WATCHERS by Dean R. Koontz

living room of Travis’s rental house, where there was space to spread everything

out on the floor. They had put pillows on the floor as well, so they could work

at the dog’s level and be comfortable.

Einstein had watched their preparations with interest.

Sitting on the floor with her back against the vinyl sofa, Nora took the

retriever’s head in both hands and, with her face close to his, their noses

almost touching, she said, “Okay, now you listen to me, Einstein. We want to

know all sorts of things about you: where you came from, why you’re smarter than

an ordinary dog, what you were afraid of in the woods that day Travis found you,

why you sometimes stare out the window at night as if you’re frightened of

something. Lots more. But you can’t talk, can you? No. And so far as we know,

you can’t read. And even if you can read, you can’t write. So we’ve got to do

this with pictures, I think.”

From where he sat near Nora, Travis could see that the dog’s eyes never wavered

from hers as she spoke. Einstein was rigid. His tail hung down, motionless. He

not only seemed to understand what she was telling him, but he appeared to be

electrified by the experiment.

How much does the mutt really perceive, Travis wondered, and how many of his

reactions am I imagining because of pure wishful thinking?

People have a natural tendency to anthropomorphize their pets, to ascribe human

perceptions and intentions to the animals where none exist. In Einstein’s case,

where there really was an exceptional intelligence at work, the temptation to

see profound meaning in every meaningless doggy twitch was even greater than

usual.

“We’re going to study all these pictures, looking for things that interest you,

for things that’ll help us understand where you came from and how you got to be

what you are. Every time you see something that’ll help us put the puzzle

together, you’ve got somehow to bring it to our attention. Bark at it or put a

paw on it or wag your tail.”

“This is nuts,” Travis said.

“Do you understand me, Einstein?” Nora asked.

The retriever issued a soft woof.

“This will never work,” Travis said.

“Yes, it will,” Nora insisted. “He can’t talk, can’t write, but he can show us

things. If he points out a dozen pictures, we might not immediately understand

what meaning they have for him, how they refer to his origins, but in time we’ll

find a way to relate them to one another and to him, and we’ll know what he’s

trying to tell us.”

The dog, his head still trapped firmly in Nora’s hands, rolled his eyes toward

Travis and woofed again.

“We ready?” Nora asked Einstein.

His gaze flicked back to her, and he wagged his tail.

“All right,” she said, letting go of his head. “Let’s start.”

Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, for hours at a time, they leafed through scores

of publications, showing Einstein pictures of all kinds of things— people,

trees, flowers, dogs, other animals, machines, city streets, country lanes,

cars, ships, planes, food, advertisements for a thousand products— hoping he

would see something that would excite him. The problem was that he saw many

things that excited him, too many. He barked at, pawed at, woofed at, put his

nose to, or wagged his tail at perhaps a hundred out of the thousands of

pictures, and his choices were of such variety that Travis could see no pattern

to them, no way to link them and divine meaning from their association to one

another.

Einstein was fascinated by an automobile ad in which the car, being compared to

a powerful tiger, was shown locked in an iron cage. Whether it was the car or

the tiger that seized his interest was not clear. He also responded to several

computer advertisements, Alpo and Purina Dog Chow ads, an ad for a portable

stereo cassette player, and pictures of books, butterflies, a parrot, a forlorn

man in a prison cell, four young people playing with a striped beach ball,

Mickey Mouse, a violin, a man on an exercise treadmill, and many other things.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *