Bellwether

  And did.

  Permissions were typed up, paperwork waived, and live-animal approvals filed for almost before I could get down to Bio and tell Bennett they’d approved the project.

  “What does ‘on line immediately’ mean?” he said worriedly. “We haven’t done any background research on sheep behavior, how they interact, what skills they’re capable of learning, what they eat—”

  “We’ll have plenty of time,” I said. “This is Management, remember?”

  Wrong again. Friday Management called me on the white carpet again and told me the permissions had all been gotten, the live-animal approvals approved. “Can you have the sheep here by Monday?”

  “I’ll need to see if the owner can arrange it,” I said, hoping Billy Ray couldn’t.

  He could, and did, though he didn’t bring them down himself. He was attending a virtual ranching meeting in Lander. He sent instead Miguel, who had a nose ring, Aussie hat, headphones, and no intention of unloading the sheep.

  “Where do you want them?” he said in a tone that made me peer under the brim of the Aussie hat to see if he had an i on his forehead.

  We showed him the paddock gate, and he sighed heavily, backed the truck more or less up to it, and then stood against the truck’s cab looking put-upon.

  “Aren’t you going to unload them?” Ben said finally.

  “Billy Ray told me to deliver them,” Miguel said. “He didn’t say anything about unloading them.”

  “You should meet our mail clerk,” I said. “You’re obviously made for each other.”

  He tipped the Aussie hat forward warily. “Where does she live?”

  Bennett had gone around to the back of the truck and was lifting the bar that held the door shut. “You don’t suppose they’ll all come rushing out at once and trample us, do you?” he said.

  No. The thirty or so sheep stood on the edge of the truck bed, bleating and looking terrified.

  “Come on,” Ben said coaxingly. “Do you think it’s too far for them to jump?”

  “They jumped off a cliff in Far from the Madding Crowd,”I said. “How can it be too far?”

  Nevertheless, Ben went to get a piece of plywood for a makeshift ramp, and I went to see if Dr. Riez, who had done an equine experiment before he turned to flatworms, had a halter we could borrow.

  It took him forever to find a halter, and I figured by the time I got back to the lab it would no longer be needed, but the sheep were still huddled in the back of the truck.

  Ben was looking frustrated, and Miguel, up by the front of the truck, was swaying to some unheard rhythm.

  “They won’t come,” Ben said. “I’ve tried calling and coaxing and whistling.”

  I handed him the halter.

  “Maybe if we can get one down the ramp,” he said, “they’ll all follow.” He took the halter and went up the ramp. “Get out of the way in case they all make a mad dash.”

  He reached to slip the halter over the nearest sheep’s head, and there was a mad dash, all right. To the rear of the truck.

  “Maybe you could pick one up and carry it off,” I said, thinking of the cover of one of the angel books. It showed a barefoot angel carrying a lost lamb. “A small one.”

  Ben nodded. He handed me the halter and went up the ramp, moving slowly so he wouldn’t scare them. “Shh, shh,” he said softly to a little ewe. “I won’t hurt you. Shh, shh.”

  The sheep didn’t move. Ben knelt and got his arms under the front and back legs and hoisted the animal up. He started for the ramp.

  The angel had clearly doped the sheep with chloroform before picking it up. The ewe kicked out with four hooves in four different directions, flailing madly and bringing its muzzle hard up against Ben’s chin. He staggered and the ewe twisted itself around and kicked him in the stomach. Ben dropped it with a thud, and it dived into the middle of the truck, bleating hysterically.

  The rest of the sheep followed. “Are you all right?” I said.

  “No,” he said, testing his jaw. “What happened to ‘little lamb, so meek and mild’?”

  “Blake had obviously never actually met a sheep,” I said, helping him down the ramp and over to the water trough. “What now?”

  He leaned against the water trough, breathing heavily. “Eventually they have to get thirsty,” he said, gingerly touching his chin. “I say we wait ’em out.”

  Miguel bopped over to us. “I haven’t got all day, you know!” he shouted over whatever was blaring in his headphones, and went back to the front of the truck.

  “I’ll go call Billy Ray,” I said, and did. His cellular phone was out of range.

  “Maybe if we sneak up on them with the halter,” Ben said when I got back.

  We tried that. Also getting behind them and pushing, threatening Miguel, and several long spells of leaning against the water trough, breathing hard.

  “Well, there’s certainly information diffusion going on,” Ben said, nursing his arm. “They’ve all decided not to get off the truck.”

  Alicia came over. “I’ve got a profile of the optimum Niebnitz Grant candidate,” she said to Ben, ignoring me. “And I’ve found another Niebnitz. An industrialist. Who made his fortune in ore refining and founded several charities. I’m looking into their committees’ selection criteria.” She added, still to Ben, “I want you to come see the profile.”

  “Go ahead,” I said. “You obviously won’t miss anything. I’ll go try Billy Ray again.”

  I did. He said, “What you have to do is—” and went out of range again.

  I went back out to the paddock. The sheep were out of the truck, grazing on the dry grass. “What did you do?” Ben said, coming up behind me.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Miguel must have gotten tired of waiting,” but he was still up by the front of the truck, grooving to Groupthink or whatever it was he was listening to.

  I looked at the sheep. They were grazing peacefully, wandering happily around the paddock as if they’d always belonged there. Even when Miguel, still wearing his headphones, revved up the truck and drove off, they didn’t panic. One of them close to the fence looked up at me with a thoughtful, intelligent gaze.

  This is going to work, I thought.

  The sheep stared at me for a moment longer, dropped its head to graze, and promptly got it stuck in the fence.

  qiao pai (1977—95)—– Chinese game fad inspired by the American card game bridge (a fad in the 1930s). Popularized by Deng Xiaoping, who learned to play in France, qiao pai quickly attracted over a million enthusiasts, who play mostly at work. Unlike American bridge, bidding is silent, players do not arrange their hands in order, and the game is extremely formalized. Superseded Ping-Pong.

  Over the next few days it became apparent that mere was almost no information diffusion in a flock of sheep. There were also hardly any fads.

  “I want to watch them for a few days,” Ben said. “We need to establish what their normal information diffusion patterns are.”

  We watched. The sheep grazed on the dry grass, took a step or two, grazed some more, walked a little farther, grazed some more. They would have looked almost like a pastoral painting if it hadn’t been for their long, vacuous faces, and their wool.

  I don’t know who started the myth that sheep are fluffy and white. They were more the color of an old mop and just as matted with dirt.

  They grazed some more. Periodically one of them would leave off chewing and totter around the perimeter of the paddock, looking for a cliff to fall off of, and then go back to grazing. Once one of them threw up. Some of them grazed along the fence. When they got to the corner they stayed there, unable to figure out how to turn it, and kept grazing, eating the grass right down to the dirt, Then, for lack of better ideas, they ate the dirt.

  “Are you sure sheep are a higher mammal?” Ben asked, leaning with his chin on his hands on the fence, watching them.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I had no idea sheep were this stupid.”

  “
Well, actually, a simple behavior structure may work to our advantage,” he said. “The problem with macaques is they’re smart. Their behavior’s complicated, with a lot of things going on simultaneously—dominance, familial interaction, grooming, communication, learning, attention structure. There are so many factors operating simultaneously the problem is trying to separate the information diffusion from the other behaviors. With fewer behaviors, it will be easier to see the information diffusion.”

  If there is any, I thought, watching the sheep.

  One of them walked a step, grazed, walked two more steps, and then apparently forgot what it was doing and gazed vacantly into space.

  Flip slouched by, wearing a waitress uniform with red piping on the collar and “Don’s Diner” embroidered in red on the pocket, and carrying a paper.

  “Did you get a job?” Ben asked hopefully.

  Roll. Sigh. Toss. “No-o-o-o.”

  “Then why are you wearing a uniform?” I asked.

  “It’s not a uniform. It’s a dress designed to look like a uniform. Because of how I have to do all the work around here. It’s a statement. You have to sign this,” she said, handing me the paper and leaning over the gate. “Are these the sheep?”

  The paper was a petition to ban smoking in the parking lot.

  Ben said, “One person smoking one cigarette a day in a three-acre parking lot does not produce secondhand smoke in sufficient concentration to worry about.”

  Flip tossed her hair, her hair wraps swinging wildly. “Not secondhand smoke,” she said disgustedly. “Air pollution.”

  She slouched away, and we went back to observing. At least the lack of activity gave us plenty of time to set up our observation programs and review the literature.

  There wasn’t much. A biologist at William and Mary had observed a flock of five hundred and concluded that they had “a strong herd instinct,” and a researcher in Indiana had identified five separate forms of sheep communication (the baas were listed phonetically), but no one had done active learning experiments. They had just done what we were doing: watch them chew, totter, mill, and throw up.

  We had a lot of time to talk about hair-bobbing and chaos theory. “The amazing thing is that chaotic systems don’t always stay chaotic,” Ben said, leaning on the gate. “Sometimes they spontaneously reorganize themselves into an orderly structure.”

  “They suddenly become less chaotic?” I said, wishing that would happen at HiTek.

  “No, that’s the thing. They become more and more chaotic, until they reach some sort of chaotic critical mass. When that happens, they spontaneously reorganize themselves at a higher equilibrium level. It’s called self-organized criticality.”

  We seemed well on the way to it. Management issued memos, the sheep got their heads stuck in the fence, the gate, and under the feed dispenser, and Flip came periodically to hang on the gate between the paddock and the lab, flip the latch monotonously up and down, and look lovesick.

  By the third day it was obvious the sheep weren’t going to start any fads. Or learn how to push a button to get feed. Ben had set up the apparatus the morning after we got the sheep and demonstrated it several times, getting down on all fours and pressing his nose against the wide flat button. Feed pellets clattered down each time, and Ben stuck his head into the trough and made chewing noises. The sheep watched impassively.

  “We’re going to have to force one of them to do it,” I said. We’d watched the videotapes from the day they arrived and seen how they’d gotten off the truck. The sheep had jostled and backed until one was finally pushed off onto the ramp. The others had immediately tumbled after it in a rush. “If we can teach one of them, we know the others will follow it.”

  Ben went resignedly to get the halter. “Which one?”

  “Not that one,” I said, pointing at the sheep that had thrown up. I looked at them, sizing them up for alertness and intelligence. There didn’t appear to be much. “That one, I guess.”

  Ben nodded, and we started toward it with the halter. It chewed thoughtfully a moment and then bolted into the far corner. The entire flock followed, leaping over each other in their eagerness to reach the wall.

  “‘And out of the houses the rats came tumbling,’” I murmured.

  “Well, at least they’re all in one corner,” Ben said. “I should be able to get the halter on one of them.”

  Nope, although he was able to grab a handful of wool and hold on nearly halfway across the paddock.

  “I think you’re scaring them,” Flip said from the gate. She had been hanging on it half the morning, morosely flipping the latch up and down and telling us about Darrell the dentist.

  “They’re scaring me,” Ben said, brushing off his corduroy pants, “so we’re even.”

  “Maybe we should try coaxing them,” I said. I squatted down. “Come here,” I said in the childish voice people use with dogs. “Come on. I won’t hurt you.”

  The sheep gazed at me from the corner, chewing impassively.

  “What do shepherds do when they lead their flocks?” Ben asked.

  I tried to remember from pictures. “I don’t know. They just walk ahead of them, and the sheep follow them.”

  We tried that. We also tried sneaking up on both sides of a sheep and coming at the flock from the opposite side, on the off-chance they would run the other way and one of them would accidentally collide with the button.

  “Maybe they don’t like those feed pellet things,” Flip said.

  “She’s right, you know,” I said, and Ben stared at me in disbelief. “We need to know more about their eating habits and their abilities. I’ll call Billy Ray and see what they do like.”

  I got Billy Ray’s voice mail. “Press one if you want the ranchhouse, press two if you want the barn, press three if you want the sheep camp.” Billy Ray wasn’t at any of the three. He was on his way to Casper.

  I went back to the lab, told Bennett and Flip I was going to the library, and drove in.

  Flip’s clone was at the desk, wearing a duct tape headband and an i brand.

  “Do you have any books on sheep?” I asked her.

  “How do you spell that?”

  “With two es.” She still looked blank. “S. H.”

  “The Sheik of Araby,” she read from the screen, “Middle-Eastern Sheiks and—”

  “Sheep,” I said. “With a p.”

  “Oh.” She typed it in, backspacing several times. “The Mystery of the Missing Sheep” she read. “Six Silly Sheep Go Shopping, The Black Sheep Syndrome …”

  “Books about sheep,” I said. “How to raise them and train them.”

  She rolled her eyes. “You didn’t say that,”

  I finally managed to get a call number out of her and checked out Sheep Raising for Fun and Profit; Tales of an Australian Shepherd; Dorothy Sayers’s Nine Tailors, which I seemed to remember had some sheep in it; Sheep Management and Care; and, remembering Billy Ray’s sheep mange, Common Sheep Diseases, and took them up to be checked out.

  “I show an overdue book for you,” she said. “Complete Words by Robert Browning.”

  “Works,” I said. “Complete Works. We went through this last time. I checked it in.”

  “I don’t show a return,” she said. “I show a fine of sixteen fifty. It shows you checked it out last March. Books can’t be checked out when outstanding fines exceed five dollars.”

  “I checked the book in,” I said, and slapped down twenty dollars.

  “Plus you have to pay the replacement cost of the book,” she said. “That’s fifty-five ninety-five.”

  I know when I am licked. I wrote her a check and took the books back to Ben, and we started through them.

  They were not encouraging. “In hot weather sheep will bunch together and smother to death,” Sheep Raising for Fun, Etc. said, and “Sheep occasionally roll over on their backs and aren’t able to right themselves.”

  “Listen to this,” Ben said. “‘When frightened, sheep may run int
o trees or other obstacles.’”

  There was nothing about skills except “Keeping sheep inside a fence is a lot easier than getting them back in,” but there was a lot of information about handling them that we could have used earlier.

  You were never supposed to touch a sheep on the face or scratch it behind the ears, and the Australian shepherd advised ominously, “Throwing your hat on the ground and stomping on it doesn’t do anything except ruin your hat.”

  “‘A sheep fears being trapped more than anything else,’” I read to Ben.

  “Now you tell me,” he said.

  And some of the advice apparently wasn’t all that reliable. “Sit quietly,” Sheep Management said, “and the sheep will get curious and come to see what you’re doing.”

  They didn’t, but the Australian shepherd had a practical method for getting a sheep to go where you wanted.

  “‘Get down on one knee beside the sheep,’” I read from the book.

  Ben complied.

  “‘Place one hand on dock,’” I read. “That’s the tail area.”

  “On the tail?”

  “No. Slightly to the rear of the hips.”

  Shirl came out of the lab onto the porch, lit a cigarette, and then came over to the fence to watch us.

  “‘Place the other hand under the chin,’” I read. “‘When you hold the sheep this way, he can’t twist away from you, and he can’t go forward or back.’”

  “So far so good,” Ben said.

  “Now, ‘Hold the chin firmly and squeeze the dock gently to make the sheep go forward.’” I lowered the book and watched. “You stop it by pushing on the hand that’s under the chin.”

  “Okay,” Ben said, getting up off his knee. “Here goes.”

  He gave the woolly rear of the sheep a gentle squeeze. The sheep didn’t move.

  Shirl took a long, coughing drag on her cigarette and shook her head.