"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 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 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.

While they were traveling, changing campgrounds every night or two, no one could try to get at him through them.

Since the attempted contact at the bank in Mission Viejo, Marty had been subjected to no more of The Other's probes. He was hopeful that the haste and decisiveness with which they'd fled north had bought them safety. Even clairvoyance or telepathy-or whatever the hell it was-must have its limits. Otherwise, they were not merely up against a fantastic mental power but flat-out magic, while Marty could be driven, by experience, to credit the possibility of psychic ability, he simply could not believe in magic. Having put hundreds of miles between themselves and The Other, they were most likely beyond the range of his questing sixth sense. The mountains, which periodically interfered with the operation of the cellular telephone, might further insulate them from telepathic detection.

Perhaps it would have been safer to stay away from Mammoth Lakes and hide out in a town to which he had no connections.

However, he opted for the cabin because even those who might target his parents' house as a possible refuge for him would not be aware of the mountain retreat and would be unlikely to learn of it casually.

Besides, two of his former high school buddies had been Mammoth County deputy sheriffs for a decade, and the cabin was close to the town in which he had been raised and where he was still well known. As a hometown boy who had never been a hell-raiser in his youth, he could expect to be taken seriously by the authorities and given greater protection if The Other did try to contact him again. n a strange place, however, he would be an outsider and regarded with more suspicion even than Detective Cyrus Lowbock had exhibited.

Around Mammoth Lakes, if worse came to worst, he would not feel so isolated and alienated as he was certain to be virtually anywhere else.

"Might be bad weather ahead," Paige said.

The sky was largely blue to the east, but masses of dark clouds were surging across the peaks and through the passes of the Sierra Nevadas to the west.

"Better stop at a service station in Bishop," Marty said, "find out if the Highway Patrol's requiring chains to go up into Mammoth."

Maybe he should have welcomed a heavy snowfall. It would further isolate the cabin and make them less accessible to whatever enemies were hunting them. But he felt only uneasiness at the prospect of a storm.

If luck was not with them, the moment might come when they needed to get out of Mammoth Lakes in a hurry. Roads* drifted shut by a blizzard could cause a delay long enough to be the death of them.

Charlotte and Emily wanted to play Look Who's the Monkey Now, a word game Marty had invented a couple of years ago to entertain them on long car trips. They had already played twice since leaving Mission Viejo.

Paige declined to join them, pleading the need to focus her attention on driving, and Marty ended up being the monkey more frequently than usual because he was distracted by worry.

The higher reaches of the Sierras disappeared in mist. The clouds blackened steadily, as if the fires of the hidden sun were burning to extinction and leaving only charry ruin in the heavens.

The motel owners referred to their establishment as a lodge. The buildings were embraced by the boughs of hundred-foot Douglas firs, smaller pines, and tamaracks. The design was studiedly rustic.

The rooms couldn't compare with those at the Ritz-Carlton, of course, and the interior designer's attempt to call to mind Bavaria with knotty-pine paneling and chunky wood-frame furniture was jejune, but Drew Oslett found the accommodations pleasant nonetheless. A sizable stone fireplace, in which logs and starter material already had been arranged, was especially appealing, within minutes of their arrival, a fire was blazing.

Alec Spicer telephoned the surveillance team stationed in a van across the street from the Stillwater house. In language every bit as cryptic as some of Clocker's statements, he informed them that Alfie's handlers were now in town and could be reached at the motel.

"Nothing new," Spicer said when he hung up the phone. "Jim and Alice Stillwater aren't home yet. The son and his family haven't shown up, either, and there's no sign of our boy, of course."

Spicer turned on every light in the room and opened the drapes because he was still wearing his sunglasses, though he had taken off his leather flight jacket. Oslett suspected that Alec Spicer didn't remove his shades to have sex-and perhaps not even when he went to bed at night.

The three of them settled into swiveling barrel chairs around a herringbone-pine dinette table off the compact kitchenette. The nearby mullioned window offered a view of the wooded slope behind the motel.

From a black leather briefcase, Spicer produced several items Oslett and Clocker would need to stage the murders of the Stillwater family in the fashion that the home office desired.

"Two coils of braided wire," he said, putting a pair of plastic wrapped spools on the table. "Bind the daughters' wrists and ankles with it.

Not loosely. Tight enough to hurt. That's how it was in the Maryland case."

"All right," Oslett said.

"Don't cut the wire," Spicer instructed. "After binding the wrists, run the same strand to the ankles. One spool for each girl. That's also like Maryland."

The next article produced from the briefcase was a pistol.

"It's a SIG nine-millimeter," Spicer said. "Designed by the Swiss maker but actually manufactured by Suer in Germany. A very good piece."

Accepting the SIG, Oslett said, "This is what we do the wife and kids with?"

Spicer nodded. "Then Stillwater himself."

Oslett familiarized himself with the gun while Spicer withdrew a box of 9mm ammunition from the briefcase. "Is this the same weapon the father used in Maryland?"

"Exactly," Spicer said. "Records will show it was bought by Martin Stillwater three weeks ago at the same gun shop where he's purchased other weapons. There's a clerk who's been paid to remem her selling it to him."

"Very nice."

"The box this gun came in and the sales receipt have already been planted in the back of one of the desk drawers in Stillwater's home office, down in the house in Mission Viejo."

Smiling, filled with genuine admiration, beginning to believe they were going to salvage the Network, Oslett said, "Superb attention to detail."

"Always," Spicer said.

The Machiavellian complexity of the plan delighted Oslett the way Wile E. Coyote's elaborate schemes in Road Runner cartoons had thrilled him as a child-except that, in this case, the coyotes were the inevitable winners. He glanced at Karl Clocker, expecting him to be likewise enthralled.

The Trekker was cleaning under his fingernails with the blade of a penknife. His expression was somber. From every indication, his mind was at least four parsecs and two dimensions from Mammoth Lakes, California.

From the briefcase, Spicer produced a Ziploc plastic bag that contained a folded sheet of paper. "This is a suicide note. Forged.

But so well done, any graphologist would be convinced it was written in Stillwater's own hand."

"What's it say?" Oslett asked.

Quoting from memory, Spicer said,"

"There's a worm. Burrowing inside.

All of us contaminated. Enslaved. Parasites within.

Can't live this way. Can't live."

"That's from the Maryland case?" Oslett asked.

"Word for word."

"The guy was creepy."

"Won't argue with you on that."

"We leave it by the body?"

"Yeah. Handle it only with gloves. And press Stillwater's fingers all over it after you've killed him. The paper's got a hard, smooth finish.

Should take prints well."

Spicer reached into the briefcase once more and withdrew an other Ziploc bag containing a black pen.

"Pentel Rolling Writer," Spicer said. "Taken from a box of them in a drawer of Stillwater's desk."

"This is what the suicide note was written with?"

"Yeah. Leave it somewhere in the vicinity of his body, with the cap off" Smiling, Oslett reviewed the array of items on the table. "This is really going to be fun."

While they waited for an alert from the surveillance team that was staking out the elder Stillwater's house, Oslett risked a walk to a ski shop in a cluster of stores and restaurants across the street from the motel. The air seemed to have grown more bitter in the short time they had been in the room, and the sky looked bruised.

The merchandise in the shop was first-rate. He was quickly able to outfit himself in well-made thermal underwear imported from Sweden and a black Hard Corps Gore-Tex/Thermolite storm suit. The suit had a reflective silver lining, foldaway hood, anatomically shaped knees, ballistic nylon scuff guards, insulated snowcuffs with rubber ired strippers, and enough pockets to satisfy a magician. Over this he wore a purple U.S. Freestyle Team vest with Thermoloft insulation, reflective lining, elasticized gussets, and reinforced shoulders.

He bought gloves too-Italian leather and nylon, almost as flexible as a second skin. He considered buying high-quality goggles but decided to settle for a good pair of sunglasses, since he wasn't actually intending to hit the slopes. His awesome ski boots looked like something a robot Terminator would wear to kick his way through concrete block walls.

He felt incredibly tough.

As it was necessary to try on every item of clothing, he used the opportunity to change out of the clothes in which he'd entered the shop.

The clerk obligingly folded the garments into a shopping bag, which Oslett carried with him when he set out on the return walk to the motel in his new gear.