by Dean Koontz
Mammoth Lakes, California.
Jim and Alice Stillwater. Who taught him to be an honest man. Who can’t be blamed if he is able to think like a criminal. To whom he dedicated a novel. Beloved. Cherished. Stolen from him but soon to be reclaimed.
He is eager to enlist them in his crusade to regain his family and his destiny. Perhaps the false father can deceive his children, and perhaps even Paige can be fooled into accepting the imposter as the real Martin Stillwater. But his parents will recognize their true son, blood of their blood, and will not be misled by the cunning mimicry of that family-stealing fraud.
Since turning onto Highway 395, where traffic is light, the BMW had maintained a steady sixty to sixty-five miles an hour, though the road made greater speed possible in many areas. Now, he pushes the Camry north at seventy-five and eighty. He should be able to reach Mammoth Lakes between two o’clock and two-fifteen, half an hour to forty-five minutes ahead of the imposter, which will give him time to alert his mother and father to the evil intentions of the creature that masquerades as their son.
The highway angles northwest across Indian Wells Valley, with the El Paso Mountains to the south. Mile by mile, his heart swells with emotion at the prospect of being reunited with his mom and dad, from whom he has been cruelly separated. He aches with the need to embrace them and bask in their love, their unquestioning love, their undying and perfect love.
8
The Bell JetRanger executive helicopter that conveyed Oslett and Clocker to Mammoth Lakes belonged to a motion-picture studio that was a Network affiliate. With black calfskin seats, brass fixtures, and cabin walls plushly upholstered in emerald-green lizard skin, the ambiance was even more luxurious than in the passenger compartment of the Lear. The chopper also offered a more entertaining collection of reading matter than had been available in the jet, including that day’s editions of The Hollywood Reporter and Daily Variety plus the most recent issues of Premiere, Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, Forbes, Fortune, GQ, Spy, The Ecological Watch Society Journal, and Bon Appétit.
To occupy his time during the flight, Clocker produced another Star Trek novel, which he had purchased in the gift shop at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel before they checked out. Oslett was convinced that the spread of such fantastical literature into the tastefully appointed and elegantly managed shops of a five-star resort—formerly the kind of place that catered to the cultured and powerful, not merely the rich—was as alarming a sign of society’s imminent collapse as could be found, on a par with heavily armed crack-cocaine dealers selling their wares in schoolyards.
As the JetRanger cruised north through Sequoia National Park, King’s Canyon National Park, along the western flank of the Sierra Nevadas, and eventually directly into those magnificent mountains, Oslett kept moving from one side of the helicopter to the other, determined not to miss any of the stunning scenery. The vastnesses beneath him were so sparsely populated, they might have been expected to trigger his nearly agoraphobic aversion to open spaces and rural landscapes. But the terrain changed by the minute, presenting new marvels and ever-more-splendid vistas at a sufficiently swift pace to entertain him.
Furthermore, the JetRanger flew at a much lower altitude than the Lear, giving Oslett a sense of headlong forward motion. The interior of the helicopter was noisier and shaken by more vibrations than the passenger compartment of the jet, which he also liked.
Twice he called Clocker’s attention to the natural wonders just beyond the windows. Both times the big man merely glanced at the scenery for a second or two, and then without comment returned his attention to Six-Breasted Amazon Women of the Slime Planet.
“What’s so damned interesting in that book?” Oslett finally demanded, dropping into the seat directly opposite Clocker.
Finishing the paragraph he was reading before looking up, Clocker said, “I couldn’t tell you.”
“Why not?”
“Because even after I told you what I find interesting in this book, it wouldn’t be interesting to you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Clocker shrugged. “I don’t think you’d like it.”
“I hate novels, always have, especially science fiction and crap like that.”
“There you go.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just that you’ve confirmed what I said—you don’t like this sort of thing.”
“Of course I don’t.”
Clocker shrugged again. “There you go.”
Oslett glared at him. Gesturing at the book, he said, “How can you like that trash?”
“We exist in parallel universes,” Clocker said.
“What?”
“In yours, Johannes Gutenberg invented the pinball machine.”
“Who?”
“In yours, perhaps the most famous guy named Faulkner was a virtuoso on the banjo.”
Scowling, Oslett said, “None of this crap is making any sense to me.”
“There you go,” Clocker said, and returned his attention to Kirk and Spock in Love, or whatever the epic was titled.
Oslett wanted to kill him. This time, in Karl Clocker’s cryptic patter, he detected a subtly expressed but deeply felt disrespect. He wanted to snatch off the big man’s stupid hat and set fire to it, duck feather and all, grab the paperback out of his hands and tear it to pieces, and pump maybe a thousand rounds of hollow-point 9mm ammo into him at extreme close range.
Instead, he turned to the window to be soothed by the majesty of mountain peaks and forests seen at a hundred and fifty miles an hour.
Above them, clouds were moving in from the northwest. Plump and gray, they settled like fleets of dirigibles toward the mountaintops.
At 1:10 Tuesday afternoon, at an airfield outside of Mammoth Lakes, they were met by a Network representative named Alec Spicer. He was waiting on the blacktop near the concrete-block and corrugated-steel hangar where they set down.
Though he knew their real names and was, therefore, at least of a rank equal to Peter Waxhill’s, he was not as impeccably attired, suave, or well-spoken as that gentleman who had briefed them over breakfast. And unlike the muscular Jim Lomax at John Wayne Airport in Orange County last night, he let them carry their own luggage to the green Ford Explorer that stood at their disposal in the parking area behind the hangar.
Spicer was about fifty years old, five feet ten, a hundred and sixty pounds, with brush-cut iron-gray hair. His face was all hard planes, and his eyes were hidden behind sunglasses even though the sky was overcast. He wore combat boots, khaki slacks, khaki shirt, and a battered leather flight jacket with numerous zippered pockets. His erect posture, disciplined manner, and clipped speech pegged him for a retired—perhaps cashiered—army officer who was unwilling to change the attitudes, habits, or wardrobe of a military careerist.
“You’re not dressed properly for Mammoth,” Spicer said sharply as they walked to the Explorer, his breath streaming from his mouth in white plumes.
“I didn’t realize it would be quite so cold here,” Oslett said, shuddering uncontrollably.
“Sierra Nevadas,” Spicer said. “Almost eight thousand feet above sea level where we stand. December. Can’t expect palm trees, hula skirts, and piña coladas.”
“I knew it would be cold, just not this cold.”
“You’ll freeze your ass off,” Spicer said curtly.
“This jacket’s warm,” Oslett said defensively. “It’s cashmere.”
“Good for you,” Spicer said.
He raised the hatch on the back of the Explorer and stood aside to let them load their luggage into the cargo space.
Spicer got behind the wheel. Oslett sat up front. In the back seat, Clocker resumed reading The Flatulent Ferocity from Ganymede.
Driving away from the airfield into town, Spicer was silent for a while. Then: “Expecting our first snow of the season later today.”
“Winter’s my favorite time of the year,” Oslett said.
“Might
not like it so much with snow up to your ass and those nice oxfords turning hard as a Dutchman’s wooden shoes.”
“Do you know who I am?” Oslett asked impatiently.
“Yes, sir,” Spicer said, clipping his words even more than usual but inclining his head slightly in a subtle acknowledgment of his inferior position.
“Good,” Oslett said.
In places, tall evergreens crowded both sides of the roadway. Many of the motels, restaurants, and roadside bars boasted ersatz alpine architecture, and in some cases their names incorporated words that called to mind images from movies as diverse as The Sound of Music and Clint Eastwood vehicles: Bavarian this, Swiss that, Eiger, Matterhorn, Geneva, Hofbrau.
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 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.”
9
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 assa
ult 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. In 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.
