As soon as I focused on the figure of the dog, what had happened last night suddenly made a different kind of sense to me. Digitaria wasn’t meant to be traded for anything—not even the horn of plenty antenna. He was important all by himself. “This is why you wanted my dog,” I said to Gilmartin as I pointed to the little dog scratched into the rock.

“I told you, I never even suggested to anyone that they try to take your dog from you,” Gilmartin replied.

“Really? Then let me get this straight. Breaking into someone’s apartment to steal stuff is okay. But stealing a dog is off-limits?”

“Even the detective who got in touch with us earlier today thought that accusation was reaching a bit. I believe they might actually be under the impression that, with all these complaints you’ve been making, it’s you who’s harassing us.”

So, great. Now I knew that while the police report I had filed last night had resulted in some kind of action, once again, the outcome was going to be that absolutely nothing was going to happen.

“So now what do I have to do, Raymond? Worry that every time I take the dog for a walk some fanatic is going to try to snatch him from me?”

“I can’t imagine why you think that,” Gilmartin responded, pronouncing each word carefully. “The only thing I can tell you is that sometimes, people become overzealous in their desire to fulfill another person’s wishes. But, at least hypothetically, one can explain to those people that they have gone a bit too far.”

That, I gathered, was meant to reinforce what he had said earlier, that trying to take my dog from me had nothing, specifically, to do with the Blue Awareness. Maybe the men involved were Awares but they were acting outside the boundaries of Blue Awareness teachings, or any direct instructions from their leader. I wondered if Gilmartin thought this would make me feel better about what happened—or at least, somehow better about him.

“How did you even know I had the dog?” I asked, as a very creepy thought formed itself in my mind. “Have you been watching me?”

“No one has been watching you,” Gilmartin replied. “I am, however, sometimes in contact with Dr. Carpenter. He told me that he had given you the dog. He knows I want one and it seemed to please him to tell me that, while he won’t give or even sell me a Dogon dog, he had just handed one over to you.”

“I don’t understand,” I said. I really was completely puzzled. “What does Dr. Carpenter have to do with all this?”

Gilmartin held out his hand to receive the stone back from me. He gave it a thoughtful glance and then looked back at me. “In Mali,” he said, “where the Dogon live, this carving would be a national treasure. My father bought it years ago, before there were laws about the purchase and export of cultural heritage items. I hear there is only one other like it, and that’s in the national museum. I’ve offered to make an exchange with Dr. Carpenter: this sacred object for a Dogon dog.”

I understood this explanation to mean that Raymond was further underscoring how civilized he was. Even when he did want to trade for something he desired he was open about it, transparent. Well, I was willing to accept that idea—but only up to a point. I could imagine that Dr. Carpenter was in a different category than me; he was a person to be respected, someone with a position, a professional reputation. Who was I? A bartender. Dr. Carpenter could make trouble for Raymond Gilmartin. I, apparently, couldn’t even get a New York City cop to take me seriously.

Now Raymond continued with his litany of complaints against Dr. Carpenter. “No matter how much I offer him—relics, money—he refuses me. He just doesn’t like me. I suppose it’s because we think very differently about . . . well, many things.”

Jack, who had been mercifully quiet for a while, now jumped back into the conversation. “Well, who would think like you?” he demanded. Then, turning to me, he said, “Have you figured out what our friend Raymond here is doing? He’s collecting touchstones—or trying to. The radio, the antenna, even your dog. I’ll bet he believes that if he can get his hands on the objects that influenced his father’s writings he can get closer to . . . well, to be honest, I’m not sure what he wants to do.” Addressing Gilmartin again he said, “Are you trying to bring them back? The boys from the Wild Blue Yonder? You believe the visitors who came to the Dogon are the same beings that Laurie calls the radiomen. The beings your father described as looking like shadows—like that figure carved on the rock. The ones who made the same kind of sound your father described. They hissed at the Dogon—and your dad. I’m right, aren’t I?”

Without even waiting for Gilmartin to reply, Jack went on, spitting out his words. “So what do you do? Sit here and rub your hands over the rock hoping to summon them? Or do you and Ravenette hook yourselves up to Blue Boxes and try to channel them? Wait,” Jack said, with a sarcastic little cackle, “I’ve got another guess: you were going to use Avi Perzin’s old radio and antenna to broadcast a message telling them you’ve found their lost dog.”

“You know what?” Gilmartin said. “I think I’ve had enough of you now. You spend so much time trying to defame us, you’ve lost your own way.”

“My way?” Jack sputtered. “Who are you to bring up anything like that? I’ve already told you; my way is to go to work every night and talk to people. Yours is to try to stop that.”

“So you say,” Gilmartin replied. “At the moment, however, you happen to be right. I do want you to stop talking. In fact, I want you to get out of my office.”

Suddenly the door opened. I had no idea how Gilmartin had signaled for her, but the cheery young woman who had led us to Gilmartin’s office was now standing in the entrance, looking much more officious. Her smile was gone and her posture was stiff.

Jack stood up, but he wasn’t about to leave just yet. “Sure you don’t want to duke this out on my show? Come on,” he said. “Mano a mano.” Then he directed a sardonic smile at Gilmartin. “You did know I still have a show, didn’t you? I start in a couple of weeks on World Air. Unless you’re planning to buy all the communications satellites, too—though come to think of it, maybe that would be better for you than a dog. They’d be like Blue Boxes, circling Earth. You could set them to send signals that would have everyone’s engrams running wild. Think of the power you’d have.”

“Good night,” Gilmartin said quietly. And then he looked at me as if, anticipating the next thing Jack was going to say, he wanted to see every phase of my reaction.

“Let’s go, Laurie,” Jack said. It sounded like an order.

It was actually the dog who turned his head first, reacting, I guess, to the sound of my name. That gave me an extra moment to think about my response. All the while, I was very conscious of Raymond Gilmartin, and how intensely he was looking at me.

“Not yet,” I finally said to Jack. “I’ll meet you at the car in a little while.”

I saw the color rise to his face. He hadn’t expected me to refuse to follow him and, clearly, that was adding to his anger. Without saying another word, he stalked out of the room. The young woman followed after him, closing the door behind her. Now I was alone with Raymond Gilmartin.

He made no comment about Jack, but finally broke his stare. Once more, he looked down at the rock. Touching a fingertip to the diagram above the heads of the carved figures he said, “Do you recognize this? It’s the constellation Canis Major.”

He was right. I recognized the Great Dog who hunts with Orion, since I had seen the constellation so many times, at night, waiting for the bus to take me home from work.

“And here’s Sirius,” he said, pointing to the largest dot in the diagram. “The Dog Star. You can’t see it, but there’s another tiny pinprick next to Sirius. That’s its companion star, Digitaria.”