Forty years ago, shortly after my Antarctic colony was taken over by the US, the embryo created from my DNA was inserted into that unknown woman's womb and I was bom, nine months later, in the usual manner. Within hours of my birth, the woman was terminated and I was placed in the care of cyborgs specially programmed to think of nothing but my physical and mental well-being. The problem of the denial of the normal mother-and-child bonding, that could have led to serious emotional problems in later life, was solved by ensuring my creature comforts and by educating me, from my second year on, with a mass of information stored on vast databases and retrieved on interactive video disks. The information included not only history, geography, literature, philosophy, politics, mathematics and all the sciences, but also the history of the original 'me', including 'bis' childhood and daily thoughts, the latter culled from his own writings, as well as countless subtexts that gradually erased the need for an emotional bond with a natural mother. Thus, by the time I was ten years old (the same age that the original 'me' had been when he first realized that the sun would die), I was by normal standards a genius, had no need for anyone other than myself, and was dedicated, as the other 'me' had also been, to the unfettered pursuit of knowledge and, ultimately, to the creation of a new human race — one that will take us to the stars before the sun dies.

  The creation of that new race, a super-race, is now under way. My own rebirth took place during the relatively early days of eugenics, before the proper cloning of human beings had been perfected, but great progress has been made since then. Now test-tube clones, those bom outside the womb, are a large part of our work force and are, indeed, in charge of the cyborgs, under my overall command. The cyborgs had their day but it was very short-lived and now, with the coming of the clones, they will be made redundant.

  For the time being, however, they still have their uses, particularly because, being a man/machine hybrid, though now more machine than man, with many parts made of steel, they can withstand abnormal heat and pressure. Also, as their life-support functions of nourishment and waste-product removal are controlled by a central computer, they can 'exist'for as long as required without food or water. Thus, they are pe feet for work on the seabed and in outer space; as workers or soldiers who virtually have no limits and cannot be killed.

  The clones, on the other hand, though brought to life in test tubes and reared in artificial wombs, are still physically 'human in most respects. For this reason, apart from their function as general supervisors, they are used mainly outside our colonies — on the seabed, on the dark side of the moon, and in the real world —for work that requires interaction with normal humans who, though willing to work with us, find it psychologically and emotionally difficult to interact with the cyborgs. In time, however, recombinant-DNA technology will enable us to cross-breed drone human beings in which all genetic disorders have been removed, total obedience has been instilled, and physical and mental capabilities have been carefully manipulated to suit our specific needs.

  Those particular drone human beings, a product of the parallel evolution of machine intelligence and genetic adaptation, will be the first of the new super-race — the Ifeform that will succeed the present human race and take us to the stars.

  Though looking like normal human beings, they will in fact be chimeras, cross-bred from a combination of DNA strands taken from different chromosomal genetic programmes and reassembled in any form required for the geneticist's purposes.

  Thus, though essentially 'human', they will be abnormally strong, exceptionally intelligent, emotionally neutered and motivated beyond reasoning. Further, by re-stimulating the genes controlling their own limb or organ development, they will be able to regrow lost limbs or, more important for longevity, regenerate failing internal organs. They will then, in effect, be supermen.

  All of this will come about in the near future. Right now, however, the clones are physically 'normal' and only different in that they have been emotionally neutered: thus they can suffer no self-doubt or guilt, and have been programmed to do as they are told without moral restraint. They are out there right now, walking among you, unrecognized, and they are there, some in positions of great authority, to do only my bidding.

  Who is a friend and who is a foe?

  You cannot tell any more.

  I am neither friend nor foe because such terms are meaningless to me. I am simply doing what I have to do and I will let no one stop me. There are those who would try because they think in terms of 'right' and 'wrong'. But I know that such concepts have no place in evolution, that only understands where it must go and takes the most direct route. I will follow that route, letting nothing stand in my way, because man is a primitive being filled with primal fears and only science can lead him out of the cave and into the heavens.

  There is no right or wrong in this — the only moral law is progress — and those who must be used will be used, as we once used the animals: for all kinds of experimentation as well as for sustenance. The human race is merely evolution's tool, no more and no less, and soon it will be superceded by the fusion of genetic engineering and computers the size of molecules.

  When that happens, a new race will come into being and the old will die out.

  1 am here to hasten the advent of that great moment in history and I do so without personal feelings. I bear malice towards none. Nor do I bear good tidings. I merely state the facts as I see them and support them with action. My resurrection has ensured that I can do so and nothing else matters.

  I am here to finish the task that I undertook in my former life. In order to do this, I will have to take you with me — and you will not, you cannot, refuse me. Already you are trying to find me — and that says it all.

  I await your arrival.

  Chapter Eight

  'Wilson?' Brandenberg asked, looking perplexed. Formerly a captain with the USAF and now the seventy-year-old head of Freedom Bay, he sat behind Wilson's old desk in an expansive dome-shaped room that had windows running right around the white-metal walls, framing the view of the vast, snow-covered Antarctic wilderness. Between the windows there were doors, steel-plated, all closed, with control panels jutting out just beside them, their tiny lights flashing on and off. The desk was in the middle of the room and had a computer and various books piled upon it. Other books packed the shelves fixed to the walls between the windows. Brandenberg, now with a doctorate in physics, gained here in Freedom Bay where standards were much higher than they were in the World, smiled fondly at Michael out of a face that looked years younger than it was, though his hair was grey and thinning.

  With that slightly twisted lower lip, he could never have been too handsome, but the kindness in his gaze made him handsome in an avuncular kind of way. 'The message said "Wilson is back"?'

  That's right, sir,' Michael responded from where he was standing in front of Brandenberg's desk. 'The message just popped up on my e-mail when I was making my way back from Robert Stanford's burial ground, about thirty kilometres from here, along the zero meridian.'

  'Stanford wasn't buried,' Brandenberg reminded him. 'He floated away on a slab of pack ice and then froze to death.'

  'I know that, sir, but I like to think of that place, the last place he set foot on earth, as his burial ground.'

  Brandenberg smiled and nodded. 'Why not?' He indicated the chair at the other side of the desk with a wave of his hand. 'You'd better sit down,' he said. 'You might be here a long time.'

  Taking note of the remark, quietly spoken but still ominous, Michael sat in the chair facing Dr Brandenberg.

  'Do you know where the message came from?'

  'No. It had a code name for a Web poster that I know — a physics student in New Zealand with whom I correspond on a regular basis — but when I sent a message back, he insisted that he hadn't sent that message and had never heard of a Wilson. He did say that he had sent me another message, but it certainly wasn't anything about Wilson. He was adamant about that.'

  'So someone hacked into your system and managed to rewrite your friend's message?'

  'It would seem so, sir.' "Wilson is back"?'

  'That's what it said, sir.'

  'Wilson can't be back. Wilson's dead.'

  'I know that as well, sir.'

  Brandenberg sighed and sat back in his chair, gazing distractedly at the ceiling. He clasped his hands under his chin and remained silent for a considerable time. Eventually he lowered his gaze again.

  'Is this the first time you've received the message?'

  'Yes, sir.'

  'Have any of your e-mail friends received it? I mean, is it some kind of bizarre Internet practical joke?'

  'I ran an extensive check with my e-mail friends and none of them received that message. That's not to say that someone else hasn't received it, but certainly no one I know.'

  'Mmmm.' Brandenberg glanced around the expansive white-

  walled office, perhaps thinking back to when he had first come here to take over Wilson's notorious master-and-slave colony and turn it into something considerably more civilized. Certainly he seemed lost in thought.

  'You once met Wilson, didn't you?' Michael asked, hoping to break into Brandenberg's thoughts and learn more about the legendary creator of Freedom Bay.

  'Yes,' Brandenberg said, pointing with his index finger to the high ceiling. 'Up there. In the only room above this one. The one we keep locked up. The one Wilson called his chapel. Almost certainly in mockery of religion; certainly not out of respect for it. He liked to say that his one religion was science and that room, which indeed has the appearance of a stark stone chapel, is where he went when he wanted to be alone. He also went there to die.'

  'What was he like?'

  Brandenberg shrugged. 'I can't really say. He was a very old man at the time. In fact, he was dying when I met him. He was stretched out on a stone bed in that stark stone so-called chapel with the sunlight beaming in over him, making him look like a ghost. More so because he was old — a hundred and twelve years old — though he looked about twenty years younger. Of course, he'd had, in his lifetime, a lot of surgical intervention to aid longevity, as well as plastic surgery. But although he didn't look quite as old as he really was, he was certainly old.'

  'But what was he like}' Michael repeated with emphasis.

  'Well, even though he was visibly dying when I saw him — practically on death's doorstep, with only hours to go — his eyes were bright, filled with a luminous, cold intensity, and his features, though wasted and yellowed with jaundice, formed what I later described for the historical records as, quote, a mask of otherworldly repose.'

  'Otherworldly? What did you mean by that?'

  'It was a face of unsurpassable intelligence and inhuman lack of emotion — the face of an alien.'

  The description chilled Michael, though it also made him regret, as he had done so often, that he had not been born before his time, about fifty years ago, when he could have met the mysterious Wilson who had seemingly appeared out of nowhere to change the face of the world — just like an alien, indeed. The word 'seemingly' was appropriate in that some of Wilson's background was known, but the extent of his achievement, evil though it had been, when related to his obscure origins made it seem that he had appeared out of nowhere to create hell on Earth. Certainly, by any standards, Wilson's known background was sketchy, but it was enough to prove that he had been a human being, not an extraterrestrial. A mutant . . . possibly . . . but clearly one of the human kind.

  Born John Wilson on July 6, 1870, in Montezuma, Iowa, to Cass and Ira Wilson, both local farmers.

  Attended elementary school in Montezuma, then high school in Des Moines where, according to his old school reports, he obtained straight A's in every subject, though he had problems interacting with the other students and was widely viewed as a 'loner'.

  When Ira Wilson died, Cass moved back to his home town of Worcester, Massachusetts, and Wilson enrolled in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he studied aerodynamics. In 1893, the year of his father's death, he was enrolled in Sibley College, Cornell University, New York, where he studied experimental engineering and was known as an unusually gifted student and, again, as a

  'loner'.

  In 1895 he obtained his bachelor of science degree (BSc) in aeronautics. His youthful brilliance was recognized when, shortly after his graduation from Cornell, he obtained work with an aeronautical company, Cohn & Goldman Incorporated, that was attempting to construct commercial airships in a plant in Mountain Pleasant, located near Montezuma, where Wilson had been born, on the border of Iowa and Illinois. Though relatively inexperienced, he was placed in charge of the project and brought it off successfully, designing and constructing the

  first airships to fly over the United States. The secret test flights of those airships led to the Great Airship Scare of 1896—1897.

  Wilson's fanatical ruthlessness with regard to his work became evident when he gave Cohn & Goldman incomplete, unworkable drawings for the airships he had designed, blew up the airships he had already constructed for them, patented the proper designs in his own name and then sold them to Germany, thus enabling that nation to produce the airships that it used for its bombing raids against Allied troops during the First World War. Wilson then used the German money to finance his own aeronautical research plant in Illinois. There he secretly produced even more advanced aircraft, including the first

  turboprop biplanes to cross the Atlantic.

  When the US government realized what Wilson was doing, they clandestinely financed him for even more daring, revolutionary research projects. These included the problem of the boundary layer and dangerous experiments with atomic propulsion. Again, Wilson was successful on both counts. But when, in 1908, his most secret experimental aircraft, reportedly using atomic propulsion, flew all the way to Russia but then crashed in the Tunguska region of Siberia, causing an explosion so big that some believed it had been caused by a crashing meteor or even an alien spacecraft, the US government backed out of the project.

  Denied the funding that he needed for his work, Wilson spent the next two decades drifting incognito across the United States, from one small aeronautical company to another, keeping his light under a bushel but making a decent living by selling his less important innovations to commercial airline companies and aircraft construction plants.

  Eventually, in the fall of 1930, when he was sixty years old, he turned up in Eden Valley, Roswell, New Mexico, to work with Robert H. Goddard, the controversial rocket scientist who later became known as

  'the Father of the Space Age'. About six months later, shortly after Goddard had successfully launched his first liquid-fuelled rockets with Wilson's help, Wilson disappeared again.

  In 1931, Wilson materialized in Nazi Germany, seeking the support that the US government had denied him. Admired by SS Rekhsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler, he was sent to work in a secret research establishment located at Kummersdorf West, about fifteen miles from Berlin and adjacent to Wernher von Braun's Rocket Research Institute. There, ruthlessly using slave labour, he experimented with a wide variety of highly advanced technologies, helped create the VI and V2 rockets that devastated London, and eventually produced the first disc-shaped, vertical-rising jet aircraft, later to be termed

  'flying saucers'.

  Under no illusions about what would become of the so-called Thousand Year Reich, knowing that it would end in ignoble defeat and that he, Wilson, would be charged by the Allies as a traitor and war criminal, he used some high-ranking fanatical SS officers, who were already fired with the idea of creating an Aryan 'Super Race' in Antarctica, to continually send men and material to Himmler's secret underground complex in Neusch-wabenland. When the war ended, Wilson went to Antarctica, took over the complex, and gradually created his nightmarish 'scientific' colony of masters and slaves.

  Geared solely to ruthless scientific and surgical experimentation, the colony was soon using brain-implanted zombies to produce technologically advanced flying saucers, a wide variety of laser-beam weapons and, of course, cyborgs. The Great UFO Scare that began in 1947 with the Kenneth Arnold sightings and was accompanied by many tales of alien abduction was caused by Wilson's early saucers and cyborgs.

  Wilson's aim was world domination and, through that, an unfettered exploration of the cosmos. But in 1981, an American travel photographer and UFOlogist, Grant McBain, accompanied by USAF Captain Lee Brandenberg, managed to destroy the Antarctic colony's defence systems, thus enabling US forces to fly in and take command of it. However, even as this was

  happening, a large flying saucer, the Goddard, named after Wilson's sole hero on Earth, the great American rocket scientist with whom he had worked all those years ago, Robert H. Goddard, was launched into space and deliberately blown up with the dead Wilson inside it.

  Wilson's colony, without the robotized masters and slaves, was subsequently renamed Freedom Bay and dedicated to the overthrow of the cyborgs that, created originally by Wilson, had taken over the world to continue his diabolical work even after his death.

  So that was Wilson . . . the evil or, as some would have it, just amoral genius, who had died forty years ago and had now returned as a name on Michael's e-mail. The thought that the message wasn't a practical joke was persistent and haunting.

  'Anyway,' Brandenberg continued after his lengthy, thoughtful silence, 'Wilson is dead and that cryptic e-mail message can only be a little bit of mischief by a cyberspace lurker.'

  'What lurker?' Michael asked. 'The only people who know about Wilson are right here in Freedom Bay.

  Out in the World, even before the coming of the cyborgs, the existence of Wilson was kept secret. As far as history in the World is concerned, Wilson doesn't exist. So what kind of lurker would even think to use Wilson's name?'