Part 8 (2/2)
”The what?”
”Never mind. Things change.”
There were several seconds of silence. We were coming up on the cordon of weaponry and troop carriers the the army had thrown up around the site. I kept my eyes on it, my heart thunping while I waited for Wetherall's response. Finally I snuck a peek at him.
He was looking right at me, wearing the same goofy, astonished smile his avatar had flashed during his first call to my university office. ”Change is scary,” he said. Then he laughed out loud. ”Ask Murk Janglish.”
We reached the checkpoint. Wetherall had brought enough financial and political pressure to bear in insure us a hearing when the time came; now I watched him discuss quietly with the nervous office in charge why our presence-in particular mine-was appropriate at this crucial moment. Wetherall seemed quite as adept at persuasion in person as he was by avatar. We pa.s.sed through the perimeter to the place where the sleeping dogs lay.
In the days since what the press was calling the Big Thorp Ma.s.sacre, the s.h.i.+tdogs had been undergoing some sort of transformation. They'd exuded fluids, and lost a considerable portion of their ma.s.s. Some were of the opinion that human flesh was poisonous to them and the dogs were dying. I wasn't convinced. The last confrontation had been so purposeful, on both sides. And I could not discount my own compulsion to converge.
The dog that had eaten Thorp was the first to rise. After baking in the hot sun for days, it shuddered, then staggered to all fours. Its legs had become more elongated and slender, and the paws more handlike, with three fingers and an opposable thumb. As it sat up, quivering, I saw that its neck was also longer, its brow higher.
The soldiers drew back. There was a clank of weapons brought to the ready when the dog rose onto its hind legs. It shook its head, opened its eyes, then looked down at itself, and raised its big blue paw before its face. ”My G.o.d!” it said. ”I've got my hand back!”
The soldiers prepared to fire. Wetherall pulled me back. The creature lowered its hand and regarded us with a clear intelligence.
”No need for the guns, boys,” it said. ”Dr. Blaine Thorp here. Let me explain to you what's going on.”
The s.h.i.+tdogs were biological message devices. They were sent by an alien race which the Thorp-creature still called the Big Dogs and which had been spreading throughout the galaxy for millennia. When the s.h.i.+tdogs landed their potential lay dormant-they were little more than the feeding and excreting machines they had seemed to be. Their initial programming was to set up the s.h.i.+t piles and jewels. If intelligent creatures existed on a world they visited, such creatures would, the Big Dogs believed, be drawn to the jewels. Of course, other sorts of creatures might be attracted as well, and the Big Dogs didn't want to waste time on squirrels and turtles.
So the s.h.i.+tdogs were designed to a.n.a.lyze the local biology and produce the vilest smell imaginable. The a.s.sumption was that only intelligence would ignore a horrific stink for nothing more tangible than curiosity. Only intelligence would grasp that ten percent beauty was well worth ninety percent s.h.i.+t. And so only a long series of interactions, c.u.mulatively proving the intelligence of the curious creatures, would trigger the next phase.
Attraction, first by semiotic manipulation, and at the climax by direct stimulation of the limbic system. Those most fascinated by the s.h.i.+tdogs would be the likely candidates for consumption. After they were eaten, the dogs would a.n.a.lyze the genetic makeup of those ingested, modify themselves correspondingly, and incorporate memory RNA from their supper.
So we faced a group of twenty-five Big Dog aliens, their own intellects fully activated, but incorporating the memories and knowledge of the humans they'd gobbled, and thus able to understand human society, to communicate, to function as partic.i.p.ants in the human world.
Much to my dismay, the brand-new Big Dogs also got the personalities of those they'd devoured. So the world is being forced to deal with a set of super-intelligent aliens, with knowledge of the universe that dwarfs our own, led by a creature that just happens to have the character of Blaine Thorp.
He's been awfully nice to me, all things considered. And why not? He lost every battle and still won the war. He's the most brilliant chiropractor in the universe and he knows it. Thorp Dog has even asked me to head up the human liaison team. So obviously having his IQ boosted to Epsilon Eridani has taught him something.
I have Wetherall to thank for this, except that I still can't decide what to do with him. Murk Janglish was right, after all. I guess I've sunk my hooks into him.
I'm just not sure whether I should keep him or throw him back.
Tonight on Eye, critic-at-large Dennis Ngomo takes a first look at architect Nguyen O'Hara's controversial plans for building Convergence World. Are the piles built by the former s.h.i.+tdogs an appropriate site for a water slide theme park? Dennis will put that very question to O'Hara and his lawyer, Murk Janglish, in a few moments.
Later today, America, America's own Penelope Hunt sits down with alien leader Blaine Thorpdog, who reminisces about his boyhood in Iowa and explains the principles of faster-than-light travel.
This week on ProfitWeek our panel of experts considers the future of frozen desserts in general and Jolly Freeze Corp in particular, in the wake of the biggest rollout of an ice cream flavor in history, Luscious Lizberry.
Coming up on Hemisphere Confidential Report: we bring you a shocking exclusive on Ramsdel Wetherall's latest s.e.xual fetish. Our I-team of undercover nan.o.bots have caught Wetherall with yet another unidentified beauty, believed to be gropie diva Jillian Jalapeno. Sources close to Ms. Jalapeno have denied that she has accepted the island of Grenada as an engagement present. Stay tuned for extremely unauthorized footage of the reclusive billionaire and his latest mystery woman jumping on beds.
The End
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