NO. The retriever thought for a moment, studied the stacks of letters, and finally continued: SECURITY.

“He’s head of security at Banodyne?” Travis asked.

NO. BIGGER.

“Probably a federal agent of some kind,” Travis told Nora as she returned the letters to their stacks.

To Einstein, Nora said, “Do you know this Johnson’s first name?” Einstein gazed at the letters and mewled, and Travis was about to tell him it was all right if he didn’t know Johnson’s first name, but then the dog attempted to spell it: LEMOOOL.

“There is no such name,” Nora said, taking the letters away.

Einstein tried again: LAMYOULL. Then again: LIMUUL.

“That’s not a name, either,” Travis said.

A third time: LEMB YOU WILL.

Travis realized the dog was struggling to spell the name phonetically. He chose six lettered tiles of his own: LEMUEL.

“Lemuel Johnson,” Nora said.

Einstein leaned forward and nuzzled her neck. He was wiggling with pleasure at having gotten the name across to them, and the springs of the motel bed creaked.

Then he stopped nuzzling Nora and spelled DARK LEMUEL.

“Dark?” Travis said. “By ‘dark’ you mean Johnson is… evil?”

NO. DARK.

Nora restacked the letters and said, “Dangerous?”

Einstein snorted at her, then at Travis, as if to say they were sometimes unbearably thickheaded. NO. DARK.

For a moment they sat in silence, thinking, and at last Travis said, “Black! You mean Lemuel Johnson is a black man.”

Einstein chuffed softly, shook his head up and down, swept his tail back and forth on the bedspread. He indicated nineteen letters, his longest answer:

THERES HOPE FOR YOU YET.

Nora laughed.

Travis said, “Wiseass.”

But he was exhilarated, filled with a joy that he would have been hard-pressed to describe if he had been required to put it into words. They had been communicating with the retriever for many weeks, but the Scrabble tiles provided a far greater dimension to their communication than they had enjoyed previously. More than ever, Einstein seemed to be their own child. But there was also an intoxicating feeling of breaking through the barriers of normal human experience, a feeling of transcendence. Einstein was no ordinary mutt, of course, and his high intelligence was more human than canine, but he was a dog-more than anything else, a dog-and his intelligence was still qualitatively different from that of a man, so there was inevitably a strong sense of mystery and great wonder in this interspecies dialogue. Staring at THERES HOPE FOR YOU YET, Travis thought a broader meaning could be read into the message, that it could be directed at all humankind.

For the next half an hour, they continued questioning Einstein, and Travis recorded the dog’s answers. In time they discussed the yellow-eyed beast that had killed Ted Hockney.

“What is the damned thing?” Nora asked.

THE OUTSIDER.

Travis said, “ ‘The Outsider’? What do you mean?”

THATS WHAT THEY CALLED IT.

“The people in the lab?” Travis asked. “Why did they call it The Outsider?”

BECAUSE IT DOES NOT BELONG.

Nora said, “I don’t understand.”

TWO SUCCESSES. ME AND IT. I AM DOG. IT IS NOTHING THAT CAN BE NAMED. OUTSIDER.

Travis said, “It’s intelligent, too?”

YES.

“As intelligent as you?”

MAYBE.

“Jesus,” Travis said, shaken.

Einstein made an unhappy sound and put his head on Nora’s knee, seeking the reassurance that petting could provide him.

Travis said, “Why would they create a thing like that?”

Einstein returned to the stacks of letters: TO KILL FOR THEM.

A chill trickled down Travis’s spine and seeped deep into him. “Who did they want it to kill?”

THE ENEMY.

“What enemy?” Nora asked.

IN WAR.

With understanding came revulsion bordering on nausea. Travis sagged back against the headboard. He remembered telling Nora that even a world without want and with universal freedom would fall far short of paradise because of all the problems of the human heart and all the potential sicknesses of the human mind.

To Einstein, he said. “So you’re telling us that The Outsider is a prototype of a genetically engineered soldier. Sort of… a very intelligent, deadly police dog designed for the battlefield.”

IT WAS MADE TO KILL. IT WANTS TO KILL.

Reading the words as she laid out the tiles, Nora was appalled. “But this is crazy. How could such a thing ever be controlled? How could it be counted on not to turn against its masters?”

Travis leaned forward from the headboard. To Einstein, he said, “Why is The Outsider looking for you?”

HATES ME.

“Why does it hate you?”

DONT KNOW.

As Nora replaced the letters, Travis said, “Will it continue looking for you?”

YES. FOREVER.

“But how does something like that move unseen?”

AT NIGHT.

“Nevertheless..

LIKE RATS MOVE UNSEEN.

Looking puzzled, Nora said. “But how does it track you?”

FEELS ME.

“Feels you? What do you mean?” she asked.

The retriever puzzled over that one for a long time, making several false starts on an answer, and finally said, CANT EXPLAIN.

“Can you feel it, too?” Travis asked.

SOMETIMES.

“Do you feel it now?”

YES. FAR AWAY.

“Very far away,” Travis agreed. “Hundreds of miles. Can it really feel you and track you from that far away?”

EVEN FARTHER.

“Is it tracking you flow?”

COMING.

The chill in Travis grew icier. “When will it find you?”

DONT KNOW.

The dog looked dejected, and he was shivering again.

“Soon? Will it feel its way to you soon?”

MAYBE NOT SOON.

Travis saw that Nora was pale. He put a hand on her knee and said, “We won’t run from it the rest of our lives. Damned if we will. We’ll find a place to settle down and wait, a place where we’ll be able to prepare a defense and where we’ll have the privacy to deal with The Outsider when it arrives.”

Shivering, Einstein indicated more letters with his nose, and Travis laid out the tiles: I SHOULD GO.

“What do you mean?” Travis asked, replacing the tiles.

I DANGER YOU.

Nora threw her arms around the retriever and hugged him. “Don’t you even think such a thing. You’re part of us. You’re family, damn you, we’re all family, we’re all in this together, and we stick it out together because that’s what families do.” She stopped hugging the dog and took his head in both hands, met him nose to nose, peered deep into his eyes. “If I woke up some morning and found you’d left us, it’d break my heart.” Tears shimmered in her eyes, a tremor in her voice. “Do you understand me, fur face? It would break my heart if you went off on your own.”

The dog pulled away from her and began to choose lettered tiles again: I WOULD DIE.

“You would die if you left us?” Travis asked.

The dog chose more letters, waited for them to study the words, then looked solemnly at each of them to be sure they understood what he meant:

I WOULD DIE OF LONELY.