An excerpt from In a Dog’s World. If you’d prefer, you can start with Chapter 1, return to the previous chapter, or skip ahead to the next chapter.
The fifth day was a breeze. All their packs were lighter, since they’d eaten through more than half of their food and fresh water. Katasha’s spirits were also lighter, and she felt her tail swinging merrily as she hiked. She saw the dogs looking at each other as she pranced about the path, chattering at them about her plans for designing a space-probe that could descend from zero-gee space into the massy depths of Jupiter. Claire seemed interested in the engineering challenge of it. Mostly, though, Katasha could tell they were all startled by her change in attitude.
Jimothy returned her grins; Howell looked sad and a little stricken. Unlike cats, they didn’t talk about it. She kind of liked that.
By the time they set up camp that night, the route they were following had finished looping through the barren, rocky landscape around the canyon lake. They were back in the filtered sunlight of the forest, padding along soft, earthen trails. Tiny wildlife was dense here. Katasha’s ears turned constantly, picking up the sounds of small animals skittering and chittering everywhere around them.
“Did you talk to your roommate about his turtles?” Katasha asked Jimothy, as they sat around the camp after a dinner of soggy yet satisfying meat-pies.
Jimothy shook his head, ears alert. “Do you mean, how he wanted me to call him Turtle?” Jimothy asked. “We didn’t really have time to talk to each other.”
Katasha told the others about Turtle’s pet research project and, well, pets. Jimothy expressed concern about how much space the turtles’ aquarium would take up in their dorm room. Claire tilted her head in a subtle way that Katasha had learned meant that this quiet dog was very interested. She was starting to suspect that Claire was a bit shy.
Howell launched into a speech on the biology and genetics research happening at Isleywood that sounded rehearsed. Katasha wondered exactly how much recruiting Howell had been doing. When his speech ended, Katasha took the conversation back into her field again: “I brought the turtles up,” she said, “Because I was thinking about Turtle’s idea of genetically uplifting them. You know, making sentient reptiles. And, I was wondering about the difference between us and all these… you know… mice, squirrels, and other tiny mammals out here.”
Claire’s head was still tilted, but she didn’t say anything. If the intensity in her eyes was any indication, however, she was deep in thought.
Howell said, matter-of-factly, “That’s simple. The First Race uplifted us. They didn’t uplift all these woodland animals.”
Jimothy coughed politely into his paw, and said, “Well, that’s one view.”
“You’re not a First Racer?” Claire asked, sounding genuinely surprised.
“Contrary to popular belief,” Jimothy said, “Not every dog believes that human beings were deities.” He cut the deck of cards in his paws, tapped the two halves together, and returned to shuffling. “Some of us just think they were very clever primates who happened to evolve sentience earlier than any other mammalian species.”
Howell looked confused and said, “I thought you were planning to major in computer archeology?”
“Knowledge is knowledge,” Jimothy said. “And whether humans were gods or not, they had a lot of knowledge. That’s still worth un-encrypting.” Then he shrugged his narrow shoulders. “Besides, I enjoy cryptology. My choice of major doesn’t have to be ideological. It can just be what I’m good at.”
Howell nodded, slowly. He glanced over at Katasha, very briefly. Then, he said, “Well, obviously, First Race beliefs aren’t required at Isleywood. We have a lot–” He hesitated for a moment and then decided to correct himself after all, “–a number of very good feline scientists.”
“Actually,” Katasha said, archly, “Some cats are First Race believers.”
For a moment, there was a look in Howell’s eye that Katasha couldn’t identify. An interest, or a warmth. A softness perhaps. Then she continued to speak, telling her hiking group about Blue, the feline First Racer she’d met at the cat-mixer, and the look was gone.
Had Howell been hoping that she’d say it was her? That she believed in the First Race?
In all honesty, Katasha had never really dwelled on her own beliefs about humans before. No matter what humans had been, they were gone now, and there was plenty in everyday life to keep her busy without pondering on a past long gone. Katasha liked that Jimothy seemed to feel the same way. He wasn’t studying science to prove arcane religious beliefs. He was planning to study computer archeology at Isleywood because science was useful, and he was good at it. Katasha could respect that.
The next day, Claire talked to Howell about what all their freshman classes would be like while they hiked. It was the next to last day of the backpacking trip, and Katasha could feel the weight of the school year approaching. She’d been waiting for months — if not years, since she’d first decided she wanted to go to Isleywood early in her high school career — to get to Isleywood. Yet, now that the school year was mere days away, Katasha wanted to stay traipsing through the woods with Jimothy.
To keep Claire and Howell’s painfully practical conversation from polluting her ears, Katasha started a completely whimsical conversation with Jimothy.
“Have you ever met a squirrel?” she asked.
“No,” he said, his eyes shifty. “You mean, like the European ones? Sentient ones?” It amazed Katasha that he continued to shuffle his deck of cards even while hiking.
“There are some squirrels in the Uplifted States,” Claire chimed in, switching conversations briefly. “They mostly live in really big cities, like any of the other European sentients here,” she added before going back to talking to Howell about what to expect from the freshman chemistry seminar.
“Well, I haven’t met any,” Jimothy said.
“Neither have I,” Katasha said, “But I was just thinking about what it must be like for one of them to go on a hike like this.”
“How do you mean?” Jimothy asked.
“Well, we keep seeing squirrels!” Katasha said. “The primitive kind. How weird would that be?”
Jimothy shrugged. “I’ve heard there are primitive cats and dogs in Europe still.”
Katasha’s blue eyes went wide. “Really?” she meowed. “I hadn’t heard that…” Katasha knew that, historically, primitive cats and dogs had been kept as pets by humans. Most cats figured that all of the canine First Race mythology had grown out of that fact.
She wondered what it would be like to have a primitive cat as a pet. Would it be weird? Would it look too much like a real person, making it seem absurd and upsetting when it behaved like a primitive animal? Her family had never had pets, but Katasha knew that plenty of people kept small reptiles, birds, or even rodents as pets. Corina’s boyfriend Erik had a pet hamster. Katasha had never understood the appeal.
Late in the afternoon, Howell’s hiking group ran into another Intro to Isleywood hiking group. This group was led by Mirabelle, the Boston terrier. Katasha recognized one of the boys as the dachshund who’d stayed up so late playing cards with her and Turtle. The other two hikers in the group were German Shepherd girls, littermates. They were as large as Howell and wore matching embroidered tunics. Katasha was impressed that two littermates had managed to both get into Isleywood. She knew they were only rumors, but the rumors did suggest that the Isleywood registrars preferred to avoid letting in littermates. It kept the student body more diverse. These sisters must have been very bright to have overcome that.
Nonetheless, Katasha shuddered at the image their sisterly presence inspired in her brain of Corina following her around Isleywood, pressuring her to wear brightly colored tunics and hang out with the cats.
After so many days alone in the wilderness with Howell, Claire, and Jimothy, it was surreal to hear new voices talking. Twice as many conversations happened at once. Katasha missed the quiet. Nonetheless, it would have come to an end one way or the other. Since all the groups were heading back to the trailhead where the bus would be on the morrow, it made little sense for Howell and Mirabelle’s groups to travel separately from here on out. So, the two groups joined together.
Continue on to Chapter 15…