He wiped his nose as his eyes focused, trying to get the smell of algae out of it. He stopped because he realized he was being watched. Nohar saw the dog before he heard or smelled it, and that made it sink in exactly how close he’d been driving himself. It stood about four meters away, a gray mutt that looked for all the world like a natural unengineered canine. It sat on its haunches, looking at Nohar and panting.
The fact that it could get that close without waking him made Nohar very nervous.
The dog noticed Nohar move, and it let loose an odd staccato yip. When Nohar had been an LA native, he had heard stories about the feral dogs that populated the Hollywood hills, especially around the old reservoirs. He’d never really thought that much about it, until now—
He never thought of a dog as a potential threat. But as he stared at the gray dog, he realized that dogs were naturally pack hunters, and in his state he’d probably have trouble with one fifty-kilo animal. He couldn’t even tell how many were out there. His sense of smell was still overwhelmed by algae.
He did his best not to make any sudden moves.
From the woods around him, he heard more staccato barking. Two, three, four, five others at least. Nohar nodded, doing his best not to show teeth as he forced his engineered lips into a facsimile of a smile.
“Nice dog,” Nohar said as he slowly reached over to where he had placed the Vind.
It wasn’t there.
Nohar heard a low growl next to him. He turned to face it and saw a black dog, somewhere between a Doberman and a Rottweiler, about three meters away from his outstretched arm. Its forepaws were placed squarely on top of Nohar’s gun.
Nohar looked from Blackie to Gray, and back again. Gray was still yipping, the rhythm of it much more complex than normal. Nohar began to look at the structure of the dogs’ skulls. It was hard to notice at first, since the proportions were similar to any other dog’s skull, but the forehead was slightly higher, the skull slightly wider, and the whole head larger in proportion to the body.
These weren’t natural specimens of canis familiaris.
The first moreaus, the first examples of macro gene-engineering that were used for warfare, were a species of dogs with enhanced intelligence designed by the South during the war of Korean unification. Almost all of the moreaus since were based in part from those Korean Dogs. Since the U.N. banned the use of the human genome after the Korean Dogs were designed, the countries that built intelligent moreaus all started with the specs from those enhanced dog brains rather than the human—
Which was a bit of hypocrisy, since the Koreans unabashedly used human genes in the creation of their dogs.
That was all history to Nohar. As far as he knew, all those first efforts were destroyed in the labs of the gene-techs or died in the war once the Chinese-backed North overwhelmed the South.
Nohar stared at Blackie and felt as if he was staring into the eyes of his own past.
“Your move,” Nohar said.
Blackie kept growling, but didn’t move.
The tableau remained like that as Nohar tried to get an impression of how many canines were out in the woods beyond where he sat. His senses were too dull at the moment to give a specific number, but he began to realize that there were a lot of them.
From beyond a tree a few meters in front of him, Nohar heard an electronic monotone ask, “what is your name.”
Nohar sat up, causing Gray to retreat and Blackie to growl louder. He hadn’t expected a response.
As he sat up, a large brown dog walked out of the woods and cocked its head at him. Around its neck it wore a collar, and an electronic device was attached to the collar with silvery-gray duct tape. The electronic voice came from the device. “who are you. why are you here.”
“My aircar crashed,” Nohar said.
The brown dog paced in front of him, close enough that Nohar could finally make out the smell of agitation and fear off of him. The box spoke without emotion, but everything in the dog’s posture carried tension that the words didn’t contain. “men follow you here. men look for you. why.”
Nohar looked around him. He was surrounded. Canine eyes seemed to peer from around every tree, every rock, every bush. He could sense that he was just one move shy of a deadly confrontation. He couldn’t do anything to spook them.
Nohar decided to rein in his own tension, and tell the truth, If they sensed him relaxing, the whole situation might calm down a few notches. . . .
If his story didn’t fire them up.
Nohar sucked in a breath and said, “They think I killed someone.”
Brown stopped pacing and looked at him. One eye was clouded, and Nohar finally realized how old Brown was. He could see scars on his side, and one of his ears was ragged.
“did you kill someone,” Brown’s electronic box asked as he stared at Nohar with his one good eye.
Nohar shook his head. “No.”
“why do you carry a weapon.”
“Someone is trying to kill me.”
“who.”
“I don’t know.”
The pack around him erupted in a chorus of the odd staccato barking. Nohar realized that they had to be talking to each other. He was at a disadvantage. They could understand him, but the only one he could understand was the one-eyed leader with the salvaged electronic voicebox.
Even without understanding them, Nohar could pretty much figure out what they were debating. They were arguing whether or not to kill him.
Of all the groups to have a run-in with after the cops.
Nohar looked at the barking crowd and had an uncomfortable realization. Most of these dogs were sick. Many had crusts around their eyes and noses, many seemed unsteady on their feet.
“we should give you to the men. you are a man problem.”
Slightly better than voting to kill him off and bury him in the woods, but not by much. “I could help you out.”
“why would you help us.” The old dog with the electronic voicebox stared at him. When he blinked, Nohar noticed with a little unease that the eyelid on the leader’s clouded eye traveled more slowly than the other.
Nohar slowly pushed himself to his feet. There were a chorus of barks. This time Nohar noticed that a few seemed weak. Blackie growled at him and pulled the Vind farther away. “I don’t want to see those pink bastards again.”
The old dog’s gaze followed him. When Nohar was fully upright, the old dog was dwarfed, despite being large for his species. The dog’s posture didn’t change, even as he tilted up so his good eye could follow Nohar’s movement. “a deal.”
“A deal,” Nohar said. He turned around slowly. A fine dust of dried algae drifted off of him as he moved. It made him want to sneeze. “How many of you are sick? Half?”
Around him came a chorus of agitated barking. It was as if the woods around him had suddenly come alive. From the sound, he had struck a nerve. The barking went on while the canines debated. Nohar kept moving slowly, trying to look nonthreatening. He stretched overused muscles, and tried to work the stiffness out of his bad knee and shoulder.
“what do our problems matter.” For once, the old dog’s posture matched the fatalism of the electronic monotone.
“I could bring back a doctor—”
The barking became loud, aggressive. Nohar stopped moving. He had struck another nerve. “no men. no doctors. if that is the help you offer, it is no help.”
Nohar swore quietly under his breath. He had no love of doctors and hospitals himself, but the canine pack around him looked at him as if he had suggested mass euthanasia.
“Okay, no doctors. But I could bring you medicine.”
“what kind of medicine.”
Nohar was tempted to say he’d cure all of them if they let him go. But he doubted they were that gullible, or that he could pull off that kind of fabrication. “I’m not a
doctor,” he said. “I don’t know what’s the matter. But I could bring back antibiotics, antivirals, at the very least something to help with the symptoms—decongestants, aspirin.”
Nohar spread his arms and tried to look friendly.
More barking, subdued this time. Nohar hoped that they were considering this seriously. Looking at them, he could tell that they did a lot of scavenging. Some of them wore jury-rigged backpacks across their backs. A few wore collars with items hooked or taped to them. Nohar even saw a watch strapped to a dog’s foreleg.
But pharmaceuticals weren’t things you could easily scavenge.
“what is your name.”
Nohar realized he had never answered the first question.
“Nohar.”
“no-har.” The hesitation over the syllable was the first time there’d been a disruption in the voicebox’s smooth monotone. “we survive here because men do not know of us. if we make this deal with you, you must tell no one of us, of where we live. no men. no doctors.”
Nohar nodded.
“i am elijah. we will accept your help.”
Nohar felt a weight lift from his chest. He looked down at himself and said, “Can I clean up somewhere?” Walking into a pharmacy covered in algae was probably going to attract attention.
Elijah stepped in front of Nohar and said, “you will help. you will be followed. do not betray the trust we give you.”
Nohar nodded.
“we will return your possessions when you do what you’ve said.”
As Elijah’s voicebox spoke, Blackie picked up the Vind in his mouth and slipped it into a neighboring canine’s backpack. That answered a nagging question that had been bothering Nohar, how these dogs could get along without hands. He supposed it was only natural, especially in a pack, for the dogs to team together to do things like loading a backpack, or even putting one on.
The busted comm and the camera followed the Vind.
They were about to do the same to his wallet. “Wait, I’ll need that to get your medicine.”
Elijah shook his head in a gesture the humans seemed to have bequeathed on all their engineered brethren. “we will return your possessions when you do what you’ve said.”
The dogs began to leave him in twos and threes. In a few moments only Elijah was left facing him.
“prepare as you wish. but return with what you’ve gathered before the sky darkens. you will be watched. you will be followed.” Somehow, the one-eyed pack leader managed to instill the toneless voice with a sense of threat.
With that, Elijah left him as well.
Fuck.
• • •
Nohar walked down out of the hills.
He wasn’t alone. A fluctuating number of canines paced him on the way out of the woods. They stayed out of sight, but Nohar could smell them, and occasionally hear them.
He did get his chance to clean up. He passed a small creek on his way down toward Hollywood where he managed to wash most of the algae out of his fur and out of his clothes. He continued the remainder of his journey toward Hollywood dripping wet.
He was still trying to figure out how he was going to keep his promise to the dogs. He was tempted just to skip, letting them keep his gun and his wallet—
Nohar doubted he’d get far pulling that. However he matched up one on one, he wasn’t about to win a fight with a whole pack of angry, engineered canines. And when it came down to it, they could have overpowered him, could have fed him to the cops and whatever Fed agency wanted his hide. He was going to keep his promise.
Besides, he couldn’t get into any more trouble than he was in already.
He got his bearings when he saw the Hollywood Freeway. He stopped next to it, standing amidst the trash that heaped next to the road. He hunted in the midst of car parts and rubbish until he found what he was looking for, a length of old blackened PVC pipe about one-and-a-half meters long.
Carrying the pipe, dripping wet, his suit wrinkled, streaked with green, and smelling of dead plants, Nohar walked into Hollywood.
The dirty streets had a few moreys in the midst of the prostitutes and hustlers, but even they stepped aside to let Nohar by. The pinks turned away from him and tried to fade into doorways or behind lamp-posts. Nohar didn’t pay much attention. He was keeping his eyes out for cops.
He stopped at the first pharmacy he came to. It was an automated storefront, open twenty-four hours a day. Behind a thick window, a large holo displayed an image of a smiling, white-coated druggist, and in front stood a small kiosk where someone could place an order for whatever they needed.
Nohar ducked into a trash-strewn alley next to the store. The drugstore had a few windows back here, set into the looming brick wall. They were small and covered by a steel latticework set into the wall as a security measure. There also was a side door to the pharmacy, armored, flat, featureless, and locked with a cardkey panel.
Nohar was looking for a weak point, and after a moment of looking, he found it. The doorframe was old, contemporary with the century-old building. Above the new armored door was a flat panel where an old-fashioned air-conditioning unit would have fitted. That area was only so much plywood.
Nohar rammed his pipe at the flat space above the door. The plywood splintered, bowing inward. Nohar withdrew the pipe and rammed the panel again. The pipe hit with a crack, breaking the plywood almost in half. When he withdrew the pipe this time, he had to step back as the panel fell from the wall, revealing a small opening above the door.
Nohar could see another security grate over the hole, on the other side. He rammed it with the pipe a few times, and it clattered to the floor inside the building.
Nohar looked around a few times, and when he was sure no one was watching from the street, he tossed the pipe through the hole and heaved himself up and through. His suit caught and tore on splintered wood, but Nohar didn’t pay it much attention.
He fell to the floor on top of the bent security grate.
The rear hallway was dark, but he was almost certain to be on someone’s security video. All sorts of alarms were going off right now. He had five minutes, ten at the most.
He raced through the narrow hallway until he found a storage area. It was through an open doorway at the end of the hall. Motion sensors turned on the lights as soon as he stepped through the threshold. In the cavernous room, boxes sat on plastic shipping pallets, waiting for the owners to come feed the items into the automated bowels of the store.
A rancid chemical smell permeated the place. It reminded Nohar uncomfortably of a hospital.
He stripped off his jacket and started going from pallet to pallet, looking for what he needed. When he saw a label that indicated an antibiotic or antiviral drug, he tore into the top with his claws and grabbed two handfuls, tossing them into his jacket.
He went from pallet to pallet, tearing open boxes until he felt he had pushed the limit of his time here. He ran back to the rear door as he began hearing sirens in the distance. He tied his jacket in a bundle and tossed it through the opening above the door. Then he raised his foot and kicked at the crash bar on the door, twice. It didn’t want to give, but on the second kick something in the mechanism gave and the door swung outward into the alley.
Nohar ducked through the broken door to retrieve his jacket and his booty—
The jacket wasn’t there. Instead, lying on the ground in front of the door, was his wallet, the comm, the camera, and his Vind. Elijah had been as good as his word, the dogs had followed him all the way, watching his every move. Nohar found it disconcerting that he didn’t know where the dogs were, worse was the thought that he had missed them when they were right outside the door. He never knew how close they’d been.
He must be getting old.
Nohar gathered his possessions and ran to find the other end of the alley before the cops arrived.
Cha
pter 8
Nohar waited in the dark, a few blocks north of Wilshire and a few blocks east of Santa Monica, trying to figure out another option. There was no way he should be here. He was too exposed. It was only a matter of time before the Beverly cops found him. He didn’t dare get within a block of Royd’s offices; they were almost certainly watched. Just like Royd’s house had to have been watched.
Evening had fallen, and Nohar was crouched in the cover provided by a small park that nestled at one end of the street that held Royd’s offices. The other end of the street was a cul-de-sac, so all traffic from Royd’s building would pass through the intersection in front of Nohar.
Like when he hunted, he was crouched, absolutely still. He held the binocular camera. He watched through it, looking at a night-enhanced monochrome view of the entrance to the parking lot of Royd’s building.
Occasionally, he would hit the zoom button to get a close-up view of a car leaving, and its occupants.
By now he had gotten a pretty good idea where the watchers were. A Chrysler Mirador with tinted windows hadn’t moved from its parking spot since Nohar had found his hiding space. It was a luxury sedan, but in Beverly Hills it was anonymous enough to be unnoticed, where an unmarked police car would draw attention to itself.
Though Nohar wondered if they were police.
After waiting for two hours, he started to wonder if he had missed her. Just as he was about to give up and consider what the hell he’d do next, Sara Henderson walked out of Royd’s building.
He watched her slim vulpine form walk through the parking lot, through the too-manicured garden. Now was the hard part. He needed her to help him discover what Royd had been up to with him and the missing morey, Manuel—but he doubted that convincing her would be easy.
Nohar took a few deep breaths and prepared to move. He was going to have to catch her car as it stopped at the intersection in front of him. He was only going to have a few minutes to get down there, and somehow get into her car. He was still trying to figure out how to do that without making it look like an attempted kidnapping.