The Invisible Dogs of Grantville
Jackie Britton Lopatin
Magdeburg Railway Platform
September 1634
“Who said anything about there being invisible dogs in Grantville?” Allan Dailey, coordinator of the Imperial College’s Military Engineering program, demanded of the hapless young soldier.
The private flinched and stammered out, “Um, uh, nobody in particular, Lieutenant, you know, just rumors.”
With a sideways wink to his companion, fellow faculty member Thomas Holcomb, Allan stared fiercely at the young man. “Well, if there were invisible dogs in Grantville, Private, they’d be a highly classified military secret, and anyone spreading rumors about their existence would be subject to military discipline.” With a self-satisfied smile, Allan rocked back on his heels and tugged at the hem of his uniform’s jacket.
“Military discipline?” the young man squeaked. “But my cousin Georg sent my mother a sign to place in her window, announcing to all that her home is guarded by an invisible dog.”
“What?!” Allan loomed over him.
“Y-yes,” he cringed. “It’s written in both English and German. Georg also told me stories that he said he heard directly from the up-timer, Billy Bob, about the invisible poodles and Chihuahuas.”
“Oh, well, if your source is Billy Bob Robinson,” Holcomb interjected, “you can discount everything you heard. Billy Bob tells a great story, but he’s one of the biggest liars in Grantville.”
“B-but, my cousin said he saw an invisible dog being walked down the street. And—and, look!” he pointed at a woman walking along the platform. Allan and Thomas followed the line of his finger and saw that the tote bag she was carrying featured the outline of a poodle in red with a caption underneath that read: “Beware the Invisible Dogs of Grantville!”
☆ ☆ ☆
“Yeah, well, my cousin, Laramie, found an invisible dog leash in our grandmother’s attic and found a way to make money off it without actually selling it.” Bledsoe Kline was clearly enjoying being the center of attention of the gathering sprawled around Allan’s classroom that evening. In his early thirties and a high school dropout, he wasn’t one of the typical students here in the Imperial College of Science, Engineering, and Technology, but rather had been assigned here by the USE Army as an assistant to Jere Haygood, one of the few honest-to-goodness civil engineers who had come through the Ring of Fire.
Allan looked around and noted with approval that most of the up-timers here at Imperial Tech were present. Only about eighteen of them, but even at that, this particular year probably represented the largest group of up-timer students it would ever have. This class included any older Americans with the desire—and the money—to learn engineering, as well as a few recruits from the latest high school graduating class. Hereafter the college would likely get only a few up-timers each year as they graduated from high school and showed a desire for engineering studies.
“He had notices printed up and is selling them through the bookstore and gift shops in Grantville,” Bledsoe continued.
“Then some other clever entrepreneur with a good source of canvas and burlap decided that tote bags are the new T-shirts for displaying clever slogans and pictures and came up with an entire line of invisible-dog tote bags.”
“Really?” Henry Swisher, one of the youngest students, leaned forward to ask. “What kind of slogans?”
“Lessee.” Bledsoe paused and thought a minute. “Some of the bags just say simple stuff like ‘Beware the Invisible Dogs of Grantville!’ or ‘I ♥ My Invisible Dog.’ But more elaborate tote bags have been printed promoting various different breeds, with a high-end line of signed and numbered bags being sold exclusively through the Higgins Hotel.” He paused to chortle sharply. “Wearable artwork with the virtue of being useful!”
As the guys sitting around chuckled, Bledsoe continued. “Some people have been spinning yarns about these invisible dogs and speculating about the nature of the various breeds. Poodles are said to be both smart and vicious, while nobody wants to mess with the invisible Rottweilers, either. Everyone’s quite glad that none of the invisible Doberman pinschers came back through the Ring of Fire, and some rather wish a breeding pair of invisible Chihuahuas hadn’t come back with us.’”
“Grr-rh-ha-rh-ha-rha!” Vincent Kubiak, another recent high school graduate, snarled at the chuckling room in a high-pitched Chihuahua fashion.
“Apparently a bunch of good ole boys are upset that none of the best tracking hounds have come through, but they’re going to try to breed some up,” he said, winking. “But some of the visiting artists have been commissioned to make portraits of the various breeds.”
Allan’s eyes started rolling as he tried to visualize portraits of invisible dogs.
“Did you find out how the artists are able to paint the invisible dogs to their patrons’ satisfaction?” Armand Glazer finally asked, a quizzical expression on his face.
“Apparently the customer specifies a breed and a pose, the artist paints their picture, and then blurs the background in the appropriate shape; kinda like in the Predator movies when the cloaked predator moves. They’ve become quite a status symbol and cost accordingly.”
Armand nodded and sat back in his chair, a thoughtful look on his face. As the oldest up-timer present and a fine commercial artist, he was one of the few there who had probably seen someone walking their “pet” during the height of the original invisible dog craze, and Allan suspected the stories were giving him some ideas.
“On the cheaper end, you can get hand-painted tote bags that say something like, ‘My Invisible Dog can beat up your Invisible Dog!’, or a picture of the invisible breed, or sometimes both.”
“I can understand how you can print different sayings on tote bags,” Armand spoke up, looking puzzled. “But since we don’t have the supplies to make our up-time silkscreens anymore, how the heck do you put an invisible dog on a tote bag? Carving or etching even one blank for printing a picture would be incredibly expensive.”
Bledsoe started laughing. “It’s so stupid it’s simple,” he said. “It’s kinda the same as silk screening, but not as slick. You take a piece of paper shaped like the outline of a dog—sitting, standing, whatever—and use it as a stencil to block out the ink that gets sprayed or dabbed over the rest of the bag, and there you have it, one picture of an invisible dog. The poodles have proven to be quite popular.”
“Poodles?”
“Yeah, apparently they’ve been given a reputation for being quite vicious. ‘Beware the Invisible Poodle Dogs of Grantville!’” he declaimed grandly, throwing out his hands dramatically as they all laughed.
This is good for us, Allan thought, leaning back and looking around the cramped classroom. A temporary arrangement, the Imperial College was currently sharing quarters with a Latin school in the Altstadt. A new roof to replace the one damaged in the sack of the city had convinced the schule that it could make do with the crowded conditions until the college’s first building was finished outside the city walls. For this meeting he’d pushed most of the furniture back against the wall and pulled the chairs into what proved to be an inadequate circle, resulting in some sitting in chairs, some perching on tables outside the circle, and some lounging around in the middle of the floor. They were all happily munching on snacks he’d had a servant bring in and pass around. We should get together on a regular basis, even when the new college gets finished. It’s too easy for us to get isolated from each other. We need a comfortable place to kick back, decompress and have a chance to talk with others who understand our background, language, and the culture clashes which are inevitable.
When he noticed the servant leaving the room, he couldn’t help wondering what he had thought about the whole invisible dog shtick. Shrugging, he turned back to the discussion as the jokes started flying even faster.
☆ ☆ ☆
Three days later he found out just how seriously the servant had taken the concept when he was summoned to the office of Wilhelm von Calcheim genannt Lohausen, the Imperial College’s civilian administrator and representative of Emperor Gustavus Adolphus II.
Without preamble, von Calcheim demanded to know how the invisible poodles were being deployed and berated him for keeping this kind of secret from their allies.
“Why did you not tell us about these dogs?” he demanded.
Allan rolled his eyes and took a deep breath. “Because we don’t actually have invisible dogs?”
“Of course you don’t,” von Calcheim replied, one corner of his mouth turning up. “The idea is ridiculous. But the idea of missing such a window of opportunity is even more ridiculous.”
“Sir?”
“I have heard the stories your Vietnam vets tell of Captain Pierre Kirk and his joking order over the radio which had the Viet Cong believing that the fiction of phasers was real. I have read the book The War Magician, and the second thing I thought of when I first heard about the invisible dogs from Grantville—after my first thought of disbelief—was that this was a wonderful way of ‘bamboozling’ our enemies. Any strange sound or disappearance? Blame it on our well-trained hunde.
“It will take very little effort on our parts to have our enemies looking over their shoulders, never knowing where to look. Are they about to be bitten by invisible dogs as our soldiers march toward them?” He paused and smiled. “Imagine the solitary sentry at his post, trembling in fear of the attack which he cannot see. A brilliant subterfuge; all it takes is instilling that little bit of doubt in the enemy.
“We have engineering students now, and if they cannot think of pranks to play and devices to use on our enemies based on the notion of invisible dogs, then they don’t deserve to graduate. War is as much a game as a fight, and any mind games which save lives are good.”
“Herr Rektor, we can’t do that,” Allan protested. “The spirit of Grantville consists of a couple of thousand Americans living side by side with people who don’t necessarily share our exact ideals. While I can agree that anything which gives our enemies pause before attacking us is a good thing, we have to protect our reputation for integrity first. Being known for having a civilian population with a warped sense of humor is one thing; being known as outright liars—if not worse—is something else again.”
“Ja, I can see that,” von Calcheim agreed sadly. “I can respect and understand your reasoning, too. As a joke it might work once, but yes, it is not a good long-term strategy.”
October 1634
“Hey, Allan, take a look at this!” Jack Bartholow thrust a squarish box at him in the empty hallway outside his classroom in the late afternoon.
“What’s this?” Allan looked down at the box. Jack, a tall, rangy man just beginning to go a little gray around the edges, grinned at him.
“That’s the winner of the first annual Fake Invisible Dog Competition which my kids insisted we hold.”
“Huh?”
Jack nodded. “That’s pretty much what my reaction was when it was proposed to me last week. I had told my class about one competition I’d heard about up-time—using elbow drinking straws and Q-tips to build different devices—and then one of my kids suggested a much more practical down-time competition…tricks and snares designed to fool the unwary into thinking invisible dogs are real.”
“Uh, you did explain to them that the army isn’t promoting the whole fake invisible dog strategy?”
“Oh yeah, but you try talking kids out of a good gag. It can’t be done.”
Shaking his head, Allan lifted the lid off the box and slid it underneath. Inside was the reel off a fishing pole with the clear fishing line attached to an old yellow tennis ball.
“Hey, where’s the fishing pole to go with this reel?” he demanded, lifting it out. “It’d be a lot more fun to cast this ball at a long distance.”
“Yeah, but the whole rationale behind leaving off the pole is that it’s much easier to hide the reel under a coat. Think how much fun it’d be to throw out the ball and playact it back to yourself as if an invisible doggie were really bringing it back to you.” Grabbing up the ball, he threw it down the length of the hallway.
“Get it boy, get it!” he called. Taking the reel out of Allan’s hand and hooking it onto his belt, he began reeling it in with a bouncy motion with one hand while making little kissy sounds and patting his leg with the other. When the ball came within grabbing distance, he reached out as if trying to wrest it from a reluctant dog’s mouth. “Come on, boy, good boy, let it go, come on, drop it, there’s a good boy.”
Allan swallowed a snicker. “Oh, that’s really awful.”
“That’s pretty much what I said when I first saw it,” Jack nodded, “but they’re all having such a good time one-upping each other in tall tales and gizmos to keep the myth going that there’s no stopping them. This engineering program is not only capturing our students’ imaginations and developing their competitiveness, it’s helping them push our technological envelope as far and as fast as possible.
“They’ve even got Jerry discussing potential strategies for using invisible dogs in war situations.”
“You’re kidding!”
“I wish I were.” Jack shrugged. “So he’s put together a packet using dogs and fishing line and various other snares, trip wires, and gizmos as the basis of mathematical problem-solving. ‘If you have two dogs, each holding onto a ball attached to a reel of fishing line, circling around a squad of enemy soldiers from different directions”—he made circling motions with his hands—“how long of a line would each dog be having to pull to be able to circle around the squad twice and trip them up?’”
“That’s ridiculous!”
“Yeah, but it’s a lot of fun and it’s making them think. And ultimately, thinking outside the box is what this engineering program is about. It’s making them laugh, and funny is easier to remember when it comes to math and science.”
“Sheesh, what’s next?” Allan asked, taking the ball out of Jack’s hand. “Catapults for pet rocks?”
He had just heaved the tennis ball down the hall and was tugging it back when he spotted the servant out of the corner of his eye. Oh no, he thought. Just what we don’t need…more rumors about invisible dogs and pet rocks!
☆ ☆ ☆
A couple of weeks later Jerry Calafano came into his classroom and held up several strips of paper. “Hey, Allan, look what Armand got for us…freebies for the Billy Bob show this weekend at the Higgins Hotel!”
Allan groaned. “Not more of that invisible dog nonsense! I can’t believe that gag is hanging on the way it is.”
“Aw, come on, it’s gonna be fun. A bunch of us are all going up to Grantville tomorrow, anyway, so why not take a break and catch the show?”
☆ ☆ ☆
“Hey, Dalton!” Allan called out across the crowded lobby of the Higgins Hotel. “How ya doing?”
Dalton Higgins grinned as he worked his way over to where Allan was standing with his fellow up-time teachers, reminding him of the young kid he’d been when they were both in school in the seventies. Dalton had dropped out of high school to put his muscles to work in a U-Haul business, but Allan had gone on to college and earned a degree in chemistry, ending up at the water treatment plant where he’d worked until the Ring of Fire changed everything. Now Dalton was mechanical support for the various branches of the military, and Allan was an officer in the army and a professor at the Imperial College. “Professor,” Allan chuckled wryly to himself. Back home I wouldn’t have been qualified to teach chemistry in high school, let alone college. But times change and all of a sudden I’m one of our best-educated men and Dalton’s an expert on all things mechanical and salvageable. When something breaks down, people come to him to see if it can be repaired, replaced, or repurposed. Life. It do get strange.
“Lookit you!” Dalton exclaimed, thrusting out his hand in welcome. “All uniformed up and everything. I thought you were teaching these days!”
“I’m wearing a ridiculous number of hats these days, Dalton.” He grinned back ruefully as they shook hands. “I’ve been assigned to the Imperial Tech school in Magdeburg, mostly teaching practical chemistry, but I’ve been coming up here about once a month to help develop a series of advanced chemistry lectures for the high school and tech college, while still helping out where I can with military research. But these yahoos here”—he jerked his thumb over his shoulder—“talked me into taking some time off tonight and coming to see Billy Bob’s show while we’re in town. You know Jerry Calafano, Christine Gaddis, Armand Glazer, and Jack Bartholow, don’t you?”
“Sure do,” he said, shaking hands with each in turn. “Don’t hardly see you guys any more, now you’re mostly down in Magdeburg.”
“So, you’re here to catch Billy Bob’s lyin’ act?”
“Yeah, Armand here got us some free tickets.”
“Free? That’s the least Mom could do for someone who’s made her as much money as Armand helped her make with those booklets she sells in the gift shop.”
All heads swiveled to stare at Armand as he grinned sheepishly.
“How could I resist?” he said, shrugging. “It’s just too much fun. After putting in a day’s work drawing illustrations for military training manuals, I found myself kicking back and designing training manuals for invisible dogs. ‘The Care and Feeding of Your Invisible Dog,’ ‘The Many Breeds of Invisible Dogs,’ ‘How to Avoid Being Bitten by Invisible Dogs.’”
“My personal favorite is ‘The Dangers of Allowing Invisible Dogs to Form Packs,’” Dalton interjected with a grin. “I took out a big ole ad on the inside back cover for my salvage business.”
“Uh, you do understand we’re trying really hard not to mislead people, don’t you?” Allan asked.
“Oh, nobody’s taking it seriously,” Dalton said with a shrug, “But it’s getting a lot of people laughing, buying souvenirs, and showing up for Billy Bob’s show.
“Speaking of which, I highly recommend sitting near the back and watching the audience as much as Billy Bob. It’s a hoot seeing who laughs at what. We know it’s lies, but some of the down-timers don’t know whether to believe or not. Y’know, it’s one of those things you’re afraid to believe because you’d look silly, but afraid to not believe, just in case it’s true.”
Once they were seated, Allan noticed that he, Christine, and Jack in their uniforms were getting quite a few looks from the down-timers filing past their row, but everyone in up-timer garb—whether blue jeans and T-shirts or dress pants and shirt—seemed to be coming in for their share of looks, too. Great, it looks like we’re part of the show.
“Apprentices are trouble.” Billy Bob, dressed in well-worn blue jeans and checked western shirt, had begun speaking into a handheld microphone from his perch atop a tall stool at the front of the room. “Every master knows that. A bored apprentice is even more trouble. And a bored apprentice in Grantville, this small town from the future which somehow landed smack in the middle of the Thirty Years’ Wars, is a dangerous thing.
“Fortunately, this American apprentice had him a sense o’ humor. Low humor, to be sure, but at least nuthin’ malicious.
“This apprentice shoulda been in school, but he had talked his mother into the notion of homeschooling him and his sister early in the mornings so they could start learning a trade during the rest of the day. He’d had dollar signs in his eye, a-course; they always do. Two years into his apprenticeship with Gruenwald Brassworks here in town and he started scroungin’ around for something else he could do to make some money on the side. After all, this was Grantville! Up-time Americans and down-time Germans alike are makin’ money hand over fist. Whatever an American’s interested in doing, they kin find others interested in payin’ good money to teach ’em about it, simply because they were usually the best in their field. At the very least, they knew that if sumpin’ was popular at some point in American history, that down-timers would like it, too.
“So it started when that scroungin’ apprentice found an old gag in his grandmother’s attic and started a rumor goin’ around.”
Billy Bob dropped his voice dramatically. “‘Americans been keepin’ secrets from us. They ain’t been tellin’ us about their invisible dogs.’”
Reverting to his normal voice, Billy Bob continued.
“Then the rumors grew as rumors often do. ‘Beware o’ them invisible poodle dogs—they’s vicious.’”
Allan chuckled and looked around. Some of the Germans—who far outnumbered the Americans—looked puzzled by the laughter around them. They’ve just never experienced pet poodles in quite the same way as us Americans. Yappy little things with ridiculous haircuts.
“Them rumors mighta died down or been disproven as setch rumors often are, ’cept that one of the first people asked about them invisible poodle dogs was a concierge right here at the Higgins Hotel; he was asked right out why Americans had been a-keepin’ them invisible poodles a secret.”
Billy Bob leaned toward his audience. “Oh, he was a prideful man, he was. He drew hisself up in all his well-dressed glory, stared down his nose at that tourist and demanded right back: ‘Why do you think?’”
Shifting his stance and pitching his voice to indicate different speakers, Billy Bob continued.
“‘Oh, of course,’ that tourist said. ‘Now it makes sense. The church would have taken them as evidence of witchcraft and consorting with demons.’”
While some of the audience gasped in terror, Allan and the other Americans in the room couldn’t help laughing out loud.
Billy Bob waited, nodding and grinning, until the laughter died down. Which took a while.
“Heh,” he was finally able to say. “Back when our computers was hooked up to what we called the ‘internet,’ the computer geeks had all kinds of abbreviations that meant this and that. If someone found sumthin’ funny, they’d type the letters el-oh-el, for ‘laughing out loud.’ My friends’ reactions over there? That woulda been typed out are-oh-tee-ef-el, for ‘Rolling on the Floor Laughing.’ Much more, and it woulda qualified as ‘Rolling on the Floor Laughing Ma Ass Off.’
“’Cause ya see, that’s one answer we never woulda thought of. We ain’t never hadta worry about the church accusing nobody o’ witchcraft or nuthin’ like that…not fer hundreds o’ years. ’N thas a good thing and one of the many reasons why our American forefathers insisted on separation of church and state. We don’t believe in magic or burnin’ people at the stake. Our guv’ment pertected us from all that nonsense.
“Anyways,” he continued, “back to the concierge and that there tourist. The concierge didn’t laugh in the tourist’s face, but he did swell up some in indig-nay-shun.
“‘Certainly not!’ he snapped. ‘That’s ree-dick-a-lus!’
“‘Then Grantville really doesn’t have invisible dogs?’
“‘I can neither confirm nor deny the existence of any such invisible dogs,’ the concierge said all stiff-like. ‘If they exist, I certainly have never seen them.’”
With a dramatic pause, Billy Bob looked around and grinned before continuing.
“Looking relieved, the tourist went on into the hotel.”
Billy Bob paused, leaned over to pick up a glass of water from the base of the stool, and took a sip.
“‘Invisible dogs, indeed,’ the concierge repeated to himself. ‘Someone’s been a-tellin’ some tall tales. Or resurrectin’ old gags. What’s next, someone a-takin’ their ‘invisible dog’ for a walk down Main Street?’”
Billy Bob paused again, to nod in satisfaction at the audience.
“Now, havin’ a rather low sense of humor hisself, the concierge couldn’t help announcin’ to the kitchen staff that he’d had a question that day about the Americans’ invisible dogs. He loved the way Brunhilde’s eyes got real big as she envisioned invisible dogs. She’d come to Grantville from a small mountain village where hunting hounds was the only dogs for miles around and she were still rather…unnerved…by the way many Americans kept dogs and cats as inside pets. Several of the Higginses’ long-term guests keep setch pets and one of ’em—a Chihuahua—takes exception to anyone entering his territory. He terrorizes the maids and is one of the reasons Brunhilde prefers to work in the kitchen.
“‘I understand the invisible poodles are quite vicious and should be avoided at all costs,’ that concierge said with a straight face.
“Now it so happened that I was a-workin’ down there on that very day, sharin’ the secrets of my down-home barbecue sauce with the head chef, and I couldn’t resist.
“‘Shoot,’ I said—with an even straighter face—‘them invisible poodles ain’t nothin’ compared to them invisible Rottweilers.’”
Allan put one hand up over his face as some in the audience responded with a sharp intake of breath. Say what you may about Billy Bob Robinson, he thought, shaking his head in admiration, he’s a damn fine storyteller. He’s got this audience right in the palm of his hand.
“Now this caused all the kitchen staff to pale at the thought, even the concierge who knew better. One of the police officers in town owns a Rottweiler-Chow mix and he scares the bejeezus out of anyone walkin’ by his lot. Fortunately, he’s been fixed, to everyone’s great relief. No little Rottweiler puppies coming along unless someone takes the time and effort to breed ’em up.
“Three days later, though, that scallywag of an apprentice was seen a-walkin’ his ‘invisible’ dog outside the Higgins Hotel, making a big production outa havin’ the dog sniff around the fire hydrant. The concierge thought the little plastic pooper-scooper was a particularly nice touch,” he added, with a grin. “He was unsurprised to see the apprentice being ‘led’ up the steps into the hotel and equally unsurprised to have him ask to talk with the person responsible for buyin’ stuff for resale in the hotel’s gift shop. After the kid went down the hall, the concierge started t’ laugh but turned it into a cough when he saw several visitors a-starin’ after him with their jaws hangin’ down in disbelief.
“‘And so the legend grows,’ the concierge thought to hisself. ‘I wonder what that kid’s gonna try to sell…bumper stickers, maybe, that say “I brake for invisible dogs?” Or more silly gag leashes? With all the things we do need made, we certainly don’t need to be a-wastin’ resources on gags.’
“The next day that concierge found himself a-shakin’ his head at the small signs he found for sale in the hotel’s gift shop proclaiming “Beware! This house is guarded by an invisible dog!” in either English or German. Or both on the same sign.
“He weren’t the only person who wanted to cash in on this sudden recurrence of an old gag, neither.
“It seems as if everyone in Grantville who ain’t figgered out some way a-makin’ money on their up-timer knowledge was able to thinka some kinda invisible dog slogan they could slap onna sign or a tote bag. ‘I Visited Grantville and Have the Invisible Dog Bites to Prove It!’ ‘I Love My Invisible Dog!’ ‘I Heart My Invisible Dog!’ or ‘Don’t step on my invisible poodle dog—she bites!’” With each slogan mentioned, Billy Bob dramatically waved his hands as if slapping a huge bumper sticker up in the air.
“I, of course, have appointed myself the teller of the ‘Tales of the Invisible Dogs of Grantville.’ Back up-time I couldn’t hardly get anyone to listen to my yarns…now I git invited to tell ’em to great audiences like you.”
As the audience enthusiastically applauded, Billy Bob got up off his stool and strutted back and forth with his microphone, expanding on the marvels of Grantville’s invisible dogs.
Allan couldn’t believe just how much truth Billy Bob managed to work into his tales, but in a way that made it hard to believe. People are very, very polite and law-abiding in Grantville, because they never know when acting up may get the dogs sicced on them. Invisible dogs are trained by whistles that can’t be heard by human ears. The concept made him snort in disbelief and he knew dog whistles are real.
He had about cracked up when Billy Bob put in a plug for “gettin’ you a picture o’ your family painted here in Grantville, with the invisible dog of your choice.” How is someone going to paint a picture of an invisible dog? he wondered. Maybe the same way some artist plagiarized the “Dogs Playing Poker” concept on black velvet, only with one of the dogs represented with a hand of cards suspended in midair about where a dog would be holding it.
He had thought that suggesting people get themselves a pet rock so they could shy it at any invisible dog that was bothering them was pushing the limits until Billy Bob suggested that people “put them a buckeye for luck in one pocket and a pet rock in the other to cover all the bases. Luck should keep the invisible dogs away, but the pet rock would be there…jist in case.”
“And as for that there apprentice,” Billy Bob concluded, returning his microphone to its stand, “he’s happy having a little extra pocket money…money he wouldn’t’ve earned if he hadn’t gotten bored one day and decided to have some fun.
“Now, it’s good to share the fun, but when someone’s telling you what sounds like a tall tale, remember that if there were near the number of invisible dogs in this town as people make out there are, we’d all be up to our knees in invisible doggy doo-doo.”
☆ ☆ ☆
As the Imperial Tech group was exiting the room afterwards, Allan noticed down-timers staring at their uniforms and whispering to themselves. Maybe coming to this show wasn’t such a good idea after all, he thought. The last thing we need is for people to get it into their heads that we actually have invisible dogs and are using them for military purposes.
Imperial College of Science, Engineering, and Technology
March 1635
“Professor Dailey?”
Allan looked up to see one of their brightest students, USE Army soldier Friedrich Schumacher, standing in the doorway of his classroom.
“Yes, Friedrich,” he said, gesturing him inside, “what can I help you with?”
“Professor, you know how you keep saying Grantville has no invisible dogs?”
Allan sighed. Can I ever get shook of this whole stupid gag? he wondered.
“Friedrich, have you ever heard anyone in the military claim that we have invisible dogs?”
“Nein.”
“Have you ever read anything in any of the up-time books about invisible dogs?”
“Nein.”
“Do you understand that the souvenirs and gags that talk about invisible dogs are just jokes and tricks?”
“Ja.”
“So, all that being said, what would you like to say about invisible dogs?”
“It’s just…sir, mein Onkel—my uncle—raises the Pudelhunde, the swimming dogs that look like the little American poodles, only bigger. I told him about up-time training techniques and he’s very interested. Do you think the Army would be interested in his dogs if he can train them like we’ve been talking about in our military strategy sessions?”
Allan sat back, his eyebrows raised in surprise. “A well-trained K-9 corps could be very useful for a lot of different jobs—military, police, and fire and rescue teams—but what does that have to do with invisible dogs?”
“My uncle was interested at first in breeding his Pudelhunde to your invisible poodles, but when I explained about how it was just a big joke, that Americans have never had invisible dogs, he suggested that his dogs would be almost as good as invisible dogs.”
“But, Friedrich, most of the suggested uses in war, the discussions in class about how dogs could be effectively used in battle, presupposes dogs that can’t be seen and shot at a distance.”
“Ja.” He grinned and nodded down at Allan. “But it occurred to us that if the fur of his Pudelhunde is bleached and dyed in an up-time camouflage pattern before they go into battle, they would blend into their background like the Predator beast and be very hard to see before they were right on the enemy.”
Allan looked up at Friedrich and began to laugh. “You could even put leaves and twigs in their fur like a little doggy ghillie suit!” Sobering a bit, he continued, “This whole thing may have started as a gag, but I can see all kinds of uses for well-trained dogs, invisible or not. So sure, get your uncle as much information on up-time dog training as you can find up in Grantville. In fact,” he said, pulling out a sheet of paper and starting to scribble on it, “I’m giving you an assignment in Grantville. Take the train, spend a week, find what you can in the libraries, and talk to some of the veterinarians. They should be able to give you some good pointers.”