Back in the throne room, Stephano debriefed the Duke and Dutchess.
“The dog’s name is Tiger. He has known only the human world, and cruel human masters. He wishes to escape to someplace green, yet at the same time he wishes to remain here in Milan. He refuses to be a police dog – to him, police dogs are bad while he is good.”
“Encouraging,” said Duke Prospero.
“Quite,” Stephano agreed. “It seems this Tiger is ideally suited to life as a double agent, if we can gain his loyalty and reposition him in the human world.”
Costanza took the floor. “Well and good,” she said, “but how shall we gain his loyalty? When I left you, he seemed on the verge of tearing you to bits.”
“His mood, your grace, has mellowed in the intervening minutes. What troubles him most are the intimate confines of his room in our damp basement. I propose we arrange transport to a place outside the city, perhaps North toward Switzerland? Even the most ardent of Milanese Gendarmes would not hazard to pursue a lost dog outside the Schengen Treaty.”
The Schengen Treaty was a human contrivance, arranged by certain remaining nations in the settling dust of the Great Wars which followed the end of the Human Age. Switzerland, being a resolutely Neutral nation which refuses to join political pacts of any kind, existed ever since as an island of sorts with Schengen States (France, Italy, and Germany) on every side. It was just the sort of tiresome elaboration that had becalmed the world since the rise of Democracy.
“The train, then,” said Prospero.
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