The Fifth Force
an excerpt

Wint Usborne was still worried. More so, if that was possible. He had followed the talking dog's grudging directions for an hour or so, until they had left even the outskirts of the city far behind. They were following a winding mountain road now, unfamiliar and vaguely alarming in the dusk.

Finally Wint had had enough. "Are you sure this is the way?"

The dog shrugged, which is an interesting thing to watch. Unfortunately it was lost on Wint, who would not take his eyes from the road. "This is the road we're supposed to be on. Dogs have an instinct, you know?"

"Yes, well, I didn't think that applied to places you'd never been or even heard of," Wint muttered.

"Yes, well, you'd never met a talking dog until today, either," Rex said, a trifle snappishly. "What do you have to eat?"

Wint was tempted to answer, "nothing for you," but the creature was, after all, the only direction he had so far. "If you think we can pull over for a break, I've got some food in the backpack."

"I know; I've been smelling it ever since I got in the car. We dogs have highly developed olfactory senses, as well. Of course I wouldn't expect a human to know that."

There really wasn't anything at the side of the road that one could call a shoulder, so Wint just edged over as close as he could get and turned off the ignition. The air around them swelled with silence.

The dog took a breath, but this time Wint quelled him with a look and hauled the backpack over into the front seat. He began emptying the contents onto the seat.

Rex had no comment on the teaspoon, the wine, or Wint's carefully folded clothes. Then he glimpsed the ham radio. "What's that?"

"An old ham radio. Don't ask me why I brought it." Wint found the sandwiches and began unwrapping the neatly sealed plastic.

The dog leapt to a sitting position, banging his head on the low roof. "Ham radio? Those two words don't go together. Ham is to eat; radio is to listen. Even a dog knows that."

"That's just what it's called. Something to do with 'amateurs' 'way back when it got started. It's a hobby. People from all over the world communicate with each other."

Rex was looking at Wint with a frightening intensity. "But that's what it's called? Ham. Radio?"

"That's what it's called. For goodness' sake, I thought you wanted a sandwich." Even for a talking dog, Rex seemed to be getting weirder as the day wore on.

"'The pig that lives not, yet speaks with many mouths.' Do you think you could call it that?"

"What the--? No, I could not call it that. I suppose you could, if you wanted to say something completely cryptic and strange." Wint squinted at the German Shepherd in the rapidly dimming twilight. Rex's eyes were huge pools of dark brown, more expressive than Wint would have imagined a dog's eyes could be. Unfortunately he could not identify the expression. "What's wrong with you?"

The dog suddenly shook his head, and probably would have let the shudder continue down his back for a good whole-body shake if there'd been room in the tiny car. "You're him! By all the bones, you're him." The dog sounded mildly disappointed.

"I'm who?" asked Wint.

"You're the Technocrat Avatar, of course," said the dog, "Although you're not at all what I expected, I have to admit. Still, you've got the talking dead pig, and that's the sign as far as I know. The pig radio does work, I suppose?"

"Ham radio, and yes it works. And I'm not a techno-whatever. I'm a launch controller at NCDSF. Or at least I was. I've probably been fired by now." Wint tossed the uneaten sandwiches back into the backpack, not even bothering to rewrap them, which lack of fastidiousness was an indication of his great distress. "And I'm not hungry, so let's get on with this."

He threw the little car into gear and lurched back into the road, barely missing a skinny figure on a scooter who'd just stopped next to the car and was about to rap on Wint's window.

It was Skete, but of course Wint didn't know that.