images from movies as diverse as
Oslett said, “Where’s the Stillwater house?”
“We’re going to your motel.”
“I understood there was a surveillance unit staking out the Stillwater 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 I 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 carful 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
“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
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
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 schoolteachers, 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 Orange 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
