Moving Pictures

“I—”
    “Good boy Laddie!”
    “Yeah, yeah. I heard the trainers say. So I’ve got to go with him to see he don’t get into any trouble, style of fing.”
    Victor yawned. “Well, I’m going to go to bed. We’ll probably have to start early.”
    Gaspode looked innocently up and down the alley. Somewhere a door opened and there was the sound of drunken laughter.
    “I fought I might have a bit of a stroll before turnin’ in,” he said. “Show Laddie—”
    “Laddie good boy!”
    “—the sights and that.”
    Victor looked doubtful.
    “Don’t keep him out too late,” he said. “People will worry.”
    “Yeah, right,” said Gaspode. “G’night.”
    He sat and watched Victor wander off.
    “Huh,” he said, under his dreadful breath. “Catch anyone worryin’ about me .” He glared up at Laddie, who sprang to obedient attention.
    “Right, young fella-me-pup,” he said. “’S time you got educated. Lesson One, Glomming Free Drinks in Bars. It’s lucky for you,” he added, “that you met me.”

    Two canine shapes staggered uncertainly up the midnight street.
    “We’re poor li’l lambs,” Gaspode howled, “wot have loorst our way…”
    “Woof! Woof! Woof!”
    “We’re li’l loorst sheeps wot have—wot have…” Gaspode sagged down, and scratched an ear, or at least where he vaguely thought an ear might be. His leg waved uncertainly in the air. Laddie gave him a sympathetic look.
    It had been an amazingly successful evening. Gaspode had always got his free drinks by simply sitting and staring intently at people until they got uncomfortable and poured him some beer in a saucer in the hope that he would drink it and go away. It was slow and tedious, but as a technique it had served him well. Whereas Laddie…
    Laddie did tricks . Laddie could drink out of bottles, Laddie could bark the number of fingers people held up; so could Gaspode, of course, but it had never occurred to him that such an activity could be rewarded.
    Laddie could home in on young women who were being taken out for the evening by a hopeful swain and lay his head on their lap and give them such a soulful look that the swain would buy him a saucer of beer and a bag of goldfish-shaped biscuits just in order to impress the prospective loved-one. Gaspode had never been able to do that, because he was too short for laps and, anyway, got nothing but disgusted screams if he tried it.
    He’d sat under the table in perplexed disapproval to begin with, and then in alcoholic perplexed disapproval, because Laddie was generosity itself when it came to sharing saucers of beer.
    Now, after they’d both been thrown out, Gaspode decided it was time for a lecture in true dogness.
    “You don’t want to go himblong. Umlong. Humbling yourself to ’umans,” he said. “It’s letting everyone down. We’ll never frow off the shackles of dependency on mankind if dogs like you go aroun’ bein’ glad to see people the whole time. I was person’ly disgusted when you did that Lyin’-on-your-back-and-playin’-dead routine, let me tell you.”
    “Woof.”
    “You’re just a running dog of the human imperialists,” said Gaspode severely.
    Laddie put his paws over his nose.
    Gaspode tried to stand up, tripped over his legs, and sat down heavily. After a while a couple of huge tears coursed down his fur.
    “O’course,” he said, “I never had a chance, you know.” He managed to get back on all four feet. “I mean, look at the start I had in life. Frone inna river inna sack. An actual sack. Dear little puppy dog opens his eyes, look out in wonder at the world, style of fing, he’s in this sack.” The tears dripped off his nose. “For two weeks I thought the brick was my mother.”
    “Woof,” said Laddie, with uncomprehending sympathy.
    “Just my luck they threw me in the Ankh,” Gaspode went on. “Any other river, I’d have drowned and gone to doggy heaven. I heard where this big black ghostly dog comes up to you when you die an’ says, your time has gome. Cone. Come.”
    Gaspode stared at nothing much. “Can’t sink in the Ankh, though,” he said thoughtfully. ‘Ver’ tough river, the Ankh.”
    “Woof.”
    “It shouldn’t happen to a dog,” said Gaspode. “Metaphorically.”
    “Woof.”
    Gaspode peered blearily at Laddie’s bright, alert and irrevocably stupid face.
    “You don’t understand a bloody word I’ve been saying, do you?” he muttered.
    “Woof! ” said Laddie, begging.
    “Lucky