Tim Pratt - Pale Dog.pdf - Tim Pratt - widez2

Pale Dog

(A Marla Mason Story)

Tim A. Pratt

Marla carried a drawstring bag containing a dozen kidney stones recently passed by an elderly

clairvoyant named Bainbridge. She swung the bag and hummed, almost dancing down the alley.

She'd taken Rondeau along with her to see Bainbridge, and Rondeau had been the one to actually

fish the kidney stones out of the toilet. Marla wasn't averse to doing her own dirty work, but given

the choice, she'd let Rondeau do it for her every time.

Now Rondeau had his hands shoved deep in the pockets of his jacket. He wore a vintage purple

zoot suit with a gold shirt -- a suit which he claimed was haunted by its former owner. Marla had

yet to see any evidence of a ghostly presence, though Rondeau had been wearing the suit for a

week straight, ever since he bought it.

Rondeau looked up at the looming brick walls on either side of them and sighed. "It seems like

we're always skulking down alleyways. Why can't we take a nice stroll down a broad avenue, all

with..." He waved his hands in a vague gesture. "With trees and shit. Happy little lampposts."

"Alleys are shortcuts," Marla said. "Shortcuts are our business."

"So me having my hands in a filthy toilet, that was in the service of the Great God Shortcut?"

"It beats cutting Bainbridge open and taking the stones out that way, doesn't it?"

"At least you would have done the cutting yourself," he muttered.

A white dog trotted into the alley. Marla didn't know much about dogs, but if pressed she would

have said it was partly shepherd but mostly mutt. The dog was neither big nor small, but

medium-sized -- just exactly the right size for a dog, Marla thought.

"Lovely pup," Rondeau said, squatting to pet the animal on the head. The dog panted and wagged

its tail. Marla crouched and ruffled the fur behind the dog's ear. "Good boy!" It looked at her with

peculiar, honey-colored eyes, and licked her hand. "It looks well fed, but it might be a stray. Do

you need a home to go to, little pup? Do you? Do you need a Mama? I can --" Marla stopped the

rush of baby talk she felt welling up within her. Slowly, she lifted her hand from the dog's neck.

The dog didn't seem to mind the end of attention, and just kept looking at her, panting and

wagging.

Marla eased away from the dog. "Rondeau," she hissed.

Rondeau looked up. "What?"

"Why are you petting that dog?"

"What do you mean? It's a nice dog. Aren't you a nice doggie? Aren't you just?"

" Rondeau ," Marla said, in her most sandpaper-on-nerve-endings voice. When she had Rondeau's

attention, she said, "Can you think of any two people less likely than us to stop what we're doing

so we can pet a stray dog ?"

Rondeau stopped patting, his hand hovering a few inches over the dog's head. He looked at the

dog, at Marla, and back at the dog. "Ah," he said. "Right." He eased away to stand beside Marla.

The dog didn't move, or seem troubled by their behavior, but kept wagging its tail, looking at them

expectantly.

"I still want to pet it," Rondeau said. "And I hate dogs. A dog stole my dinner once when I was a

kid, living under the Brandon street underpass."

"I don't hate dogs," Marla said, keeping her eyes fixed on the animal. "I don't even think about

dogs. They're pointless. I have no opinion about them. But I want to take this one home, and give it

a nest of blankets at the foot of my bed, and... and feed it steak ."

"Do you think it's some kind of a... dog god?"

"I hope we haven't sunk that low, Rondeau, to get pushed around by a dog god."

"Well, what, then? Somebody's familiar?"

"Maybe, but it would have to belong to someone pretty damned powerful. Who runs a dog show?

Some out-of-towner? It's nobody local; I would have heard." Marla was the head sorcerer in the

city, chief of chiefs, first among equals. Not much slipped through her information network.

"And I would've heard if anyone of consequence came to town." Rondeau ran Juliana's Bar, and

all gossip of relevance to the city's sorcerous population passed through there eventually.

"So."

"Shapeshifter?"

Marla snorted. She could tell a shapeshifter from a real animal. Only ordinaries and amateurs

were fooled by shapeshifters.

"Maybe it's just a sport, a fluke." Rondeau looked down at the dog, whose tail had not slowed in its

wagging. "An otherwise normal dog that was born with some psychic twist. It happens to people

sometimes, so why not dogs? It makes us want to love it and take care of it... that seems like a

reasonable, beneficial adaptation."

"Maybe," Marla said. "But then why is it out on the street with no collar, no tags? If this were my

psychic dog, I'd take better care of it."

Rondeau shrugged. "Maybe the collar broke. Maybe --"

The dog moved, and Marla and Rondeau both stepped back warily.

The dog turned and trotted out of the alley.

"See?" Rondeau said. "Off to seek other suckers."

"I don't know..."

Rondeau shook his head. "You just don't like my theory because, if I'm right, the dog is harmless,

and you don't know how to deal with anything harmless."

"Maybe that's it," Marla said. And maybe it was. But as they walked back to Marla's apartment,

she kept her eye out for the white dog. She didn't see it, but she wondered if it could see her.

Marla set the last jar on the counter, the one holding Bainbridge's kidney stones. Another jar

contained the toenail clippings of a man with amazing regenerative properties. A third (and this jar

was made of cobalt glass, to mute the brightness) held a dram of the shining lymph of Mother

Abbot. The remaining jar contained a goiter cut from the throat of a sacred cow.

"That stuff's nasty," Rondeau said, wrinkling his nose at the jars. He twiddled with the radio on the

counter until he found some big band music. Marla didn't like that kind of music, but it was an

improvement over the hard-driving dance-music Rondeau usually preferred. He hummed along

with the radio for a moment, then took a sip of his gin and tonic and grimaced. "This drink is nasty,

too. How can you stand this stuff? Tastes like pine needles."

"I like the taste of pine needles." Marla checked the seals on the jars. "That's it, we're set. Now we

go to see Langford."

"Why can't you do a divination on your own? Why go to all this trouble?"

"The only divination I'm any good at is reading entrails, and I don't have the stomach for that

anymore."

Rondeau swirled the ice in his glass. "You don't have the stomach. For reading entrails. Marla,

have you just made your first joke?"

"It's my second joke at least. Don't you remember that knock-knock joke?"

"Ah, yes. I must have repressed the memory. But really, why are we going to see Langford?

There are other methods."

She waved at the jars. "This is specialized stuff, to answer a specialized question, and for that,

we need a specialist. Hence, Langford. Most of the seers in this city are cryptic and obscure.

They can't help it -- that's just the way the information comes to them, the way it gets filtered

through their minds. I don't have time to puzzle out secret meanings, though, and Langford can

give me clear, unambiguous answers."

"He's creepy," Rondeau complained.

"This from the man with the haunted zoot suit?"

Rondeau looked at his sleeves worriedly. "Shh. You'll wake him up."

"I thought the dead didn't sleep?" She put the jars into a satchel. "Or else they don't do anything

but sleep."

"Yeah, well, he's quiet sometimes, at least." Rondeau smoothed his lapels.

"Let's go. We have to catch the 7:35 bus."

"Why do we ride the bus, when we could take the Bentley? We never take the car." His eyes

became dreamy, faraway. "I like cars. I want a big one, like you see in old movies, all chrome and

curves, like a torpedo, a rolling bomb..."

Marla frowned at him. He'd never rhapsodized about cars before. "Cars are for ordinaries,

Rondeau. We're underground people."

"Goddamn shortcuts."

Langford owned lots of property, and kept his current headquarters beneath one of the city's

largest medical testing facilities. The place was like a hospital, without the inconvenience of actual

patients. Marla and Rondeau walked down white hallways, past gray doors. People in lab coats

passed by and gave them quizzical looks -- Marla in her cream-white cloak with the silver clasp in

the shape of a stag beetle, Rondeau in his gold-and-purple zoot suit. The two of them looked

disreputable, fundamentally out-of-place, but people who worked for Langford doubtless became

accustomed to the occasional odd coming-and-going.

Marla led Rondeau down a dim stairway to a steel door with no discernible seams or apertures. A

red button set into the wall glowed faintly. Marla pushed it.

"Yes?" Langford's voice came crisp and digitally clear from a concealed speaker

"It's Marla and Rondeau."

The door buzzed and swung inward. Marla and Rondeau stepped inside. Marla had been to

Langford's lab before, so she knew to breathe through her mouth. Rondeau, however, was a

newcomer, and he gagged. "It smells like a barnyard in here!"

"I always thought it smelled like a yeast infection," Marla said, her voice nasal. "But I've never

smelled a barnyard." They stood in a small, featureless room, with another door at the far end.

"This is the anteroom, too. It really stinks in the main area. Langford says you get used to it. I

never have."

The inner door opened, and Langford smiled and beckoned them in. He wore a lab coat, too, but

his was spattered with strange stains, yellow and green and red. His round rimless glasses

seemed on the point of sliding off his nose, and his brown hair was cut short. He might have been

a cute young medical student, but Marla knew he was fifty years old at least, his youthful looks

just one of the consequences of his dabbling in biological esoterica. Langford was commonly

known as a biomancer, and his early studies had, indeed, been almost exclusively concerned

with the effect of magic on living organisms (his menagerie of "transformed" creatures was

supposed to be astonishing, though Marla had never spoken to anyone who claimed to have seen

it firsthand). In recent years he'd expanded his field of inquiry, however, dabbling in quantum

mechanics, superconducting technology, and other endeavors, applying the torque wrench of

magic whenever traditional scientific approaches proved too slow or ineffective.

"Are you ready for the divination?" he asked.

Marla nodded, holding out the satchel.

"Oh, good," Langford said. His glee for the work never seemed to fade; he was the most

consistently energetic person Marla had ever met. She wondered if he'd done something to step

up endorphin production in his brain.

Langford took the satchel and preceded them into his workshop. In contrast to the gleaming,

humming sterility of the labs upstairs, Langford's personal workshop was a riotous mess, part

junk-shop, part science lab, part brujo's hut. One wall was covered with a particularly virulent

green mold, and the last time Marla had visited, Langford had introduced her to the mold, and told

her he was experimenting with "aggregate sentience." Innumerable shelves held pickled oddities,

as well as terrariums filled with all manner of live creatures, from hissing roaches to fire newts to

water dragons.

Rondeau was clearly spooked by the towering proximity of so many nasty, chitinous, slithering

things, but Marla chose to ignore his discomfort, and Langford was wholly oblivious. The scientist

led them to a lab table (its surface remarkably clear of clutter) and put the jars down beside a

large metal mixing bowl filled with a viscous black substance.

"I've been thinking about scrying bowls," Langford said. "And quantum computers. The difference,

really, is only one of perspective and application --"

"I don't need to know the details," Marla interrupted. "You know this stuff is beyond me."

"Oh, only the math," Langford said. "You could understand the outlines, if you wanted."

"I'm not interested in how you get the answers, just in the answers themselves."

"Of course," he said, and started taking the jars out of the bag. "The goiter isn't bad. I'd have

preferred a goiter from a white buffalo, but this will do."

Marla laughed. "If I had a white buffalo, I could work up a magic big enough to get rid of Todd

Sweeney forever, and I wouldn't need this divination."

"I can make a white buffalo, of course," Langford said, gnawing his lip. "But the naturally-occurring

ones are so much more effective."

"Sweeney?" Rondeau said. "You're here to ask a question about Todd Sweeney? But he's dead ."

Marla shrugged. "He's supposed to be dead. Everyone said he was dead. But one of Hamil's

spies saw him in the lobby of the Whitcroft-Ivory building, alive and well. I'm here to figure out how

that happened."

"Shit," Rondeau said, with no little awe. "Todd Sweeney's alive. That's impressive. If as many

people wanted me dead as want him dead... Well. I'd be dead."

Todd Sweeney (and the name was a pretentious affectation, one of many the man entertained)

had come to town the year before. It was obvious to everyone that he was a player, and he

claimed connections to heavy operators in Thailand and French Guyana. He wanted what

everyone wanted -- money and power -- and he was charming enough to get both.

But Sweeney had no qualms, no scruples, and no manners. He'd connived, cheated, and

screwed-over everyone in the city to get what he wanted. Everyone , even dangerous men like

Gregor and Hamil. Marla was the only one who hadn't done any business with him. When the

council of sorcerers decided something had to be done about Sweeney, that a message had to

be sent, Marla was the obvious choice to carry out the sentence. She was the only one who didn't

have a personal stake in Sweeney's downfall.

But now, somehow, Sweeney had survived Marla's efforts.

That was a mistake on Sweeney's part. His survival made things between him and Marla a

personal matter. "Yeah," Marla said. "I take his continued life as a personal affront. He tricked us

somehow, or else tricked death itself. Langford's going to tell me what's what."

"Wow." Rondeau said, shaking his head. He walked over to one of the shelves, scowling at

insects in a terrarium, then wandered toward a shelf of books.

"You have the question all worked out?" Langford said, opening the jars. "My, this is exceptional

lymph!"

"Yes," Marla said. "Nailed-down and unambiguous. I went over the wording about a hundred

times. It's airtight."

"Good. Because you only get one chance to ask, and --"

"I know, Langford," she said, not without affection. She liked the biomancer. His ambitions were

incomprehensible to her, but they were also completely tangential to her own. That meant he was

no threat. That meant they could be friends.

Langford added the contents of the jars, one by one, to the bowl of blackness on the table, stirring

with a wooden spoon. The toenail clippings swirled away, as did the kidney stones, and the goiter

appeared to actually dissolve . "It's like programming a computer," Langford said. "Inputting the

parameters. If you assume that everything physical has a spiritual analogue --" He glanced at

Marla, who had her arms crossed with impatience. "Ah. Sorry." He held the blue jar of lymph in his

hand, light shining from the jar's open mouth. "After I add this, ask the question. Don't take any

unnaturally long pauses, or the scrying bowl will think -- well, not think , I don't mean think exactly

-- that you've finished. It's fascinating, really -- as near as I can tell, the vibrations your voice cause

in the air are transmitted to the scrying fluid, which then performs some operation which is at

bottom mysterious to me, and the answer emerges ... I don't think the bowl is at all concerned with

the content , it's like the thought experiment about the Chinese Room..." He glanced at Marla.

"Well. Anyway. Onward." He tipped the jar of shining lymph into the bowl, where it disappeared,

not even changing the substance's color.

Marla drew breath to ask her question.

"What the hell is this dog doing here?" Rondeau shouted.

Marla's mouth fell open in shock and dismay. She looked at Langford, who stared fixedly at the

bowl. "That's it," Langford said. "That's the question it's going to answer. I'm sorry, Marla." He

slumped his shoulders for a moment, then stiffened. " What dog?"

Rondeau hurried back to the table... followed by the white dog they'd seen in the alleyway. "Marla,

it's that dog again, I don't know what --"

"Rondeau," she said, her voice full of ice and spines. "You ruined the divination. Why can't you

keep your mouth shut?"

"It's impossible," Langford said. "How did this dog -- nice doggie -- get in here? There's no

possible entrance, no conceivable way, unless it came in with you two, but it couldn't have -- oh,

good dog! -- it couldn't have, because I let you out of the anteroom myself..." He frowned. "Why do

I want to name this animal 'Snowflake' and take it home with me?"

The scrying bowl spoke, then, in Rondeau's voice:

"The dog is here to guide the undying spirit to its final rest," it said.

Marla, Rondeau, and Langford all looked at the bowl.

Then they looked at the dog. Which was wagging its tail.

"So," Marla said, feeding the dog a huge hunk of rare steak. "Do you think it's come to get

Sweeney? That he managed to fool death somehow, and now the dog is on his trail?" The dog sat

on a chair beside her, eating happily off his own china plate.

"It's possible," Hamil said, looking at the animal thoughtfully. Hamil was Marla's consiglieri. An

older sorcerer, and a man of considerable gravitas (as well as considerable physical bulk), he

had the experience to temper Marla's sheer-power approach to problem-solving.

"Then why's it keep following us?" Rondeau asked from the other side of Hamil's table. He'd been

sitting beside the dog at first, but it kept sniffing at his armpits, which made Rondeau nervous,

mostly because he found the dog's behavior adorable, which was a wholly unnatural response for

him.

"Perhaps it recognizes you as allies. It is surely a creature of great wisdom and perception..."

Hamil trailed off as the dog began licking its own testicles, with evident pleasure.

"That's so cute," Marla said, and then scowled.

"That dog is too creepy," Rondeau said. "Mostly because I don't find it creepy at all , when I know I

should. What do we do now?"

"We go see Todd Sweeney, and let the dog get a whiff of him, and drag his ass to hell." Marla

patted the dog. "I always thought hellhounds were black and breathed fire and such."

"Death rides a pale horse," Rondeau said. "Maybe this is Death's pale best friend."

Hamil chuckled. "Psychopomps -- beings that guide the dead from earth to the afterlife -- come in

a number of guises. They appear as birds, quite often. Why not a dog?" Hamil took a bite of a

chicken leg, then offered the drumstick to the dog.

Rondeau reached across the table and slapped Hamil's hand away, though under normal

circumstances he never would have struck a sorcerer of such power. Rondeau's only strength

lay in his ownership of Juliana's Bar and his friendship with Marla, and those could only offer so

much protection.

Hamil looked at Rondeau with the implacable patience of a glacier.

"I'm sorry," Rondeau said, looking down at the table. "Really. But you can't give chicken bones to

the dog. It might choke."

"We’ve got to find Sweeney," Marla said.

Marla and Rondeau went to Sweeney's old place, a Victorian townhouse in a nice neighborhood.

The house had been ritually defiled, the walls covered with lethally mis-drawn spray-painted

runes, the corners filled with sea salt, the mirrors all shattered. Bird-shit covered the floor from the

flock of pigeons that had been released inside, that now lived raucously in the living room

chandelier. The house had been turned into one huge bad-luck death-omen. That had been

Sweeney's first warning, which he had disregarded. As if he had nothing to fear from threats of

death.

"I don't think he's been back," Rondeau said, noting the undisturbed dust. The dog sat down by his

feet and scratched behind its ear. The pigeons twittered, and the dog barked. It was an adorable

bark, a bark that would never annoy neighbors or frighten children.

"Let's check the bedroom," Marla said, and went upstairs. She opened the closet, which was

empty but for a few wire hangers. "He came back for his suits. He was always vain about his

suits." She glanced at Rondeau. "You're vain, too, but he had good taste. Has, I guess."

Rondeau tugged at his purple cuffs. "My taste is unimpeachable. How do you know it was

Sweeney, and not some looter, who took the suits?"

She pointed to the carved designs over the closet door. "If anybody else passed so much as a

finger through this doorway, zap! They'd be burned."

"That's pretty extreme wardrobe protection."

"I told you he was vain."

The dog trotted toward the closet door.

"No!" Marla and Rondeau shouted simultaneously. But the dog passed through the doorway

without visible harm; the runes over the door didn't even glow. It was as if the dog wasn't even

Tim Pratt - Pale Dog.pdf

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