Watchers

land, which meant much simpler procedures by which the NSA could assume authority in the investigation.
    Cliff Soames was still turning the fragment of mirror over and over in his hand, staring at it thoughtfully.
    Looking around the eerie chamber one last time, Lem Johnson made a promise to himself and to his dangerous quarry: When I find you, I won’t consider trying to take you alive; no net or tranquilizer guns, as the scientists and the military types would prefer; instead, I’ll shoot you quick and clean, take you down fast.
    That was not only the safest plan. It would also be an act of compassion and mercy.
     
     
     
4
    By the first of August, Nora sold all of Aunt Violet’s furniture and other possessions. She had phoned a man who dealt in antiques and secondhand furniture, and he had given her one price for everything, and she had accepted it happily. Now—except for dishes, silverware, and the furniture in the bedroom that she had made her own—the rooms were empty from wall to wall. The house seemed cleansed, purified, exorcised. All evil spirits had been driven out, and she knew she now had the will to redecorate entirely. But she no longer wanted the place, so she telephoned a real-estate agent and put it on the market.
    Her old clothes were gone, too, all of them, and she had an entirely new wardrobe with slacks and skirts and blouses and jeans and dresses like any woman might have. Occasionally, she felt too conspicuous in bright colors, but she always resisted the urge to change into something dark and drab.
    She still had not found the courage to put her artistic talent on the market and see if her work was worth anything. Travis nudged her about it now and then, in ways he thought were subtle, but she was not ready to lay her fragile ego on the anvil and give just anyone a chance to swing a hammer at it. Soon, but not yet.
    Sometimes, when she looked at herself in a mirror or noticed her reflection in a sun-silvered store window, she realized that, indeed, she was pretty. Not beautiful, perhaps, not gorgeous like some movie star, but moderately pretty. However, she did not seem to be able to hold on to this breakthrough perception of her appearance, at least not for long, because every few days she would be surprised anew by the comeliness of the face looking back at her from the mirror.
    On the fifth of August, late in the afternoon, she and Travis were sitting at the table in his kitchen, playing Scrabble, and she was feeling pretty. A few minutes ago, in the bathroom, she’d had another of those revelations when she had looked in the mirror, and in fact she had liked her looks more than ever before. Now, back at the Scrabble board, she felt buoyant, happier than she would have once believed possible—and mischievous. She started using her tiles to spell nonsense words and then vociferously defended them when Travis questioned their legitimacy.
    ‘Dofnup’?” he said, frowning at the board. “There’s no such word as ‘dofnup.’”
    “It’s a triangular cap that loggers wear,” she said.
    “Loggers?”
    “Like Paul Bunyan.”
    “Loggers wear knit caps, what you call toboggan caps, or round leather caps with earflaps.”
    “I’m not talking about what they wear to work in the woods,” she explained patiently. “ ‘Dofnup.’ That’s the name of the cap they wear to bed.”
    He laughed and shook his head. “Are you putting me on?”
    She kept a straight face. “No. It’s true.”
    “Loggers wear a special cap to bed?”
    “Yes. The dofnup.”
    He was unaccustomed to the very idea that Nora would play a joke on him, so he fell for it. “Dofnup? Why do they call it that?”
    “Beats me,” she said.
    Einstein was on the floor, on his belly, reading a novel. Since graduating with startling swiftness from picture books to children’s literature like The Wind in the Willows, he had been reading eight and ten hours a day, every day. He couldn’t get enough books. He’d become a prose junkie. Ten days ago, when the dog’s obsession with reading had finally outstripped Nora’s patience for holding books and turning pages, they had tried to puzzle out an arrangement that would make it possible for Einstein to keep a volume open in front of him and turn the pages himself. At a hospital-supply company, they had found a device designed for patients who had the use of neither arms nor legs. It was a metal stand onto which the boards of the book were clamped; electrically