“Thank God,” Travis said.

And Nora discovered that her eyes were filling with tears again.

Jim said, “He’s not out of the woods yet. His heartbeat is more regular, less accelerated, though still not good. Nora, get one of those dishes over there and fill it with some water.”

Nora returned from the sink a moment later and put the dish down on the floor, at the vet’s side.

Jim pushed it close to Einstein. “What do you think, fella?”

Einstein raised his head off the mattress again and stared at the dish. His lolling tongue looked dry and was coated with a gummy substance. He whined and licked his chops.

“Maybe,” Travis said, “if we help him-”

“No,” Jim Keene said. “Let him consider it. He’ll know if he feels up to it. We don’t want to force water that’s going to make him vomit again. He’ll know by instinct if the time is right.”

With some groaning and wheezing, Einstein shifted on the foam mattress, rolling off his side, half onto his belly. He put his nose to the dish, sniffed the water, put his tongue to it tentatively, liked the first taste, had another, and drank a third of it before sighing and lying down again.

Stroking the retriever, Jim Keene said, “I’d be very surprised if he doesn’t recover, fully recover, in time.”

In time.

That phrase bothered Travis.

How much time would Einstein require for a full recovery? When The

Outsider finally arrived, they would all be better off if Einstein was healthy and if all of his senses were functioning sharply. The infrared alarms notwithstanding, Einstein was their primary early-warning system.

After the last patient left at five-thirty, Jim Keene slipped out for half an hour on a mysterious errand, and when he returned he had a bottle of champagne. “I’m not much of a drinking man, but certain occasions demand a nip or two.”

Nora had pledged to drink nothing during her pregnancy, but even the most solemn pledge could be stretched under these circumstances.

They got glasses and drank in the surgery, toasting Einstein, who watched them for a few minutes but, exhausted, soon fell asleep.

“But a natural sleep,” Jim noted. “Not induced with sedatives.”

Travis said, “How long will he need to recover?”

“To shake off distemper-a few more days, a week. I’d like to keep him here two more days, anyway. You could go home now, if you want, but you’re also welcome to stay. You’ve been quite a help.”

“We’ll stay,” Nora said at once.

“But after the distemper is beaten,” Travis said, “he’s going to be weak, isn’t he?”

“At first, very weak,” Jim said. “But gradually he’ll get most if not all of his old strength back. I’m sure now that he never went into second-stage distemper, in spite of the convulsions. So perhaps by the first of the year he’ll be his old self, and there should be no lasting infirmities, no palsied shaking or anything like that.”

The first of the year.

Travis hoped that would be soon enough.

Again, Nora and Travis split the night into two shifts. Travis took the first watch, and she relieved him in the surgery at three o’clock in the morning.

Fog had seethed into Carmel. It roiled at the windows, softly insistent.

Einstein was sleeping when Nora arrived, and she said, “Has he been awake much?”

“Yeah,” Travis said. “Now and then.”

“Have you… talked to him?”

“Yeah.”

“Well?”

Travis’s face was lined, haggard, and his expression was grave. “I’ve asked him questions that can be answered with a yes or no.”

“And?”

“He doesn’t answer them. He just blinks at me, or yawns, or he goes back to sleep.”

“He’s very tired yet,” she said, desperately hoping that was the explanation for the retriever’s uncommunicative behavior. “He doesn’t have the strength even for questions and answers.”

Pale and obviously depressed, Travis said, “Maybe. I don’t know… but I think… he seems… confused.”

“He hasn’t shaken the disease yet,” she said. “He’s still in the grip of it, beating the damn stuff, but still in its grip. He’s bound to be a little muddleheaded for a while yet.”

“Confused,” Travis repeated.

“It’ll pass.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, it’ll pass.”

But he sounded as if he believed that Einstein would never be the same again.

Nora knew what Travis must be thinking: it was the Cornell Curse again, which he professed not to believe in but which he still feared in his heart of hearts. Everyone he loved was doomed to suffer and die young. Everyone he cared about was torn from him.

That was all nonsense, of course, and Nora did not believe in it for a moment. But she knew how hard it was to shake off the past, to face only toward the future, and she sympathized with his inability to be optimistic just now. She also knew there was nothing she could do for him to haul him out of that pit of private anguish-nothing except kiss him, hold him for a moment, then send him off to bed to get some sleep.

When Travis was gone, Nora sat on the floor beside Einstein and said, “There’re some things I have to tell you, fur face. I guess you’re asleep and can’t hear me, and maybe even if you were awake you wouldn’t understand what I’m saying. Maybe you’ll never again understand, which is why I want to say these things now, while there’s at least still hope that your mind’s intact.”

She paused and took a deep breath and looked around at the still surgery, where the dim lights gleamed in the stainless-steel fixtures and in the glass of the enameled cabinets. It was a lonely place at three-thirty in the morning.

Einstein’s breath came and went with a soft hiss, an occasional rattle. He didn’t stir. Not even his tail moved.

“I thought of you as my guardian, Einstein. That’s what I called you once, when you saved me from Arthur Streck. My guardian. You not only rescued me from that awful man-you also saved me from loneliness and terrible despair. And you saved Travis from the darkness within him, brought us together, and in a hundred other ways you were as perfect as any guardian angel might hope to be. In that good, pure heart of yours, you never asked for or wanted anything in return for all you did. Some Milk-Bones once in a while, a bit of chocolate now and then. But you’d have done it all even if you’d been fed nothing but Dog Chow. You did it because you love, and being loved in return was reward enough. And by just being what you are, fur face, you taught me a great lesson, a lesson I can’t easily put into words..

For a while, silent and unable to speak, she sat in the shadows beside her friend, her child, her teacher, her guardian.

“But damn it,” she said at last, “I’ve got to find words because maybe this is the last time I can even pretend you’re able to understand them. It’s like this… you taught me that I’m your guardian, too, that I’m Travis’s guardian, and that he is my guardian and yours. We have a responsibility to stand watch over one another, we are watchers, all of us, watchers, guarding against the darkness. You’ve taught me that we’re all needed, even those who sometimes think we’re worthless, plain, and dull. If we love and allow ourselves to be loved… well, a person who loves is the most precious thing in the world, worth all the fortunes that ever were. That’s what you’ve taught me, fur face, and because of you I’ll never be the same.”

The rest of the long night, Einstein lay motionless, lost in a deep sleep.

Saturday, Jim Keene kept hours only in the morning. At noon he locked the office entrance at the side of his big, cozy house.

During the morning, Einstein had exhibited encouraging signs of recovery. He drank more water and spent some time on his belly instead of lying limply on his side. Head raised, he looked around with interest at the activity in the vet’s surgery. He even slurped up a raw-egg-and-gravy mixture that Jim put in front of him, downing half the contents of the dish, and he did not regurgitate what he had eaten. He was now entirely off intravenous fluids.