The pet was named Pancake, and its owner had ticked the box marked Does not bite.
Dot considered that reassuring until she saw what else Beck had ticked. Pancake was long enough to overlap three boxes in the photograph. Six short legs stood beneath a green, plated body. Its face appeared to have been assembled around a very determined smile.
“Not a reptile,” Beck said through her earpiece. “People keep saying that.”
“It’s in a recycling tunnel.”
“It likes the slurry. It feeds through its feet.”
“Is that in the form?”
“There wasn’t a box.”
Dot stood beside the basement hatch of Beck’s building, holding a retrieval sling and a tablet with fourteen unanswered questions. Upstairs, the River Level festival was beginning. Bass notes descended through the service shaft, making the hatch tremble under her hand.
Beck wanted Pancake back before the parade passed. It had a little harness with silver bells, and the children on her floor had made a place for it beside their paper float. She was calling from upstairs while trying to locate the feeding mat she used to persuade it into bed.
Dot wanted to finish her first solo retrieval without calling Len. He would answer. That was the problem. He would answer in the same patient voice he had used yesterday while she tried to buckle a sling around a crate instead of the animal inside it.
She opened the tunnel plan. The hatch led to a dry service walkway, with a waist-high rail separating it from the processing channel. Pancake’s last movement had triggered a camera two turns ahead. The channel was being drained for the afternoon wash. The plan gave her eleven minutes before the hatches sealed; people could leave by the service door at the end of the walkway, but loose animals would be inside the wash zone.
She could ask Len for a delay before entering. She thought of doing it. Then she thought of him hearing that she had found the animal before she requested a delay. It seemed a small improvement to the conversation.
Pancake was under the second camera. Its feet were spread in the last shallow film of slurry. It made a soft grinding noise against the tiles, like a cabinet being moved very slowly.
“Pancake,” Dot said.
It raised its head. She held out the sling. It put its nose into the loop, investigated the buckle, then backed away. Dot followed one step and the sling caught on the rail. While she unhooked it, the animal crawled beneath the rail and into the channel.
“Does it come for food?” she asked Beck.
“It stands on the mat.”
“Have you found the mat?”
“I’m looking. Can you clap? Sometimes it likes clapping.”
Dot clapped. The sound went up the shaft and came back. Pancake moved away from it. Above them, the festival drums began, low and slow. The animal stopped, then turned toward a branch channel leading under the plaza.
“It likes that,” Dot said.
“What?”
“The bass.”
“Oh, yes. I sleep with a fan on. It sleeps under the fan.”
Pancake was moving faster now. The main walkway ended at the junction. A little bridge crossed the channel to the branch walkway on the far side. Dot could follow Pancake from there, but the bridge gate closed before the main hatches. She hurried, bent to clear the low frame and dropped her tablet. It slid across the bridge. She stepped through the gate to collect it just as the caution light changed from green to amber.
The gate closed behind her. Its inside handle opened onto the lower service stairs, beyond the wash zone. She could leave. Pancake, down in the branch, could not reach those stairs with its wide body. It had turned onto its back beneath the low branch ceiling. All six feet rested against the tiles overhead, patting gently in time with the drums. It looked considerably happier than Dot.
Dot looked at the tablet. Six minutes remained.
She called Len.
“I’ve found it. I’m on the branch side of gate four, and it’s below me. I need the wash delayed.”
“Are you in the channel?”
“Walkway.”
“Stay there.”
He asked for her camera number, checked the image and called the tunnel operator. Dot heard only half his conversation, then the time indicator stopped. A message appeared: WASH HOLD—TWENTY MINUTES.
“Twenty minutes once,” Len said. “I’m coming to gate four. Get the owner and whatever this animal follows.”
Beck had found the mat under her sofa. She said she would come down. Dot told her to bring the small speaker visible beside the sofa in Pancake’s photograph.
“That’s broken,” Beck said. “It only does the low sounds.”
“Good.”
Len arrived with a wider sling. He opened the gate through its service panel and put a portable ramp over the rail. Dot hadn’t brought a ramp. She had thought a long animal would be easy to guide once it faced the right way.
Pancake remained upside down. Its six feet kneaded the air when the parade rhythm changed. Beck stood on the ramp with the speaker in one hand and the mat in the other.
“That’s not its harness,” she said, looking at Len’s sling.
“It’s a lift sling. We’ll take it off upstairs.”
“Won’t it be frightened?”
“Tell us if it is.”
She played the softest bass setting. Pancake curled halfway over, paused with its legs pointing sideways, then landed on its feet with a slap. Dot laughed before she could stop herself. Beck laughed too, relieved rather than insulted.
It followed the speaker up the ramp. Halfway, it stopped and pressed two feet onto the feeding mat Beck had laid in front of it. The other four feet refused to leave the wet channel.
Dot moved the mat a little higher. Pancake followed, two feet at a time. Len waited at the top. When it stood fully on the dry walkway, they slipped the sling beneath it. Beck kept the speaker near its nose while Dot buckled both sides. This time she had the animal inside.
They carried it through the hatch between them. Pancake was heavier than the form allowed for, and Dot had to rest once on the stairs. Beck climbed backward ahead of them, promising it a bowl of slurry while the bells on its unused harness rang against her wrist.
Upstairs, the paper float was already in the lift. The children made room for Pancake on the floor. Beck asked whether they could keep the sling until after the parade. Len said no; they would help her fit the proper harness now.
Dot sat on a stair and waited for her hands to stop shaking. Below, the wash began. She could feel it through the soles of her shoes.
Len sat two steps above her.
“Tomorrow,” he said, “you’ll come with me.”
She nodded. He took out his tablet and opened the next call. Something small and airborne was loose in a florist’s cooling room.
“Still today?” Dot asked.
“Still today. Bring the ramp back first.”
From the lift, Pancake made its slow grinding sound. The parade beat began again, and the silver bells went with it up toward the street.
Loading comments…