Mr. Murder

happened to be Oslett. However, as Alfie's primary handler, he knew that some of the blame would stick to him even though the operative's rebellion was not his fault to any degree whatsoever.
        The error must be in Alfie's fundamental conditioning, damn it, not in his handling.
        Leaving Clocker in the kitchen to keep a lookout for unwanted visitors, Oslett quickly inspected the rest of the motorhome.
        He found nothing else of interest except a pile of discarded clothes on the floor of the main bedroom at the back of the vehicle.
        In the beam of the flashlight, he needed to disturb the garments only slightly with the toe of his shoe to see that they were what Alfie had been wearing when he had boarded the plane for Kansas City on Saturday morning.
        Oslett returned to the kitchen, where Clocker waited in the dark.
        He turned the flashlight on the dead pensioners one last time.
        "What a mess. Damn it, this didn't have to happen."
        Referring disdainfully to the murdered couple, Clocker said, "Who cares, for God's sake? They were nothing but a couple of fucking Klingons anyway."
        Oslett had been referring not to the victims but to the fact that Alfie was more than merely a renegade now, was an untraceable renegade, thus jeopardizing the organization and everyone in it. He had no more pity for the dead man and woman than did Clocker, felt no responsibility for what had happened to them, and figured the world, in fact, was better off without two more nonproductive parasites sucking on the substance of society and hindering traffic in their lumbering home on wheels. He had no love for the masses. As he saw it, the basic problem with the average man and woman was precisely that they were so average and that there were so many of them, taking far more than they gave to the world, quite incapable of managing their own lives intelligently let alone society, government, the economy, and the environment.
        Nevertheless, he was alarmed by the way Clocker had phrased his contempt for the victims. The word "Klingons" made him uneasy because it was the name of the alien race that had been at war with humanity through so many television episodes and movies in the Star Trek series before events in that fictional far future had begun to reflect the improvement of relations between the United States and the Soviet Union in the real world. Oslett found Star Trek tedious, insufferably boring. He never had understood why so many people had such a passion for it. But Clocker was an ardent fan of the series, unabashedly called himself a "Trekker," could reel off the plots of every movie and episode ever filmed, and knew the personal histories of every character as if they were all his dearest friends. Star Trek was the only topic about which he seemed willing or able to conduct a conversation, and as taciturn as he was most of the time, he was to the same degree garrulous when the subject of his favorite fantasy arose.
        Oslett tried to make sure that it never arose.
        Now, in his mind, the dreaded word
        "Klingons" clanged like a firehouse bell.
        With the entire organization at risk because Alfie's trail had been lost, with something new and exquisitely violent loose in the world, the return trip to Oklahoma City through so many miles of lightless and unpeopled land was going to be bleak and depressing. The last thing Oslett needed was to be assaulted by one of Clocker's exhaustingly enthusiastic monologues about Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, Scotty, the rest of the crew, and their adventures in the far reaches of a universe that was, on film, stuffed with far more meaning and moments of sophomoric enlightenment than was the real universe of hard choices, ugly truths, and mindless cruelty.
        "Let's get out of here," Oslett said, pushing past Clocker and heading for the front of the Road King. He didn't believe in God, but he prayed nonetheless ardently that Karl Clocker would subside into his usual self-absorbed silence.
        Cyrus Lowbock excused himself temporarily to confer with some colleagues who wanted to talk to him elsewhere in the house.
        Marty was relieved by his departure.
        When the detective left the dining room, Paige returned from the window and sat once more in the chair beside Marty.
        Although the Pepsi was gone, some of the ice cubes had melted in the mug, and he drank the cold water. "All I