Mr. Murder

was inhibiting blood-cell formation.”

Oslett took a bite of the eggs. There was basil in them, and they were marvelous. “I fail to see where Charlotte’s illness could have any relationship to our current problem.”

After pausing for effect, Waxhill said, “She was hospitalized at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles.”

Oslett froze with a second forkful of eggs halfway to his mouth.

“Five years ago,” Waxhill repeated for emphasis.

“What month?”

“December.”

“What day did Stillwater give the marrow sample?”

“The sixteenth. December sixteenth.”

“Damn. But we had a blood sample as well, a backup—”

“Stillwater also gave blood samples. One of them would have been packaged with each marrow sample for lab work.”

Oslett conveyed the forkful of eggs to his mouth. He chewed, swallowed, and said, “How could our people screw up like this?”

“We’ll probably never know. Anyway, the ‘how’ doesn’t matter as much as the fact they did screw up, and we have to live with it.”

“So we never started where we thought we did.”

“Or with whom we thought we started,” Waxhill rephrased.

Clocker was eating like a horse without a feed bag. Oslett wanted to throw a towel over the big man’s head to spare Waxhill the unpleasant sight of such vigorous mastication. At least the Trekker had not yet punctuated the conversation with inscrutable commentary.

“Exceptional kippers,” Waxhill said.

Oslett said, “I’ll have to try one.”

After sipping orange juice and patting his mouth with his napkin, Waxhill said, “As to how your Alfie knew Stillwater existed and was able to find him . . . there are two theories at the moment.”

Oslett noticed the “your Alfie” instead of “our Alfie,” which might mean nothing—or might indicate an effort was already under way to shift the blame to him in spite of the incontrovertible fact that the disaster was directly the result of sloppy scientific procedures and had nothing whatsoever to do with how the boy had been handled during his fourteen months of service.

“First,” Waxhill said, “there’s a faction that thinks Alfie must have come across a book with Stillwater’s picture on the jacket.”

“It can’t be anything that simple.”

“I agree. Though, of course, the about-the-author paragraph on the flap of his last two books says he lives in Mission Viejo, which would have given Alfie a good lead.”

Oslett said, “Anybody, seeing a picture of an identical twin he never knew he had, would be curious enough to look into it—except Alfie. Whereas an ordinary person has the freedom to pursue a thing like that, Alfie doesn’t. He’s tightly focused.”

“Aimed like a bullet.”

“Exactly. He broke training here, which required a monumental trauma. Hell, it’s more than training. That’s a euphemism. It’s indoctrination, brainwashing—”

“He’s programmed.”

“Yes. Programmed. He’s the next thing to a machine, and just seeing a photograph of Stillwater wouldn’t send him spinning out of control any more than the personal computer in your office would start producing sperm and grow hair on its back just because you scanned a photograph of Marilyn Monroe onto its hard disk.”

Waxhill laughed softly. “I like the analogy. I think I’ll use it to change some minds, though of course I’ll credit it to you.”

Oslett was pleased by Waxhill’s approval.

“Excellent bacon,” said Waxhill.

“Yes, isn’t it.”

Clocker just kept eating.

“The second and smaller faction,” Waxhill continued, “proposes a more exotic—but, at least to me, more credible—hypothesis to the effect that Alfie has a secret ability of which we’re not aware and which he may not fully understand or control himself.”

“Secret ability?”

“Rudimentary psychic perception perhaps. Very primitive . . . but strong enough to make a connection between him and Stillwater, draw them together because of . . . well, because of all they share.”

“Isn’t that a bit far out?”

Waxhill smiled and nodded. “I’ll admit it sounds like something out of a Star Trek movie—”

Oslett cringed and glanced at Clocker, but the big man’s eyes didn’t shift from the food heaped on his plate.

“—though the whole project smacks of science fiction, doesn’t it?” Waxhill concluded.

“I guess so,” Oslett conceded.

“The fact is, the genetic engineers have given Alfie some truly exceptional abilities. Intentionally. So doesn’t it seem possible they’ve unintentionally, inadvertently given him other superhuman qualities?”

“Even inhuman qualities,” Clocker said.

“Well, now, you’ve just shown me a more unpleasant way to look at it,” Waxhill said, regarding Karl Clocker soberly, “and all too possibly a more accurate view.” Turning to Oslett: “Some psychic link, some strange mental connection, might have shattered Alfie’s conditioning, erased his program or caused him to override it.”

“Our boy was in Kansas City, and Stillwater was in southern California, for God’s sake.”

Waxhill shrugged. “A TV broadcast goes on forever, to the end of the universe. Beam a laser from Chicago toward the far end of the galaxy, and that light will get there someday, thousands of years from now, after Chicago is dust—and it’ll keep on going. So maybe distance is meaningless when you’re dealing with thought waves, too, or whatever it was that connected Alfie to this writer.”

Oslett had lost his appetite.

Clocker seemed to have found it and added it to his own.

Pointing to the basket of croissants, Waxhill said, “These are excellent—and in case you didn’t realize, there are two kinds here, some plain and some with almond paste inside.”

“Almond croissants are my favorite,” Oslett said, but didn’t reach for one.

Waxhill said, “The best croissants in the world—”

“—are in Paris,” Oslett interjected, “in a quaint cafe less than a block off—”

“—the Champs Elysees,” Waxhill finished, surprising Oslett.

“The proprietor, Alfonse—”

“—and his wife, Mirielle—”

“—are culinary geniuses and hosts without equal.”

“Charming people,” Waxhill agreed.

They smiled at each other.

Clocker served himself more sausages, and Oslett wanted to knock that stupid hat off his head.

“If there’s any chance that our boy has extraordinary powers, however feeble, which we never intended to give him,” Waxhill said, “then we must consider the possibility that some qualities we did intend to give him didn’t turn out quite as we thought they did.”

“I’m afraid I don’t follow,” Oslett said.

“Essentially, I’m talking about sex.”

Oslett was surprised. “He has no interest in it.”

“We’re sure of that, are we?”

“He’s apparently male, of course, but he’s impotent.”

Waxhill said nothing.

“He was engineered to be impotent,” Oslett stressed.