By Bob Shaw

　　君泽选注

　　当地球上的人类真正移民到其他星球时，他们会把地球式的某些生活方式——一些看似无足轻重、可有可无的杂事琐物一并移植吗？

　　When Hewitt picked the dog up he got the impression it was slightly heavier than a real animal, but that might have been because it was still inert, a dead weight in his hands.<注2> He ran his fingers through the wiry hair, noting as he did so that the markings of a Lakeland terrier had been perfectly simulated.<注3> There was no doubt that the dog was very well made, but there was a lingering question in his mind as to whether it was worth a month’s salary. He turned the compact body upside down and gave it a tentative shake.<注4>

　　“It won’t rattle,”Burt Pacer said, from behind the commissary counter. <注5> “Fluid solenoid construction throughout. Just like real muscles.”<注6>

　　“I can tell it’s a good machine, Burt.”Hewitt frownedsintosthe dog’s immobile face.“It’s just the money.”

　　Pacer smiled, sympathetically.“We’re a long way from Earth.”

　　Hewitt nodded, wondering if the comment was meant to explain the cost of the little robot or to justify the extravagance of buying it.<注7> There were other things he and Liz could do with the money, and for weeks he had been stoutly rejecting the idea of getting a dog for Billy. The trouble with domestic budgets, however, was that they were sometimes required to accommodate items whose true value could not be reckoned in cash.<注6> Yesterday evening, for instance, Hewitt had stood at the rear window of his house and had watched his eight-year-old son scamper to the far end of the mowed plot<注9> which was their back garden. There had been nothing to stop Billy running on through the longer grass of the plain beyond, but the boy had come to a halt and had stood there, reluctant to advancesintosalien territories. The sight of the small figure—utterly alone, upright, probably thinking of friends he had left behind on Earth—had filled Hewitt with sadness. With the emotion had come uncertainty about the ambitions which had led him to subject his family to the rigors of the Ferrari Transfer,<注10> and he had reacted by deciding to enquire about a dog first thing in the morning. The memory of how he had felt at that moment resolved the conflict in Hewitt’s mind.

　　“Okay,”he said.“You talked mesintosit.”

　　“Right.”Pacer took Hewitt’s citizenship card and showed it to the computer terminal along with the dog’s specification tag.<注11> He worked with an airy casualness which was intended to remind people that he was a qualified electronics man and only helped out at the commissary on a voluntary basis, for the good of the colony.<注12>

　　His official ownership of the dog, now confirmed, prompted Hewitt to start activating it.<注13> He probed at the back of its skull with his finger-tips, searching for the subcutaneous push-button which was mentioned in the instruction leaflet.<注14>

　　“What are you doing?”Pacer said with some show of concern.

　　“Trying to turn it on.”

　　“I thought it was for your boy.”

　　Hewitt was mildly surprised.“What’s that got to do with it?”

　　“It’s best if the prime owner is the one who activates the dog,”Pacer said.“His should be the first face it sees.”

　　“Is this a joke?”

　　“No joke, Sam. All our dogs are the same. We programme in a canine personality which causes each dog to fixate on one special owner.”<注15>

　　“I don’t know if I like the sound of that,”Hewitt said slowly.

　　“Oh, it’ll be friendly to everyone else in the family, but it’s important to have that one special relationship with the owner—that’s what the whole boy-and-his-dog thing is all about.”Pacer had forgotten to be nonchalant, and a note of evangelical zeal was creepingsintoshis voice.<注16>

　　“I just wanted to make sure it works,”Hewitt said defensively.“I was going to switch it off again.”

　　“You can’t do that, Sam.”

　　“What Why not?”

　　“The brain is too sensitive and complex for that sort of treatment. It can be wiped clean, of course, but it has to be done progressively, using special equipment.”

　　“What have I bought here?”Hewitt set the rodog down in a swathe of sunlight which lay across the counter.<注17> The individual hairs of its coat gleamed brown and black and white.“It sounds like it’s going to be as much trouble as a real dog.?”

　　“A piece of clockwork wouldn’t be much use to your boy,”Pacer commented, folding his thin freckled arms.“Besides, there’s the security aspect—the way the dog is made, no stranger can come along and steal it and blank out its memory of the proper owners.”

　　“I must be mad,”Hewitt said as Pacer fitted the dogsintosits carrying case.“I can’t afford to pay eight hundred monits<注18> for a supertoy.”

　　“You can always bring it back.”Pacer closed up the plastic case and slid it across the counter.“If young Billy gets tired of it, or maybe you get another transfer, bring it in and I’ll give you a fifty percent refund.”<注19>

　　“Can you do that?”

　　“No trouble. We can wipe the brain clean and sell the dog to somebody else. There’s a big demand for this sort of product on Mesonia.”

　　His route home took him past the arrivals and induction centre, which was a pyramidical structure whose architecture reinforced the dual-space properties of the pyramid-shaped receiving chamber at its heart.<注20> The number of vehicles parked outside it suggested to Hewitt that the null-space transmission<注21> conditions were favourable and that new colonists were being brought through. He could imagine them stepping out of the chamber, naked and hungry, stunned with the realisation that they—in one instant—had left Earth and all its ways forty light years behind them. The Ferrari Transfer was psychologically brutal, as well as being fantastically expensive, but it was the only practicable form of interstellar travel that mankind had ever devised.<注22>

　　At least, Hewitt thought, inhaling the scented air,<注23> the newcomers are getting a good day for it.