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responded to it with eager whines and howls,
and the line began to move.
    Mhumhi had been to this meat dispensary a
thousand times, though he had never really understood it. Somewhere
behind that brick and featureless glass lay a vast store of meat.
No dog had yet been able to penetrate one of the dispensaries, but
they had little need to. The meat was delivered to them regularly,
once a day, one portion per dog.
    As each dog took its turn and stood inside
the booth, the slider clicked and hissed out of the rubber lips in
the wall, bearing a package wrapped in opaque white plastic. The
air was soon filled with the sound of hissing and the smell of
bloodless meat as each dog carried its package away in its jaws to
devour in a more secluded area.
    A fight broke out on one of the nearby
scales- a coyote had snatched the meat from a little corsac fox,
which was squealing furiously. Immediately one of the painted dogs
bounded down from the car. At the sight of it the coyote dropped
the meat and darted away. The painted dog wheeled around,
scattering the crowd, and hopped back up onto the car.
    Mhumhi was caught up staring, but Bii nipped
his heel- it was his turn. Hastily he loped over into the booth,
claws clicking. The bottom of the booth was a metal scale that
depressed underneath him as he stepped onto it. He ducked down and
pressed his nose against a black button set in the wall.
    A metal slider hissed and emerged smoothly
from the wall, bearing a painted dog-sized hank of meat in a
plastic wrapper. Mhumhi tugged it loose from its hook and stood to
one side as Bii hopped up on the scale and reared to brush his nose
against the button. The slider retracted back into the wall and
returned a moment later with a much smaller package.
    "Let's get out of the crowd," he called to
Mhumhi as he leapt up to snatch it.
    They squeezed back through the crowd, earning
hungry looks- the rest of the dogs in line had yet to eat, and more
were still squeezing onto Wide Street. Bii flicked his tail and led
Mhumhi underneath a ramp held up with round concrete columns. There
were a smattering of other dogs lurking there already, and they
were greeted with growls, but Mhumhi's appearance was enough to
keep them unmolested.
    Mhumhi found an empty spot in the shadows and
tore through the plastic on his package. As always, the malleable
stuff got stuck to his teeth and on the roof of his mouth. He
curled his lips and scraped the roof of his mouth with his
tongue.
    Bii was having an easier time of it with his
needle-sharp teeth. He sliced a neat line through his wrapper and
tugged it fully back, exposing the pale, bloodless meat. Mhumhi
started salivating at the sight, which didn't help him much in
trying to get a grip on the slippery plastic.
    "I can help you," Bii offered, watching him
struggle, but Mhumhi warned him with a soft growl. He hooked his
teeth onto one corner and stepped on the package to squeeze the
squashy stuff out of the hole he'd made. He gobbled it as Bii
watched.
    "Don't you ever get tired of eating the same
thing every day?"
    Mhumhi swallowed his mouthful and licked his
chops. "There's nothing else to eat."
    That was not strictly true- if a dog was
clever enough to bargain, he could gain access to fruit from the
Great Glass Garden that sat above the center of the city. But
Mhumhi rarely desired any of the stuff, and it was never quite so
filling as meat.
    Mhumhi finished his portion and went on to
devour Bii's little packet as well. It felt like a negligible
addition to his stomach, and he found himself rather cross at the
prospect of having to give much of it up again.
    He licked his chops again and sat down, fully
intending to digest a moment, but Bii was waving his tail.
    "Let's go, Mhumhi. We'll want to hurry back.
Aren't you and Kutta going somewhere today?"
    "What makes you think that?" Mhumhi said,
springing back to his feet, though his full belly protested. "Were
you-"
    "Listening? Not intentionally." Bii laughed,
and