WATCHERS by Dean R. Koontz

I know.

How do you know?

I know, I know, I know! It raced around its cage, rattling the bars, shrieking,

and then it returned to face Yarbeck. Tear out my own eyes.

So you won’t have to look at yourself?

So won’t have to look at people looking at me, the creature had signed, and Lem

had pitied it then, deeply, though his pity had in no way diminished his fear of

it.

Now, standing in the hot June night, he told Walt Gaines about that exchange in

Yarbeck’s lab, and the sheriff shivered.

“Jesus,” Cliff Soames said. “It hates itself, its otherness, and so it hates its

maker even more.”

“And now that you’ve told me this,” Walt said, “I’m surprised none of You ever

understood why it hates the dog so passionately. This poor damned

twisted thing and the dog are essentially the only two children of the Francis

Project. The dog is the beloved child, the favored child, and The Outsider has

always known that. The dog is the child that the parents want to brag about,

while The Outsider is the child they would prefer to keep locked securely in a

cellar, and so it resents the dog, stews in resentment every minute of every

day.”

“Of course,” Lem said, “you’re right. Of course.”

“It also gives new meaning to the two smashed mirrors in the upstairs bathrooms

in the house where Teel Porter was killed,” Walt said. “The thing couldn’t bear

the sight of itself.”

In the distance, very far away now, something shrieked, something that was not

of God’s creation.

SEVEN

1

During the rest of June, Nora did some painting, spent a lot of time with

Travis, and tried to teach Einstein to read.

Neither she nor Travis was sure that the dog, although very smart, could be

taught such a thing, but it was worth a try. If he understood spoken English, as

seemed to be the case, then it followed that he could be taught the printed word

as well.

Of course, they could not be absolutely certain that Einstein did understand

spoken English, even though he responded to it with apt and specific reactions.

It was remotely possible that, instead, the dog did not perceive the precise

meanings of the words themselves but, by some mild form of telepathy, could read

the word-pictures in people’s minds as they spoke.

“But I don’t believe that’s the case,” Travis said one afternoon as he and Nora

sat on his patio, drinking wine coolers and watching Einstein frolic in the

spray of a portable lawn sprinkler. “Maybe because I don’t want to believe it.

The idea that he’s both as smart as me and telepathic is just too much. If

that’s the case, then maybe I should be wearing the collar and he should be

holding the leash!”

It was a Spanish test that appeared to indicate the retriever was not, in fact,

even slightly telepathic.

In college, Travis had taken three years of Spanish. Later, upon choosing a

career in the military and signing on with the elite Delta Force, he’d been

encouraged to continue those language studies because his superiors believed the

escalating political instability in Central and South America guaranteed that

Delta would be required to conduct antiterrorist operations in Spanish speaking

countries with steadily increasing frequency. He had been out of Delta for many

years, but contact with the large population of California Hispanics had kept

him relatively fluent.

Now, when he gave Einstein orders or asked questions in Spanish, the dog Stared

at him stupidly, wagging his tail, unresponsive. When Travis persisted in

Spanish, the retriever cocked his head and whuffed as if to inquire if this Was

a joke. Surely, if the dog was reading mental images that arose in the mind of

the speaker, he would be able to read them regardless of the language that

inspired those images.

“He’s no mind reader,” Travis said. “There are limits to his genius—thank God!”

Day after day, Nora sat on the floor of Travis’s living room or on the patio,

explaining the alphabet to Einstein and trying to help him to understand how

words were formed from those letters and how those printed words were related to

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 *