"You're*?"

"Clocker. Karl Clocker."

"Shot him."

"Sure did."

"Who* who* was he?"

"Drew Oslett. Bigger question is what was he?"

"Huh?"

Clocker smiled. "Born of man and woman, but he wasn't much more human than poor Alfie. If there's an evil alien species out there somewhere, marauding through the galaxy, they'll never mess with us if they know we can produce specimens like Drew."

Clocker drove, and Charlotte occupied the front passenger seat. He referred to her as "First Officer Stillwater" and assigned her the duty of "handing the captain his coffee when he needs another sip of it and, otherwise, guarding against catastrophic spillage that might irreparably contaminate the ship."

Charlotte was uncharacteristically restrained and unwilling to play.

Marty worried about what psychological scars their ordeal might have left in hen-and what additional trouble and trauma might be ahead of them.

In the back seat, Emily sat behind Karl Clocker, Marty behind Charlotte, and Paige between them. Emily was not merely quiet but totally silent, and Marty worried about her too.

Out of Mammoth Lakes on Route 203 and south on 395, progress was slow.

Two or three inches of snow were on the ground, and the blizzard was in full howl.

Clocker and Paige drank coffee, and the girls had hot chocolate.

The aromas should have been appealing, but they increased Marty's queasiness.

He was allowed apple juice. From the convenience store, Paige had purchased a six-pack of juice in cans.

"It's the only thing you might be able to hold in your stomach," Clocker said. "And even if it makes you gag, you've got to take as much of it as you can because, with that wound, you're sure as hell dehydrating dangerously."

Marty was so shaky that, even with his right hand, he couldn't hold the juice without spilling it. Paige put a straw in it, held it for him, and blotted his chin when he dribbled.

He felt helpless. He wondered if he was more seriously wounded than they had told him or than they realized.

Intuitively, he sensed he was dying-but he didn't know if that was an accurate perception or the curse of a writer's imagination.

The night was filled with white flakes, as if the day had not merely faded but shattered into an infinitude of pieces that would drift down forever through an unending darkness.

Over the chittering of the tire chains and the grumble of the engine, as they descended from the Sierras in a train of cars behind a snowplow and cinder truck, Clocker told them about the Network.

It was an alliance of powerful people in government, business, law-enforcement, and the media, who were brought together by a shared perception that traditional Western democracy was an inefficient and inevitably catastrophic system by which to order society.

They were convinced that the vast majority of citizens were self indulgent, sensation-seeking, void of spiritual values, greedy, lazy, envious, racist, and woefully ignorant on virtually all issues of importance.

"They believe," Clocker said, "that recorded history proves the masses have always been irresponsible and civilization has progressed only by luck and by the diligent efforts of a few visionaries."

"Do they think this idea's new?" Paige asked scornfully. "Have they heard of Hitler, Stalin, Mao Tse-tung?"

"What they think's new," Clocker said, "is that we've reached an age when the technological underpinnings of society are so complex and so vulnerable because of this complexity that civilization-in fact, the planet itself-can't survive if government makes decisions based on the whims and selfish motivations of the masses that pull the levers in the voting booths."

"Crap," Paige said.

Marty would have seconded her opinion if he'd felt strong enough to join the discussion. But he had only enough energy to suck at the apple juice and swallow it.

"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 Huckleber y Finn from libraries and the people who want to ban books by Anne Rice may seem to be motivated by different concerns but they're spiritual brothers and sisters."

"Sure," Paige said. "They share the same motivation-the desire not merely to control what other people do but what they think."

"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."

Pie said, "An oranization of such extremes can't hold together "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."

Why did it look like me? Marty wanted to ask, but instead his head lolled onto Paige's shoulder and he lost consciousness.

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 out of one looking-glass after another, pursuing him, an ever-growing army of Martin Stillwaters, so like him on the outside, so dark and cold on the inside. Now ahead of him as well, reaching out from the mirrors past which he runs and into which he blunders, grasping at him, all of them speaking in a single voice, I need my life.

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, "sulfur 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 on the edge of the adjacent bed, watching over him. Emily was holding Peepers, the rock on which she had painted a pair of eyes, her pet.

Both girls looked terribly solemn.

He managed to smile at them.