Night Howl by Andrew Neiderman

and probably weighed just about a hundred pounds, but she showed a genuine sense of authority and firmness about her. Obviously the giant security man didn’t intimidate her one bit. Qwen thought the brightness in her eyes was the only thing that suggested anything feminine about her. She had the build of a small teenaged boy. He hated women who cut their hair that short. When she relaxed her lips, the paleness didn’t leave them. Her face was bland. She looked like a flower shut away from sunlight.
    “Dr. Bronstein didn’t assign you to this,” Gerson said. His voice quivered a bit with uncertainty.
    “So what?” She turned to Kevin. “I have to go along, Kevin. You know that.”
    “This isn’t going to be a little walk in the woods, Ann. We might have to be out for a couple of days.”
    “I’ve camped out before. I have what I need,” she said. She turned to Qwen.
    “I don’t care if you go along or not, lady, but like the man here says, it’s not a picnic.”
    “I’m very well aware of that,” she said.
    “But what about your work?” Kevin asked. He stepped forward so that he could be between Ann and Qwen. Qwen understood that Kevin wanted some privacy, so he went to the truck and leaned against the bashed-in fender.
    “You know as well as I do that I need him back in the laboratory before I can go much further.”
    “Dr. Bronstein said we have to think about working around that.”
    “Listen to me, Kevin,” she said. She drew him farther from Gerson, who glared hatefully at her defiance. She took a deep breath. “I haven’t told you everything. I haven’t told anyone.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “There was something I saw happening. I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to see any delays or participate in any stupid roundtable discussions about morality.”
    “Ann, what the hell are you talking about? I’ve got this guy ready to go. We’re already wasting precious daylight...”
    “I knew that eventually he would escape,” she said.
    “What?”
    “He was making judgments about us, about what we were doing.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “Dammit, Kevin. He didn’t want us to know how intelligent he had become. He deliberately failed tests. He deliberately made mistakes. Don’t you see, that’s more than intelligence growth. That’s . . . that’s foresight. We didn’t just expand an animal’s perception and ability to make conclusions on a higher level. We’ve developed something beyond that. We’ve created a creature with ego. You know he has self-awareness. You know what that means.”
    Kevin stared at her.
    “We should have talked more about this. You were in there doing all those tests, all those other things . . .”
    “I know, but I thought it was interesting,” she said, looking down, “and I didn’t want to fill the others in on everything just yet. You know how it gets to be, everything becomes a committee decision.”
    “It’s supposed to be a group effort, Ann. For Christ’s sake—”
    “I don’t mean to interrupt,” Qwen said, “but we could have been a half a mile or so by now.”
    “Right. One more moment.”
    “I’ve got to go along,” Ann said when Kevin turned back to her. “Don’t you see? I know things about him that you don’t, and when you confront him, it might come in handy.”
    “Okay,” he said. “But when we get back, we’re going to have one helluva meeting with Dr. Bronstein. And no holding back on anything.”
    “It’s a promise,” she said.
    “Ann’s coming along,” he said, turning to Gerson and Qwen.
    “Bullshit,” Gerson said.
    “What the hell’s the difference to you?” Kevin asked. Gerson shot a look at Qwen and then at him.
    “Dr. Bronstein said—”
    “I’ll take full responsibility for her going. Don’t worry,” Kevin said.
    “Why don’t we ask the dog how he feels about it?” Qwen said and then laughed, but he stopped when all three of them turned toward him and looked at