Watchers

their own agencies and perhaps outside of the political world entirely. The investigation seemed stymied. But all he said to Walt was, “No.”
    Walt started to straighten up and close the car door, then leaned down and in again. “One more thing. You notice it seems to have a meaningful destination?”
    “What’re you talking about?”
    “It’s been moving steadily north or north-northwest ever since it broke out of Banodyne,” Walt said.
    “It didn’t break out of Banodyne, damn it.”
    “From Banodyne to Holy Jim Canyon, from there to Irvine Park, and from there to the Keeshan house tonight. Steadily north or north-northwest. I suppose you know what that might mean, where it might be headed, but of course I daren’t ask you about it or you’ll heave me straight into prison and let me rot there.”
    “I’m telling you the truth about Banodyne.”
    “So you say.”
    “You’re impossible, Walt.”
    “So you say.”
    “So everyone says. Now will you let me go home? I’m beat.”
    Smiling, Walt closed the door at last.
    Lem drove out of the hospital garage to Main Street, then to the freeway, heading home toward Placentia. He hoped to make it back into bed no later than dawn.
    As he piloted the NSA sedan through streets as empty as midocean sea-lanes, he thought about The Outsider heading northward. He’d noticed the same thing himself. And he was convinced that he knew what it was seeking even if he did not know where, precisely, it was going. From the first, the dog and The Outsider had possessed a special awareness of each other, an uncanny instinctual awareness of each other’s moods and activities even when they were not in the same room. Davis Weatherby had suggested, more than half seriously, that there was something telepathic about the relationship of those two creatures. Now, The Outsider was very likely still in tune with the dog and, by some sixth sense, was following it.
    For the dog’s sake, Lem hoped to God that was not the case.
    It had been evident in the lab that the dog had always feared The Outsider, and with good reason. The two were the yin and yang of the Francis Project, the success and the failure, the good and the bad. As wonderful, right, and
    good as the dog was—well, The Outsider was every bit as hideous, wrong, and evil. And the researchers had seen that The Outsider did not fear the dog but hated it with a passion that no one had been able to understand. Now that both were free, The Outsider might single-mindedly pursue the dog, for it had never wanted anything more than to tear the retriever limb from limb.
    Lem realized that, in his anxiety, he had put his foot down too hard on the accelerator. The car was rocketing along the freeway. He eased back on the pedal.
    Wherever the dog was, with whomever it had found shelter, it was in jeopardy. And those who had given it shelter were also in grave danger.
 
     
    SIX 1
    Through the last week of May and the first week of June, Nora and Travis— and Einstein—were together nearly every day.
    Initially, she had worried that Travis was somehow dangerous, not as dangerous as Art Streck but still to be feared; however, she’d soon gotten through that spell of paranoia. Now she laughed at herself when she remembered how wary of him she had been. He was sweet and kind, precisely the sort of man who, according to her Aunt Violet, did not exist anywhere in the world.
    Once Nora’s paranoia had been overcome, she’d then been convinced that the only reason Travis continued to see her was because he pitied her. Being the compassionate man he was, he would not be able to turn his back on anyone in desperate need or trouble. Most people, meeting Nora, would not think of her as desperate—perhaps strange and shy and pathetic, but not desperate. Yet she was—or had been—desperately unable to cope with the world beyond her own four walls, desperately afraid of the future, and desperately lonely. Travis, being every bit as perceptive as he was kind, saw her desperation and responded to it. Gradually, as May faded into June and the days grew hotter under the summer sun, she dared to consider the possibility that he was helping her not because he pitied her but because he really liked her.
    But she couldn’t understand what a man like him would see in a woman like her. She seemed to have nothing whatsoever to offer.
    All right, yes, she had a self-image problem. Maybe she was not really as hopelessly drab and dull as she