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