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 hitmen 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