Free Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse by Stephen King, George R. R. Martin, Cory Doctorow Page B

moving like it was before. And I heard something snap when
    I stuffed it in."
    "So?"
    Jaak shrugged. "I don't think it's healing."
    The dog did look kind of beat up. It just lay there, its sides going up and down like a bellows. Its eyes were half-open, but didn't seem to be focused on any of us. When Jaak made a sudden movement, it twitched for a second, but it didn't get up. It didn't even growl.
    Jaak said, "I never thought an animal could be so fragile."
    "You're fragile, too. That's not such a big surprise."
    "Yeah, but I only broke a couple bones on it, and now look at it. It just lies there and pants."
    Lisa frowned thoughtfully. "It doesn't heal." She climbed awkwardly to her feet and went to peer into the cage. Her voice was excited. "It really is a dog. Just like we used to be. It could take weeks for it to heal. One broken bone, and it's done for."
    She reached a razored hand into the cage and sliced a thin wound into its shank. Blood oozed out, and kept oozing. It took minutes for it to begin clotting. The dog lay still and panted, clearly wasted.
    She laughed. "It's hard to believe we ever lived long enough to evolve out of that. If you chop off its legs, they won't regrow." She cocked her head, fascinated. "It's as delicate as rock. You break it, and it never comes back together." She reached out to stroke the matted fur of the animal. "It's as easy to kill as the hunter."
    The comm buzzed. Jaak went to answer.
    Lisa and I stared at the dog, our own little window into pre-history.
    Jaak came back into the room. "Bunbaum's flying out a biologist to take a
    look at it."
    "You mean a bio-engineer," I corrected him.
    "Nope. Biologist. Bunbaum said they study animals."
    Lisa sat down. I checked her blades to see if she'd knocked anything loose. "There's a dead-end job."
    "I guess they grow them out of DNA. Study what they do. Behaviour, shit like
    that." "Who hires them?"
    Jaak shrugged. "Pau Foundation has three of them on staff. Origin of life guys. That's who's sending out this one. Mushi-something. Didn't get his name."
    "Origin of life?"
    "Sure, you know, what makes us tick. What makes us alive. Stuff like that." I poured a handful of tailings mud into Lisa's mouth. She gobbled it gratefully. "Mud makes us tick," I said. Jaak nodded at the dog. "It doesn't make that dog tick." We all looked at the dog. "It's hard to tell what makes it tick."

    Lin Musharraf was a short guy with black hair and a hooked nose that dominated his face. He had carved his skin with swirling patterns of glow implants, so he stood out as cobalt spirals in the darkness as he jumped down from his chartered HEV.
    The centaurs went wild about the unauthorized visitor and corralled him right up against his ship. They were all over him and his DNA kit, sniffing him, running their scanners over his case, pointing their 101's into his glowing face and snarling at him.
    I let him sweat for a minute before calling them away. The centaurs backed off, swearing and circling, but didn't slag him. Musharraf looked shaken. I couldn't blame him. They're scary monsters: bigger and faster than a man. Their behaviour patches make them vicious, their sentience upgrades give them the intelligence to operate military equipment, and their basic fight/flight response is so impaired that they only know how to attack when they're threatened. I've seen a half-slagged centaur tear a man to pieces barehanded and then join an assault on enemy ridge fortifications, dragging its whole melted carcass forward with just its arms. They're great critters to have at your back when the slag starts flying.
    I guided Musharraf out of the scrum. He had a whole pack of memory ad-dendums blinking off the back of his skull: a fat pipe of data retrieval, channeled direct to the brain, and no smash protection. The centaurs could have shut him down with one hard tap to the back of the head. His cortex might have grown back, but he wouldn't have been the same. Looking at those blinking