Breathless

to it.

On the floor with her veterinarian, Puzzle seemed to think that she was the recipient of a most relaxing massage, for she purred and sighed as Cammy pressed firmly on all the joints of her hind legs in search of some indication of how Riddle could have performed as he did.

The previous evening, when she’d first seen the creatures, they impressed her as sophisticated mammals with some of the qualities of primates. By the time she had gone home, she regarded them more as primates. The complex and sustained curiosity they displayed by so methodically examining the contents of the living-room desk, the reasoning they revealed in their raid on the pantry, and the upright running posture that Riddle exhibited in his reaction to the hot pepper argued that they were hominids. But the only hominids on Earth were human beings and the extinct races of ape-men from which it was thought they had evolved.

Except for their well-articulated hands, Puzzle and Riddle did not look much like hominids. In truth she didn’t know enough about evolutionary biology and anthropology to adequately classify any unfamiliar species or to properly compare this one to human beings.

While Cammy was still on the kitchen floor with Puzzle, Merlin padded in from the hallway.

Grady followed him, having quickly showered and dressed in expectation of the authorities. “While I was out of the room, did they suddenly reveal they can fly?”

“No wings yet. And I can’t find anything odd about their joints by palpating them. I’d love to get X-rays. But what would they show, anyway? It’s just not possible what happened — pretty much a dog-form leg straightening into a leg with an entirely vertical humanlike line of extension — and then back again. It’s not simply a matter of two different structures for each ankle, knee, and hip joint. Muscles and tendons serving one kind of joint wouldn’t likely stretch or torque perfectly to serve another kind.”

“You ever see one of those crazy movies about cars and trucks that turn into robots?”

“Transformers. The science, technology, and mechanics of those things are ridiculous, just fantasy, they’d never work in the real world. What Riddle did shouldn’t work in the real world, either, but we saw it happen.”

“Maybe we’re not in the real world.”

“It seems more unreal by the hour,” she agreed.

Pointing to the memory stick from his camera, which Cammy had put on the table, Grady said, “I’ve thought about it, and I’m with you on the photos.”

Before leaving the clinic, she had loaded the photographs from the memory stick into her office computer and then had copied them onto three diskettes. Two of the diskettes were well-hidden at the clinic, and the third was tucked under the cargo-hold mat in her Explorer.

If Homeland Security claimed permanent possession of Puzzle and Riddle and eventually took them away, the photos were going to be blown all over the Internet with Grady’s and Cammy’s testimony. They would mount as strong a campaign as they could to free the creatures, risking prosecution under the National Security Secrets Act.

Puzzle and Riddle were not engineered animals. No scientist on the planet possessed the knowledge or the technology to create them. They were mysterious, and if their origin was ever known, it would not be a cliche like recombinant DNA or extraterrestrial visitation, but something unexpected. No reasonable person could arrive at any sane scenario in which they were a threat to a single human being, let alone to the entire nation.

If Eleanor Fortney and Sidney Shinseki hadn’t reported Cammy to the feds, and if Homeland Security hadn’t moved so quickly, she might have tried to run Puzzle and Riddle out of the immediate area and find a place to keep them for a while, crazy as it might be to go on the lam with two creatures that seemed to be a cross between furry cherubim and Looney Tunes characters. But the authorities were already inbound, they knew her vehicle, and they had the forces to seal off the entire state. To go on the run successfully, she would have needed to leave the previous evening.

As if reading her mind, Grady said, “Maybe there’s still time to turn them loose in the woods.”

Stroking Puzzle, Cammy said, “They’d come right back. I know they would. They’re socialized. They relate to people. Essentially, we’re now a pack. And if they didn’t come back … I’m not so sure how they’d fare in the wild.”

“That’s where I found them.”

“But they hadn’t been there long. Remember — no ticks, no fleas, their fur so clean.”

Merlin issued a low, protracted growl as Cammy had never heard from him before.

Getting to her feet, she said, “Why does this have to happen?”

Body tensed, ears pricked, Merlin growled again and looked at the ceiling.

Puzzle and Riddle were on all fours, poised to sprint, heads cocked, listening.

After a moment, Cammy heard a familiar but not yet identifiable sound in the distance. Then she knew it: the hard, low clatter of helicopters.

“From the east, out of the sun, low and fast,” Grady said, and hurried toward the front of the house.

Merlin, Puzzle, Riddle moved in the same instant, not in a play mood this time, but with urgency.

As Cammy reached the living room, Grady threw open the front door and stepped outside.

She caught up with him on the porch. Puzzle and Riddle sat on the steps in their prairie-dog mode. Merlin stood in the yard.

To the east, where Cracker’s Drive met the state road, a large helicopter descended.

At an altitude of less than a hundred feet, another chopper continued uphill, following the county road. As it approached, Cammy realized the aircraft was even bigger than she first thought, the largest helicopter she had ever seen close up.

The rotors were loud, but they also slammed concussion waves across the slope, and Cammy’s heart began to slam, too, harder and faster as the helicopter drew nearer.

Suddenly she decided that Puzzle and Riddle should not be out here, not in the open where they could be snatched up in an instant. They needed to be inside, behind closed doors, so the federal agents would need to go inside to get them.

To go inside, the feds needed a search warrant, didn’t they? They probably had one. They probably had a court order to blow up the house if they were in the mood for pyrotechnics.

Nevertheless, a closed door was at least some kind of barrier, a way to delay surrendering custody of the animals, however briefly.

Cammy moved onto the steps, between Puzzle and Riddle, pulled at them, tried to herd them onto the porch and inside, but they were transfixed by the incoming chopper.

Above the thunder of the immense rotors, she shouted, “Merlin!”

The wolfhound heard her, he looked back, he understood that she wanted him, and he loped across the lawn to the steps.

“Let’s go!” She shouted, “House!” which was one of his commands.

He bounded up the steps ahead of her. Although Puzzle and Riddle had not been interested in following her, they at once followed the dog, as she had hoped they would. The three scrambled into the house.

Cammy pulled the front door shut and returned to Grady’s side.

East of the house, the helicopter touched down in the meadow, just past the end of the deep front yard.

The rotor-slashed air shook the big paper birch at the northeast corner of the house. Cascades of golden leaves fluttered down upon the porch, the yard.

At the back of the enormous chopper’s main body, a bay door dropped, forming a ramp. Heavily armed, uniformed men hurried down the ramp, under the tail section. So many of them.

PART TWO Death in Life