Oktober [antikvár]

One Seventeen was being a bitch, as usual. If there was any irony in the thought, Bruno didn't see it. The dogs inside the pens always got jealous of the dogs that were still outside in the yard during the daily hosing-out, but he'd been noticing for some time now that the number seventeen animal took it worse than most. She'd lope back and forth from shelf to floor and back onto the shelf again, and the other five huskies in there with her would crowd back wherever they could to give her space. Two of them still had shaved patches and scars, souvenirs of their failure to get out of her way when Bruno had come within reach of the wire. She hated him, it was as simple as that. She could read him in some way that the others couldn't, and she found plenty to be afraid of. Bruno leaned on his brush in the half-swept last pen of the row, and he listened to the even bump-bump-bump of her pacing on the other side of the rough wooden wall. Draining water lay like eels on the concrete floor, glistening in the light from the overhead fluorescents; the day never made it this far inside. Down the row and around the corner, one of the dogs was crooning gently to itself. Only inches above Bruno's headthe ceiling was barely six feet high - there was an almost continuous scratching of claws on boards. The six bear-like Eskimo dogs in the roof space were getting restless, as if messages of tension were running along invisible lines. The Siberian in the next pen paced from floor to shelf, from shelf to floor, on and on. She hated him. "It's mutual," he said out loud, surprising himself with the sharpness of his voice in the cold air. The pacing continued without missing a beat, as rhythmic and as powerful as a steam-driven machine.