Watchers

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?”
    “Definitely couldn’t?”
    Lem sighed, wearily rubbed his eyes, and said nothing. He was not going to start lying to his best friend again.
     
     
7
    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