Watchers (33 page)

“Shit,” Walt said. “It’s not a black-and-white issue, is it?”

Lem said, “That’s what makes life interesting.”

Walt smiled sourly. “Right now, it’s a whole hell of a lot more interesting than I care for. Okay. I can see the wisdom of keeping a lid on this. Besides, if we made it public, you’d have a thousand half-assed adventurers out there looking for the thing, and they’d end up victims of it, or they’d gun down one another.”

“Exactly.”

“But my men could help keep the lid on by joining in the search.”

Lem told him about the hundred men from Marine Intelligence units who were still combing the foothills, dressed as civilians, using high-tech tracking gear and, in some cases, bloodhounds. “I’ve already got more men on line than you could supply. We’re already doing as much as can be done. Now will you do the right thing? Will you stay out of it?”

Frowning, Walt said, “For now. But I want to be kept informed.”

Lem nodded. “All right.”

“And I have more questions. For one thing, why do they call it The Outsider?”

“Well, the dog was the first breakthrough, the first of the lab subjects to display unusual intelligence. This one was next. They were the only two successes: the dog and the other. At first, they added capital letters to the way they pronounced it, The Other, but in time it became The Outsider because that seemed to fit better. It was not an improvement on one of God’s creations, as was the dog; it was entirely
outside
of creation, a thing apart. An abomination—though no one actually said as much. And the thing was aware of its status as an outsider, acutely aware.”

“Why not just call it the baboon?”

“Because . . . it doesn’t really look much of anything like a baboon anymore. Not like anything you’ve ever seen—except in a nightmare.”

Walt did not like the expression on his friend’s dark face, in his eyes. He decided not to ask for a better description of The Outsider; perhaps that was something he did not need to know.

Instead, he said, “What about the Hudston, Weatherby, and Yarbeck murders? Who was behind all that?”

“We don’t know the man who pulled the trigger, but we know the Soviets hired him. They also killed another Banodyne man who was on vacation in Acapulco.”

Walt felt as if he were jolting through one of those invisible barriers again, into an even more complicated world. “Soviets? Were we talking about the Soviets? How’d they get into the act?”

“We didn’t think they knew about the Francis Project,” Lem said. “But they did. Apparently, they even had a mole inside Banodyne who reported out to them on our progress. When the dog and, subsequently, The Outsider escaped, the mole informed the Soviets, and evidently the Soviets decided to take advantage of the chaos and do us even more damage. They killed every project leader—Yarbeck and Weatherby and Haines—plus Hudston, who had once been a project leader but no longer worked at Banodyne. We think they did this for two reasons: first, to bring the Francis Project to a halt; second, to make it harder for us to track down The Outsider.”

“How would that make it harder?”

Lem slumped in his seat as if, in talking of the crisis, he was more clearly aware of the burden on his shoulders. “By eliminating Hudston, Haines, and especially Weatherby and Yarbeck, the Soviets cut us off from the people who would have the best idea how The Outsider and the dog think, the people best able to figure out where those animals might go and how they might be recaptured.”

“Have you actually pinned it on the Soviets?”

Lem sighed. “Not entirely. I’m focused primarily on recovering the dog and The Outsider, so we have another entire task force trying to track down the Soviet agents behind the murders, arson, and data hijacking. Unfortunately, the Soviets seem to have used freelance hit men outside of their own network, so we have no idea where to look for the triggermen. That side of the investigation is pretty much stalled.”

“And the fire at Banodyne a day or so later?” Walt asked.

“Definitely arson. Another Soviet action. It destroyed all the paper and electronic files on the Francis Project. There were backup computer disks at another location, of course . . . but data on them has somehow been erased.”

“The Soviets again?”

“We think so. The leaders of the Francis Project and all their files have been wiped out, leaving us in the dark when it comes to trying to figure how either the dog or The Outsider might think, where they might go, how they might be tricked into captivity.”

Walt shook his head. “Never thought I’d be on the side of the Russians, but putting a stop to this project seems like a good idea.”

“They’re far from innocent. From what I hear, they’ve got a similar project under way at laboratories in the Ukraine. I wouldn’t doubt we’re working diligently to destroy their files and people the way they’ve destroyed ours. Anyway, the Soviets would like nothing better than for The Outsider to run wild in some nice peaceable suburb, gutting housewives and chewing the heads off little kids, because if that happens a couple of times . . . well, then the whole thing’s going to blow up in our face.”

Chewing the heads off little kids? Jesus.

Walt shuddered and said, “Is that likely to happen?”

“We don’t believe so. The Outsider is aggressive as hell—it was designed to be aggressive, after all—and it has a special hatred for its makers, which is something Yarbeck didn’t count on and something she hoped to be able to correct in future generations. The Outsider takes great pleasure in slaughtering us. But it’s also smart, and it knows that every killing gives us a new fix on its whereabouts. So it’s not going to indulge its hatred too often. It’s going to stay away from people most of the time, moving mainly at night. Once in a while, out of curiosity, it might poke into residential areas along the edge of the developed eastern flank of the county—”

“As it did at the Keeshan place.”

“Yeah. But I bet it didn’t go there to kill anyone. Just plain curiosity. It doesn’t want to be caught before it accomplishes its main goal.”

“Which is?”

“Finding and killing the dog,” Lem said.

Walt was surprised. “Why would it care about the dog?”

“We don’t really know,” Lem said. “But at Banodyne, it harbored a fierce hatred of the dog, worse than what it felt toward people. When Yarbeck worked with it, constructing a sign language with which to communicate complex ideas, The Outsider several times expressed a desire to kill and mutilate the dog, but it would never explain why. It was
obsessed
with the dog.”

“So you think now it’s tracking the retriever?”

“Yes. Because evidence seems to indicate that the dog was the first to break out of the labs that night in May, and that its escape drove The Outsider mad. The Outsider was kept in a large enclosure inside Yarbeck’s lab, and everything belonging to it—bedding, many educational devices, toys— was torn and smashed to pieces. Then, apparently realizing that the dog was going to be forever out of its reach if it didn’t make good its own escape, The Outsider put its mind to the problem and, by God, found its own way out.”

“But if the dog got a good head start—”

“There’s a link between the dog and The Outsider that no one understands. A mental link. Instinctual awareness. We don’t know its extent, but we can’t rule out the possibility that this link is strong enough for one of them to follow the other over considerable distances. It’s apparently a sort of mild sixth sense that was somehow a bonus of the technique of intelligence enhancement used in both Weatherby’s and Yarbeck’s research. But we’re only guessing. We don’t really know for sure. There’s so fucking much we don’t know!”

Both men were silent for a while.

The humid closeness of the car was no longer entirely unpleasant. Given all the dangers loose in the modern world, these steamy confines seemed safe and comfortable, a haven.

Finally, not wanting to ask any more questions, afraid of the answers he might get, Walt nevertheless said, “Banodyne is a high-security building. It’s designed to keep unauthorized people from getting in, but it must be hard to get
out
of the place, too. Yet both the dog and The Outsider escaped.”

“Yes.”

“And obviously no one ever figured they could. Which means they’re both smarter than anyone realized.”

“Yes.”

Walt said, “In the case of the dog . . . well, if it’s smarter than anyone figured, so what? The dog is friendly.”

Lem, who had been staring at the opaqued windshield, finally met Walt’s eyes. “That’s right. But if The Outsider is smarter than we thought . . . if it’s very nearly as smart as a man, then catching it’s going to be even harder.”

“Very nearly . . . or
as
smart as a man.”

“No. Impossible.”

“Or even smarter,” Walt said.

“No. That couldn’t be.”

“Couldn’t?”

“No.”

“Definitely couldn’t?”

Lem sighed, wearily rubbed his eyes, and said nothing. He was not going to start lying to his best friend again.

Nora and Travis went through the photographs one by one, learning a little more about Einstein. By barking once or vigorously wagging his tail, the dog answered questions and was able to confirm that he had chosen the advertisements for computers because they reminded him of the computers in the lab where he had been kept. The photo of four young people playing with a striped beach ball appealed to him because one of the scientists in the lab had evidently used balls of various sizes in an intelligence test that Einstein had particularly enjoyed. They were unable to determine the reason for his interest in the parrot, the butterflies, Mickey Mouse, and many other things, but that was only because they could not hit upon the pertinent yes-or-no questions that would have led to explanations.

Even when a hundred questions failed to reveal the meaning of one of the photographs, the three of them remained excited and delighted by the process of discovery, for they met with success in enough cases to make the effort worthwhile. The only time the mood changed for the worse was when they queried Einstein about the magazine picture of the demon from an upcoming horror movie. He became extremely agitated. He tucked his tail between his legs, bared his teeth, growled deep in his throat. Several times, he padded away from the photograph, going behind the sofa or into another room, where he stayed for a minute or two before returning, reluctantly, to face additional questions, and he shivered almost continuously when being quizzed about the demon.

Finally, after trying for at least ten minutes to determine the reason for the dog’s dread, Travis pointed to the slab-jawed, wickedly fanged, luminous-eyed movie monster and said, “Maybe you don’t understand, Einstein. This isn’t a picture of a real, living thing. This is a make-believe demon from a movie. Do you understand what I mean when I say make-believe?”

Einstein wagged his tail:
Yes.

“Well, this is a make-believe monster.”

One bark:
No.

“Make-believe, phony, not real, just a man in a rubber suit,” Nora said.

“Yes,” Travis said.

Einstein tried to run off behind the sofa again, but Travis grabbed him by the collar and held him. “Are you claiming to have seen such a thing?”

The dog raised his gaze from the picture, looked into Travis’s eyes, shuddered, and whimpered.

The pitiful note of profound fear in Einstein’s soft whine and an indescribably disturbing quality in his dark eyes combined to affect Travis to an extent that surprised him. Holding the collar with one hand, his other hand on Einstein’s back, Travis felt the shivers that quaked through the dog—and suddenly he was shivering, too. The dog’s stark fear was transmitted to him, and he thought, crazily,
By God, he really has seen something like this.

Sensing the change in Travis, Nora said, “What’s wrong?”

Instead of answering her, he repeated the question that Einstein had not yet answered: “Are you claiming to have seen such a thing?”

“Something that looks exactly like this demon?”

A bark and a wag:
Yes and no.

“Something that looks at least a little bit like it?”

Letting go of the collar, Travis stroked the dog’s back, trying to soothe him, but Einstein continued to shiver. “Is this why you keep a watch at the window some nights?”

Clearly puzzled and alarmed by the dog’s distress, Nora began to pet him, too. “I thought you were worried that people from the lab would find you.”

Einstein barked once.

“You’re not afraid people from the lab will find you?”

Travis said, “But you’re more afraid that . . . this other thing will find you.”

“Is this the same thing that was in the woods that day, the thing that chased us, the thing I shot at?” Travis asked.

Travis looked at Nora. She was frowning. “But it’s only a movie monster. Nothing in the real world looks even a little bit like it.”

Padding across the room, sniffing at the assorted photographs, Einstein paused again at the Blue Cross ad that featured the doctor, mother, and baby in a hospital room. He brought the magazine to them and dropped it on the floor. He put his nose to the doctor in the picture, then looked at Nora, at Travis, put his nose to the doctor again, and looked up expectantly.

“Before,” Nora said, “you told us the doctor represented one of the scientists in that lab.”

Travis said, “So are you telling me the scientist who worked on you would know what this thing in the woods was?”

Einstein went looking through the photographs again, and this time he returned with the ad that showed a car in a cage. He touched his nose to the cage; then, hesitantly, he touched his nose to the picture of the demon.