“What they’re really about,” Clocker said, “is brute power. The only thing new about them, regardless of what they think, is they’re working together from different extremes of the political spectrum. The people who want to ban
“Sure,” Paige said. “They share the same motivation—the desire not merely to control what other people do but what they
“The most radical environmentalists, those who want to reduce the population of the world by extreme measures within a decade or two, because they think the planet’s ecology is in danger, are in some ways simpatico with the people who’d like to reduce the world’s population drastically just because they feel there are too many black and brown people in it.”
Paige said, “An organization of such extremes can’t hold together for long.”
“I agree,” Clocker said. “But if they want power badly enough, total power, they might work together long enough to seize it. Then, when they’re in control, they’ll turn their guns on each other and catch the rest of us in the cross-fire.”
“How big an organization are we talking about?” she asked.
After a hesitation, Clocker said, “Big.”
Marty sucked on the straw, exceedingly grateful for the level of civilization that allowed for the sophisticated integration of farming, food-processing, packaging, marketing, and distribution of a product as self-indulgent as cool, sweet apple juice.
“The Network directors feel modern technology embodies a threat to humanity,” Clocker explained, switching the pounding windshield wipers to a slower speed, “but they aren’t against employing the cutting edge of that technology in the pursuit of power.”
The development of a completely controllable force of clones to serve as the singularly obedient police and soldiers of the next millennium was only one of a multitude of research programs intended to help bring on the new world, though it was one of the first to bear fruit. Alfie. The first individual of the first—or Alpha—generation of operable clones.
Because society was riddled with incorrect thinkers in positions of authority, the first clones were to be employed to assassinate leaders in business, government, media, and education who were too retrograde in their attitudes to be persuaded of the need for change. The clone was not a real person but more or less a machine made of flesh; therefore, it was an ideal assassin. It had no awareness of who had created and instructed it, so it couldn’t betray its handlers or expose the conspiracy it served.
Clocker downshifted as the train of vehicles slowed on a particularly snowswept incline.
He said, “Because it isn’t burdened by religion, philosophy, any system of beliefs, a family, or a past, there isn’t much danger that a clone assassin will begin to doubt the morality of the atrocities it commits, develop a conscience, or show any trace of free will that might interfere with its performance of its assignments.”
“But something sure went wrong with Alfie,” Paige said.
“Yeah. And we’ll never know exactly what.”
A hall of mirrors in a carnival funhouse. Frantically seeking a way out. Reflections gazing back at him with anger, envy, hatred, failing to mimic his own expressions and movements, stepping
The mirrors shattered as one, and he woke.
Lamplight.
Shadowy ceiling.
Lying in bed.
Cold and hot, shivering and sweating.
He tried to sit up. Couldn’t.
“Honey?”
Barely enough strength to turn his head.
Paige. In a chair. Beside the bed.
Another bed beyond her. Shapes under blankets. The girls. Sleeping.
Drapes over the windows. Night at the edges of the drapes. She smiled. “You with me, baby?”
He tried to lick his lips. They were cracked. His tongue was dry, furry.
She took a can of apple juice from a plastic ice bucket in which it was chilling, lifted his head off the pillow, and guided the straw between his lips.
After drinking, he managed to say, “Where?”
“A motel in Bishop.”
“Far enough?”
“For now, it has to be,” she said.
“Him?”
“Clocker? He’ll be back.”
He was dying of thirst. She gave him more juice.
“Worried,” he whispered.
“Don’t. Don’t worry. It’s okay now.”
“Him.”
“Clocker?” she asked.
He nodded.
“We can trust him,” she said.
He hoped she was right.
Even drinking exhausted him. He lowered his head onto the pillow again.
Her face was like that of an angel. It faded away.
Escaping from the hall of mirrors into a long black tunnel. Light at the far end, hurrying toward it, footsteps behind, a legion in pursuit of him, gaining on him, the men from out of the mirrors. The light is his salvation, an exit from the funhouse. He bursts out of the tunnel, into the brightness, which turns out to be the field of snow in front of the abandoned church, where he runs toward the front doors with Paige and the girls, The Other behind them, and a shot explodes, a lance of ice pierces his shoulder, the ice turns to fire, fire—
The pain was unbearable.
His vision was blurred with tears. He blinked, desperate to know where he was.
The same bed, the same room.
The blankets had been pulled aside.
He was naked to the waist. The bandage was gone.
Another explosion of pain in his shoulder wrung a scream from him. But he was not strong enough to scream, and the cry issued as a soft, “Ahhhhhh.”
He blinked away more tears.
The drapes were still closed over the windows. Daylight had replaced darkness at the edges.
Clocker loomed over him. Doing something to his shoulder.
At first, because the pain was excruciating, he thought Clocker was trying to kill him. Then he saw Paige with Clocker and knew that she would not let anything bad happen.
She tried to explain something to him, but he only caught a word here and there: “sulfa powder . . . antibiotic . . . penicillin . . .”
They bandaged his shoulder again.
Clocker gave him an injection in his good arm. He watched. With all of his other pains, he couldn’t feel the prick of the needle.
For a while he was in a hall of mirrors again.
When he found himself in the motel bed once more, he turned his head and saw Charlotte and Emily sitting
