Scott Bakker - Disciple of the Dog

PENGUIN CANADA

DISCIPLE OF THE DOG

SCOTT BAKKER is the author of Neuropath and The Prince of Nothing trilogy, which Publishers Weekly calls a work of unforgettable power. He has been translated into seventeen languages, and has earned worldwide acclaim for his use of the pulp genre as a vehicle for literature. He spent his childhood exploring the bluffs of Lake Eries north shore, and his youth studying literature, languages, and philosophy. He now lives in London, Ontario, with his wife, Sharron, and his daughter, Ruby.

Also by Scott Bakker

Neuropath

Writing as R. Scott Bakker

THE PRINCE OF NOTHING SERIES

The Darkness That Comes Before

The Warrior-Prophet

The Thousandfold Thought

THE ASPECT-EMPEROR SERIES

The Judging Eye

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First published 2010

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (WEB)

Copyright R. Scott Bakker, 2010

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Publishers note: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Manufactured in Canada.

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Bakker, R. Scott (Richard Scott), 1967- Disciple of the dog / R. Scott Bakker.

ISBN 978-0-14-317244-4

I. Title.

PS8553.A3884D48 2010 C813.6 C2010-902120-7

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For Ruby
Wow

I am called a dog because I fawn on those who give, bark at those who refuse, and set my teeth in rascals.

Diogenes of Sinope

Track One

A REAL WINNER

My father always claimed I had an attitude problem. Youre too dismissive, he once told me. Too quick to judge. Life is bigger than you know, you know.

To which I replied, Cmon, Dad. Thats just stupid talk.

That was June 13, 1981. A good day.

For some mysterious reason, maybe genetic, maybe environmental, maybe some combination of the two, I am doubtful and irreverent through and through. Show me a picture of your newborn baby and Ill ask you if youre holding it upside down. Tell me youve won the lottery and Ill give you the number of my coke dealer. Show me a flag and I see kinky sheets on a hookers bed. I never commit, not to the big things, and certainly not to the little. Its not that Im evil or anything, its just that, no matter how hard I try, I never think what I should. Where everyone sees a Merge sign, I read Detour.

A true-blue individualthats what I am.

You would think that would make me popular, you know, home of the brave, land of the free, all that crap. But such is not the case, alas. Truth is, the only kind of individualism Americans believe in is the one that numbs the sting of name tags, or that makes a trip to the mall an exercise in self-creation. The consumer kind.

The false kind.

And who knows? Maybe thats the way it should be.

Ignore the Merge sign long enough, and sooner or later somebody gets killed.

Im what you would call a cynic.

This isnt to be confused with a skeptic. Skeptics dont believe in anything because they care too much. For them the dignity of truth is perpetually beyond the slovenly reach of humankind. Were just not qualified.

A cynic, on the other hand, doesnt believe in anything because he doesnt care enough. I mean, really, who gives a fuck?

You?

My name is Disciple Manning. A stupid name, I knowpretty much what you would expect from stupid-talking parents. When people ask me my name, I simply say Diss, Diss Manning. When they make funny with their faces, I lie and tell them I was named after my father, Datt Manning. I usually get a laugh out of dat. If I dont, if I still get the funny stuff, you know, the What-fucking-planet-are-you-from look, then I hit them, hardunless they happen to be a cop, in which case I just keep kissing ass.

The one thing you need to remember about me is that I dont forget.

Anything.

Ever.

According to the doctors, its driving me crazy.

And this is why I find myself sitting down and writing. My latest therapist thinks my problem isnt what I remember so much as how. Shes a big believer in the power of stories. She thinks hammering my more toxic memories into narrative form will give them some kind of psychologically redemptive meaning.

Sounds foofy, I know. Ive always thought writing is just what happens when we pursue our genius for justifying our scams for its own sake. But shes cute, and theres a wisdom you get after botching as many suicide attempts as I have. Putting pen to paper just doesnt seem that big a deal after putting knife to skin.

Nothing does, really. Strange knowledge, that.

Otherwise, Im like pretty much everyone else. I used to have all these grandiose goals and ambitions, an abiding conviction that I was the master of my own destiny, blah-blah-blah. But life just kept happening, you know? And the ad hoc decisions piled up and up and up, until I found myself stranded on a mountain not of my own making. You see, its convenience that drives the species, not in any grand sense but in the most squalid way you could possibly imagine. Say your wife starts coming home late on a regular basis, and you get this kind of queasy feeling in your gut, like on some parallel plane of existence you just stepped off the Tilt-A-Whirl. So what do you do? Say nothing. Follow the ruts. Keep your eyes on the habituated prize. Only ten years to go on the mortgage!

Its these kinds of decisions that define who we are, by and large. The small kind. The lazy kind.

And then one day you wake up, and the distance between your youthful hope and your middle-aged actuality yawns like a tiger on the wrong side of the cage. What happened? you ask yourself, but you know. Its written into the meat of you, all those little concessions to your weaker nature.