Watchers

a corner wet bar, Garrison poured Chivas Regal on the rocks in two glasses. Although Nora was unaccustomed to whiskey, she startled Travis by downing her drink in two long swallows and asking for another. He decided that she had the right idea, so he followed suit and took his empty glass back to the bar while Garrison was refilling Nora’s.
    “I’d like to tell you everything and have your help,” Travis said, “but you really must understand you could be putting yourself on the wrong side of the law.”
    Recapping the Chivas, Garrison said, “You’re talking as a layman now. As an attorney, I assure you the law isn’t a line engraved in marble, immovable and unchangeable through the centuries. Rather . . . the law is like a string, fixed at both ends but with a great deal of play in it—very loose, the line of the law—so you can stretch it this way or that, rearrange the arc of it so you are nearly always—short of blatant theft or cold-blooded murder—safely on the right side. That’s a daunting thing to realize but true. I’ve no fear that anything you tell me could land my bottom in a prison cell, Travis.”
    Half an hour later, Travis and Nora had told him everything about Einstein. For a man only a couple of months shy of his seventy-first birthday, the silver-haired attorney had a quick and open mind. He asked the right questions and did not scoff. When given a ten-minute demonstration of Einstein’s uncanny abilities, he did not protest that it was all mere trickery and flummery; he accepted what he saw, and he readjusted his ideas of what was normal and possible in this world. He exhibited greater mental agility and flexibility than most men half his age.
    Holding Einstein on his lap in the big leather armchair, gently scratching the dog’s ears, Garrison said, “If you go to the media, hold a press conference, blow the whole thing wide open, then we might be able to sue in court to allow you to keep custody of the dog.”
    “Do you really think that would work?” Nora asked.
    “At best,” Garrison admitted, “it’s a fifty-fifty chance.” Travis shook his head. “No. We won’t risk it.”
    “What have you in mind to do?” Garrison asked.
    “Run,” Travis said. “Stay on the move.”
    “And what will that accomplish?” “It’ll keep Einstein free.”
    The dog woofed in agreement.
    “Free—but for how long?” Garrison asked.
    Travis got up and paced, too agitated to sit still any longer. “They won’t stop looking,” he admitted. “Not for a few years.”
    “Not ever,” the attorney said.
    “All right, it’s going to be tough, but it’s the only thing we can do. Damned if we’ll let them have him. He has a dread of the lab. Besides, he more or less brought me back to life—”
    “And he saved me from Streck,” Nora said.
    “He brought us together,” Travis said.
    “Changed our lives.”
    “Radically changed us. Now he’s as much a part of us as our own child Would be,” Travis said. He felt a lump of emotion in his throat when he met the dog’s grateful gaze. “We fight for him, just as he’d fight for us. We’re family. We live together . . . or we die together.”
    Stroking the retriever, Garrison said, “It won’t only be the people from the lab looking for you. And not only the police.”
    “The other thing,” Travis said, nodding.
    Einstein shivered.
    “There, there, easy now,” Garrison said reassuringly, patting the dog. To
    Travis, he said, “What do you think the creature is? I’ve heard your description of it, but that doesn’t help much.”
    “Whatever it is,” Travis said, “God didn’t make it. Men made it. Which means it has to be a product of recombinant-DNA research of some kind. God knows why. God knows what they thought they were doing, why they wanted to build something like that. But they did.”
    “And it seems to have an uncanny ability to track you.”
    “To track Einstein,” Nora said.
    “So we’ll keep moving,” Travis said, “And we’ll go a long way.”
    “That’ll require money, but the banks don’t open for more than twelve hours,” Garrison said. “If you’re going to run, something tells me you’ve got to head out tonight.”
    “Here’s where we could use your help,” Travis told him.
    Nora opened her purse and withdrew two checkbooks, Travis’s and her own. “Garrison, what we’d like to do is write a check on Travis’s account and one on mine, payable to you. He’s only got three