Thomas disch - The Puppies of Terra

THE PUPPIES OF TERRA

Thomas M. Disch

In which I am born, and my father is done in by Dingoes.

My name is White Fang, though of course that is not really my name. My name is really Dennis White, now. I like the old name better; it is more in keeping with the image I have of myself. But perhaps such an attitude is just a hangover from the time I was a pet. Some people would say that once youve been a pet, once youve grown used to the Leash, youre never quite human againin the sense of being free. I dont know about that. Of course, it is more fun to be Leashed, but one can learn not to want it so badly. I did. And this, in one sense, is the story of how I did it.

As a puppy

But already I have made a botch of it! For will not most of my readers resent such a phrase? Puppies, Pets, Masters, Leashes: the old way of speaking has come to have almost the force of obscenity among the zealous. And who in these times dares not to be among the zealous?

Yet, how am I to tell the story of my life as a pet without using a pets language, without adopting his attitudes? Surely the time must come to an end when every politician and philosopher must conceal himself behind the mask of a bare-bones, know-nothing prose. And am I then required to tell White Fangs story from the point of view of a Dingo? No! The memoirs of a member of Louis XVIs court could not be set down in the rough accents of a sansculotteand I must be allowed to write of White Fang as White Fang would have written of himself. For the time being, let us leave Dennis White in abeyanceand let me say, without more preamble, that as a puppy I was uncommonly happy.

How could it have been otherwise? I was raised in the best kennels of the Solar System. My young body was sportive, and so it sported. My education ranged freely through the full scope of human knowledge, and yet I was never forced beyond my inclinations. I enjoyed the company of my own kind as well as the inestimable pleasures of the Leash. Lastly, I was conscious from earliest childhood of possessing the finest pedigree. My father Tennyson White was a major artist, perhaps the major artist, in a society that valued art above all things else. No little bit of that glory rubbed off on his bloodline. Later, in adolescence, a fathers fame may cramp the expanding ego, but then it was enough to know that one was as valuable a pet as there could be. It made me feel secure. In what else does happiness consist than in this: a sense of ones own value? Not in freedom, surely. For I have known that state, oh very well, and I can assure you that it is far less happy. Had I been free in my childhood, I would almost certainly have been wretched.

Actually, when I speak of my childhood as being so idyllic, I refer chiefly to my first seven years, for shortly after my seventh birthday I was orphanedthat is to say, the Dingoes made away with my father, while Motherlove simply committed Pluto and myself to care of the Shroeder Kennel and vanished into outer space. Thus even at the age of seven I might have been said to be free, and it was a condition I bitterly resented, thinking of it simply as neglect. Now, of course, I can see that the Shroeder Kennel, by contrast to what we call the human condition, is truly Paradise. Then I only had the moons of Jupiter to judge by. But I see I am making something of a jumble of this. Perhaps it would be better to set about this in a more chronological fashion.

Let me make a narrative of this.

To begin my life with the beginning of my life, as David Copperfield does, I record that I was born on a Sunday afternoon in the year of Our Lord 2017, on Ganymede, the fourth moon of Jupiter. At my fathers behest a gigantic thunderclap accompanied my birth, attended with quite a smart display of meteors and artificial comets. These natural wonders were succeeded by a Masque written by my father and set to a reconstituted Vivaldi cantata, in which various of the bitches of the kennel took the parts of my fairy godmothers. The eleven fairies portrayed were Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, and Clean. Each presented me with a little token emblematic of the spiritual gift she was bequeathing to me, but my father had somehow neglected to invite the twelfth fairy, Reverence, with fateful consequences for my character.

In speaking of my earliest memories, I encounter difficulties, for I cannot be sure at this late date which of my seeming memories are indeed mine and which are borrowed from Motherlove, Pluto, or whichever other brain my Master may have happened to pick for me. For instance, I have a distinct recollection of Daddy (excuse me, but that is the name I know him by; he has no other) looking yearningly into my eyes as he declaimed a poem, which I also remember clearly though I dare not here repeat it. I think it is one of the Earl of Rochesters. Daddy is wearing a shirt in the Byronic style, with billowing sleeves and a soft, expansive collar. His tights are of black velvet, with silver piping. His thin hair, blonde almost to whiteness, hangs down to his shoulders. His eyes are the deep blue of a Martian sky, and their blue is heightened by contrast to the extreme pallor of his skin. Like his use of clothes and his broad A, the pallor is sheer affectation. He might have been tan for the asking.

Now surely this is not my memory. Perhaps it is Motherloves, though she claimed, when I recited the poem for her, that shed never heard such a thing in her life (attempting all the while not to giggle). It could have been the memory of any of a dozen bitches on Ganymede, for since Daddy was the kennels prize possession he was encouraged to bestow his favors liberally. From the number of pedigreed descendants who could legitimately claim paternity from him it seems evident that Daddy cooperated with this policy. I have never met (and now I never shall meet) all my half-brothers and half-sisters.

Another memory that is more likely to have been mine is of Daddy from a vantage point of about three feet from the ground. He is conventionally nude this time and laughing to bust a gut. I cant remember the joke. This must have been one of my last memories of him, for behind him I can make out the vivid green of a Terran meadow and the light that plays across his body can only be the light of the sun as it shines on our home planet, no more nor less. Even foreshortened I can see that Daddy had then the body of an athletebut so had everyone else under the Mastery. Daddy was really quite modest in his somatic tastes, tending toward the Cellini side of the scale, while the majority favored a more Michelangelesque style.

Of my mother, Clea Melbourne Clift, I have more memories but none so distinct. She had a type of classic handsomeness over which time could not exercise his cruel authority: a noble brow; an unimpeachable nose; lips that might have been sculpted of marble, so perfect was their articulation. Indeed, from the tip of her toe to the highest-piled lock of her perfectly composed hair, there was something about Clea Clift that suggested the work of a stonemason. Clea was such a stickler for form. She always wanted me and Pluto to call her Clea or better, Miss Clift, and would become incensed if we ventured to use, in moments of unconsidered fondness, the simpler Mom, or Daddys slightly joking Motherlove. Had we been French, I daresay she would have insisted upon the formal