Breathless

under Grady’s pillows. With expressions of blissful contentment, the dog and the two somethings curled around one another.
    The wolfhound and his posse watched Grady turn out the bedside lamp. They watched him turn out the overhead light.
    Leaving on the lamp beside the large Stickley-style reclining chair, Grady went into the closet to retrieve a spare pillow and a blanket.
    The snuggling animals raised their heads as he came out of the closet, and they tracked him as he went to the reclining chair. They seemed unmoved by the sour look he gave them.
    Grady sat in the roomy chair, which he had built and upholstered the previous year. He stretched out his legs on a matching footstool.
    The three compadres watched him solemnly.
    He draped the blanket across himself and put the pillow behind his head.
    They watched him adjust the pillow and the blanket until he got everything as right as he could. The chair made a comfortable bed, and he was too tired to play here-we-go-’round-the-mulberry-bush with these animated plush toys.
    He said, “Just so you know …”
    The three caballeros remained interested in him, although he couldn’t honestly claim that they waited with bated breath for what he would say next.
    “… I consider this mutiny,” he informed them. “Mutiny indeed. And in the morning, discipline will be administered.”
    He switched off the lamp beside the chair.
    Their colorful eyes seemed to float in the darkness.
    “I see you watching me,” he said.
    They didn’t blink.
    “I’m counting on you, Merlin. Don’t let them devour me in my sleep.”

Thirty-seven

A t the computer in her office at the veterinary clinic, Cammy Rivers wrote e-mails to Dr. Eleanor Fortney of Tufts University’s Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine in North Grafton, Massachusetts, and to Dr. Sidney Shinseki of Texas A&M University’s College of Veterinary Medicine in College Station, Texas. She attached JPEGs of photos of Puzzle and Riddle.
    Eleanor Fortney was an eminent zoologist, an internist, and a surgeon who had been a guest lecturer for a month at Colorado State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences in Fort Collins, when Cammy had been in her last year of studies at that institution.
    As one of the very few CSU students who ever achieved a perfect grade-point average in every semester of her studies, both as an undergraduate and a graduate student, Cammy had been able to receive a guaranteed seat in every one of Eleanor’s small-class lectures but had been invited also to participate in three one-on-oneconferences that proved to be some of the most intense educational experiences of her life.
    By the time Eleanor completed her month in Fort Collins, she had made a persuasive case that, upon graduation, Cammy should come east to Tufts. Eleanor offered a three-year contract to work in a canine-cancer research project of which she was the director, a program with deep funding provided by an alumnus.
    Cammy was tempted by the opportunity to advance her career and contribute to research that might save the lives of countless dogs. But ultimately, she declined. She had dreamed for so long of serving animals not in the research lab, but in the course of their day-to-day suffering; she wanted the satisfaction of healing animals whose names she knew and into whose eyes she had looked.
    She and Eleanor had remained in touch, however, and were friends who regarded their work not solely as a profession and primarily as a mission. If Puzzle and Riddle were extreme teratogenic individuals, Eleanor’s broad, deep zoological background might enable her to see through the mutations to underlying characteristics that identified their species.
    As for Sidney Shinseki: After receiving her veterinary degree, Cammy had done a year of postdoctoral work with him to refine her surgical techniques. He was a sweet old gruff bear of a guy who had a keen diagnostic sense and a talent for making intuitive leaps from a few perplexing facts to the truth toward which they pointed.
    After sending the e-mails, Cammy trolled a few institutional zoological archives that could be accessed with ease, searching for photographs of nocturnal creatures with unusually large eyes.
    The aye-aye, inhabiting the rain forests of Madagascar, appeared to have larger eyes than it really did. In the photos, they were sucha bright orange that the stunning color contributed to an illusion of immensity. Anyway, with its big