The sound of my name snapped me back from wherever I had been. "Why? Why did you stop me? It was supposed to be me, not Thorp!"

"I love you, Liz."

I blinked at him, the goofy billionaire. Then I looked up at Queen Jolly Freeze. Wetherall was afraid of heights. How the h.e.l.l had he climbed down that ladder?

Altogether, the twenty-five s.h.i.tdogs consumed twenty-five of Thorp's people, twelve men and thirteen women. They then fell into a coma-like sleep.

During the next forty-eight hours, the world watched as they shrivelled and deflated. The Joint Chiefs advocated nuking them before they awoke. I was in the camp that said it would be a crime against the universe to destroy the aliens over what was clearly a human-caused tragedy. Wetherall pointed out that Thorp's people were trespa.s.sing on private lands, had been warned of the dangers involved, and had voluntarily offered themselves for consumption. He never mentioned that I'd been prepared to do the same, and I was grateful to him for keeping that quiet.

About the time Wetherall and I were being picked up by Nguyen and Janglish, Wetherall's smart rope lost power. Queen Jolly Freeze came unmoored, floated majestically across the flats before a stiff, hot breeze that smelled of fresh-baked oatmeal bread. Ten hours later it wrapped itself around Deseret Peak in the Stansbury Mountains of Utah and was totally destroyed.

The debate about what to do about the dogs was still raging when, three days later, they awoke.

The report that the s.h.i.tdogs were stirring came while Wetherall, Nguyen, Janglish and I were sitting in the lounge of Laputa, going over the wreckage of Wetherall's plans and trying to figure out what came next. Wetherall seemed surprisingly sanguine about the destruction of Queen Jolly Freeze. When I asked him about it, he only said, "I don't need it anymore."

Nguyen and Janglish had established some sort of alliance aimed at getting Wetherall back to his business interests. And they were holding hands. They made a strange couple; I wondered how they'd fare once the nosegays wore off. In any event, I guess I'd figured out the gory details of Nguyen O'Hara's erotic life.

Me, I was thinking about whether I could face going back to the university after everything that had happened. Back to bored undergrads and faculty meetings run by the likes of Saintjohn Matthewson. Much as I had complained, inwardly and outwardly, about the way Wetherall had deranged my life, I wasn't sure I wanted it to be ranged again.

Also, the s.h.i.tdogs were the biggest news in the world of science since Playdough Theory. As the sapientologist with the most experience on the ground, so to speak, I wasn't going to leave until I knew what was going on.

"Let's go," I said.

"Uh . . ." Nguyen said. "Considering their last interaction with humans, I'm not sure I want to be there when they take up activities again, thank you. Besides, we have issues to resolve with Wetherall."

"That's fine," I said. "I don't blame you. But I'm a scientist."

"I'm coming too," Wetherall said.

"There's no need-" I started.

"Considering your behavior during the last s.h.i.tdog interaction with humans, I think there is," Wetherall said.

I didn't argue. We grabbed a jeep and motored over to Pile B. It was the first time we had been alone together since we'd been picked up on the salt flats. I felt nervous, as if we were both expecting me to say something. I took my eyes off the horizon to look at him. He squinted against the bright sunlight, the wind blowing his short blond hair. He looked his age, which I had discovered was forty-two.

"The place will be lousy with media," I said.

"I don't care."

I concentrated on driving. Amid the talk that he was responsible for the death of Thorp's followers, he had faced hordes of questioning reporters-without his avatars.

"I haven't forgotten what you said when you stopped me from getting eaten," I told him.

"Please-I don't expect you to say anything. You already told me how you feel about me."

"That was an example of the narcissism of minor differences."

"The what?"

"Never mind. Things change."

There were several seconds of silence. We were coming up on the cordon of weaponry and troop carriers the the army had thrown up around the site. I kept my eyes on it, my heart thunping while I waited for Wetherall's response. Finally I snuck a peek at him.

He was looking right at me, wearing the same goofy, astonished smile his avatar had flashed during his first call to my university office. "Change is scary," he said. Then he laughed out loud. "Ask Murk Janglish."

We reached the checkpoint. Wetherall had brought enough financial and political pressure to bear in insure us a hearing when the time came; now I watched him discuss quietly with the nervous office in charge why our presence-in particular mine-was appropriate at this crucial moment. Wetherall seemed quite as adept at persuasion in person as he was by avatar. We pa.s.sed through the perimeter to the place where the sleeping dogs lay.

In the days since what the press was calling the Big Thorp Ma.s.sacre, the s.h.i.tdogs had been undergoing some sort of transformation. They'd exuded fluids, and lost a considerable portion of their ma.s.s. Some were of the opinion that human flesh was poisonous to them and the dogs were dying. I wasn't convinced. The last confrontation had been so purposeful, on both sides. And I could not discount my own compulsion to converge.

The dog that had eaten Thorp was the first to rise. After baking in the hot sun for days, it shuddered, then staggered to all fours. Its legs had become more elongated and slender, and the paws more handlike, with three fingers and an opposable thumb. As it sat up, quivering, I saw that its neck was also longer, its brow higher.

The soldiers drew back. There was a clank of weapons brought to the ready when the dog rose onto its hind legs. It shook its head, opened its eyes, then looked down at itself, and raised its big blue paw before its face. "My G.o.d!" it said. "I've got my hand back!"

The soldiers prepared to fire. Wetherall pulled me back. The creature lowered its hand and regarded us with a clear intelligence.

"No need for the guns, boys," it said. "Dr. Blaine Thorp here. Let me explain to you what's going on."

The s.h.i.tdogs were biological message devices. They were sent by an alien race which the Thorp-creature still called the Big Dogs and which had been spreading throughout the galaxy for millennia. When the s.h.i.tdogs landed their potential lay dormant-they were little more than the feeding and excreting machines they had seemed to be. Their initial programming was to set up the s.h.i.t piles and jewels. If intelligent creatures existed on a world they visited, such creatures would, the Big Dogs believed, be drawn to the jewels. Of course, other sorts of creatures might be attracted as well, and the Big Dogs didn't want to waste time on squirrels and turtles.

So the s.h.i.tdogs were designed to a.n.a.lyze the local biology and produce the vilest smell imaginable. The a.s.sumption was that only intelligence would ignore a horrific stink for nothing more tangible than curiosity. Only intelligence would grasp that ten percent beauty was well worth ninety percent s.h.i.t. And so only a long series of interactions, c.u.mulatively proving the intelligence of the curious creatures, would trigger the next phase.

Attraction, first by semiotic manipulation, and at the climax by direct stimulation of the limbic system. Those most fascinated by the s.h.i.tdogs would be the likely candidates for consumption. After they were eaten, the dogs would a.n.a.lyze the genetic makeup of those ingested, modify themselves correspondingly, and incorporate memory RNA from their supper.

So we faced a group of twenty-five Big Dog aliens, their own intellects fully activated, but incorporating the memories and knowledge of the humans they'd gobbled, and thus able to understand human society, to communicate, to function as partic.i.p.ants in the human world.

Much to my dismay, the brand-new Big Dogs also got the personalities of those they'd devoured. So the world is being forced to deal with a set of super-intelligent aliens, with knowledge of the universe that dwarfs our own, led by a creature that just happens to have the character of Blaine Thorp.

He's been awfully nice to me, all things considered. And why not? He lost every battle and still won the war. He's the most brilliant chiropractor in the universe and he knows it. Thorp Dog has even asked me to head up the human liaison team. So obviously having his IQ boosted to Epsilon Eridani has taught him something.

I have Wetherall to thank for this, except that I still can't decide what to do with him. Murk Janglish was right, after all. I guess I've sunk my hooks into him.

I'm just not sure whether I should keep him or throw him back.

Tonight on Eye, critic-at-large Dennis Ngomo takes a first look at architect Nguyen O'Hara's controversial plans for building Convergence World. Are the piles built by the former s.h.i.tdogs an appropriate site for a water slide theme park? Dennis will put that very question to O'Hara and his lawyer, Murk Janglish, in a few moments.

Later today, America, America's own Penelope Hunt sits down with alien leader Blaine Thorpdog, who reminisces about his boyhood in Iowa and explains the principles of faster-than-light travel.

This week on ProfitWeek our panel of experts considers the future of frozen desserts in general and Jolly Freeze Corp in particular, in the wake of the biggest rollout of an ice cream flavor in history, Luscious Lizberry.

Coming up on Hemisphere Confidential Report: we bring you a shocking exclusive on Ramsdel Wetherall's latest s.e.xual fetish. Our I-team of undercover nan.o.bots have caught Wetherall with yet another unidentified beauty, believed to be gropie diva Jillian Jalapeno. Sources close to Ms. Jalapeno have denied that she has accepted the island of Grenada as an engagement present. Stay tuned for extremely unauthorized footage of the reclusive billionaire and his latest mystery woman jumping on beds.

The End