close, too, and he decided that even the churning wake of the Amazing Grace did
not give him enough cover, so he took a deep breath and went under again,
staying down as long as he could. When he came up, both Della and her shadowers
were well past the mouth of the harbor, turning south, and he was safe from
observation.
The outgoing tide was swiftly carrying him past the point of the northern
breakwater, which was a wall of loose boulders and rocks that rose more than
twenty feet above the waterline, mottled gray and black ramparts in the night.
He not only had to swim around the end of that barrier but had to move toward
land against the resistant current. Without further delay, he began to swim,
wondering why on earth he had thought this would be a snap.
You’re almost seventy-one, he told himself as he stroked past the rocky point,
which was illuminated by a navigation-warning light. What ever possessed you to
play hero?
But he knew what possessed him: a deep-seated belief that the dog must remain
free, that it must not be treated as the government’s property. If we’ve come so
far that we can create as God creates, then we have to learn to act with the
justice and mercy of God. That was what he had told Nora and Travis—and
Einstein—on the night Ted Hockney had been killed, and he had meant every word
he’d said.
Salt water stung his eyes, blurred his vision. Some had gotten into his mouth,
and it burned a small ulcer on his lower lip.
He fought the current, pulled past the point of the breakwater, out of sight of
the harbor, then slashed toward the rocks. Reaching them at last, he hung onto
the first boulder he touched, gasping, not yet quite able to pull himself out of
the water.
In the intervening weeks since Nora and Travis went on the run, Garrison had
plenty of time to think about Einstein, and he felt even more strongly that to
imprison an intelligent creature, innocent of all crime, was an act of grave
injustice, regardless of whether the prisoner was a dog. Garrison had devoted
his life to the pursuit of justice that was made possible by the laws of a
democracy, and to the maintenance of the freedom that grew from this justice.
When a man of ideals decides he is too old to risk everything for what he
believes in, then he is no longer a man of ideals. He may no longer be a man at
all. That hard truth had driven him, in spite of his age, to make this night
swim. Funny—that a long life of idealism should, after seven decades, be put to
the ultimate test over the fate of a dog.
But what a dog.
And what a wondrous new world we live in, he thought.
Genetic technology might have to be rechristened “genetic art,” for every work
of art was an act of creation, and no act of creation was finer or more
beautiful than the creation of an intelligent mind.
Getting his second wind, he heaved entirely out of the water, onto the sloped
north flank of the northern breakwater. That barrier rose between him and the
harbor, and he moved inland, along the rocks, while the sea surged at his left
side. He’d brought a waterproof penlight, clipped to his trunks, and now he used
it to proceed, barefoot, with the greatest caution, afraid of slipping on the
wet stones and breaking a leg or an ankle.
He could see the city lights a few hundred yards ahead, and the vague silvery
line of the beach.
He was cold but not as cold as he had been in the water. His heart was beating
fast but not as fast as before.
He was going to make it.
Lem Johnson drove down from the temporary HO in the courthouse, and Cliff met
him at the empty boat slip where the Amazing Grace had been tied up. A wind had
risen. Hundreds of craft along the docks were wallowing slightly in their
berths; they creaked, and slack sail lines clicked and clinked against their