glory. He had reveled in Stapledon's works, and drawn interesting comparisons between himself and Stapledon's wonder sheepdog. Now, however, there was a listlessness about him that made his defeatism a drab and unhappy thing. He would not read philosophy, but lay silent while I read poetry to him.

  Jennings, I discovered, had steadily increased his bouts of drunkenness. Socrates told me that he had to carry the act by himself now; Jennings was generally too drunk to give even the most elementary instructions on the stage.

  And, of course, with the drunkenness came the whippings. There were nasty scars on the dog's back. I treated them as well as I could, but increasingly I hated and dreaded the time when he would say, “Must go now,” and I would see him lope off, tail low, to face Jennings' drunken fury.

  I remonstrated with him again, begging him to come away with me, but it was beyond reason. The centuries of slavery could not be eradicated. He always went back to Jennings.

  Then he came one afternoon. It had been raining for days, and he was wet through. He would not stay in front of the fire to dry. The rain was slackening a little. I took my raincoat, and, with Tess frisking beside us, we set out. We walked on in silence. Even Tess grew subdued.

  At last, Socrates said, “Can't go on for long. Whipped me again last night. Felt something burn my mind. Almost tore his throat out. I will do it soon and they will shoot me.”

  “They won't shoot you,” I said, “You come to me. You will be all right. Come now, Socrates. Surely you don't want to go on serving Jennings when you know you may have to kill him?”

  He shivered, and the raindrops ran off his shaggy back.

  “Talking no good,” he said. “I must go back. And if he whips me too much, I must kill him. I will be shot. Best that way.”

  We had reached the river. I paused on the bridge that spanned it a few inches above the swirling currents of the flood, and looked out. The river was high after the rain, running even more swiftly than it usually did. Less than a quarter of a mile away was the fall, where the waster cascaded over the brink into a raging turmoil below. I was looking at it abstractedly when I heard Jennings' voice.

  He stood at the other end of the bridge. He was raging drunk.

  He called, “So there you are! And that's what you've been up to—sneaking off to visit the professor. I thought I might catch you here.”

  He advanced menacingly up the bridge. “What you need, my lad, is a taste of the whip.”

  He was brandishing it as he walked. I waited until he had almost reached the place where Socrates was cowering on the boards, waiting for the blow, and then I charged him savagely. He fought for a moment, but I was sober and he was not. I caught one of his legs and twisted. He pulled viciously away, staggered, fell—and disappeared into the violently flowing river.

  I saw his face appear a few yards down. He screamed and went under again. I turned to Socrates.

  “It's all over,” I said. “You are free. Come home, Socrates.”

  The head appeared again, and screamed more faintly. Socrates stirred. He called to Jennings for the first and last time, “Master!”

  The he was over the bridge and swimming down frantically toward the drowning man. I called after him, but he took no notice. I thought of jumping in myself, but I knew I could not last even to reach him. With Tess at my heels, I raced around the bank to the place where the water roared over the fall.

  I saw them just as they reached the fall. Socrates had reached him, and was gripping the coat in his teeth. He tried to make for the bank, but there was no chance. They swept over the edge and into the fury below. I watched for their reappearance for some time, but they did not come up.

  They never came up.

  I think sometimes of the things Socrates might have done if he had been given the chance. If only for those queer things he saw that we cannot see, his contribution to knowledge would have been tremendous. And when I think that he was less than a year old when he died, the lost possibilities awe and sadden me.

  I cannot escape the conclusion that at his full maturity he would have outstripped all the specialists in the strange fields he might have chosen to work in.

  There is just one thing that worries me still. His was a true mutation; the identical litter showed that. But was it a dominate one? Could the strength and vigor of his intelligence rise above the traits of an ordinary dog? It's a point that means a great deal.

  Tess is going to have pups.

  The Model of a Judge

  William Morrison

  “The Model of a Judge” is superficially not a Furry story, but it has a Furry “soul”. One goal of anthropomorphic fiction is seemingly to encourage the concept of other intelligent life forms that can coexist as equal partners with humans. But how likely is this? To take examples just from familiar terrestrial life, other animals have their own instincts and biological imperatives. It may be nice to dream of anthropomorphized zebras, or eagles, or tuna, but even imagining bioengineering advanced to ridiculous extremes, how likely is this? In “The Model of a Judge”, mankind has taken an alien, wolflike carnivorous predator and “humanized” him through futuristic biosurgery and psychiatry into an imitation human, really a parody of a human, refined and suitable to judge a bakery contest. Yet how “human” can a carnivore really be?

  “The Model of a Judge” is another story that betrays its age. It was naïve even in 1953 to assume that wolflike animals and other wildlife could live on the moons of Saturn, or that these moons could be rendered habitable for humans merely by putting up a fragile plastic dome. Men are scientists and politicians; women are dilettante society leaders and gourmet cooks. Nevertheless, it has been reprinted several times, including in The Best Science-Fiction Stories: 1954, edited by Everett F. Bleiler and T.E. Dikty (Frederick Fell, November 1954) and Isaac Asimov Presents the Great Science Fiction Stories, Vol. 15, 1953 (DAW Books, December 1986).

  RONAR was reformed, if that was the right word, but he could see that they didn't trust him. Uneasiness spoke in their awkward hurried motions when they came near him; fear looked out of their eyes. He had to reassure himself that all this would pass. In time they'd learn to regard him as one of themselves and cease to recall what he had once been. For the time being, however, they still remembered. And so did he.

  Mrs. Claymore, of the Presiding Committee, was babbling, "Oh, Mrs. Silver, it's so good of you to come. Have you entered the contest?"

  "Not really," said Mrs. Silver with a modest laugh. "Of course I don't expect to win against so many fine women who are taking part. But I just thought I'd enter to—to keep things interesting."

  "That was very kind of you. But don't talk about not winning. I still remember some of the dishes you served for dinner at your home that time George and I paid you a visit. Mmmmm—they were really delicious."

  Mrs. Silver uttered another little laugh. "Just ordinary recipes. I'm so glad you liked them, though."

  "I certainly did. And I'm sure the judge will like your cake, too."

  "The judge? Don't you usually have a committee?"

  * * * * *

  He could hear every word. They had no idea how sharp his sense of hearing was, and he had no desire to disconcert them further by letting them know. He could hear every conversation taking place in ordinary tones in the large reception room. When he concentrated he could make out the whispers. At this point he had to concentrate, for Mrs. Claymore leaned over and breathed into her friend's attentive ear.

  "My dear, haven't you heard? We've had such trouble with that committee—there were such charges of favoritism! It was really awful."

  "Really? But how did you find a judge then?"

  "Don't look now—no, I'll tell you what to do. Pretend I said something funny, and throw your head back and laugh. Take a quick glance at him while you do. He's sitting up there alone, on the platform."

  Mrs. Silver laughed gracefully as directed, and her eyes swept the platfo
rm. She became so excited, she almost forgot to whisper.

  "Why, he's—"

  "Shhh. Lower your voice, my dear."

  "Why—he isn't human!"

  "He's supposed to be—now. But, of course, that's a matter of opinion!"

  "But who on Earth thought of making him judge?"

  "No one on Earth. Professor Halder, who lives over on that big asteroid the other side of yours, heard of the troubles we had, and came up with the suggestion. At first it seemed absurd—"

  "It certainly seems absurd to me!" agreed Mrs. Silver.

  "It was the only thing we could do. There was no one else we could trust."

  "But what does he know about cakes?"

  "My dear, he has the most exquisite sense of taste!"

  "I still don't understand."

  "It's superhuman. Before we adopted Professor Halder's suggestion, we gave him a few tests. The results simply left us gasping. We could mix all sorts of spices—the most delicate, most exotic herbs from Venus or Mars, and the strongest, coarsest flavors from Earth or one of the plant-growing asteroids—and he could tell us everything we had added, and exactly how much."

  "I find that hard to believe, Matilda."

  "Isn't it? It's honestly incredible. If I hadn't seen him do it myself, I wouldn't have believed it."

  "But he doesn't have human preferences. Wasn't he—wasn't he—"