We don't know that the message was referring to the same Wilson. It is, after all, a common surname.

  You're only assuming that it refers to "our" Wilson.'

  Don't you think it strange, sir, that I should receive that message when I'm actually at the spot where Robert Stanford, metaphorically speaking, turned his back on Wilson, choosing death as a free human being over life as Wilson's slave? Why should the message come to me there, of all places, if it doesn't refer to the same Wilson?'

  Brandenberg nodded thoughtfully and pursed his lips. 'It certainly seems odd,' he said.

  'And the phrasing: "Wilson is back." Back from where? It could be another Wilson who just went off somewhere and is about to return, but the name, the statement itself, the location and the timing, all make me think that it has to be about our Wilson.'

  'Then it has to be some kind of joke,' Brandenberg insisted. 'It can't be anything else.'

  'Even if we assume that it's a practical joke, that still raises the question: Who sent the message? Who's the hacker, out there in the World, who even knows about Wilson? The only known facts about Wilson, the only written records about him, are held right here in Freedom Bay.'

  'Then we could have a practical joker right here in our midst . . . But I doubt it.' Brandenberg shook his head from side to side, convincing himself. 'Our people aren't that kind. They don't play practical jokes and certainly, even if they did, they'd never use Wilson's name. So it's possible, but highly unlikely, that the joker is here. It must have come from outside.'

  'From where? To what purpose?'

  Perhaps wearied by Michael's persistence, Brandenberg pushed his chair back, turned away and walked to the panoramic window. He stood there, framed by the Antarctic wilderness, silhouetted against its ice-covered mountain peaks and dazzling

  ins of virgin snow. His shoulders were bent. Indeed, he was almost stooped. Michael realized then that Brandenberg, despite his youthful face, was indeed an old man.

  'Could Wilson still be alive?' Michael asked.

  'Of course not,' Brandenberg replied, talking to the window, his back still turned to Michael. 'He was in the Goddard when it exploded — and I saw it exploding.'

  'But did anyone actually see Wilson being carried into that flying saucer?'

  Brandenberg turned back to face Michael, his brow furrowed, his gaze focused inward, travelling back to the past. 'No,' he acknowledged. 'Come to think of it, no one did. His body went missing and we were told by Dr Epstein, when he had been freed from the influence of his brain implants, that Wilson had died

  and that his body had been placed in the Goddard. I personally saw that flying saucer exploding and Epstein said it had been exploded deliberately, in order to scatter Wilson's remains through outer space.

  That was, according to Epstein, Wilson's final request, made just before he died in that room, his so-called chapel, located right above us.'

  'Epstein might have lied.'

  'He might have, but I doubt that he would have. He would have lied about it when he was still under the influence of his brain implants, but certainly not once he was freed from them, as he was when I spoke to him. Besides, even if Wilson had survived, he would now be over a hundred and fifty years old.

  Even with our present medical and surgical skills — the most advanced in the world — we couldn't keep a man alive that long. So Wilson, even if using the longevity treatments available in his time, wouldn't have lived much longer than he did. This is why I believe he died and was blown apart in the exploding Goddard. I don't think Epstein lied to me.'

  Brandenberg returned to his desk, leaned back in his chair, clasped his hands under his chin and offered a slight, bemused smile.

  '"Wilson is back",' he repeated, as if talking to himself, shaking his head in perplexity. 'It's a mystery,'

  he added.

  Thev were silent for a moment, both thinking about the mystery, then Michael said, 'I still think there's something to it. I think it 15 about our Wilson and I don't think it's a practical joke. It came from the World, but it came from someone who knows about Wilson — a rarity out there — so if it's not a statement of fact, which surely it can't be, then it must be some kind of coded message.'

  'Relating to what?'

  '"Wilson is back . . ." Maybe that name is being used to suggest something relating to Wilson . . .

  Maybe the cyborgs. It could be a way of telling us that the cyborgs are about to do something special . .

  . something we should know about.'

  'Which, if it were true, would still leave us with the mystery of the poster's identity and whereabouts.'

  'Yes. So, at the very least, we should do our best to find out who this mysterious person is and then, if we can locate him, find out why he transmitted that message and just what it means.

  'How do you propose to do that? You've already traced the e-mail back to who you thought was the poster only to have him deny that he sent it. Clearly the real lurker is a hacker of the cleverest kind, maybe a flame ghoul trying to weave a disruptive thread. So even if he sends you another message, which he may not, you won't be able to find out where he's hiding because the details on the e-mail won't be his.

  'I wasn't intending to try cyberspace, Michael replied, suddenly nervous. 'I was thinking of using my gifts

  He was feeling nervous because the few who were gifted, as he was, only received advance training on the understanding that they would not use their 'gifts* without clearance from their superiors. Michael had not done that, but for him to even propose that he should use his talents for any purpose other than one of the first magnitude of importance made him feel that he had. His nervousness was only increased by the fact that as soon as he mentioned the subject to Dr Brandenberg the latter s eyes veiled over, indicating that he was either displeased or uncomfortable. He stared steadily at Michael for a long time, his face grave. Then he took a deep breath and expelled it as he spoke. 'Your gifts,' he said simply.

  'Yes.' Michael nodded. t

  'You believe that this message warrants that?

  'Yes, sir, I do.'

  'To employ your gifts, as you know, can be dangerous, so I must assume you think it's worth the risk.

  'I do,' Michael said.

  Now it was Brandenberg's turn to nod. He closed his eyes for a moment, thinking the matter through, deciding. Then, eventually, he opened them again and kept his gaze steady.

  'Which particular gift are you planning to use?' he asked.

  'Psychometry,' Michael replied, referring to his skill at obtaining information about a person simply by holding and focusing upon an object belonging to, or relating to, that individual. Like all of his parapsychological gifts, it was a useful talent, but one that could be dangerous: using it could place too great a strain on the heart and brain of the practitioner. For this reason, those with such psychic gifts could not use them without prior consultation with their superiors. 'I printed the e-mail out and I think I can use that paper to trace the poster.'

  'You might only trace the original sender — your friend in New Zealand — since it was him, in fact, who sent the original e-mail.'

  'I won't focus on his details. I'll focus on the message alone . . . on Wilson's name. I'll block everything else out.'

  'Do you think that's enough?'

  Michael hesitated, nervous again, then took a deep breath and plunged in with, 'No. I'm going to need something else.'

  Looking even more concerned, Brandenberg straightened up in his chair. 'Oh? What's that?'

  'I need to use Wilson's chapel,' Michael said. 'I think—'

  'You know that no one's allowed in there,' Brandenberg interjected, sounding angry. 'You know I can't permit that. You have no right to ask.'

  Michael did, indeed, know that traditionally no one was allowed into the room that Wilson had once described mockingly as his 'chapel' and that he had chosen to die in. Michael had never seen the room, but it had been described to him by Dr Brandenberg and he knew that there was nothing in it except the raised block of stone upon which Wilson had died. The room, unchanged, had been locked up by Brandenberg shortly after Wilson's death and had never been opened again because, as Brandenberg had said, 'It might be contaminated with Wilson's spirit, and that spirit is evil.' While this sounded, superficially, like an extraordinary attitude for a pragmatic scientist such as Brandenberg to have taken, Michael knew, particularly given the nature of his own gifts, that Brandenberg had his reasons.

  In Freedom Bay, parapsychology was accepted as a serious science and researches in the field had confirmed, among other things, that all human beings left some kind of psychic 'mark' on things around them and that information on an individual could be obtained by the concentration of mental energy upon an item touched by them or relating to them. It was this knowledge, therefore, and not primitive superstition, that had led Brandenberg and others in the colony to believe that traces of Wilson's personality could have been left in his chapel, particularly in the stone 'bed' upon which he had died, and that those traces could still contaminate, or corrupt, the person exposed to them. It was for this reason, then, that Wilson's chapel had been locked up shortly after his death and not entered by anyone since then.

  'In asking for access,' Michael said, 'I know that I'm asking for a great deal. But I don't have a choice. I

  think I can trace the poster through the printed e-mail, but only if I can also use the unseen emanations of Wilson's deathbed. Please let me try, sir.'

  Brandenberg stared steadily at Michael for a long time. Then he pushed his chair back, stood up and went again to the window overlooking the Antarctic wilderness. Michael sensed what he was thinking.

  He was thinking that the choice of the name 'Wilson' for that cryptic e-mail could not have been accidental and that it had to be some kind of coded message. He was thinking that the message, sent deliberately to the Antarctic, had to relate somehow to the cyborgs as well as to Freedom Bay. He was thinking that Michael's use of psychometry could be dangerous, particularly in Wilson's chapel, but that the possibility of the message being important made the risk worth the taking. He was thinking of saying 'Yes.'

  And, indeed, he did. Turning away from the window, he nodded and smiled, this being a positive sign, then opened a drawer in his desk and withdrew a key that he handed to Michael.

  'Be careful,' he said.

  'I will,' Michael replied.

  Smiling, he hurried out of the office, then made his way to the narrow flight of natural stone steps that curved up the short distance to the highest floor in Freedom Bay. The stairs opened out onto an expansive, pyramid-shaped hallway hacked crudely out of the mountain's rock and never properly smoothed. Small windows on either side of the hallway let striations of sunlight in, illuminating the stone-flagged floor — and the solid oak door to Wilson's chapel.

  Hesitating only a moment, his throat dry, Michael turned the key in the lock and stepped inside. He closed the door carefully behind him and then studied the chapel. It was high and dome-shaped, built of rock hewn from the mountain and empty except for a six-foot-tall block of stone, Wilson's deathbed, that was resting in the middle of the vast, stone-flagged floor. The bed was hazed in a pyramid of shimmering light created by the shafts of sunlight beaming obliquely in through the windows. The silence was so complete that Michael could hear his own heartbeat. He found this disturbing.

  Trying to keep his breathing even, he crossed to the centre of the room, withdrew the printed e-mail from his trouser pocket, then stretched out on the stone bed and laid the piece of paper on his chest with his hands clasped over it. He did not have to read it to see it: he could do that with his mind. Closing his eyes against the dazzling pyramidal web of light that fell across him, as it had once fallen across Wilson, he focused on the wording of the e-mail, on that one word, wilson, and soon saw it as clearly as if it was blazing in neon lighting inside his head. He breathed the presence of Wilson, felt the dead man's emanations, then rose out of himself, spiralling up into the light to gaze back down at the bed of stone — upon which he saw Wilson stretched out

  Michael knew with total certainty that it was Wilson. There could be no doubt about it. The man was very old, his skin yellowed with jaundice, but his gaze was still bright with a relentless intelligence and his features were so ascetic, so devoid of human emotion or warmth, that he seemed truly otherworldly. He was breathing harshly, clearly dying, dissolving into the shimmering light. But as he, the old man, was dissolving, another, younger man was taking his place.

  This, too, was Wilson. Michael was sure of it. The younger man looked strikingly like the dying one but he was many years younger, about forty years of age. Though his features were hazed in the shimmering light, he seemed oddly familiar.

  'You received my message,' he said, his voice ethereal, reverberating, ghostlike, 'and you cannot ignore it. Tell Bran-denberg that I'm back and that you saw me and he'll send you to find me. When you do so, you'll know where your future lies and you will go to it willingly. I am Wilson. Come find me.'

  The young Wilson dissolved also, fading into the shimmering light, back into the bed of stone. Then the old Wilson emerged from that same stone to die again before rebirth. He was there and then gone, dissolving like his younger self. Then the shimmering light brightened, became dazzling, phosphorescent, and Michael heard the pounding of his heart as a deafening thunder. His heart was racing and he was choking, breathing in harsh, anguished spasms: he knew that if he didn't get off the stone he would die just as Wilson had.

  He tried to sit up, but failed; tried again and failed again. He felt the tightening of his head from the strain of concentration, his brain waves agitated, lightning tearing his mind's blackness, the alpha rhythms pushing him to the very edge of epilepsy while his heart raced so fast that he couldn't breathe and felt that the end had come. He saw the abyss just in time and jumped back before he fell, breathing deeply and rolling off the bed of stone, landing on his feet.

  The piece of paper, Wilson's message, was on the floor and he bent down to pick it up. When he did so, his head started swimming and so he straightened up quickly.

  Shocked and exhilarated, hardly believing what had happened,

  he hurried out of the room, Wilson's chapel, and went straight back to Dr Brandenberg's office. There he found the learned professor waiting for him, his ageing face creased by anxiety, his still-youthful eyes curious.

  'Wilson's back,' Michael said.

  Chapter Nine

  'Hi, Dude,' Gumshoe said to the Cowboy where he was sitting in darkness on the porch of his Anacostia shack, silhouetted against the moonlit bend in the river, his booted feet up on the railing, a stetson hat on his head. Without otherwise moving a muscle, the Cowboy turned his head in Gumshoe's direction, then gave a big

  grif'

  'Well, I'll be damned,' he said, 'if it ain't my old buddy,

  Gumshoe. How ya bin, kid?'

  'Not bad,' Gumshoe said.

  The Cowboy's shrewd gaze shifted, moving up and down, taking in the length and shape of the Long Hair standing silently beside Gumshoe.

  'Mmmm,' he murmured appreciatively. 'And this is . . . ?'

  'Bonnie Packard,' Bonnie said before Gumshoe could speak. 'And you can keep those fuckin' eyes in your head, 'cause I'm not into real time.'

  The Cowboy's gaze shifted to Gumshoe.

  'She means sex,' Gumshoe explained. 'She's not into real-time sex. I mean, she only likes cyberspace interaction. She doesn't like to be touched.' Realizing what he had just said, he turned to look into Bonnie's bizarrely painted eyes. 'Hey, didn't you tell me you liked it both ways? Didn't I hear you say that?'

  'I only do it the other way occasionally and even then only

  with Short Hairs my own age. No way would I consider it with that corpse. I mean, what age are you,

  buddy?'

  The Cowboy wasn't offended. Cowboys took it all in their stride. He just grinned his lazy old grin, crinkled his prairie-green eyes, then took hold of the brim of his stetson hat to raise and lower it slightly. 'A man's only as old as he feels, Ma'am, an' I feel as young as you look.'

  The bone-hard Bonnie almost melted. 'Oh, shit, man, that's great. I mean, the way you talk, man. The fuckin' Short Hairs I run with, those boondockers, they couldn't come out with some thin' like that to save their fuckin' lives. You're not as old as you look, man.'

  'That's right kind of you to say so, Ma'am, but I sure don't deserve it.'

  'Yes, man, you do. Just call me Bonnie.'

  'Jesus Christ!' Gumshoe said. Disgusted, he spat in the grass around his feet, then grinned at the Cowboy and said, 'Okay, Dude, that's enough of that smooth shit. You got something to drink?'

  'I sure do,' the Cowboy said. Swinging his booted feet off the railing, he leaned down to the side of his chair and picked up a couple of bottles of Bud. Straightening up again, he levered the caps off with his teeth, spat the caps over the railing, then held up the bottles. 'You gonna stand down there all day?' he said. 'Or are you comin' up here?'

  'We' re coming up,' Gumshoe said.

  Motioning for Bonnie to follow him, he clambered up over the railing, onto the porch. When he turned back to help Bonnie up, she slapped his hand away and defiantly did it on her own. The Cowboy was sitting in an old rocking chair, but there were a couple of ordinary hard chairs beside him and Gumshoe and Bonnie sank down on them, then took the bottles of Bud from the Cowboy. He placed his booted feet back on the railing and sank back into the chair. When they followed his gaze, they saw spherical lights gliding across the night sky, silent and beautiful.

  'Motherfuckers/ the Cowboy said. 'They're out patrollin' every night. They rise an' fall as straight as a die to pick up what they want from the American earth — animal, vegetable or mineral. The world's sure changed, all right.'

  'You should know,' Gumshoe said. 'You were there at the beginning. What exactly happened that day, Cowboy? We wanna hear the full story.'