The Oneiromantic Sheep

(4,857 words)

We clatter along the black hardpath, land bright under the morning light of the star. The paddocks we leave behind are grazed down to nubs. The pleasure of fresh meadows and the company of other sheep await. We pass first through this hot country, uneasy at the urine of predators.

* * *

The flock and their shepherds were halfway to the Christmas-feast when the coyotl trotted out of the late afternoon haze and onto the old motorway. Low and slinky, they fanned out around the lead rams and Samuel, who was standing point of balance to push the flock forward. He called back to warn Min, his apprentice and granddaughter.

Min walked forward toward the coyotl, keeping herself between them and the sheep.

The rams huffed. In the long-ago, Samuel figured, their ancestors would have fled. But the terraformer had long since changed Avunculus, the living things on it, and their relations.

The coyotl edged closer, issuing yips and mutter-talk, their yellow lantern eyes big and hopeful. Some walked on two hind legs, others on all fours. A female with six swollen dugs extended a hand tipped with long slender fingers. In the other, held low and against her waist, she gripped a kitchen knife scavenged from some midden. Her face was hollow and sad.

Min yelled, windmilling her arms. The coyotl paused, heads tilted.

Samuel sighed and raised his shotgun, ancient but able to fulfill the basic function. The storms that came off the orange star over a century ago had ruined gauss guns, nerve inducers, and all other electronic weaponry. But anyone whose great-grandparents had squirreled away one of the old, loud troublemakers held advantage on the road.

Wearing big, obsequious grins that split their chimeric faces in two, the coyotl moved off to beg or steal dinner elsewhere. Samuel said, “Mmm hmm,” long and loud, locking gazes with the female as she slunk away. The coyotl melted into the badlands.

The rams lifted their foreheads and butted each other in a congratulatory show of martial prowess.

Min softened her spine and exhaled.. “Are they gone for real, you think?”

“Yeah.” Samuel scowled. “But who told you to move up front?”

“Wanted them to have a better look. They remember people they meet on the highway, right?”

“They remember the gun. The one in my hands. You, they don’t know from a rabbit.”

Min drew her mouth tight but kept quiet. Showing a bit of self-control.

They got moving. After a bit, Min said, “That one had pups.”

“Yep. Glad I didn’t have to leave them without a mom, I suppose.”

“I’m surprised we haven’t seen patrols out of Station Abbey yet.”

Samuel grunted. “Amateurs, and it shows. If we’d held Christmas-feast back home as usual, we’d have made sure the roads were clear.”

Min smirked, just a little.

“And the yelling,” Samuel continued. “You have to remember to speak calmly. Sheep can’t understand your words outside the dreamwork, but they pick up tone and body language just fine.”

“They really creep me out. Unnatural.”

She meant the coyotl, Samuel hoped. She didn’t really have as much bond with the sheep as he would have liked in an apprentice and heir.

They continued without incident, though yipping pierced the night. Once in sight of Station Abbey they stopped to bury the gun near the rusted megafaunal wreckage of an airplane. Whatever their purpose, firearms in settlement were immediate and irrevocable grounds for being expelled from the great exchange, the cashless, anarchic economy of people and things whose only edicts were set by the machine intelligence that resided within and behind the spacetime locus of the planet Avunculus itself.

Better to arm up in between towns, though.

Samuel and Min and the flock left home on Monday and arrived at the Christmas-feast on Thursday. They joined the influx of travelers—pigs, chickens, goats, a few horses, and their human representatives.

* * *

Our shepherds lead us through the crowds toward a patch of dirt for us to lie on. We move to the green forb pastures. The ewes, though too few, are coming into estrus, and the flock that lives here holds ground already. We hold many kinship ties with this flock as we encounter each other year over year. Our level of inbreeding is higher than optimal, and we should not mate with our double cousins and half-siblings. We chafe and chuff, waiting for the other flocks to arrive.

* * *

Samuel’s flock went its own way, baaing a path through the multispecies throng. The ewes were cycling and would soon engage the rams. Mate selection was their call, but Samuel hoped they’d give the flock out of Oslo Station a look over when they showed up. Some nice wool on those rams.

“I’m off to work a trade with one of those chicken-brokers,” said Min. “Make the omelet I’ve been craving all year.”

“Maybe think bigger than breakfast if you’re going to bother coming here,” said Samuel, shaking his head. “Use points on the wool to set us all up back home.”

“I was kidding about the omelet, boss. I’ll be back.” Min craned her neck as if sighting something and loped off.

Samuel rolled his eyes skyward and walked the handcart over to the pitch set aside for herders. Moving aside ointments and tools, he retrieved the tent. It was Earth-made, at a level of material science no longer possible in the backwaters of planet Avunculus. Airy and weightless, the fabric cooled you on the hottest day and kept you toasty in a blizzard. It fell into a shrinking category of old Earth artifacts that still worked after the century of geomagnetic storms that had destroyed electrical grids and shut down anything drawing power from them. Tech like the tent was straight out of an enchantment story about a lost fairy kingdom. A description, Samuel supposed, that fit old Earth well.

Tent was up. Minerva had not returned. Annoying, that.

Despite the noises of merriment and carousing coming off the market-town, he settled into his bedroll, supping on the morning’s fava beans with stiff flatbread. He prepared a cup of tea brewed from desert firmoss, a plant variant quickened long ago by the terraforming machine as a way for humans to enter into a semiotic frame with other species. Sipping on an earthen mug of desert firmoss tea, he unwrapped a book of old Earth mythology that he’d traded for at last-year’s Christmas-feast. The text had crossed the years wearing a fortified binding that smelled faintly sweet. Finding a position his sciatica liked, he read about Odysseus and the cyclops until he drank the tea down to the dregs.

* * *

The sheep as a conversational being does not exist outside of talking to humans. The godplanet changed this world so that sheep and humans and clover could live on it together. And to be able to speak to us, humans must also consume a plant.

Our shepherd sleeps. The human dreaming calls the flock into being.

* * *

The alkaloids in the desert firmoss tea opened Samuel’s mind. A second presence entered, the collective consciousness of the flock. It manifested as Torpy, an old wether. Dead now for twenty-five years, the castrated male had ended life as a flock elder.

“Entering interface mode. Where is the flock from Oslo Station?” Torpy asked. Except it didn’t really say the words to produce the voice in Samuel’s head. Rather, it grunted with a low rumble, hoofed the ground, and tilted its head.

“They’re coming. Everyone’s coming to the Christmas-feast at Station Abbey this year.”

“Not many ewes here. The rams are upset.” The wether chewed its cud, snorted twice, and farted.

“Give it some time. The Christmas-feast was moved last minute on account of Station Abbey putting up most of the feastwealth in November—” Samuel broke off, knowing the sheep didn’t understand or care about the details of human economics. “Look, Torpy, folks have to make travel arrangements. Can you tell me how many ewes have already mated and conceived? Make output percentage.”

Torpy’s voice stiffened into a machine cadence. “Of ewes of reproductive age and condition, fifteen percent are mated, and five percent are now pregnant.”

“Oh no. Try to wait. The lambs’ health depends on you mating with the flock out of Oslo Station.”

“Correct. The inbreeding coefficient for this flock is currently thirteen hundredths.”

“Well, Oslo Station will be here soon.” Samuel hoped this was true. “I’ll be around tomorrow to look at vitals. Maybe some high nutrient treats for our expecting ewes.”

“We’ve also several with hooves that need attention after the hardpath.”

“I just had the farrier out!”

“Hardpath is unkind to our hooves. You will see to our needs?”

Samuel sighed. “I always do.”

* * *

Impatient, impatient, the rams and ewes sing. Sheep begin surreptitious liaisons by ones and twos. The wethers say to wait; weak lambs will hurt the flock.

“This is outside our control,” they say. They are lost to lust.

The wethers enter council. “This mating situation is unprecedented. In the times ago, rams and ewes come to us.”

Torpy speaks now. “The human elder Samuel explains this: The humans move the Christmas-feast. What should he do?”

“Plan ahead. That is what humans say they do for us.”

“When he can no longer walk, who will negotiate trades of wool? Medical care? Pastures? The human elder Samuel is old. He sires none that live.”

“He has a younger, the human Minerva.”

“He doesn’t think she is mature enough.”

“And she mates with a stranger who smells of other flocks.”

“Other flocks? Perhaps we should meet this new shepherd!”

“Perhaps we should think to seasons ahead.”

One hundred percent of the wethers agree.

* * *

Samuel wanted to raise a traveler’s mug of light Christmas beer to cut the heat of the day. He rose and walked north toward the brewers’ district.

Passing the cheesemongers, Samuel saw Minerva in conversation with a man. The man had the fair, sunburned features one often saw on Oslo Stationers. That village had been established by settlers from Earth’s northern climes, quite unlike this part of Avunculus, even with its milder orange star.

Casting an irritated glance at Minerva, who was probably arranging some liaison, Samuel passed without approaching and soon inserted himself into the maze of drinkeries, where he soon found the beer he sought, produced by a sentient yeast. They soon reached an arrangement—a few thousandths of a point on the flock’s expected wool harvest for two mugs of beer—and the brewer-broker poured Samuel a draught of the yeast’s fermented waste.

* * *

The flock from Oslo Station has arrived. We feel it edging at our senses, just outside our organs of perception. Something diverts them around our pasture.

An offer in the night. A hastily assembled manifestation to answer the call. It is the stranger the human Minerva has mated with. He smells of rye grass and loam. Oslo Station.

“Hello, hello,” he says. He smells younger, healthier than the human Samuel.

“Stranger,” we say.

“My name is Haaken.”

“You are a shepherd,” we say, interest in the tilts of our heads. “You smell of sheep.”

“Yes. I brought the flock from my home in Oslo Station.”

“Where are they? Why do they not come?”

“It is not safe. The last-minute change of the Christmas-feast left Station Abbey unprepared to secure the roads south of here. There are too many coyotl about.”

“Why not bring them to the pasture? No coyotl ever intrudes.”

“I left them somewhere safe outside of town. They, too, are eager to mate, but I hope to first arrange a good liaison on their behalf. Bring them into the settlement and they might not be willing to wait.”

“We can relate.”

“I could take you to meet them.”

We stomp our hooves at that. “We never pasture outside settlement. We never travel far without the human Samuel.”

“I have been meeting with his apprentice and granddaughter,” Haaken the shepherd says. “She says he’ll agree to my proposal.”

We study humans year over year and know something of their ways, so we ask the new human this: “And what do you offer the human Samuel?”

“I have promised him medicines for worms. Tools for hoof care. I want fine lambs in my flock as well. Is he your master? Do you work for him?”

We show our foreheads at that insult.

Some of us have the skittish feeling that comes before the storm. But some of us want the mating season underway. Some of us are curious what other humans might offer.

It is strange to make an introduction this way. But the count is taken. Seventy-two percent of the wethers agree we should visit the Oslo Station flock. Eighteen percent opine that the human deceives. Ten abstain. But all note that the flock from Oslo Station is present-but-not-here.

We have decided.

* * *

Something pinged at his consciousness, and Samuel came to in the dark. While it existed, the market-town never entirely stilled or slept, but the crowd-roar outside had died down into the hubbub of smaller roving groups of revelers and drunks and dealmakers. That was not what had awoken Samuel. He felt an urge to move, to crowd close to others, and flee some danger.

An alien biology was using his mind to articulate its desires. No, not alien—it was the sheep, whose wills and wants had come to overlap his over the years of herding—but they entered all the same from some place outside him, outside his evolutionary lineage. The machine that had shaped the planet so that humans could live there had bent many points of congruence among living things to make this possible. When Samuel drank the firmoss tea at bedtime to take meetings with the flock, it promoted lucid dreaming and the cross-species articulation of neurologies. The sheep’s emotional state was panic rounding the curvature of his mind across its horizon.

The sheep were calling out: lost.

Pausing to slide on his shoes, Samuel leaned over and shook his apprentice’s tent. “Minerva, wake up!”

Min poked her head out, squinting, eyes red, hair tufted. “What’s wrong, boss?”

“Need you to help look for the sheep.”

“Didn’t they take themselves to the pastures?” Min asked, sleepy confusion and concern battling for dominance on her face.

“Did last I looked. Now they’re somewhere else.”

“Alright, I’m coming.” The apprentice ducked back in the tent to get dressed.

Samuel called to her. “Where’s your friend?”

Min re-emerged, buttoning a flannel jacket against the night chill. “Haaken had to go check his flock. What makes you think something’s wrong?”

“Got that feeling like when lambs are too far. Except a thousand times stronger. What did your friend say he was doing?”

“Not sure. We were out with some fellas from down Manhattan Station. Then he said he had to go.”

“You reckon he knows his business, your friend?”

Min nodded firmly. “Oh, yes. He just needs to put together his own flock.” Her mouth made a bow, sour and tight, and she added, “His master won’t let him though.”

Samuel knew the shepherd out of Oslo Station from Christmas-feasts past. “Old Erna’s not one for promoting her apprentices.”

“She wants to keep him working until she’s ready to retire. Probably the day before her funeral.”

Samuel nodded. “Ambitious then.”

“He says he just wants a fair chance.”

Samuel ignored that. He said instead, “Haven’t seen Erna yet, have we?”

Then they reached the paddock. It was empty.

* * *

We make passage through the night. Some of us nap while walking but most are awake, watchful. Two rams lead. The human stands behind our point of balance to drive us forward. The flock moves off the hardpath and onto the trail toward the wastes. Grazing in that country will occur near water sources or not at all. The smell of water and sheep drifts faint upon the breeze. Through it winds a scent of predator, fresh.

* * *

“We’re wasting time,” said Samuel to his apprentice. “I’m going to show you something. Hop in there and bring me a handful of dirt.”

“Dirt?”

“Yeah, the stuff they stand on. And make sure it’s dirt our sheep have trodden.”

Min made a wobbly attempt to leap the fence but thought better and used the gate. After some consideration inside the paddock, she scraped together a small handful of rocky soil.

“Be sure to get the turds, too!” said Samuel. Min walked over to Samuel, grip-full of pasture dirt held before her. Samuel held out his hand. Min tipped her hand to let it pour into Samuel’s. “Now watch.” Samuel squatted. “See what I do with my fingers. I’m making them into an antenna.”

“What’s that?” she asked.

“Way of calling up the godplanet. Goes back to when settlers of old could talk to it directly. Now I’m going to toss the dirt and see what happens.” Samuel cast his hand. The sand, clay, bits of rock, and sheep pellets scattered in an arc across the paddock gate apron. They seemed to hang in space, each in its own consideration of where to land, then fell together with a patter like rain.

Min stood, agape.

“This is a map,” said Samuel.

She closed her mouth, cocked her head. “Really?”

“Yeah, really.” Samuel brushed his hands against his jerkin. “Look. The turds fell here. What do you think that means?”

Min furrowed her brow. “Those are the sheep?”

“Very good! You can call that copromancy. Godplanet gave us that to read each other better. What of the gravel and bits of quarry rubbish here?”

“Are those . . . rocks?”

Samuel sighed. “The bluffs. The sheep are moving toward them. The red dust that fell here is Station Abbey. The gray line is the road.”

After a long pause. “You think the sheep have left the road.”

“Indeed. Or were taken from it.”

“But there’s no water. Might be bobcats or coyotl prowling. Why would they go there?”

“That’s what I mean to find out.” Samuel rose, looking down at his apprentice until she stood as well. “Let’s gear up then. Water, ration. Star rises soon. We’ll pick up the other thing where I left it.”

They made quick time out of town to the spot where Samuel had buried the shotgun. Min put Samuel’s folding shovel to work and soon retrieved a scuffed plastic storage container. Samuel dusted the lid clean, then popped it off and retrieved the shotgun. He broke it to give it a looksee the way his ma had taught him. Clean, two shells loaded, safety on. Ready to go.

* * *

In the drylands, our wethers meet with those of Oslo Station, and we learn a thing: The human Haaken drove them out of Oslo Station in the night, the way as he did us. Their shepherd did not accompany them and none have heard her voice in many days. They distrust the human Haaken but 61% of them feel he knows this country better than they. Better than us as well.

In the distance, blurry figures astride the path. We cannot see them, but we know the scent of fur and dust and predator wafting over. The coyotl from before.

The human Haaken approaches. He has a tool we do not recognize. He thrusts it into an ewe, slicing her open.

The rams charge forward.

* * *

They made good time off the road. The flocksign was all but reading itself out loud: fresh-turned dirt to the side of the trail, tufts of wool stuck against a tumbleweed. A couple of hours into the hike, they picked up the baaing of the flock itself.

“Careful,” said Samuel as they turned a bend set against a low bluff. “Could be our man climbed up there and is waiting to drop a rock on us.”

“Which man?” asked Min, a little heated-sounding.

“Whatever man’s got the—” They both stopped at the sight of blood drips that led off the path into the bush.

“Aw, crap,” said Samuel. In the distance, staccato yips and a mournful howl. Samuel unslung the shotgun and doubled his pace.

* * *

The human Haaken is blocked from the ewe. He points the coyotl toward her. The coyotl shove and screech forward. We panic and flee. This triggers something in the coyotl. We run. The air is full of bloodsmell. We are bitten, bleeding.

It is hard to think and speak when we are scattered and frightened.

They corner three rams. A fatal mistake! They fight back against the coyotl, driving them under hoof and horn. A coyotl squeals blood. The others retreat. We defend us. Not the human Haaken. No shepherd-protector he, stumbling back on two unsteady feet, face twisted and dark stain spreading across his chest, arm pressed to neck.

* * *

So intent was Samuel on reading flocksign that he missed a faint scuffing of dust across the path. His foot hit the dust, and a fine wire sprang up to cut deep across both legs at the shin. He crumpled. Legs twisted. Waiting for the pain to come to rest. When it did, he yelped.

Min, who’d been working hard at keeping up with the old man, stopped short.

A silhouette slid between them and the mid-morning sun.

“Hello again,” said Haaken. Hard to hear his words. Hard to make him out in the backlight of the orange star. Haaken stretched a hand in their general direction. He was holding his shoulder with the other, as if he’d slept wrong.

Samuel had fallen atop the shotgun, concealing it from view. He tensed the muscles in his core and shoulders, ready to roll over and bring the gun to bear.

Haaken swayed a little. Then he plopped down fast, landing upright on his butt. He sat there with his legs splayed across the grit. In his outstretched hand, a long knife, a monomolecular blade. It fell to his side and, though the monoblade was presumably functional, requiring no electronics, Haaken made no effort to recover it. He wore an ancient Earth surplus t-shirt soaked in blood down the left side.

“You got bit?” asked Samuel.

“Yes. Stabbed, too.” Haaken indicated his left side then pointed at Samuel’s legs. “Those tripline cuts are bleeding pretty badly.”

“You set those?”

“Not me. Them.” Haaken motioned vaguely to the badlands.

“They didn’t think the sheep you offered them was enough?” The story was about told now, Samuel figured. Haaken had run off with old Erna’s flock. Had he left her past retirement and all other concerns? Seemed possible, even likely. Haaken had planned a flockjacking to build his numbers. Came to the Christmas-feast but couldn’t bring whatever sheep he’d gotten away with into the settlement lest they blab about their missing shepherd. Negotiated with the coyotl for safe passage: Here, have a couple of sheep. But the coyotl had wanted them all.

“Something like that,” said the blond man.

Samuel rocked up onto one side. Dry season and hot out, but he felt cool and dizzy.

Haaken had stopped talking—maybe he’d died having said enough. But then he staggered up, still gripping the knife in one blood-slicked hand.

“It’s not like I can go home,” he said, his words dressed up as reasonable explanation. He advanced on them.

Min bent and yanked up the shotgun, socked it against her shoulder,, and pulled the trigger. Despite the aching laceration across his legs, Samuel winced away from the blast. Haaken staggered back and plopped down, his mouth making a loose circle. Slowly, he sank down to face the sky.

“Did you just miss?” said Samuel.

“Well, yeah, but I meant to scare him. So not really.” Min trotted over, training the empty shotgun on Haaken while she retrieved the monoblade. She came back. “I think he’s down anyway.”

Min dropped the gun. Samuel bit back his correction of her mistreatment of a weapon. As gently as she could, Min propped Samuel’s legs up on his pack. She had a careful, sure touch gained from handling sick livestock, but as she tied off two touniquets, Samuel felt little, which was worrisome.

“I’ll run back to Station Abbey to get help, grandpa,” she said. Samuel motioned to his ears and she repeated herself, louder. Min hitched the straps on her pack then ditched the entire thing. She looked at Haaken once but didn’t approach.

“Sure,” said Samuel. “Before you go, help me set up here.”

“What else do you need?”

“Get my medicine bag.”

Minerva nodded and eased the black nylon pouch off Samuel’s waist. She set it alongside the monoblade and the shotgun. She looked at the old man pushed small into the dust and her eyes welled up, blurring the scene. She wiped away the tears. “I’ll run fast. Please be okay, grandpa.” She kissed the top of his head and took off back to the road, coltish legs propelling her back to the Christmas-feast.

Samuel yelled out, “Hurry up!” but it came out too hoarse and quiet to be heard. Samuel shook his head. Dumb Minerva for thinking she could run there and back in time. Samuel couldn’t deny, however, that his apprentice, his granddaughter, had kept calm in a crisis. And, of the three humans, she was the only one not lying on the ground.

He chewed the desert firmoss and forced himself to swallow. He was exhausted and the noon sun had narrowed down to an orange sliver that just cut the black. Not much time now if he was going to do it. Samuel fumbled a devil’s trumpet out of the pouch into his mouth. Then another. And a third. Powerful hallucinogen where it grew on Avunculus. Maybe enough to kill a full-grown ram. Or a man. But when you had to do a thing, best to see it through.

If this worked, he’d be in a strange position for a shepherd, no doubt about that. Maybe he’d stay put 

awhile then retire to whatever came after. Then, unlike old Erna, he’d let his apprentice have her turn. But not just yet.

Sheep were gathering just over that rise where the blond man had left them. Samuel rose. His body looked crooked, discarded on the dustpack.

Time to manage the flock.

* * *

“Interfacing.”

“Run medical diagnostic. On me.”

“You suffer a traumatic injury. And organ failure from something grazed.”

“Body’s worn out. Thought I could join you for a while. Continue living the pastoral life, you know?”

“This flock network is not appropriate for storage of human consciousness.”

“Oh. Well.”

“Entering council.” Torpy fades away to just a voice. “Ninety-two percent of us believe we can slow the organ failure and blood loss in your body while you remain with us temporarily.”

“I did not know you could do medicine.”

“This action uses your body’s own responses. It does not stop or alter the cause of your injuries. It is also a technique we have developed without your direction.”

“Oh. I see.”

“Eighty-eight percent of us believe it is a foolish choice to follow the human Haaken here. Ninety-two percent of us would like to express appreciation for your herding and an apology for what is happening to you. But one hundred percent of us would like you to note that while many sheep die every year, no sheep would presume to live on inside your mind.”

“So noted. And thank you.”

* * *

Samuel fell back across the distance, and landed hard, thrashing.

“Grandpa, stop! It’s okay, you’re safe.”

“Oh, good.” Samuel tried to open his eyes, but his lids felt leaden and gummed shut. Everything felt numb, but something held his body from below. A bed. An antiseptic smell suffused the room.

“Don’t move too much, grandpa. You’ve got a lot of stitches.”

“The flock make it back?”

A long silence. “I’m fine. Just a little sore and sunburned.”

“Minerva. Thank you. Sorry.” Samuel tried to scoot upwards, so he could see better, but nothing happened. His body felt off somehow, different.

“Why can’t I open my eyes?”

“Doctors said the medical bugs will affect your vision and movement. It’ll wear off.”

“Am I going to like what I see when that happens?”

A pause. “They had to work to save your right leg. They have good microbiota here. You’ll probably be walking again well before next Christmas-feast.”

“When you get a chance, thank the flock for me, too. I might be off the firmoss for a while.”

“I’d guess they’re busy now with the Oslo Station flock. But after . . . they’d probably understand fine if you gave them some apples or alfalfa hay.”

“Good idea, Minerva. I’ll let you set up the trades. But . . .”

“But?”

“Last bit of advice, and then I’ll shut up. You really should make it both. Ripe apples and alfalfa hay. And lots of it.”