BANODYNE LABORATORIES INC.
On a pad of motel stationery, Travis made a note of the answer, then returned
all the tiles to their individual stacks. “Where is Banodyne located?”
IRVINE.
“That makes sense,” Travis said. “I found you in the woods north of Irvine. All
right . . . I found you on Tuesday, May eighteenth. When had you escaped from
Banodyne?”
Einstein stared at the tiles, whined, and made no choices.
“In all the reading you’ve done,” Travis said, “you’ve learned about months,
weeks, days, and hours. You have a sense of time now.”
Looking at Nora, the dog whined again.
She said, “He has a sense of time now, but he didn’t have one when he escaped,
so it’s hard to remember how long he was on the run.”
Einstein immediately began to indicate letters: THATS RIGHT.
“Do you know the names of any researchers at Banodyne?”
DAVIS WEATHERBY.
Travis made a note of the name. “Any others?”
Hesitating frequently to consider possible spellings, Einstein finally produced
LAWFON HANES, AL HUDSTUN, and a few more.
After noting all of them on the motel stationery, Travis said, “These will be
some of the people looking for you.”
YES. AND JOHNSON.
“Johnson?” Nora said. “Is he one of the scientists?”
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.
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