An Android Dog's Tale Read Free

Development Corporation
    Specializing in natural produce from across
the galaxy.
    Caringly grown, cultivated and harvested by
simple sentient life forms.
    No artificial ingredients, pesticides,
herbicides, or mechanized equipment used in processing.
    Guaranteed 100% organic.
    The smaller ship watched it leave and then
reabsorbed its own landing struts. It took great satisfaction in
completing a job done well. The project it established here should
bolster corporate profits for many millennia to come.
    It notified the new project manager of its
intention to leave.

 
One - People Like Clay
    4,197 Years Later
    (Galactic Standard Year 227800)
    (Project Year 4247)
    In which Mobile Observer Android 126 first
encounters humans.
     
    T here were no paths
here—or anywhere. The corporation discouraged paths, especially
those that led anywhere. Anyone who might be watching would have
seen a man, his dog, and his pack animal zigzagging seemingly at
random through tall grass, between trees and bushes, around rock
outcroppings, and across shallow streams. If a direct way to get
from where they were to where they were going existed, they would
have intentionally avoided it. But no one watched and no direct
routes existed, just as it should be.
    MO-126 took in the sights. Everything
remained new to him, but most of what he could see nearby merited
no more than a glance—even less if it could be avoided. His
position in front of his partner and their pack animal, together
with his height, or lack thereof, currently limited his view to the
patch of weeds around him. It was not especially interesting, but
it did have advantages over being behind the slow-moving gond, a
position which allowed little more than a clear view of its wide,
shaggy legs and even less attractive portions of its anatomy.
    He glanced over his shoulder at the android
walking a few steps behind him. His partner, being bipedal, enjoyed
a higher vantage point. MO-126 did not envy him his height because
it came with additional responsibilities, among other things.
    The trader outwardly resembled the sentient
primitives the corporation introduced to work this project. He wore
a simple, knee-length tunic of woven flax linen. The sandals on his
feet were made of the tanned hide of the same kind of beast now
carrying their trade goods. Nothing about the two travelers would
pass as remarkable in any of the villages in the region.
    The humanoid trader led their mission, and
he chose the indirect routes they would take to get to all the
villages that Field Operations told them to visit on this
assignment. The large animal he walked beside, and ostensibly led
by a slack, leather strap, was one of a varied species of normally
docile herbivores native to this planet. The frugal process of
evolution gifted these plodding beasts with all the speed and
intelligence they required to survive. Lacking in natural
predators, they did not need to be especially quick in either
area.
    In the wild, small herds of the huge, hairy
gonds grazed and foraged the landscape, moving behind their herd
leaders at a rate of about half a kilometer per day, if they were
in a hurry to get to an especially appetizing patch of forage.
Domesticated, they could be harnessed to pull plows or drag rocks
and stumps from fields, which they did without complaint or any
sense of urgency. They could not be beaten or bribed to move much
faster. Their intelligence measured just slightly higher than the
vegetation they consumed and slow was the top speed at which they
could move, which suited corporate interests perfectly because it
matched their plans for human development here.
    A familiar sensation, like a metallic ping
in the middle of MO-126’s low forehead, demanded his attention. His
partner was signaling him.
    “ Slow up. We’ll follow this stream for a
while. ”
    No obvious logic lay behind the route the
trade android chose, which was probably why he chose it and why he
would choose a different but equally