by Ellen Clary
Beth waved to her from a picnic table that she was standing at. She had a Vinnie Pizza box balanced on her hand. She said, “I did remember to ask if you liked veggie pizza, yes?”
As they walked up, she could breathe the delicious smell of freshly baked dough and cheese. “You certainly did and I assured you that I loved it.” Lars came right up to Beth and sat his best sit for her.
Beth said to him, “You’ll have to ask your mom.”
Amy, laughing, said, “The beggar might get some crust, but he can’t have onions, mushrooms, or garlic so it’s not worth my having to take the time to edit pizza for him.”
“Poor guy.” Beth set the box down on the table.
“He loves the crust, don’t feel sorry for him.”
Beth looked up and said, “And here are our honored guests.”
Amy turned to see Herman, his wife Carolyn, Lincoln, and his wife Laura.
Herman looked completely different from the two times she’d seen him before. The first time, she had chased him into a cavern after he’d been beaten up, and he’d sounded completely delirious. The second time he was in the hospital. Now his face had healed and he walked like a healthy man his age should, but the main thing she noticed was his light brown eyes. She had examined his eyes carefully in the past, but now they seemed completely different. They were focused, seeing what was in front of him and not a distant, fuzzy recall of the past. She walked up to him, smiling, and extended her hand.
Taking her hand, he said, “And you must be Agent Amy who found me. Thank you. My memory from that time is hazy, but I do remember an angel who I was calling Mary Jane, though you don’t look like Mary Jane at all.”
Still holding his hand and his gaze, Amy reached out with her left hand, covering his hand, and said, meaning it, “You are most welcome. It was an honor, and I am so happy to see you doing what I hope is better.”
“Much better, thank you.”
Amy released his hand and said hello to Carolyn, Lincoln, and Laura. “Beth brought pizza, please have some—and a seat.”
Beth said, “There’s a cooler there with some drinks, too.”
“You thought of everything,” Amy said. Beth could be so businesslike, and so hospitable too, probably because it helped with whatever business she was up to, she thought.
Carolyn, who seemed to have her ear to the ground when it came to recent news, said, “We’re so sorry to hear about the mess with that young man in the mountains, what was his name?”
“Randall Curtis,” Amy said, but she didn’t add anything as she wasn’t entirely sure how much information Beth had released yet.
“Terrible tragedy,” Carolyn said.
“Yes, indeed,” Amy said, focusing on her breathing. Just keep it casual, she told herself.
Beth decided to rescue her by asking about Applied Sciences and their involvement with Herman and Lincoln’s company, Nanology.
Talking with his slice of pizza, Lincoln said, “They do what’s called ‘turn-key’ laboratory setups. Meaning they’ll build a complete lab setup according to a customer’s specification. Using them saves us a fair bit of time.”
“How much access do they have to your building?”
The pizza slice and his arm extended out sideways. “They have pretty free rein during the day as they need to see where things will fit in and what our workflow is.”
“Do they have access to data?”
“No, because that’s restricted by thumbprint.”
“But they see how you access the data?”
Lincoln looked at Herman, questioningly. Herman said, shrugging, “Sure probably. Since it’s thumbprint protected, we never thought too much about hiding the process.”
Beth nodded.
Lincoln swallowed and put down what was left of his slice and, after a pause, said, “You think Applied did the theft?”
Amy recognized what she had learned was a cagey look on Beth’s face. “Applied Sciences is being investigated for it, but Nanology has agreed, and I’m hoping you all will also consent, to keep things looking exactly as they did before the theft. I wouldn’t normally disclose even this amount of information, but I figured you deserved to hear this much.”
“So behave as if none of this had happened?” Lincoln asked. “We do have more stringent security protocols in place now.”
Beth said, “As much as you can. We’re trying to see where this all leads.”
Herman said, “Well, I, for one, really want you to catch the twits that did this to us.”
“We certainly hope to. It’s not likely to happen again, but do be careful when you’re out and about,” Beth said.
Lincoln laughed, looking at Herman. “And be careful of accepting drinks from strangers.”
“Especially pharmaceutical reps,” Herman said.
CHAPTER 21:
Yolanda and Harris Practice with Gimli
IN THE office, Amy bent down and looked through the lower window to see a corgi crawling through the shrubs. Plopping down on a small patch of dirt, he was looking quite pleased with himself with that open-mouthed grin, his tongue hanging part-way out.
Then two humans burst through the door and ran over to the window, Harris saying, “Did you release it?”
“I just did but I can’t see anything,” Yolanda said.
Harris crawled over to the window. “Could you have him come closer so I can see his collar?”
Yolanda said, “Gimli, walk up.”
The corgi stood up and took a couple of cautious steps, negotiating carefully amongst the branches.
“Okay, stop, and lie down.”
He plunked back down.
Harris looked closer. “It’s tied up in his fur, can we shave his neck?”
Yolanda made her best appalled look. “And what do you think, Einstein?”
“Err, just a light trim?”
“Maybe you should go find a Chihuahua.”
“We keep trying that, but none of them will talk to us—remember?”
“Perhaps if you asked nicely—en Español.”
“Se habla doggy?” Steve said.
“We should try that,” Amy said.
“Will you two stop?” Yolanda put her hands over her ears.
“Just trying to be helpful,” Steve said. When Yolanda glared at him he said, “Well, maybe not that helpful.”
After thinking a second, Yolanda said, “Let’s try a wider collar. Okay, Gimli, you can come out.”
Gimli got up and exited the bushes while Harris and Yolanda went outside.
Steve looked over at Amy. “You think that’s going to work?”
Amy shrugged. “Well, not yet certainly, but they are giving it a better try than we are.”
Amy squinted back out the window to see that Yolanda had handed Harris what looked like something you’d find on Leroy the Junkyard Dog, only cut to half of its size. “How is that going to fit on Gimli?”
Harris fiddled with it and handed it back to Yolanda, who put the unwieldy collar around Gimli’s neck. Gimli’s eyes went wide and he didn’t move his head at all. In fact, he didn’t move anything, just stood there rigidly. They both stood up, assessing, and shook their heads.
Steve said, “He has no neck, he could be a bouncer at the tavern.”
Amy laughed at the image of Gimli clamped onto some drunk’s ankle. She said to Steve, “You know, I think we have something that would work better. How about a lab working collar?”
He said, “I might have something in one of the vehicles. I guess this means I have to go on record as showing mercy to the wee doggy.” He walked out and spoke to them, then headed off to the car, emerging with a smaller collar, while Yolanda removed the collar from Gimli and he raced off in circles, bouncing and shaking his head.
Poor corgi, Amy thought, smiling and shaking her own head, but she knew he was game for anything as long as he was paid in the proper food, which to him was a burger.
CHAPTER 22:
Amy Does PR
AMY WENT into one of the shared offices and shut the door.
They tended to keep their desks out in the shared area because they worked together intensely, but she needed to get some writing done on an article called “Empath 101” that she and Catherine were coauthoring for On-Target News.
Many of the On-Target audience were fascinated by the empaths’ dogs, but they weren’t entirely sure what to think about it. “Talking to dogs?” Absurd, but if someone wanted a loved one found, they called the empaths at LAI first, hedging their bets. Since their belief wasn’t actually required for it to work, it wasn’t a horrible thing to try.
Others struggled. “What does it mean?” “If true, what happens now?” “Talking to cats? Horses? Mollusks? Fish? Primordial ooze?”
Religious leaders were having a grand time preaching that only man can be the communicator, which resulted in a lot of humor from the marine-life academic community, who had been studying whale and dolphin communication for decades.
Setting that aside, she started to dictate, but hesitated, thinking about her writing style.
On-Target liked things pretty easy, but they also liked actual content. They didn’t just want pictures of dogs, they really wanted to know as much as the empaths could tell them. She decided to go with the question-and-answer style that they did a lot of in presentations, but thought an intro would be catchier.
Vet, Dr. Alice Kimble, says dog empathy all started with getting an actual answer to “Does this hurt?” She says she didn’t think much about it at first and assumed that she was just getting lucky with intuition, but, over time, she gained the reputation of being able to figure out right where doggy was sore.
Then Dr. Kimble hired Dr. Annie Parsons. And when Dr. Parsons saw Dr. Kimble do a correct preliminary diagnosis of a knee injury using a method that required communication with the subject, an amazed Dr. Parsons convinced the normally introverted Dr. Kimble to allow some colleagues investigate it further. That is how Canine Empathy Studies began.
Amy paused the dictation to look it over. She wasn’t sure if it was too technical, though she was skipping over that it was a torn knee ligament and the fact that Annie was Amy’s grandmother. It was tempting to explain just how much Alice had to stretch to tolerate becoming a minor celebrity. She decided to continue on to the Q and A section and come back to it, though she did want to add a bit about how Alice didn’t think much either way about animal communicators, who allegedly had long conversations with dogs, sometimes over electronic communications.
Q. How does it work?
A. We don’t really know yet. Certain dogs form a special bond with people and it enables them to communicate nonverbally to some extent.
Q. What do they say?
A. Smart dogs are currently about the intelligence of a three-year-old child and what they say is similar. They first just make sounds that dogs usually make, but they can be taught to say the words that they learn. Obvious ones are Sit, Down, Come, Toy. Then they learn abstractions like Yes, No, Hot, Cold, Hurt, Happy, Good, Bad. Then it can progress from there, depending on what the dog’s job is going to be. Location dogs learn how to indicate they found someone: Here or Found. Health Diagnosis dogs are similar, though they can now look for multiple things, so they are often taught the names of things they’re sniffing for. Police dogs are taught to silently indicate danger: Caution, Warning, Watch out.
Q. Can you breed them?
A. We haven’t been successful yet. Many of our dogs we find at the shelter, though some are purebred too.
Q. Will they learn to talk verbally?
A. They’ll probably speak more in dog language, which is a little verbal and a lot of signals, and go to more effort about teaching us how to speak and understand dog better. They lack human lips, so for them to suddenly start talking just like humans do is unlikely. Rover is not going to suddenly start saying the letters P or B, which require putting lips together.
Q. Will they get smarter—as smart as humans?
A. Our experts tell us that they would have to grow much larger brains for that. It will likely be a long time unless someone comes up with an augmentation, but that would likely be for humans first.
The door knocked. Amy turned off the dictation and said, “Come in.”
It was Yolanda, who bubbled with excitement, “We are so ready.”
“That’s a switch from ‘You do it first.’ So, you’re gonna place some moths?”
“We sure are.”
Amy inclined her head. “Er, good hunting? Be well, regardless.”
Yolanda waved as she turned away. “Ta-ta.”
Turning back to her work, Amy sighed, smiling, and shook her head. “Ta.”
CHAPTER 23:
Gimli Places the Bugs
ONE EVENING, Yolanda and Gimli drove up to the hill just above Applied Sciences. Powering down the car, she got Gimli out of his crate and fitted the black dog coat on him. It was actually a kevlar vest with a small camera on it that would be able to reach her handheld, which could then relay back to Harris and Amy in Central. She put on his wide collar, complete with a tag that said “Muffin” and a generic message ID, and got out the four bugs they were hoping to place on four particular lower windows. She positioned a communicator in her ear, just so she could use the handheld for other things without having to worry about losing the connection to everyone else. She then said, “Hope I’m not late to the party.”
“This is your party,” Harris said on the line.
“And we’re ready to party,” said Steve, who was parked further up the road as a backup.
She had earlier found a spot where the fence didn’t make it to the ground since it was on a hill. Gimli could easily get underneath it even with his vest on. She had carefully not parked too close to that spot, but a bit behind it where she could see it and the building below.
“You ready for an adventure, my golden boy?”
/Yes!/ came the answer.
“Okay, you’re going to go up to that corner of the fence, go under the fence, and go down the hill to the building. Once you get to the building, you’ll go into the bushes and crawl right up to the windows and I’ll tell you more then.” She realized this was a bit much and she would probably have to talk him through things as he got closer.
/Okay,/ he said with that corgi grin, mouth open, tongue out, panting a little.
“Are we ready?”
“We’re good to go on this end, we have a camera feed,” Harris said.
“Locked and loaded. You go, corgi cat burglar,” said Steve.
“You better not be,” she said back to Steve.
“Yep, you’re right, no lock, no load.”
“Pardon me while The Corgman and I have a pep talk.”
She put him on the ground and faced him, knowing this was too much information and that it made her feel better while confusing him; she decided to give it a try anyway.
“Gimli, you’re going to be going to four locations at this building. Don’t worry about trying to count, I’ll talk you through all of them. You are going to be going to the side of the building, then two places here on the back, and then one more on the other side. Each time when I tell you, I want you to go into the bushes beside the window and then stop when I tell you. Then I want you to come back out to the edge of the bushes and we’ll move on to the next location.”
Gimli’s brow furrowed in concentration. Petting the sides of his head, she decided to simplify.
“So for right now, just go to the hole in the fence, go through it, go down the hill and then go where I tell you to go.”
She checked the handheld to make sure the sensor in the coat was showing up as a red dot, and she finally let him go, saying, “Good hunting.” He gave her a slightly puzzled look and ran off in the direction of the fence.
As she got back in the vehicle, she decided to speak her command audibly and mentally, so that others could keep track of what was going on. “I’m saying Gimli’s instruction
s audibly, so you all can listen in.”
“We’re getting camera and your audio,” Harris said. “Oh, and good hunting to you as well.”
“Thanks. I think. Okay, Gimli, you’re near the fence. Take a look and see if you see an opening in the fence.”
She could see him pause and walk back and forth a couple of times.
“Go a little further down the road.”
/Here?/ came the question.
Looking at the video feed from the camera, she said, “Yes, that’s it, go under the fence.”
She could see him carefully wiggle under the fence. Fortunately, the coat wasn’t a problem. Then he started to run down the hill.
Sure enough, a motion sensor light came on. Yolanda immediately said “STOP” to Gimli. He skidded to a stop. “Stand there and sniff the ground for a bit.”
His nose plunked to the ground drinking in the fresh sod. /Mmmmm./
The lights went back off. “Walk up, slow.”
With obvious effort, he started to walk and not run this time.
“The man loves his job,” said a male voice on the line.
Yolanda said back, “Thank you, but don’t help right now, boys.”
She could still see him working his way to the building and didn’t have to watch his red dot just yet. “Gimli, go left.” She saw him go right. “No, left.” He started back the other way. “Walk up.” He continued on to the building, but he was headed directly towards the corner of the building. “Go left. Get out,” she said, giving him the command to increase his distance away from what he was circling, hoping that a command to go wider around sheep would work on a building. He moved out in an arching pattern. “Okay, stop.” He stopped with all feet planted, but parallel to the building. “Go on,” giving him the command to move straight ahead. He started to walk, but was coming in too close again; she said “Get out,” and he moved further out. They went through about three more iterations of this and then she said, “Good. Stop. There.” He stopped, and to her relief he stopped facing the building, which was sort of what the “There” command was supposed to mean.
