Oslett was beginning to hope they might recover Alfie, salvage the

  Network, and keep their reputations intact after all.

  Turning to Clocker, Waxhill said, "What about you, Karl? Do you have a

  problem with any of this?"

  Though he was sitting at the table, Clocker appeared distant in spirit.

  He pulled his attention back to them as if his thoughts had been with

  the Enterprise crew on a hostile planet in the Crab nebula.

  "There are five billion people on earth," he said, "so we think it's

  crowded, but for every one of us, the universe contains countless

  thousands of stars, an infinity of stars for each of us."

  Waxhill stared at Clocker, waiting for elucidation. When he realized

  that Clocker had nothing more to say, he turned to Oslett.

  "I believe what Karl means," Oslett said, "is that . . . Well, in the

  vast scheme of things, what does it matter if a few people die a little

  sooner than they would have in the natural course of events?"

  The sun is high over the distant mountains, where the loftiest peaks are

  capped with snow. It seems odd to have a view of winter from this

  springlike December morning full of palm trees and flowers.

  He drives south and east into Mission Viejo. He is vengeance on wheels.

  Justice on wheels. Rolling, rolling.

  He considers locating a gun shop and buying a shotgun or hunting rifle,

  some weapon for which there is no waiting period prior to the right of

  purchase. His adversary is armed, but he is not.

  However, he doesn't want to delay his pursuit of the kidnapper who has

  stolen his family. If the enemy is kept off balance and on the move, he

  is more likely to make mistakes. Unrelenting pressure is a better

  weapon than any gun.

  Besides, he is vengeance, justice, and virtue. He is the hero of this

  movie, and heroes do not die. They can be shot, clubbed, run off the

  road in high-speed car chases, slashed with a knife, pushed from a

  cliff, locked in a dungeon filled with poisonous snakes, and endure an

  endlessly imaginative series of abuses without perishing. With Harrison

  Ford, Sylvester Stallone, Steven Seagal, Bruce Willis, Wesley Snipes,

  and so many other heroes, he shares the invincibility of virtue and high

  noble purpose.

  He realizes why his initial assault on the false father, in his house

  yesterday, was doomed to fail in spite of his being a hero. He'd been

  drawn westward by the powerful attraction between him and his double, to

  the same degree that he had been aware of something pulling him, the

  double had been aware of something approaching all day Sunday and

  Monday. By the time they encountered each other - in the upstairs

  study, the false father had been alerted and had prepared for battle.

  Now he understands that he can initiate and terminate the connection

  between them at will. Like the electrical current in any house hold

  circuit, it can be controlled by an ON-OFF switch. Instead of leaving

  the switch in the ON position all the time, he can open the pathway for

  brief moments, just long enough to feel the pull of the false father and

  take a fix on him.

  Logic suggests he also can modify the power flowing along the psychic

  wire. By imagining the psychic control is a dimmer switch--a

  rheostat--he should be able to adjust downward the amperage of the

  current in the circuit, making the contact more subtle than it has been

  to date. After all, by using a rheostatic switch, the light of a

  chandelier can be reduced smoothly by degrees until there is barely a

  visible glow. Likewise, imagining the psychic switch as another

  rheostat, he might be able to open the connection at such a low amperage

  that he can track the false father without that adversary being alerted

  to the fact he's being sought.

  Stopping at a red traffic light in the heart of Mission Viejo, he

  imagines a dial-type dimmer switch with a three-hundred-sixty-degree

  brightness range. He turns it only ninety degrees, and at once feels

  the pull of the false father, slightly farther east and now some what to

  the north.

  Outside of the bank, halfway to the BMW, Marty suddenly felt another

  wave of pressure and behind it, the crushing Juggernaut of his dreams.

  The sensation was not as strong as the experiences in the bank, but it

  caught him in mid-step and threw him off balance. He staggered,

  stumbled, and fell. The two manila envelopes full of cash flew out of

  his hands and slid across the blacktop.

  Charlotte and Emily scampered after the envelopes, and Paige helped

  Marty to his feet.

  As the wave passed and Marty stood shakily, he said, "Here, take my

  keys, you better drive. He's hunting me. He's coming."

  She looked around the bank lot in panic.

  Marty said, "No, he's not here yet. It's like before. This sense of

  being in the path of something very powerful and fast.

  shaken again by contact with The Other. Although the impact of the

  probe was less disturbing than ever before, he took no solace from the

  diminishment of its power.

  "Get us the hell out of here," he urged Paige, as he retrieved the

  loaded Beretta from under the seat.

  Paige started the engine, and Marty turned to the kids. They were

  buckling their seatbelts.

  As Paige slammed the BMW into reverse and backed out of the parking

  space, the girls met Marty's eyes. They were scared.

  He had too much respect for their perceptiveness to lie to them.

  Rather than pretend everything was going to be all right, he said, "Hang

  on. Your Mom's gonna try to drive like I do."

  Popping the car out of reverse, Paige asked, "Where's he coming from?"

  "I don't know. Just don't go out the same way we came in. I feel

  uneasy about that. Use the other street."

  Two blocks. Maybe not that far.

  Driving slowly. Scanning the street ahead, left and right.

  Looking for them.

  A car horn toots behind him. The driver is impatient.

  Slow, slow, squinting left and right, checking people on the sidewalks

  as well as in passing cars.

  The horn behind him. He gestures obscenely, which seems to spook the

  guy into silence.

  Slow, slow.

  No sight of them.

  Try the mental rheostat again. A sixty-degree turn this time.

  Still a strong contact, an urgent and irresistible pull.

  Ahead. On the left. Shopping center.

  As Marty got into the front passenger seat and shut the door, holding

  the envelopes of cash that the kids had retrieved for him, he was He is

  drawn to the bank rather than the shopping center itself, and he parks

  near the east entrance.

  As he switches the engine off, he hears a brief shriek of tires.

  From the corner of his eye, he is aware of a car driving away fast from

  the south end of the building. Turning, he sees a white BMW eighty to a

  hundred feet away. It streaks toward the shopping center, past him in a

  flash.

  He catches sight of only a portion of the driver's face--one cheekbone,

  jaw line, curve of chin. And a shimmer of golden hair.

  Sometimes it's possible to identify
a favorite song by only three notes,

  because the melody has left an indelible impression on the mind.

  Likewise, from that partial profile, glimpsed in a flicker of shadow and

  light, in a blur of motion, he recognizes his precious wife.

  Unknown people have eradicated his memories of her, but the photograph

  he discovered yesterday is imprinted on his heart.

  He whispers, "Paige."

  He starts the Camry, backs out of the parking space, and turns toward

  the shopping center.

  Acres of blacktop are empty at that early hour, for only the

  supermarket, a doughnut shop, and an office-supply store are open for

  business. The BMW races across the parking lot, swinging wide of the

  few clusters of cars, to the service road that fronts the stores. It

  turns left and heads toward the north end of the center.

  He follows but not aggressively. If he loses them, locating them again

  is an easy matter because of the mysterious but reliable link between

  him and the hateful man who has usurped his life.

  The BMW reaches the north exit and turns right into the street.

  By the time he arrives at that same intersection, the BMW is already two

  blocks away, stopped at a red traffic signal and barely in sight.

  For more than an hour, he follows them discreetly along surface streets,

  north on the Santa Ana and Costa Mesa freeways, then east on the

  Riverside Freeway, staying well back from them. Tucked in among the

  heavy morning commuter traffic, his small Camry is as good as invisible.

  On the Riverside Freeway, west of Corona, he imagines switching on the

  psychic current between himself and the false father. He pictures the

  rheostat and turns it five degrees out of a possible three hundred and

  sixty. That is sufficient for him to sense the presence of the false

  father ahead in traffic, although it gives him no precise fix.

  Six degrees, seven, eight. Eight is too much. Seven. Seven is ideal.

  With the switch open only seven degrees, the attraction is powerful

  enough to serve as a beacon to him without alerting the enemy that the

  link has been re-established. In the BMW, the imposter rides east

  toward Riverside, tense and watchful but unaware of being monitored.

  Yet, in the hunter's mind, the signal of the prey registers like a

  blinking red light on an electronic map.

  Having mastered control of this strange adducent power, he may be able

  to strike at the false father with some degree of surprise.

  Though the man in the BMW is expecting an attack and is on the run to

  avoid it, he's also accustomed to being forewarned of assault. When

  enough time passes without a disturbance in the ether, when he feels no

  unnerving probes, he'll regain confidence.

  With a return of confidence, his caution will diminish, and he'll become

  vulnerable.

  The hunter needs only to stay on the trail, follow the spoor, bide his

  time, and wait for the ideal moment to strike.

  As they pass through Riverside, morning traffic thins out around them.

  He drops back farther, until the BMW is a distant, colorless dot that

  sometimes vanishes temporarily, miragelike, in a shimmer of sunlight or

  swirl of dust.

  Onward and north. Through San Bernardino. Onto Interstate 15.

  Into the northern end of the San Bernardino Mountains. Through the El

  Cajon Pass at forty-three hundred feet.

  Soon thereafter, south of the town of Hesperia, the BMW departs the

  interstate and heads directly north on U.S. Highway 395, into the

  westernmost reaches of the forbidding Mojave Desert. He follows,

  continuing to remain at such a distance that they can't possibly realize

  the dark speck in their rearview mirror is the same car that has trailed

  them now through three counties.

  Within a couple of miles, he passes a road sign indicating the mileage

  to Ridgecrest, Lone Pine, Bishop, and Mammoth Lakes. Mammoth is the

  farthest--two hundred and eighty-two miles.

  The name of the town has an instant association for him. He has an

  eidetic memory. He can see the words on the dedication page of one of

  the mystery novels he has written and which he keeps on the shelves in

  his home office in Mission Viejo, This opus is for my mother and father,

  Jim and Alice Stillwater, who taught me to be an honest man--and who

  can't be blamed if I am able to think like a criminal.

  He recalls, as well, the Rolodex card with their names and address.

  They live in Mammoth Lakes.

  Again, he is poignantly aware of what he has lost. Even if he can

  reclaim his life from the imposter who wears his name, perhaps he will

  never regain the memories that have been stolen from him. His

  childhood. His adolescence. His first date. His high school

  experiences. He has no recollection of his mother's or his father's

  love, and it seems outrageous, monstrous, that he could be robbed of

  those most essential and enduringly supportive memories.

  For more than sixty miles, he alternates between despair at the

  estrangement which is the primary quality of his existence and joy at

  the prospect of reclaiming his destiny.

  He desperately longs to be with his father, his mother, to see their

  dear faces (which have been erased from the tablets of his memory), to

  embrace them and re-establish the profound bond between him self and the

  two people to whom he owes his existence. From the movies he has seen,

  he knows parents can be a curse the maniacal mother who was dead before

  the opening scene of Psycho, the selfish mother and father who warped

  poor Nick Nolte in The Prince of Tides--but he believes his parents to

  be of a finer variety, compassionate and true, like Jimmy Stewart and

  Donna Reed in It's a Wonderful Life.

  The highway is flanked by dry lakes as white as salt, sudden battlements

  of red rock, wind-sculpted oceans of sand, scrub, boron flats, distant

  escarpments of dark stone. Everywhere lies evidence of geological

  upheavals and lava flows from distant millennia.

  At the town of Red Mountain, the BMW leaves the highway. It stops at a

  service station to refuel.

  He follows until he is certain of their intention, but passes the

  service station without stopping. They have guns. He does not. A

  better moment will be found to kill the impersonator.

  Re-entering Highway 395, he drives north a short distance to

  Johannesburg, which sits west of the Lava Mountains. He exits again and

  tanks up the Camry at another service station. He buys crackers, candy

  bars, and peanuts from the vending machines to sustain him during the

  long drive ahead.

  Perhaps because Charlotte and Emily had to use the restrooms back at the

  Red Mountain stop, he is on the highway ahead of the BMW, but that

  doesn't matter because he no longer needs to follow them. He knows

  where they are going.

  Mammoth Lakes, California.

  Jim and Alice Stillwater. Who taught him to be an honest man.

  Who can't be blamed if he is able to think like a criminal. To whom he

  dedicated a novel. Beloved. Cherished. Stolen from him but soon to be

  reclaimed.

  He is eager to enlist
them in his crusade to regain his family and his

  destiny. Perhaps the false father can deceive his children, and perhaps

  even Paige can be fooled into accepting the imposter as the real Martin

  Stillwater. But his parents will recognize their true son, blood of

  their blood, and will not be misled by the cunning mimicry of that

  family-stealing fraud.

  Since turning onto Highway 395, where traffic is light, the BMW had

  maintained a steady sixty to sixty-five miles an hour, though the road

  made greater speed possible in many areas. Now, he pushes the Camry

  north at seventy-five and eighty. He should be able to reach Mammoth

  Lakes between two o'clock and two-fifteen, half an hour to forty-five

  minutes ahead of the imposter, which will give him time to alert his

  mother and father to the evil intentions of the creature that

  masquerades as their son.

  The highway angles northwest across Indian Wells Valley, with the El

  Paso Mountains to the south. Mile by mile, his heart swells with

  emotion at the prospect of being reunited with his mom and dad, from

  whom he has been cruelly separated. He aches with the need to embrace

  them and bask in their love, their unquestioning love, their undying and