He studied them for signs of the changes Cohanna had wrought. There weren't many. The massive rottweiler head was perhaps a little broader, with a more pronounced cranial bulge, though he doubted he would have noticed without looking for it, yet there was something. And then he realized. The eyes fixed upon him with unwavering attention betrayed the intelligence behind them.
"All right, Colin." Cohanna's voice wrenched his attention from the dogs. "You wanted to see them. Here they are."
He looked up quickly, but her expression gave him pause. He was accustomed to her testiness, but her dark eyes were fierce. This, he realized with a sinking sensation, was no bloodless project for her.
"Sit down, 'Hanna," he said quietly, and knelt before the dogs as she sank into an empty chair. Heads cocked to look at him, and he ran a hand down the biggest's broad back. His sensory boosters were on high, and he felt the usual bunchy muscle of the breed... and something more. He looked at Cohanna, and she shrugged.
" 'Hanna," he sighed, "I have to tell you I'm less worried, in a way, about the genetic stuff than the rest of it. Do you have any idea how the anti-techies will react to fully enhanced dogs? The idea of a dog with that kind of strength and toughness is going to terrify them."
"Then they're idiots!" Cohanna glared at him, then sighed herself, and something very like guilt diluted her fierceness. A knot of tension inside him relaxed slightly as he saw it and realized how much of her anger at him came from an awareness that perhaps she had gone too far.
"All right," she said finally, her voice low. "Maybe I was an idiot. I still maintain—" her eyes flashed "—that they're superstitious savages, but, damn it, Colin, I can't understand how their minds work! These dogs represent no more danger to them than another enhanced human would!"
"I know you think they don't, 'Hanna, but—"
"I don't 'think' anything, Colin—I know! And so will you if you take the time to get to know them."
"That," he admitted, "is what I'm more than half afraid of." He turned back to the dogs, and the big male he'd touched returned his gaze levelly. "This is Galahad?" he asked Cohanna... but someone else answered.
"Yes," a mechanically produced voice said, and Colin's eyes widened as he saw the small vocoder on the dog's collar. A shiver ran down his spine as a "dumb animal" spoke, but it vanished in an instant. Wonder replaced it, and a strange delight he tried hard to suppress, and he drew a deep breath.
"Well, Galahad," he said quietly, "has Cohanna explained why I wanted to meet you?"
"Yes," the dog replied. His ears moved, and Colin realized it was a deliberate gesture—an expression intended to convey meaning. "But we do not understand why others fear us." The words came slowly but without hesitation.
"Excuse me a moment, Galahad," Colin said, feeling only a slight sense of unreality at extending human-style courtesies to a dog. He looked back up at Cohanna. "How much of that was computer enhanced?"
"There's some enhancement," the doctor admitted. "They tend to forget definite articles, and their sentence structure's very simple. They never use the past tense, either, but the software is limited to 'filling in the holes.' It doesn't provide any expansion of their meaning."
"Galahad," Colin turned back to the dog, "you don't frighten me—or anyone else in this room—but some people will find you... unnatural, and humans are afraid of things they don't understand."
"Why?" Galahad asked.
"I wish I could explain why," Colin sighed.
"Danger is cause for fear," the dog said, "but we are no danger. We wish only to be. We are not evil."
Colin blinked. A word like "evil" implied an ability to manipulate concepts light-years in advance of anything Tinker Bell had ever managed.
"Galahad," he asked carefully, "what do you think 'evil' is?"
"Evil," the mechanically-generated voice replied, "is danger. Evil is hurting when not hurt or when hurting is not needed."
Colin winced, for Galahad had cut to the heart of his own definition of evil. And whether he'd meant to or not, he'd thrown Colin's decision about his own fate into stark focus.
Colin MacIntyre stared into his own soul and disliked what he saw. How could he explain that much of humanity was incapable of understanding what Galahad saw so clearly, or why he felt so ashamed that it was so?
"Colin-human," Colin looked up as Galahad spoke again, "I try to understand, for understanding is good, but I cannot. We know—" a toss of a massive canine head indicated his litter-mates "—you may end us. We do not want to end. You do not want to end us. If we must end we cannot stop you. But it is not right, Colin-human." Canine eyes held his with heart-tearing dignity. "It is not right," Galahad repeated, "and this is something you know."
Colin bit his lip. He turned to Jiltanith, and when her eyes—the black, subtly alien eyes of a full Imperial—met his, they, too, shone with tears.
"He hath the right of it, my Colin," she said quietly. "Should we decree their deaths, 'twill be fear that moveth us—fear that maketh us do what we know full well is wrong. Nay, more than wrong." She knelt beside him, touching a slender hand to Galahad's heavy head. "E'en as Galahad hath said, 'twould evil be to hurt where hurting need not be."
"I know." His voice was equally quiet, and then he shook himself. "Isis?"
" 'Tanni's right. If I'd known what 'Hanna was planning I'd've pitched a fit right alongside you, but look at them. They're magnificent. People, Colin—good people who happen to have four feet and no hands."
"Yes." Colin looked down at his hands—the hands Galahad didn't have—and felt the decision make itself. He rose and tugged on his nose, thinking hard. "How many are we talking about here, 'Hanna?"
"Ten. These four and two smaller litters."
"Okay." He turned back to Galahad and his siblings. "Listen to me, all of you. I know you don't understand why humans should be afraid of you, but do all of you accept that they might be?" Four canine heads nodded in unmistakable assent, and he chuckled despite his solemnity. "Good, because the only way we could keep you really safe would be for us to keep the humans you might scare from finding out you exist, and we can't do that forever.
"So here's what I'm going to do. From now on, you four will live with us—with 'Tanni and me—and except for when you're alone with us, you have to pretend to be just like other dogs. Can you do that?"
"Yes, Colin-human." It wasn't Galahad, but a smaller female who spoke, and her dignified mien vanished abruptly. She leapt up on him, wagging her tail and slurping his face enthusiastically, then tore around the room barking madly. She skidded to a halt, tongue lolling, dumped herself untidily on the carpet, rolled on her back, and waved all four feet in the air. Then she rolled back over and sat upright once more, eyes laughing at him.
"All right!" He wiped his face and grinned, then sobered again. "I don't know if you'll understand this, but we're going to take you lots of places and show you to lots of people, and I want you to behave like ordinary dogs. The news people'll get a lot of footage of you, and that's good. When the truth about you gets out, I want the rest of humanity to be used to seeing you. I want them used to the idea that you're not a threat. That you've been around a long time and never hurt anyone. Do you understand?"
"If we prove we are not evil, people will not fear us?" Galahad asked.