WATCHERS by Dean R. Koontz

contrariness and fear. He cursed his own thickheadedness. “Hell, of course!

You’re not afraid of the vet—but of who the vet might report you to.”

Einstein’s shivering subsided a bit, and he wagged his tail briefly. Yes. “If

people from that lab are hunting for you—and we know they must be hunting

furiously because you have to be the most important experimental animal in

history—then they’re going to be in touch with every vet in the state, aren’t

they? Every vet . . . and every dog pound . . . and every dog-licensing agency.”

Another burst of vigorous tail wagging, less shivering.

Nora came around the bed and stooped down beside Travis. “But golden retrievers

have to be one of the two or three most popular breeds. Vets and

animal-licensing bureaucrats deal with them all the time. If our genius dog here

hides his light under a bushel and plays dopey mutt—”

“Which he can do quite well.”

“—then they’d have no way of knowing he was the fugitive.”

Yes, Einstein insisted.

To the dog, Travis said, “What do you mean? Are you saying they would be able to

identify you?”

Yes.

“How?” Nora wondered. Travis said, “A mark of some kind?” Yes.

“Somewhere under all that fur?” Nora asked.

One bark. No.

“Then where?” Travis wondered.

Pulling loose of Travis’s hands, Einstein shook his head so hard that his floppy

ears made a flapping noise.

“Maybe on the pads of his feet,” Nora said.

“No,” Travis said even as Einstein barked once. “When I found him, his

feet were bleeding from a lot of hard travel, and I had to clean out the wounds

with boric acid. I’d have noticed a mark on one of his paws.”

Again, Einstein shook his head violently, flapping his ears.

Travis said, “Maybe on the inner lip. They tattoo racehorses on the inner lip to

identify them and prevent ringers from being run. Let me peel back your lips and

have a look, boy.”

Einstein barked once—No—and shook his head violently.

At last Travis got the point. He looked in the right ear and found nothing. But

in the left ear, he saw something. He urged the dog to go with him to the

window, where the light was better, and he discovered that the mark consisted of

two numbers, a dash, and a third number tattooed in purple ink on the pink-brown

flesh: 33-9.

Looking over Travis’s shoulder, Nora said, “They probably had a lot of pups they

were experimenting with, from different litters, and they had to be able to

identify them.”

“Jesus. If I’d taken him to a vet, and if the vet had been told to look for a

retriever with a tattoo . .

“But he has to have shots.”

“Maybe he’s already had them,” Travis said hopefully.

“We don’t dare count on that. He was a lab animal in a controlled environment

where he might not have needed shots. And maybe the usual inoculations would’ve

interfered with their experiments.”

“We can’t risk a vet.”

“If they do find him,” Nora said, “we simply won’t give him up.”

“They can make us,” Travis said worriedly.

“Damned if they can.”

“Damned if they can’t. More likely than not, the government’s financing the

research, and they can crush us. We can’t risk it. More than anything else,

Einstein’s afraid of going back to the lab.”

Yes, yes, yes.

“But,” Nora said, “if he contracts rabies or distemper or—”

“We’ll get him the shots later,” Travis said. “Later. When the situation cools

down. When he’s not so hot.”

The retriever whined happily, nuzzling Travis’s neck and face in a sloppy

display of gratitude.

Frowning, Nora said, “Einstein is about the number-one miracle of the twentieth

century. You really think he’s ever going to cool down, that they’ll ever stop

looking for him?”

“They might not stop for years,” Travis admitted, stroking the dog. “But

gradually they’ll begin to search with less enthusiasm and less hope. And the

Vets will start forgetting to look in the ears of every retriever that’s brought

to them. Until then, he’ll have to go without the shots, I guess. It’s the best

thing we can do. It’s the only thing we can do.”

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