Free Genetopia by Keith Brooke Page B

returned to her work, sluicing the swill buckets in a stream of brown water channelled through bamboo pipes direct from the river Elver.
    She hummed herself a little tune. It was one her mother had taught her when she was not much more than a pup. An insect buzzed in her ear. Quick as a striking whipsnake, she enclosed it in one of her fleshy fists and slipped it into her mouth. It tasted of blood.
    She stacked the last of the collapsible buckets by the outflow and wiped her hands on her frayed, off-white pinafore.
    Flies and change. Strange tastes. She would remember this day as the day of flies and change.
    Dinah was smart like that. Mutts could be blessed in many ways, but memory was not usually one of them. Old Ellis at the leisure house in Beshusa had taught her the trick of remembering things by hanging them on labels in your head. Already the day of flies and change was the day when two pups had died in the pens; when Nico had given her a white flower from the swamp trees; and now it was the day when Mas’ Torbern had returned–she could smell his sweet sweaty smell above all the other approaching scents on the air–with Mas’ Enchebern and a group of many visitors for Dinah to attend to. Many , for Dinah, was a number greater than the number of fingers on both hands.
    Dinah didn’t apply labels to all the days she passed through, but only to those she felt to be important in some way. Today, for instance, she only chose to mark as significant when she tasted her returning master.
    He had been away since the previous morning. That meant that Dinah had been able to get on with her chores without too much hindrance or hurt, but now that she knew he was returning, she felt her heart hastening with pleasure and pride.
    She emerged from the work cabin into the fading light of the day. Maddy was there already, shifting her weight from foot to foot in the dusty square. The poor thing didn’t know what was happening, only that something was happening, confusion clear on her ape-like features.
    Dinah hugged her, holding her friend’s head to her soft breasts. “Masters coming,” she said, explaining to the poor, feeble-minded creature. “Me done smell masters coming home.”
    She took Maddy’s hand and led her to where a series of wooden rungs were lashed to the stockade wall. She led the way up the ladder, climbing to the walkway from where the two could look out from the transit camp.
    They were standing on the side of the morning sun, which meant that they could look out across the overgrown waters of the Little Elver. This part of the river was a wide, shallow channel that cut through a meander formed by the main river, separating Stopover Island from the mainland. A short way downstream, Dinah could see the thick green ridge of the causeway that joined her home to the mainland.
    Yes! There, where the trees and vegetation thinned and the causeway fell away to be replaced by a slender living wood bridge, she saw a line of people and mutts. Too far away to identify the individuals, but she knew her master Torbern was there. She clutched Maddy’s hairy arm in anticipation and love and dread.
    ~
    Dinah and Maddy scampered through the camp to make preparations for their master’s arrival. Stopover was a big camp, as large as any in the Ten, she had once been told. There were many masters in Stopover and, although Dinah was quite naturally in the thrall of them all, her bond to her own master was the most intense. She knew that her devotion to Mas’ Torbern was something bonded deep in the matter of her body, a gut thing–she was, after all, a clever mutt: she understood far more than most, far more than she would ever let on. Knowledge did not– could not–alter her ingrained devotion to her master, though. She loved Mas’ Torbern more than she could love a pup of her own.
    All around the two of them, a fug of animal smells blanketed the dry air. The dirt track they followed was one of many that formed a grid