Outsider were filmed and, later, they were quizzed to see it they understood
which segments of the videotape were of real events and which were flights of
the imagination. Both creatures had gradually learned to identify fantasy when
they saw it; but, strangely, the one fantasy they most wanted to believe in, the
fantasy they clung to the longest, was Mickey Mouse. They were enthralled by
Mickey’s adventures with his cartoon friends. After escaping Banodyne, The
Outsider had some how come across this coin bank and had wanted it badly because
the poor damn thing was reminded of the only real pleasure it had ever known
while in the lab.
In the beam of Deputy Bockner’s flashlight, something on the shelf glinted. It
was lying nearly flat beside the coin bank, and they almost overlooked it. Cliff
stepped onto the grass bed and plucked the gleaming object Out of the wall
niche: a three-inch-by-four-inch triangular fragment of a mirror.
The Outsider huddled here, Lem thought, trying to take heart from its meager
treasures, trying to make as much of a home for itself as was possible. Once in
a while it picked up this jagged shard from a mirror and stared at itself,
perhaps searching hopefully for an aspect of its countenance that was not ugly,
perhaps trying to come to terms with what it was. And failing. Surely failing.
“Dear God,” Cliff Soames said quietly, for the same thoughts had apparently
passed through his mind. “The poor miserable bastard.”
The Outsider had possessed one additional item: a copy of People magazine.
Robert Redford was on the cover. With a claw, sharp stone, or some other
instrument, The Outsider had cut out Redford’s eyes.
The magazine was rumpled and tattered, as if it had been paged through a hundred
times, and now Deputy Bockner handed it to them and suggested they page through
it once more. On doing so, Lem saw that the eyes of every person pictured in the
issue had been either scratched, cut, or crudely torn out.
The thoroughness of this symbolic mutilation—not one image in the magazine had
been spared—was chilling.
The Outsider was pathetic, yes, and it was to be pitied.
But it was also to be feared.
Five victims—some gutted, some decapitated.
The innocent dead must not be forgotten, not for a moment. Neither an affection
for Mickey Mouse nor a love of beauty could excuse such slaughter.
But Jesus .
The creature had been given sufficient intelligence to grasp the importance and
the benefits of civilization, to long for acceptance and a meaningful existence.
Yet a fierce lust for violence, a killing instinct second to none in nature, was
also engineered into it because it was meant to be a smart killer on a long
invisible leash, a living machine of war. No matter how long it existed in
peaceful solitude in its canyon cave, no matter how many days or weeks it
resisted its own violent urges, it could not change what it was. The pressure
would build within it until it could no longer contain itself, until the
slaughter of small animals would not provide enough psychological relief, and
then it would seek larger and more interesting prey. It might damn itself for
its savagery, might long to remake itself into a creature that could exist in
harmony with the rest of the world, but it was powerless to change what it Was.
Only hours ago, Lem had pondered how difficult it was for him to become a
different man from the one his father had raised, how hard it was for any man to
change what life had made him, but at least it was possible if one had the
determination, willpower, and time. However, for The Outsider change Was
impossible; murder was in the beast’s genes, locked in, and it could expect no
hope of re-creation or salvation.
“What the hell is this all about?” Deputy Bockner asked, finally unable to
repress his curiosity.
“Believe me,” Lem said, “you don’t want to know.”
“What was in this cave?” Bockner asked.
Lem only shook his head. If two more people had to die, it was a stroke of good
fortune that they had been murdered in a national forest. This was federal land,