perfect love.

  The Bell JetRanger executive helicopter that conveyed Oslett and Clocker

  to Mammoth Lakes belonged to a motion-picture studio that was a Network

  affiliate. With black calfskin seats, brass fixtures, and cabin walls

  plushly upholstered in emerald-green lizard skin, the ambiance was even

  more luxurious than in the passenger compartment of the Lear. The

  chopper also offered a more entertaining collection of reading matter

  than had been available in the jet, including that day's editions of The

  Hollywood Reporter and Daily Variety plus the most recent issues of

  Premier, Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, Forbes, Fortune, GQ, Spy, The

  Ecological Watch Society Journal, and Bon Appetit.

  To occupy his time during the flight, Clocker produced another Star Trek

  novel, which he had purchased in the gift shop at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel

  before they checked out. Oslett was convinced that the spread of such

  fantastical literature into the tastefully appointed and elegantly

  managed shops of a five-star resort--formerly the kind of place that

  catered to the cultured and powerful, not merely the rich--was as

  alarming a sign of society's imminent collapse as could be found, on a

  par with heavily armed crack-cocaine dealers selling their wares in

  schoolyards.

  As the JetRanger cruised north through Sequoia National Park, King's

  Canyon National Park, along the western flank of the Sierra Nevadas, and

  eventually directly into those magnificent mountains, Oslett kept moving

  from one side of the helicopter to the other, determined not to miss any

  of the stunning scenery. The vastnesses beneath him were so sparsely

  populated, they might have been expected to trigger his nearly

  agoraphobic aversion to open spaces and rural landscapes. But the

  terrain changed by the minute, presenting new marvels and

  ever-more-splendid vistas at a sufficiently swift pace to entertain him.

  Furthermore, the JetRanger flew at a much lower altitude than the Lear,

  giving Oslett a sense of headlong forward motion. The interior of the

  helicopter was noisier and shaken by more vibrations than the passenger

  compartment of the jet, which he also liked.

  Twice he called Clocker's attention to the natural wonders just beyond

  the windows. Both times the big man merely glanced at the scenery for a

  second or two, and then without comment returned his attention to

  Six-Breasted Amazon Women of the Slime Planet.

  "What's so damned interesting in that book?" Oslett finally demanded,

  dropping into the seat directly opposite Clocker.

  Finishing the paragraph he was reading before looking up, Clocker said,

  "I couldn't tell you."

  "Why not?"

  "Because even after I told you what I find interesting in this book, it

  wouldn't be interesting to you."

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  Clocker shrugged. "I don't think you'd like it."

  "I hate novels, always have, especially science fiction and crap like

  that."

  "There you go."

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "Just that you've confirmed what I said--you don't like this sort of

  thing.

  "Of course I don't."

  Clocker shrugged again. "There you go."

  Oslett glared at him. Gesturing at the book, he said, "How can you like

  that trash?"

  "We exist in parallel universes," Clocker said.

  "What?"

  "In yours, Johannes Gutenberg invented the pinball machine."

  "Who?"

  "In yours, perhaps the most famous guy named Faulkner was a virtuoso on

  the banjo."

  Scowling, Oslett said, "None of this crap is making any sense to me."

  "There you go," Clocker said, and returned his attention to Kirk and

  Spock in Love, or whatever the epic was titled.

  Oslett wanted to kill him. This time, in Karl Clocker's cryptic patter,

  he detected a subtly expressed but deeply felt disrespect.

  He wanted to snatch off the big man's stupid hat and set fire to it,

  duck feather and all, grab the paperback out of his hands and tear it to

  pieces, and pump maybe a thousand rounds of hollow-point 9mm ammo into

  him at extreme close range.

  Instead, he turned to the window to be soothed by the majesty of

  mountain peaks and forests seen at a hundred and fifty miles an hour.

  Above them, clouds were moving in from the northwest. Plump and gray,

  they settled like fleets of dirigibles toward the mountain tops.

  At 1:10 Tuesday afternoon, at an airfield outside of Mammoth Lakes, they

  were met by a Network representative named Alec Spicer. He was waiting

  on the blacktop near the concrete-block and corrugated steel hangar

  where they set down.

  Though he knew their real names and was, therefore, at least of a rank

  equal to Peter Waxhill's, he was not as impeccably attired, suave, or

  well-spoken as that gentleman who had briefed them over breakfast. And

  unlike the muscular Jim Lomar at John Wayne Airport * in Orange

  County last night, he let them carry their own luggage to the green Ford

  Explorer that stood at their disposal in the parking area behind the

  hangar.

  Spicer was about fifty years old, five feet ten, a hundred and sixty

  pounds, with brush-cut iron-gray hair. His face was all hard planes,

  and his eyes were hidden behind sunglasses even though the sky was

  overcast. He wore combat boots, khaki slacks, khaki shirt, and a

  battered leather flight jacket with numerous zippered pockets. His

  erect posture, disciplined manner, and clipped speech pegged him for a

  retired--perhaps cashiered--army officer who was unwilling to change the

  attitudes, habits, or wardrobe of a military careerist.

  "You're not dressed properly for Mammoth," Spicer said sharply as they

  walked to the Explorer, his breath streaming from his mouth in white

  plumes.

  "I didn't realize it would be quite so cold here," Oslett said,

  shuddering uncontrollably.

  "Sierra Nevadas," Spicer said. "Almost eight thousand feet above sea

  level where we stand. December. Can't expect palm trees, hula skirts,

  and pin colds."

  "I knew it would be cold, just not this cold."

  "You'll freeze your ass off," Spicer said curtly.

  "This jacket's warm," Oslett said defensively. "It's cashmere."

  "Good for you," Spicer said.

  He raised the hatch on the back of the Explorer and stood aside to let

  them load their luggage into the cargo space.

  Spicer got behind the wheel. Oslett sat up front. In the back seat,

  Clocker resumed reading The Flatulent Ferocity from Ganymede.

  Driving away from the airfield into town, Spicer was silent for a while.

  Then, "Expecting our first snow of the season later today."

  "Winter's my favorite time of the year," Oslett said.

  "Might not like it so much with snow up to your ass and those nice

  oxfords turning hard as a Dutchman's wooden shoes."

  "Do you know who I am?" Oslett asked impatiently.

  "Yes, sir," Spicer said, clipping his words even more than usual but

  inclining his head slightly in a subtle acknowledgment of his inferior

  position.

>   "Good," Oslett said.

  In places, tall evergreens crowded both sides of the roadway.

  Many of the motels, restaurants, and roadside bars boasted ersatz alpine

  architecture, and in some cases their names incorporated words that

  called to mind images from movies as diverse as The Sound of Music and

  Clint Eastwood vehicles, Bavarian this, Swiss that, Eiger, Matterhorn,

  Geneva, Hofbrau.

  Oslett said, "Where's the Stillwater house?"

  "We're going to your motel."

  "I understood there was a surveillance unit staking out the Still water

  house," Oslett persisted.

  "Yes, sir. Across the street in a van with tinted windows."

  "I want to join them."

  "Not a good idea. This is a small town. Not even five thousand people,

  when you don't count tourists. Lot of people going in and out of a

  parked van on a residential street--that's going to draw unwanted

  attention."

  "Then what do you suggest?"

  "Phone the surveillance team, let them know where to reach you. Then

  wait at the motel. The minute Martin Stillwater calls his folks or

  shows up at their door--you'll be notified."

  "He hasn't called them yet?"

  "Their phone's rung several times in the past few hours, but they aren't

  home to answer it, so we don't know if it's their son or not."

  Oslett was incredulous. "They don't have an answering machine?"

  "Pace of life up here doesn't exactly require one."

  "Amazing. Well, if they're not at home, where are they?"

  "They went shopping this morning, and not long ago they stopped for a

  late lunch at a restaurant out on Route 203. They should be home in

  another hour or so."

  "They're being followed?"

  "Of course."

  In anticipation of the predicted storm, skiers were already arriving in

  town with loaded ski racks on their cars. Oslett saw a bumper sticker

  that read MY LIFE IS ALL DOWNHILL--AND LOVE IT!

  As they stopped at a red traffic light behind a station wagon that

  seemed to be stuffed full of enough young blond women in ski sweaters to

  populate half a dozen beer or lip-balm commercials, Spicer said, "Hear

  about the hooker in Kansas City?"

  "Strangled," Oslett said. "But there's no proof our boy did it, even if

  someone resembling him did leave that lounge with her."

  "Then you don't know the latest. Sperm sample arrived in New York.

  Been studied. It's our boy."

  "They're sure?"

  "Positive."

  The tops of the mountains were disappearing into the lowering sky. The

  color of the clouds had deepened from the shade of abraded steel to a

  mottled ash-gray and cinder-black.

  Oslett's mood grew darker as well.

  The traffic signal changed to green.

  Following the car full of blondes through the intersection, Alec Spicer

  said, "So he's fully capable of having sex."

  "But he was engineered to be . .." Oslett couldn't even finish the

  sentence. He no longer had any faith in the work of the genetic

  engineers.

  "So far," Spicer said, "through police contacts, the home office has

  compiled a list of fifteen homicides involving sexual assault that might

  be attributable to our boy. Unsolved cases. Young and attractive

  women. In cities he visited, at the times he was there.

  Similar M.O.

  in every case, including extreme violence after the victim was knocked

  unconscious, sometimes with a blow to the head but generally with a

  punch in the face . . . evidently to ensure silence during the actual

  killing."

  "Fifteen," Oslett said numbly.

  "Maybe more. Maybe a lot more." Spicer glanced away from the road and

  looked at Oslett. His eyes were not only unreadable but entirely hidden

  behind the heavily tinted sunglasses. "And we better hope to God he

  killed every woman he screwed."

  "What do you mean?"

  Looking at the road again, Spicer said, "He's got a high sperm count.

  And the sperm are active. He's fertile."

  Though he couldn't have admitted it to himself until Spicer had said it

  aloud, Oslett had been aware this bad news was coming.

  "You know what this means?" Spicer asked.

  From the back seat, Clocker said, "The first operative Alpha generation

  human clone is a renegade, mutating in ways we might not understand, and

  capable of infecting the human gene pool with genetic material that

  could spawn a new and thoroughly hostile race of nearly invulnerable

  super beings."

  For a moment Oslett thought Clocker had read a line from his current

  Star Trek novel, then realized that he had succinctly summed up the

  nature of the crisis.

  Spicer said, "If our boy didn't waste every bimbo he took a tumble with,

  if he made a few babies and for some reason they weren't aborted--even

  one baby--we're in deep shit. Not just the three of us, not just the

  Network, but the entire human race."

  Heading north through the Owens Valley, with the Inyo Mountains to the

  east and the towering Sierra Nevadas to the west, Marty found that the

  cellular phone would not always function as intended because the

  dramatic topography interfered with microwave transmissions. And on

  those occasions when he was able to place a call to his parents' house

  in Mammoth, their phone rang and rang without being answered.

  After sixteen rings, he pushed the END button, terminating the call, and

  said, "Still not home."

  His dad was sixty-six, his mom sixty-five. They had been school

  teachers, and both had retired last year. They were still young by

  modern standards, healthy and vigorous, in love with life, so it was no

  surprise they were out and about rather than spending the day at home in

  a couple of armchairs, watching television game shows and soap operas.

  "How long are we staying with Grandma and Grandpa?" Charlotte asked

  from the back seat. "Long enough for her to teach me to play the guitar

  as good as she does? I'm getting pretty good on the piano, but I think

  I'd like the guitar, too, and if I'm going to be a famous musician,

  which I think I might be interested in being--I'm still keeping my

  options open--then it would be a lot easier to take my music with me

  everywhere, since you can't exactly carry a piano around on your back."

  "We aren't staying with Grandma and Grandpa," Marty said. "In fact, we

  aren't even stopping there."

  Charlotte and Emily groaned with disappointment.

  Paige said, "We might visit them later, in a few days. We'll see.

  Right now we're going to the cabin."

  "Yeah!" Emily said, and

  "All right!" Charlotte said.

  Marty heard them smack their hands together in a high-five.

  The cabin, which his mom and dad had owned since Marty was a boy, was

  nestled in the mountains a few miles outside of Mammoth Lakes, between

  the town and the lakes themselves, not far from the even smaller

  settlement of Lake Mary. It was a charming place, on which his father

  had done extensive work over the years, sheltered by hundred-foot pines

  and firs. To the girls, who had been raised in the suburban maze of

  Orang
e County, the cabin was as special as any enchanted cottage in a

  fairy tale.

  Marty needed a few days to think before making any decisions about what

  to do next. He wanted to study the news and see how the story about him

  continued to be played, in the media's handling of it, he might be able

  to assess the power if not the identity of his true enemies, who

  certainly were not limited to the eerie and deranged look-alike who had

  invaded their home.

  They could not stay at his parents' house. It was too accessible to

  reporters if the story continued to snowball. It was accessible, as

  well, to the unknown conspirators behind the look-alike, who had seen to

  it that a small news item about an assault had gotten major media

  coverage, painting him as a man of doubtful stability.

  Besides, he didn't want to put his mom and dad at risk by taking shelter

  with them. In fact, when he managed to get a call through, he was going

  to insist they immediately pack up their motorhome and get out of

  Mammoth Lakes for a few weeks, a month, maybe longer.