Wolfgang
A story about a new addition to the Geryon. The doctor at last betrays a certain amount of medical ability, but few find the courage to take comfort in it.
First there was the shriek, and then there was the thud.
The only thing that was remotely strange was that the shriek came in Jules’ voice. The odd shriek now and then was something that you got used to on the Geryon. If it wasn’t because they were under attack and Reynard was barking orders, it was because some were arguing and Amy’s pitch was rising, or because Charles had adjusted something ever-so-slightly too tight and now metal-on-metal squeals were pealing out of the engine room, or for any other number of reasons you could hope to look for to explain a shriek.
But Jules didn’t shriek, as a matter of course. While one would be incorrect in the extreme to assume that she was the quiet sort, they would also be incorrect to think that she wore anything, much less something as embarrassing as fear or startlement, on her sleeve.
So it brought in the crowds, as it were.
Charles led the pack. It was hard to get him out of his engine room at the best of times, but he’d make an exception for anything that made Jules squeal like a milkmaid faced with a mouse.
Immediately behind him was Isabelle. It came from her kitchen, and she swore that if that loony doctor and her unmentionable monstrosities requiring refrigeration had anything to do with it, there was going to be hell to pay.
Amy was behind Isabelle. Her own reasons for interest were really quite the same as Charles’--Jules had make fun of her own daintier tendencies regularly enough that it would be pure delight to see the tables turned.
They found Mr. Magihana in the mess, turned slightly in his chair. He glanced at them as they came in, before looking back down. A pair of sandaled feet were sticking out from one end of the table, and he seemed to be looking at the upper half of what they could only assume was Jules’ prone body.
“She’s fainted?” Amy asked, stifling a smirk.
“I’m afraid so,” Mr. Magihana said. “Not that I particularly blame her.”
“Oh, praise God,” Charles crowed. “What is it? A rat? A roach?”
“No roaches in my kitchen,” Isabelle said, giving him a dirty look.
“Neither,” said Mr. Magihana, apparently transfixed. They wandered around to the side of the table.
There was a simultaneous choked gasp, and three more thuds.
Sitting on Jules’ chest was a severed human head, with fingers sticking out of its neck. While not necessarily appalling of itself, what precipitated the faint was the concerned expression on the head’s face, and its hesitant tapping of Jules’ face with a single finger.
--
They regained consciousness to see a slightly worried-looking Reynard standing beside a seated Dr. Solomon. Everyone scrambled to their feet. Charles and Isabelle were mortally embarrassed at their faint--Charles for being so easily dismayed by something so small, Isabelle for having a strong reaction at all. Amy had no such qualms. Fainting was quite natural when one was rightly delicate--as long as it wasn’t at an inopportune time, she didn’t see a problem.
Jules was nearly gibbering.
“What was that?” Charles asked, rubbing his head.
Dr. Solomon lifted the head up to show him. Staggered to find that the thing wasn’t just a hallucination, four jaws dropped.
Isabelle joined Jules in the gibbering.
“His name is Wolfgang,” Dr. Solomon said, setting the head on the table. It turned to her with an obvious look of adoration, and she kissed it on the forehead, petting its hair. It licked the fingers of her spare hand. “I made him myself. I am glad to see that he has made so many friends already! He is such a curious boy--Mutti’s cheeky little angel, running away like that!”
“How can you treat a human being like that?!” Isabelle shouted.
“Human? No, nothing of the sort. I scooped out the old brain--it was blown through.” Dr. Solomon twirled a finger in the air, and the head dutifully worked its little finger-legs to turn to the side. She pointed at a patch of metal imbedded in its hair. “See? I fixed him. I put a dog’s brain in the head, and he’s got a little rudimentary heart, lung, stomach, liver, bladder, intestine, all stuffed into the head cavity.” She grinned as the head turned around again and hurried, spider-like, into her arms. “He was such a fuss to paper train, I tell you!”
“It’s hideous!” Jules exclaimed.
“Oh, come now,” Dr. Solomon said, arms around her pet. “Surely you’ve seen more extreme examples of the limits of the human body.”
“Sure, but they weren’t ALIVE,” Jules emphasized. “I’ve seen men with only a quarter’s worth of face, but he wasn’t breathing! I’ve seen people opened out and flattened like an ironed shirt, but they weren’t moving!”
“Oh, he’s harmless,” Dr. Solomon smiled, looking down at Wolfgang. “He’s only got human teeth, you know. It’s not like he can bite you.”
Amy mewled a little, looking at the head. Ordinarily she was unfazed by this sort of thing--science was too vitally important a field to worry about whose head got used in the pursuit of it. But there was something horrid about seeing the head of a rather handsome man scurrying around on eight fingers. The head had green eyes and dark hair and was about thirty-five to forty years of age--enough that it had just a touch of gray at its temples. Its beard and mustache were slightly unkempt, and its long, aristocratic nose made her skin crawl for some strange reason.
Reynard looked a bit ill. “So. What is your goal with...Wolfgang, Doctor?”
“He will be the ship’s pet, with your permission, captain!” Dr. Solomon responded cheerfully. “There’s nothing for him to hunt, but he’s just a quick little fellow, and he’ll run off for help in a blink if something is amiss. Wolfy? Wolfy, go get your squeaky duck.”
The head perked right up, an excited look blazing in its features as it ran off. It scuttled like an enormous spider, keeping admirable balance despite its rather top-heavy figure. The scuttling set Jules off again, and she whimpered loudly.
Charles and Mr. Magihana remained silent, each trapped in feelings of helpless horror.
“I might replace his legs in a little while,” Dr. Solomon said, cradling her head in her hand. “I do love the aesthetics, but I fear it may be hard for him. Perhaps a set of metal legs. Charles, perhaps you can help me with that.”
After a short moment, Wolfgang came hurrying back with a rubber duck in his mouth. He hurried up the leg of the table and raced towards the doctor.
“Oh! Look at that squeaky duck! Look at your lovely yellow duck! Such a lucky boy, to have a squeaky duck! Your Mutti must love you, yes she must!”
Jules looked near to fainting.
“Uh, doctor. Here. Do me a favor and take Wolfgang into the lab for a bit. We need to have a quick chat,” Reynard said.
Dr. Solomon looked slightly perturbed, but she nodded. “Wolfy? Come with me.”
When they were gone, everyone started talking at once.
“We can’t let her--”
“It’s a crime against--”
“--nightmares, nightmares forever--”
“Complete monster! How can she even think it’s--”
“All for science, certainly, but there is a limit--”
“--find that I must agree with Miss Weatherby, it is unsettling to say the least.”
Reynard stuck two fingers in his mouth and whistled sharply. “I sympathize,” he said loudly. “I don’t like it more than anyone else. It’s...eerie, to say the least.”
“I wouldn’t have an issue if she’d just taxidermied it,” Jules explained. “It’s just...it moves. I was standing there, minding my own business, making tea, and it licked my ankle. You don’t want something to lick your ankle at the best of times, but when you look down and see that?!”
Everyone shuddered. Hard not to sympathize.
“How the hell did she even get that to live at all?” Charles asked, crossing his arms and scowling. “That kind of monstrosity shouldn’t move at all--and she’s got it fetching toys by name!”
Reynard rubbed his eyes. “All right. So what are we going to do about it?”
“It can’t stay here! It’s hideous. It’s wrong. We can’t have that crawling around the ship in the middle of the night!”
“And who’s going to tell her she needs to dispose of it?” Reynard asked.
Everyone looked at him.
“Seems to fall under your responsibility,” Isabelle said, lighting a cigarette. She dared anyone to make a comment. A severed human head had just scuttled through her kitchen. She deserved.
Reynard groaned under his breath. “I want it on the record that my job is harder than anyone else’s.”
“Noted. Go break some hearts, champ,” said Charles.
--
Dr. Solomon wasn’t a stupid woman, which was something Reynard was usually thankful for. Sometimes it made him a little nervous to have such an obviously-unhinged person that intelligent on his boat, but it generally meant that she could fend for herself.
And unlike a great number of crazy people, she was remarkably aware of the feelings of people around her.
She was stroking Wolfgang, looking at him despondently, when Reynard walked in.
“They really don’t like him, do they?”
Wolfgang looked up at the captain. It wasn’t a stupid creature, apparently--it could sense its creator’s distress. Somehow the dog-like concern wasn’t as strange as it might’ve been on a human face.
“No, I’m afraid not,” Reynard said, coming over to lean against the counter. “And I don’t disagree with them, mostly. It’s a bit unsettling, to say the least...”
“But he’s just a dog!” Dr. Solomon exclaimed, frustrated. “And not just any dog...I made sure I bought a border collie brain...they are supposed to be so smart! He is smart! And I worked so hard on him. Did you know he’d been alive for a month before I let him explore?” He winced. This thing had been on his ship for a month? “I made sure he could survive before I set him loose--trained him and taught him a little German. He gave me the saddest little looks when I had to leave the sickbay...he wants to play with his family!”
“We aren’t a family, Klara,” Reynard said, rubbing his face with a hand.
“We nearly are. I made a pet so that we could all have something to love, and they hate him.” Dr. Solomon picked up Wolfgang and pressed her cheek to his. “He likes Jules so much, he gave her a kiss. And he ran right over to nuzzle Charles’ leg--I had to pick him up to get him to move.”
“Klara--”
“Why do they hate him?” she asked with a sigh, petting his head. “I worked so hard on him, and he’s so good. He’s a sweet boy...he likes to curl up at the foot of my bed at night.”
Oh, that was an image he didn’t need. “Klara, listen. It’s a human head running around on fingers. That’s really unsettling for people. A lot of people don’t see him as a dog--they see a human being’s head and they think it’s a human being. It’s all in the look, really.”
“So they hate him because they think he looks different?” she asked, miserable.
Reynard was a little baffled. How could they ‘think’ he looked different? He was a damn human head! He made a note never to ask what German dogs must look like. “Yes. I’m sorry, but that’s just the way it is. And we can’t have him on the ship.”
Klara looked at him tearfully. “What? No, please!”
“I’m sorry, but we just can’t have him running around like this. It’s pretty bad, Klara, and I can’t have something on my ship that makes people faint at the site of it.”
“But, please, I love him, he’s just a dog, just a little puppy!” She held the head close. “I will never let him out, I’ll keep him hidden and he will not bother anyone! All he can eat is a little milk and gruel--he won’t use up any resources.”
“Come on, Klara, what kind of life is that for a dog? You can’t keep him penned up like that, especially if he’s a collie. He’ll want to run.”
“Please, captain, this is unfair--they want to rid themselves of him for irrational reasons! Please don’t make me get rid of him! No one else will take him and care for him like I can!”
That was true. “We’d have to put him down.”
Klara covered her mouth with a hand, clutching the head tighter. It began to squirm--unsettling sight, to say the least. “Oh, no, please, you can’t! He’s a puppy! Just a baby, you can’t kill a baby!”
Reynard wished he’d never had dogs of his own. He didn’t do well with feminine strife, but when he’d thought about having to put down some of his own childhood companions, it made something brackish and thick weigh down his stomach. Sure, it was a hideous monstrosity, but...
Hell. It was still a dog.
“All right, Klara,” he said. “I’ll make a deal.”
--
Jules was recovering slowly. The shore leave had given her a chance to get off the ship and try to forget about the nightmare she’d encountered just a week ago. Reynard had come back afternoon declaring the thing dealt with, and no one had seen much of Dr. Solomon in the past few days. It was all right--fair enough that she’d want to mourn her little demon-creature, and Jules didn’t particularly fancy running into the loony when she’d recently learned she could reanimate dead tissue, much less change it up like that.
Of course, the last thing she wanted was to feel a sudden lick on her ankle one morning.
She shrieked again, but this time, instead of fainting, she executed a brilliant leap up onto the mess table.
Jules looked down at the little monster, expecting to see the vile evidence of Reynard’s betrayal of the laws of God and nature, and was a little surprised by what she saw.
Instead of a human head running around on fingers, the significantly larger head of a St. Bernard looked back at her. It grinned, as only big dogs can, and let out a small, soft bark.
The crowds gathered. Jules felt near enough to gibbering again, though this time with confusion. All she knew was that she wasn’t getting off that table in a hurry.
Everyone stared at Reynard, who grinned sheepishly. “Ah.”
“Wolfy, naughty boy!” Dr. Solomon said, striding in, all smiles. The dog’s head turned to her, hurrying over to her feet. As it moved, all the assembled parties got a better look at its method of locomotion--a small chassis supported the head and neck, leading to several metal spider legs, driven by small, rapidly-working pistons. It scuttled much like it had used to, but now it was powered by electricity.
How that connected to the brain no one was really interested.
“It’s still alive,” Isabelle observed in a tone of grim disappointment.
“Of course he is!” Dr. Solomon said, patting Wolfgang on the head. “Captain explained the problem. If you had just told me you wanted a dog, I never would’ve used his old head!”
Was it better, or worse, that she was so easily discarding the human head that Wolfgang’s brain--and body--had previously occupied?
“And look, this is better; I was able to fit in a bigger lung and vocal cords, so he can bark a little.” Dr. Solomon grinned. “Wolfy, go get the ducky.”
The dog head scuttled off.
“It’s all better, right?” Dr. Solomon asked the assembled. “He looks all right now, yes? So we can keep him as a pet?”
‘No,’ thought everyone.
“Uh.”
“Well, I guess...”
“I mean...”
“It’s not...the worst--”
“Last time was the worst...”
“So, uh, well...”
“Wonderful!” Dr. Solomon cried, grinning. “I knew you would love him! Treat him gently, please--he hasn’t gotten used to this body yet. He needs his exercise though, so please play fetch with him and pet him...he loves to have his ears scratched!”
Wolfgang scuttled back in with his duck and spread out all his legs, lying down to chew it.
Eventually everyone dispersed. Jules remained on the table until she was sufficiently sure that it wouldn’t try to lick her the moment she leaned off of the safe zone. She legged it for her bunk.
Dr. Solomon left Wolfgang to his own devices, happy that he was finally out and about.
Mr. Magihana sat at the table, reading his newspaper. Wolfgang rested beside him, leaning against a chair leg. After a few moments, Mr. Magihana reached down and picked up the squeaky duck, flicking it across the room.
The tinkle-tinkle of little metal spider feet raced across the mess in hot pursuit. Wolfgang came trotting back and stretched up, dropping the duck in the man’s lap.
Mr. Magihana grinned, and threw the toy again.
First there was the shriek, and then there was the thud.
The only thing that was remotely strange was that the shriek came in Jules’ voice. The odd shriek now and then was something that you got used to on the Geryon. If it wasn’t because they were under attack and Reynard was barking orders, it was because some were arguing and Amy’s pitch was rising, or because Charles had adjusted something ever-so-slightly too tight and now metal-on-metal squeals were pealing out of the engine room, or for any other number of reasons you could hope to look for to explain a shriek.
But Jules didn’t shriek, as a matter of course. While one would be incorrect in the extreme to assume that she was the quiet sort, they would also be incorrect to think that she wore anything, much less something as embarrassing as fear or startlement, on her sleeve.
So it brought in the crowds, as it were.
Charles led the pack. It was hard to get him out of his engine room at the best of times, but he’d make an exception for anything that made Jules squeal like a milkmaid faced with a mouse.
Immediately behind him was Isabelle. It came from her kitchen, and she swore that if that loony doctor and her unmentionable monstrosities requiring refrigeration had anything to do with it, there was going to be hell to pay.
Amy was behind Isabelle. Her own reasons for interest were really quite the same as Charles’--Jules had make fun of her own daintier tendencies regularly enough that it would be pure delight to see the tables turned.
They found Mr. Magihana in the mess, turned slightly in his chair. He glanced at them as they came in, before looking back down. A pair of sandaled feet were sticking out from one end of the table, and he seemed to be looking at the upper half of what they could only assume was Jules’ prone body.
“She’s fainted?” Amy asked, stifling a smirk.
“I’m afraid so,” Mr. Magihana said. “Not that I particularly blame her.”
“Oh, praise God,” Charles crowed. “What is it? A rat? A roach?”
“No roaches in my kitchen,” Isabelle said, giving him a dirty look.
“Neither,” said Mr. Magihana, apparently transfixed. They wandered around to the side of the table.
There was a simultaneous choked gasp, and three more thuds.
Sitting on Jules’ chest was a severed human head, with fingers sticking out of its neck. While not necessarily appalling of itself, what precipitated the faint was the concerned expression on the head’s face, and its hesitant tapping of Jules’ face with a single finger.
--
They regained consciousness to see a slightly worried-looking Reynard standing beside a seated Dr. Solomon. Everyone scrambled to their feet. Charles and Isabelle were mortally embarrassed at their faint--Charles for being so easily dismayed by something so small, Isabelle for having a strong reaction at all. Amy had no such qualms. Fainting was quite natural when one was rightly delicate--as long as it wasn’t at an inopportune time, she didn’t see a problem.
Jules was nearly gibbering.
“What was that?” Charles asked, rubbing his head.
Dr. Solomon lifted the head up to show him. Staggered to find that the thing wasn’t just a hallucination, four jaws dropped.
Isabelle joined Jules in the gibbering.
“His name is Wolfgang,” Dr. Solomon said, setting the head on the table. It turned to her with an obvious look of adoration, and she kissed it on the forehead, petting its hair. It licked the fingers of her spare hand. “I made him myself. I am glad to see that he has made so many friends already! He is such a curious boy--Mutti’s cheeky little angel, running away like that!”
“How can you treat a human being like that?!” Isabelle shouted.
“Human? No, nothing of the sort. I scooped out the old brain--it was blown through.” Dr. Solomon twirled a finger in the air, and the head dutifully worked its little finger-legs to turn to the side. She pointed at a patch of metal imbedded in its hair. “See? I fixed him. I put a dog’s brain in the head, and he’s got a little rudimentary heart, lung, stomach, liver, bladder, intestine, all stuffed into the head cavity.” She grinned as the head turned around again and hurried, spider-like, into her arms. “He was such a fuss to paper train, I tell you!”
“It’s hideous!” Jules exclaimed.
“Oh, come now,” Dr. Solomon said, arms around her pet. “Surely you’ve seen more extreme examples of the limits of the human body.”
“Sure, but they weren’t ALIVE,” Jules emphasized. “I’ve seen men with only a quarter’s worth of face, but he wasn’t breathing! I’ve seen people opened out and flattened like an ironed shirt, but they weren’t moving!”
“Oh, he’s harmless,” Dr. Solomon smiled, looking down at Wolfgang. “He’s only got human teeth, you know. It’s not like he can bite you.”
Amy mewled a little, looking at the head. Ordinarily she was unfazed by this sort of thing--science was too vitally important a field to worry about whose head got used in the pursuit of it. But there was something horrid about seeing the head of a rather handsome man scurrying around on eight fingers. The head had green eyes and dark hair and was about thirty-five to forty years of age--enough that it had just a touch of gray at its temples. Its beard and mustache were slightly unkempt, and its long, aristocratic nose made her skin crawl for some strange reason.
Reynard looked a bit ill. “So. What is your goal with...Wolfgang, Doctor?”
“He will be the ship’s pet, with your permission, captain!” Dr. Solomon responded cheerfully. “There’s nothing for him to hunt, but he’s just a quick little fellow, and he’ll run off for help in a blink if something is amiss. Wolfy? Wolfy, go get your squeaky duck.”
The head perked right up, an excited look blazing in its features as it ran off. It scuttled like an enormous spider, keeping admirable balance despite its rather top-heavy figure. The scuttling set Jules off again, and she whimpered loudly.
Charles and Mr. Magihana remained silent, each trapped in feelings of helpless horror.
“I might replace his legs in a little while,” Dr. Solomon said, cradling her head in her hand. “I do love the aesthetics, but I fear it may be hard for him. Perhaps a set of metal legs. Charles, perhaps you can help me with that.”
After a short moment, Wolfgang came hurrying back with a rubber duck in his mouth. He hurried up the leg of the table and raced towards the doctor.
“Oh! Look at that squeaky duck! Look at your lovely yellow duck! Such a lucky boy, to have a squeaky duck! Your Mutti must love you, yes she must!”
Jules looked near to fainting.
“Uh, doctor. Here. Do me a favor and take Wolfgang into the lab for a bit. We need to have a quick chat,” Reynard said.
Dr. Solomon looked slightly perturbed, but she nodded. “Wolfy? Come with me.”
When they were gone, everyone started talking at once.
“We can’t let her--”
“It’s a crime against--”
“--nightmares, nightmares forever--”
“Complete monster! How can she even think it’s--”
“All for science, certainly, but there is a limit--”
“--find that I must agree with Miss Weatherby, it is unsettling to say the least.”
Reynard stuck two fingers in his mouth and whistled sharply. “I sympathize,” he said loudly. “I don’t like it more than anyone else. It’s...eerie, to say the least.”
“I wouldn’t have an issue if she’d just taxidermied it,” Jules explained. “It’s just...it moves. I was standing there, minding my own business, making tea, and it licked my ankle. You don’t want something to lick your ankle at the best of times, but when you look down and see that?!”
Everyone shuddered. Hard not to sympathize.
“How the hell did she even get that to live at all?” Charles asked, crossing his arms and scowling. “That kind of monstrosity shouldn’t move at all--and she’s got it fetching toys by name!”
Reynard rubbed his eyes. “All right. So what are we going to do about it?”
“It can’t stay here! It’s hideous. It’s wrong. We can’t have that crawling around the ship in the middle of the night!”
“And who’s going to tell her she needs to dispose of it?” Reynard asked.
Everyone looked at him.
“Seems to fall under your responsibility,” Isabelle said, lighting a cigarette. She dared anyone to make a comment. A severed human head had just scuttled through her kitchen. She deserved.
Reynard groaned under his breath. “I want it on the record that my job is harder than anyone else’s.”
“Noted. Go break some hearts, champ,” said Charles.
--
Dr. Solomon wasn’t a stupid woman, which was something Reynard was usually thankful for. Sometimes it made him a little nervous to have such an obviously-unhinged person that intelligent on his boat, but it generally meant that she could fend for herself.
And unlike a great number of crazy people, she was remarkably aware of the feelings of people around her.
She was stroking Wolfgang, looking at him despondently, when Reynard walked in.
“They really don’t like him, do they?”
Wolfgang looked up at the captain. It wasn’t a stupid creature, apparently--it could sense its creator’s distress. Somehow the dog-like concern wasn’t as strange as it might’ve been on a human face.
“No, I’m afraid not,” Reynard said, coming over to lean against the counter. “And I don’t disagree with them, mostly. It’s a bit unsettling, to say the least...”
“But he’s just a dog!” Dr. Solomon exclaimed, frustrated. “And not just any dog...I made sure I bought a border collie brain...they are supposed to be so smart! He is smart! And I worked so hard on him. Did you know he’d been alive for a month before I let him explore?” He winced. This thing had been on his ship for a month? “I made sure he could survive before I set him loose--trained him and taught him a little German. He gave me the saddest little looks when I had to leave the sickbay...he wants to play with his family!”
“We aren’t a family, Klara,” Reynard said, rubbing his face with a hand.
“We nearly are. I made a pet so that we could all have something to love, and they hate him.” Dr. Solomon picked up Wolfgang and pressed her cheek to his. “He likes Jules so much, he gave her a kiss. And he ran right over to nuzzle Charles’ leg--I had to pick him up to get him to move.”
“Klara--”
“Why do they hate him?” she asked with a sigh, petting his head. “I worked so hard on him, and he’s so good. He’s a sweet boy...he likes to curl up at the foot of my bed at night.”
Oh, that was an image he didn’t need. “Klara, listen. It’s a human head running around on fingers. That’s really unsettling for people. A lot of people don’t see him as a dog--they see a human being’s head and they think it’s a human being. It’s all in the look, really.”
“So they hate him because they think he looks different?” she asked, miserable.
Reynard was a little baffled. How could they ‘think’ he looked different? He was a damn human head! He made a note never to ask what German dogs must look like. “Yes. I’m sorry, but that’s just the way it is. And we can’t have him on the ship.”
Klara looked at him tearfully. “What? No, please!”
“I’m sorry, but we just can’t have him running around like this. It’s pretty bad, Klara, and I can’t have something on my ship that makes people faint at the site of it.”
“But, please, I love him, he’s just a dog, just a little puppy!” She held the head close. “I will never let him out, I’ll keep him hidden and he will not bother anyone! All he can eat is a little milk and gruel--he won’t use up any resources.”
“Come on, Klara, what kind of life is that for a dog? You can’t keep him penned up like that, especially if he’s a collie. He’ll want to run.”
“Please, captain, this is unfair--they want to rid themselves of him for irrational reasons! Please don’t make me get rid of him! No one else will take him and care for him like I can!”
That was true. “We’d have to put him down.”
Klara covered her mouth with a hand, clutching the head tighter. It began to squirm--unsettling sight, to say the least. “Oh, no, please, you can’t! He’s a puppy! Just a baby, you can’t kill a baby!”
Reynard wished he’d never had dogs of his own. He didn’t do well with feminine strife, but when he’d thought about having to put down some of his own childhood companions, it made something brackish and thick weigh down his stomach. Sure, it was a hideous monstrosity, but...
Hell. It was still a dog.
“All right, Klara,” he said. “I’ll make a deal.”
--
Jules was recovering slowly. The shore leave had given her a chance to get off the ship and try to forget about the nightmare she’d encountered just a week ago. Reynard had come back afternoon declaring the thing dealt with, and no one had seen much of Dr. Solomon in the past few days. It was all right--fair enough that she’d want to mourn her little demon-creature, and Jules didn’t particularly fancy running into the loony when she’d recently learned she could reanimate dead tissue, much less change it up like that.
Of course, the last thing she wanted was to feel a sudden lick on her ankle one morning.
She shrieked again, but this time, instead of fainting, she executed a brilliant leap up onto the mess table.
Jules looked down at the little monster, expecting to see the vile evidence of Reynard’s betrayal of the laws of God and nature, and was a little surprised by what she saw.
Instead of a human head running around on fingers, the significantly larger head of a St. Bernard looked back at her. It grinned, as only big dogs can, and let out a small, soft bark.
The crowds gathered. Jules felt near enough to gibbering again, though this time with confusion. All she knew was that she wasn’t getting off that table in a hurry.
Everyone stared at Reynard, who grinned sheepishly. “Ah.”
“Wolfy, naughty boy!” Dr. Solomon said, striding in, all smiles. The dog’s head turned to her, hurrying over to her feet. As it moved, all the assembled parties got a better look at its method of locomotion--a small chassis supported the head and neck, leading to several metal spider legs, driven by small, rapidly-working pistons. It scuttled much like it had used to, but now it was powered by electricity.
How that connected to the brain no one was really interested.
“It’s still alive,” Isabelle observed in a tone of grim disappointment.
“Of course he is!” Dr. Solomon said, patting Wolfgang on the head. “Captain explained the problem. If you had just told me you wanted a dog, I never would’ve used his old head!”
Was it better, or worse, that she was so easily discarding the human head that Wolfgang’s brain--and body--had previously occupied?
“And look, this is better; I was able to fit in a bigger lung and vocal cords, so he can bark a little.” Dr. Solomon grinned. “Wolfy, go get the ducky.”
The dog head scuttled off.
“It’s all better, right?” Dr. Solomon asked the assembled. “He looks all right now, yes? So we can keep him as a pet?”
‘No,’ thought everyone.
“Uh.”
“Well, I guess...”
“I mean...”
“It’s not...the worst--”
“Last time was the worst...”
“So, uh, well...”
“Wonderful!” Dr. Solomon cried, grinning. “I knew you would love him! Treat him gently, please--he hasn’t gotten used to this body yet. He needs his exercise though, so please play fetch with him and pet him...he loves to have his ears scratched!”
Wolfgang scuttled back in with his duck and spread out all his legs, lying down to chew it.
Eventually everyone dispersed. Jules remained on the table until she was sufficiently sure that it wouldn’t try to lick her the moment she leaned off of the safe zone. She legged it for her bunk.
Dr. Solomon left Wolfgang to his own devices, happy that he was finally out and about.
Mr. Magihana sat at the table, reading his newspaper. Wolfgang rested beside him, leaning against a chair leg. After a few moments, Mr. Magihana reached down and picked up the squeaky duck, flicking it across the room.
The tinkle-tinkle of little metal spider feet raced across the mess in hot pursuit. Wolfgang came trotting back and stretched up, dropping the duck in the man’s lap.
Mr. Magihana grinned, and threw the toy again.