Watchers

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 any more. 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 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