Einstein Dog (5 page)

“What's wrong girl?” Bertrand asked, irritated and concerned.

Libra tellied the image of a shadowy figure following them through the dappled light. She transmitted the scent of their pursuer, too.

Bertrand was the only human she knew capable of communicating in Dog, a language made up of shared sensations: smells, images, tastes. The idea of wind would be conveyed by a phantom breeze ruffling your fur; sunrise as a vision of light, bursting over the horizon; puppies as the sweet scent of the young.

Humans talked, their slur of sounds incomprehensible to Libra. Over time she had learned to identify some repeated words and phrases but, for the most part, human speech annoyed her, like the droning of flies. Bertrand talked, too, of course. He
was
human, after all. But he accompanied the verbal gobbledegook with clear, powerful tellies.

“Someone out for a brisk walk?” he suggested.

Libra knew better. Signaling that she wanted to investigate, she slunk off the path, doubling back through the wood.

“Libra!” Bertrand hissed.

Keep walking
, she tellied, ignoring his command.
Make plenty of noise
.

As their tracker got closer she detected another component to his man-smell, one that quickened her heart rate. Fear! He exuded the acrid odor of terror. Libra shivered. She knew of nothing quite so dangerous as a terrified human. Why is he following us? she wondered. Where is his pack?

Suddenly the stalker rounded a crook in the path. Libra froze. He'd caught her off guard. He froze, too. He hadn't spotted her, but had got closer than he'd intended to Bertrand. Like Libra, he was hoping he wouldn't be noticed if he remained perfectly still.

Move
, she ordered the boy.
Pretend not to see him.

Thankfully Bertrand didn't argue. He resumed his hike, thudding along the trail with more than his usual amount of crashing and thrashing.

Libra resisted the urge to flatten herself onto her belly. The slightest twitch would give her away. She willed the man to keep looking up the trail after Bertrand. If he shifted his glance by so much as a degree, he would surely see her.

“What's going on?”

Someone was talking to the man through a device attached to his glasses and plugged into his ear. She couldn't make out what was being said, but she could read the emotions in a human voice, and this voice sounded impatient.

“Can't talk,” their pursuer whispered.

“What do you see?” the voice in the earphone demanded.

“It's the kid. He's just up ahead. I can see him through the trees.”

“Can you see the mutt, Bob?”

Sensing they were talking about her, Libra's fur bristled.

“No,” Bob said.

“Do a slow pan,” Charlie Gowler ordered his brother. “I'll set the camera on high zoom. Maybe we'll be able to pick her out.”

Bob's head began to swivel slowly.

“I don't see anything,” he stammered.

“Whoa! What's that?” Charlie yelped. “Freeze!” he ordered his brother.

“Why? What's wrong?”

“Just don't move a muscle,” Charlie ordered, his voice tense.

“I think there's something in the bushes just off the trail.”

“What's in the bushes, Charlie?”

“It's probably nothing.”

“But . . . ”

“Shut your eyes!” Charlie growled.

“But what's in the bushes?”

Libra sensed the man's eyes scanning, focusing, picking out her shape from the concealing foliage.

“Jeez!” Bob gasped. “Isn't that the dog from Mr. Hindquist's surveillance video — the vicious one?”

“Calm down,” Charlie coached. “Pretend the dog isn't even there.”

“How can I do that?” Bob groaned.

“You'll do it because if you don't she's going to gnaw your friggin' legs off!”

“Oh jeez! Oh jeez!” Bob panted.

“Calm down!”

Libra knew she'd been seen and that slipping away was no longer an option. For a second she held her pose, then her lip curled, her hackles sprang up, and she growled.

“Don't run!” Charlie bellowed.

“Oh nooo!” Bob wailed.

Then all hell broke loose.

If Bob Gowler had stood his ground, the outcome might have been entirely different; a lone dog was no match for a full-grown man. But he turned tail and ran, triggering Libra's herding instincts. She harried and harassed the wailing human, steering him back down the trail toward a fetid mire of green slime and skunk cabbage they'd passed earlier. Driven by her nips and snarls, Bob ran headlong into this stinking cesspool, his legs still churning as he toppled with a mighty splat.

That's where Libra left him floundering, like a monster struggling to free itself from the bubbling ooze. Then she ran, her paws drumming the mossy track in an exuberant tattoo, her fur streaming behind her. She held her tail erect, a fluttering pennant. Perhaps she would pay a high price for what she'd done, but this was not the moment for calculating consequences; this was a moment of jubilation.

Only after her victory did she heed Bertrand's frantic whistles.

“What the heck happened in there?” he demanded when she emerged back at the trailhead.

Run!
she signaled.

And run they did, out of the forest, across Campus Green, straight back to the Stafford Building.

Frank Hindquist laughed until his stomach ached and the tears rolled down his cheeks. In other circumstances he might have roared, smashed the desktop and summoned the Gowler brothers into his office. But what he'd witnessed through the Operative Control Unit worn by Bob Gowler had been so hilarious that Hindquist had thought fleetingly he might submit it to one of those inane television shows that featured catastrophic home videos.

Bob's squeals of panic; the snarls and snaps of the enraged hound; Charlie's bellowed commands; the scene tilting as Bob executed a very messy faceplant into the bog . . .

Hindquist broke down again, convulsed by great sobs of laughter. Still gasping, he wiped a tear from his eye and coughed. He sighed contentedly and glanced about his plush office, as if someone might have been watching his jollity from behind the potted palm or the leather sofa. “Ahem!” he said.

He had important business to attend to. SMART dog 73 had clearly demonstrated her ability to outwit a human operative in the field, which meant the footage he'd just been laughing at could have some very serious implications. “I must get this to Vlad,” he told his computer. “Make a note of that.” He thought for a second or two, then added, “And be sure to remind him that SMART 73 is obsolete. She's not the last SMART dog; she's just a prototype.”

Professor Smith hadn't meant to make such a grand entrance into the SMART lab, but he was so distracted, so bursting with conflicting emotions, that he hardly noticed the door as he barged through.

“My goodness!” Elaine glanced up from her workbench.

“Rip the door off its hinges, why don't you?”

He grinned sheepishly. “Sorry,” he explained. “I've just come back from my meeting with Dean Zolinsky.”

“Say no more,” she consoled. “Was it
that
bad?”

“Good and bad actually,” he said glumly. “By the end of it I didn't know whether I should hug her or threaten to hand in my resignation.”

“Well,” Elaine grinned, “I sincerely hope you'd hand in your resignation before you'd hug her. I won't stand for that.”

He laughed. Elaine had a way of driving away his worries with a little joke or a brilliant smile. Gently, he touched his research assistant's cheek.

Again she smiled. “I thought we weren't supposed to do that, Professor,” she taunted.

“I love you,” he said.

Now it was Elaine's turn to frown.

He knew what she was thinking. What about Bertrand? When would they be able to hold hands in front of him? When could Elaine come to their house for dinner? Why was he so reluctant to break the news?

“So what did the dean say, Alex?” she interrupted.

“Ah!” he cringed. “Frank Hindquist means business, Elaine. He's already written a cheque for the million dollars. It means better equipment, enough money to attend international conferences. It's a tremendous opportunity . . . ”

“But?” she prompted when his enthusiasm faltered.

“She won't bend on SMART 73,” he grimaced. “In her mind the dog is now worth a million bucks so there's no way we're going to take 73 off campus. Not even for a weekend.”

“Oh boy.”

“Bertrand's going to hate me.” Professor Smith shook his head sadly. “And I can't blame him. I shouldn't have let him think we could bring SMART 73 home. As long as the project was an obscure experiment nobody really cared about, there was a real chance of that happening. Now she'll have to remain here indefinitely.”

“That's ridiculous!” Elaine fumed. “Libra is an intelligent, sensitive spirit. She's a social animal and Bertrand is her best friend.”

“Don't you think I know that?” he wailed. “I don't believe in this talking-canine nonsense, Elaine. But I
do
understand the deep connections that exist between a boy and his dog. Dean Zolinsky has no time for that. She said I should have been firmer from the outset, and not let the boy develop a relationship with a lab animal.”

“Lab animal!” Elaine shrieked. “Why, the woman's a fool!”

“Now Elaine, there's no need to be insulting.”

“You may not believe in the telepathic connection between Libra and Bertrand, but I know it's real, Alex,” she said. “Don't you see? That's
the
most important result of the mental acceleration trials to date. If we restrict Bertrand's access to Libra we not only squelch a beautiful relationship, we also put the brakes on the most incredible advance in animal-human social interaction that's ever been made.”

Taken-aback, Alex turned and quick-marched out of the lab into the kennel. He needed to be alone with his thoughts. He banged the door shut behind him and began pacing unhappily. SMART 73 watched closely from her kennel.

“
You
understand, don't you?” he pleaded.

The dog tilted her head as if she actually wanted him to explain.

Professor Smith smiled at his own credulity. “I've been listening to Bertrand too much,” he chided.

But the quip sounded hollow, even to him.

Libra held him in her gaze, her brown, unblinking eyes fixed on his. Professor Smith wanted to look away, but couldn't. A strange sort of magnetism drew his attention to her. He shook his head, trying to clear a sensation that felt like a sudden fever. But the feeling grew, then suddenly, as if a TV had been switched on, an image appeared to him, what Bertrand referred to as a telly. Professor Smith saw Libra wrapped around a litter of puppies. They were extraordinarily beautiful.

Libra stared up at him from the kennel floor. Her tail thumped the cold concrete.

“You
do
understand, don't you?” he murmured.

Still she did not move, but held him in her loving gaze. In that instant Professor Smith realized that she was Bertrand's friend, but the professor's own creation, and that Libra accepted her fate in a way that went far beyond anything his clumsy, stilted words could ever explain.