“No,” I said. “Of course not.” But maybe, in a way, that was true. I had to be honest with myself; something had happened to me when I’d stayed on with Gilmartin, in his office, after Jack had stormed out. It was as if I had caught something from him, some sickness or desire, some obsession that had progressed beyond the empathy I’d felt in his presence. Some need to know about the radiomen. It was part of me, now, the same way it was part of him. And like him, I found myself looking for anything there was to know about them, through any means possible, no matter how oblique.

“Then I’ll ask you again. What is it you want?”

The response that came to mind—at least, the way to frame it—was more Raymond’s than mine, but I proceeded with it nonetheless. “I want to show you something,” I said to Dr. Carpenter.

I stood up then, walked over to his desk and picked up the yellow pad he had been making notes on. I tore out a sheet and using the same pen he’d been writing with, sketched the pictograph that was carved on the rock Raymond Gilmartin had shown me. I pushed the drawing toward Dr. Carpenter and then returned to my chair.

I gave him a moment to study my drawing and then said, “Raymond showed me a stone with that picture on it. He said you knew what it was.”

“I’ve seen it.”

“There’s a dog in the drawing. It looks like my dog, I think. So I’m wondering, what’s the connection between my dog and this picture?”

Dr. Carpenter’s reaction was to utter a harsh, derisive laugh. “To this drawing? What an idea. Despite what you may think—or what anyone has told you—your dog does not even have a direct connection to Africa. It was born in my house, which is in Montclair. You know where that is?”

“New Jersey.”

“The Garden State. Hardly exotic.” But then his attitude seemed to change again. He looked down at the drawing and then back at me. All traces of laughter were now gone. “I know what you’re really asking me,” he said. He pointed to my rendition of the shadowy figure standing beside the dog and the human figure. “It’s what everyone wants who has seen these pictures. You want to know if these beings exist. But I have no idea. My field of expertise, as I told you when we met, is French literature. It most certainly is not extraterrestrials.” Dr. Carpenter set his face in an attitude of extreme irritation. “But perhaps you don’t believe me. Perhaps you think I’m one of those magical Africans who turns up in Hollywood movies to explain to the white explorers where the lost treasure caves are and what the secret symbols mean that they’ve found on some long-lost map?”

Now he wasn’t the only one in the room who was irritated. “Look,” I said, “I don’t think you’re particularly magical—you’re not even very nice—and as for me, I don’t really want to explore anything. I was just living my life and all of a sudden it was invaded by these Blue Awareness people . . . they were the ones who robbed my apartment the night before you were there. It was probably Raymond who sent them. So much for your theory that I’m here to do his bidding, right? Later, they even tried to steal the dog. Raymond swears that wasn’t his idea, but still . . .”

“I’m not surprised,” Dr. Carpenter said, cutting me off. He shifted in his chair, leaning forward a bit and, for the first time since we’d begun this conversation, he sounded animated. “Raymond Gilmartin is an impossible person. Once—once!—I gave an interview about Dogon culture to a student who wrote for one of the university’s publications. Unfortunately for me, Gilmartin is an alumnus and read the article. Since then he has given me no peace.” Leaning forward in his chair, speaking with intensity, he said, “Let me tell you something, Ms. Perzin. I know all about him.” He briefly tapped the crude drawing I had made, touching the shape I had used to represent the nonhuman figure and then quickly withdrawing his hand. “He thinks that it’s possible to become like them. To know what they know. That’s Gilmartin’s dream, isn’t it? Well, good luck to him. He has never considered the fact that perhaps—even if they exist—they know nothing.

“Raymond Gilmartin,” he continued, “has a rock with some scrapings on it that someone sold his father, telling him it was a great treasure. It isn’t. In Mali, in the Dogon lands, there are many such pictographs on rocks, on cave walls, on cliff sides. But this is hardly unique, I think. In every corner of the world there are legacies of such images left by ancient societies. Jackal-headed beings, men with the bodies of lions, mermaids, giants, centaurs. Does anyone today think that creatures like that exist? Or ever did?”

“If that’s true—if the pictographs are just so much graffiti to the Dogon—then why wouldn’t you let Raymond have one of your dogs? He probably would have paid any amount of money you’d asked for.”

I kept pushing this point because I just couldn’t give up on the idea that there had to be something important hidden within Dr. Carpenter’s refusal to permit Raymond Gilmartin to even purchase a dog that had been given to me for free. But Dr. Carpenter wouldn’t concede that this was so. In fact, he seemed to take the suggestion as an affront.

“Because I didn’t like him, Ms. Perzin. And I have no interest in promoting his fantasies.”

Dr. Carpenter turned to look toward the window, where a block of dusty summer sunlight seemed to sit on the sill like a package someone had forgotten to bring inside. When he faced me again, the professor seemed almost weary. He let out a sigh—something I probably wasn’t meant to hear—and said, “The men from the stars and the dog who stayed with a little boy. In Mali, in the Dogon lands, it’s become the national myth and look what it has led to,” he said, shaking his head. “Crazy people become fixated on the animals. And for the rest of us, for the Dogon, even if we leave Mali behind, we don’t seem to be able to live without these damn dogs. It’s as if we feel compelled to have them.”

These damn dogs. That small outburst seemed almost amusing to me, and I was grateful for it. At last, something in this conversation didn’t seem like armed combat. But the moment passed quickly and almost immediately Dr. Carpenter’s forbidding persona reassembled itself. “Well?” he said testily. “Is there anything else or may I be permitted to go back to my work?”

I didn’t think that I deserved to be treated so dismissively. So perhaps I was just being stubborn, but I wasn’t ready yet just to get up and walk away. Besides, I had something more to tell him.

“I took the dog to be blessed by a priest,” I said. “It was actually kind of an accident. But maybe that’s the point. I happened to walk into a church in the middle of Queens and found the one priest—I bet you, the one priest in the entire city—who had been to Mali, to the Dogon lands, and could recognize that I had a Dogon dog.”

“Well, that’s what they say, isn’t it? God moves in mysterious ways.”

“Who brought up God?” I demanded, feeling just as prickly as Dr. Carpenter sounded. But then I remembered—the priest did. He had referred to the Creator in his blessing. And that was what had been on my mind all along, what had compelled me and brought me here. Bless this animal. May it carry out the function it has been given, and may it aid us to think of You, its Creator. I was about to repeat these words to Dr. Carpenter when he spoke first.

He said, “You aren’t a believer?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t think so.”

Dr. Carpenter made a small gesture toward my drawing although this time, he didn’t even deign to touch it. “Then you have something in common with your friends here. In all the pictographs I have ever seen that relate to this myth—and I have seen hundreds—there is no depiction of a deity. None. So if you have come to me seeking some sort of spiritual guidance, then I really do have nothing to offer you.”