Don't suggest I'm a fucking problem,' Bonnie retorted. 'I can make it back on my own.'

  'Not recommended,' the Cowboy said smoothly, his grin as youthful as it was licentious. 'Stay here if you want to.' I d be safe in your bed, would I?' Bonnie responded. Nothing'd happen that you didn't want to happen — you can be damned sure of that.'

  Let's go,' Gumshoe said, startled to find that he was concerned that Bonnie might actually decide to stay. 'I brought you here and I feel responsible for you, so I'm gonna take you back.' A real gentleman,'

  the Cowboy said.

  'Ain't he ever?' Bonnie replied. 'You wouldn't think of it to look at him, would you?'

  'He's a good kid,' the Cowboy said. 'Anyway,' he continued, turning to Gumshoe, 'you come back anytime and bring your lady. It always does me good to see you, dude, and your lady's a zinger.'

  'Yeah,' Gumshoe said, hastily getting out of his chair and motioning for Bonnie to do the same. 'Right.

  I'll see you when I see you, Cowboy.'

  'Make it soon,' the Cowboy said.

  Gumshoe vaulted over the railing and Bonnie came over after him, again declining to let him help her and spitting on the ground near his feet to make him feel bad. A real hitch in the making there, he mused.

  Gumshoe gave the Cowboy a big grin and waved his right hand. 'Adios,' he said. Then Bonnie waved and blew the Cowboy a kiss. The Cowboy blew one right back.

  'Anytime,' he said, smiling warmly at Bonnie before turning his languid gaze on Gumshoe. 'And you watch out for those cyborgs when you're going back.'

  'I will,' Gumshoe said.

  Fearful that Bonnie might try being even friendlier towards the Cowboy, he hurried back to his motorcycle and waited patiendy until she had climbed onto the pillion seat, with her arms and thighs pressed tightly to him.

  'He called me a lady,' Bonnie said, whispering into his ear. 'That's some guy back there.'

  'Yeah, right,' Gumshoe muttered. He kicked the motorcycle into life and shot off the way he had come, back through the dilapidated, often dangerous low-income housing projects with their smashed or caged windows, broken-down bars, and still highly active collection of thugs, pool-hall hustlers, pimps and whores, all surrealistically redrawn in the neon-lit darkness. Making it through without incident and soon approaching the bridge, he suddenly thought of something and braked to a halt.

  'So where do you live?' he asked Bonnie.

  'Nowhere,' she replied. 'I just got thrown out of my dive in Chinatown and now I've got nowhere to go.

  I was gonna go back with Snake Eyes, but now that's out of the question.'

  With his heart sinking, though also oddly exhilarated (even aware, as he was, that the Long Hair behind him was not showing too much concern for the fate of her supposed boyfriend), he said, 'What the hell does that mean? I mean, where are your things?'

  'What things?'

  'Your possessions.'

  'I don't have no possessions. The sons of bitches who threw me out kept my possessions in lieu of the unpaid rent.'

  'Shit,' Gumshoe said. 'So where do I take you?'

  'I'm not fussy,' Bonnie replied. 'Your place will do fine. Just don't expect no real-time interaction, 'cause right now I'm not into bein' touched.'

  'Well . . .' Gumshoe hesitated, not sure how he should respond, preferring to be on his own but, at the same time, not really wanting to let her go, feeling . . . something for her and confused by the feeling.

  He wasn't into real-time interaction himself and that was the truth of it. So why, when he would get

  nothing out of it, should he give himself headaches? 'I mean . . .'

  'Okay, just dump me,' she cut him short. 'You pick the spot. Just leave me and let the cyborgs pick me up. Say goodnight and sleep soundly.'

  'Okay! Okay! I'll take you home for the night. You can stay there until you work something out. Just don't give me no hassles.'

  The Cowboy called me a lady,' Bonnie responded haughtily, and you still think you can talk to me this way? Where the fuck do you get off?'

  Okay! Okay! I'm taking you back. Now you hold on real tight.'

  Don't worry. I will.'

  TT*T

  Gumshoe took her back to his place. They managed to get there in one piece. There were a few potentially nasty incidents — a SARGE here and there, a couple of Prowlers up ahead, a few remote-controlled flying saucers, or footballs — but he saw them all in time, from a good distance away, and managed to avoid them and keep going without being spotted. When eventually he reached Georgetown and had locked the motorcycle into its protective cage in the basement, he took Bonnie up to his apartment, switched on the lights, and was not surprised to hear her describe his home as a pigpen.

  'But it's okay/ she added hastily. 'It's all right. I mean, I've lived in a lot worse.'

  'Thanks a million,' he said.

  They did not sleep together. Gumshoe slept on the sofa. He was gentleman enough to let her have the bed, though he deeply resented it. He did not sleep at all and Bonnie did not come to the sofa, made no attempt to join him, just snored softly all on her own, so he spent the night thinking of Wilson and wondering if he might drag up something about him if he trawled through the World Wide Web. He went to work first thing the next morning, while Bonnie was still asleep, pursuing Wilson — a phantom, a teasing riddle — through the teeming, abstract world of cyberspace.

  Gumshoe found Wilson lurking there.

  Chapter Ten

  Michael was training himself with the rigour of an ancient samurai, honing his parapsychological skills for the day when he and others would move against the cyborgs — against Wilson — and wrest control of the world back from them. This course of intensive training had begun immediately after he had told Brandenberg about his extraordinary experience in Wilson's old chapel. Brandenberg had believed him and had accepted that the experience, if not necessarily meaning that Wilson was still alive or had been miraculously resurrected, certainly indicated that the demonic forces created by him were soon to be turned against Freedom Bay.

  'We can't wait for that to happen,' he had told Michael. 'We must take the initiative — and that may mean returning to the World.'

  'At last!' Michael had exclaimed.

  Brandenberg had smiled bleakly. 'I know you've always been impatient to do this. But I didn't think we were ready for it, not quite advanced enough in our technology — in our flying saucers and laser-beam weapons; in the parapsychological skills of yourself and the other adepts. I'm still not a hundred per cent sure. But now, whether we're ready or not, we have to find out what the cyborgs are up to and

  somehow put a stop to them. Once we move against them, however, there'll be no turning back, because we'll either win for good or lose for good and it won't end until that's been decided. The cyborgs want us out of here — we're the only free men left on Earth; the only ones still standing against them — and once we go back into the World, they'll do everything in their power to keep us there.'

  'What happens first?' Michael had asked, now more impatient than ever, excited by the knowledge that all his years of relentless work — the work that had begun early in childhood — were going to be put to good use at last. For the first time, he felt that it had all been worth it — and he was eager to prove it.

  'The cyborgs, as you know, have developed a diversity of parapsychological skills to make up for the loss of their eyes, ears and mouths. Those skills include psychokinesis, thoughtogra-phy, eyeless sight, psychometry and various forms of telepathy. If we're to move against them, we need people the equal of them in those skills, which means that you and the other adepts will have to strengthen your skills even more, to the absolute limit, no matter how dangerous the attempt. You'll do that over the next few weeks, commencing straightaway, while I and the other elders of the colony discuss the situation and decide what steps should be taken. When we're ready to move, we'll inform you. Meanwhile, you must work at your skills night and day. As part of your training, you'll try to find out as much as you can about the cyborgs, particularly those in the White House. You can attempt this by astral projection, if you wish, but please do so with care.'

  'I'll be careful,' Michael had said.

  'Use any means at your disposal,' Brandenberg had continued. 'Isolate yourself from your family and friends. Meditate alone. The other adepts will be alone also, which is as it should be.'

  'Can I venture into the wilderness?'

  'Yes. Leave immediately, departing via the dome, and I'll inform your parents in your absence. Any questions?'

  'No.'

  'Good luck, Michael.'

  Now Michael was far out in the Antarctic wilderness, well beyond where Robert Stanford had taken his last steps on Earth, in a vast, flat, glittering white plain surrounded by distant ice-capped mountains. He was sitting in the lotus position on the hardpacked snow, wearing only a loincloth, defying the freezing cold with the power of his will as he gazed wide-eyed into an immense, dazzling sun. He was practising a form of Tibetan tutno, defeating the cold through deep-breathing exercises and by focusing intensely on imagined inner fires, believing that in this way he could absorb prana, the life force, but also aware that it was dangerous in that it could cause hyperventilation and produce hallucinations or even unconsciousness, in which case his defences would be breached and he would freeze to death. At the same time, however, he was perfecting the skills that he had built up over the years, skills to do with controlling his pulse rate, digestion, metabolism and kidney activity while slowing his heartbeat almost to the vanishing point. In doing this, he was able to reduce himself, as an organism, to a condition similar to that of a hibernating animal. In fact, he could have been buried alive for several days without ill effects.

  Concentrating on his inner fire, he saw it flickering in eternity, beyond time and space, in that interior self that few humans ever perceived, something separate from the blood and the bone of the frail, mortal body. Time stood still where the fire burned, or, more accurately, where it did not exist; and though one day passed into the next, Michael did not age a second. He lost himself in that inner fire, became the fire, burned as a flame, and in the heart of the flame his soul took wing and he rose out of himself. Looking down, he saw himself in the lotus position, almost naked, covered in snow, his eyes

  wide open, a mere speck in that vast white plain; then he turned away, spiralling up like a vapour, to project himself into the radiant, boundless sky and transcend Earth's dominion. He travelled through his mind, through the cosmos, to come down in another place.

  He was back in the snow, still in the lotus position, still

  almost naked, but now in front of the glittering geodesic dome that he had left many days ago. He had come here, he realized, not by astral projection, but by the Tibetan art of lung-gom that he had practised alone for years and that enabled him to travel at great, unnatural speed across the most inhospitable terrain, not by running like normal men, but by lifting himself magically from the ground and proceeding by leaps, endowed with the elasticity of a rubber ball and rebounding each time his feet touched the ground. In this way he would have covered any distance in less than half the time it would have taken him outside the trance state.

  Aware that he had completed the first of his demanding exercises, he returned to his personal room inside the dome, the bleak abode of an adept, and refreshed himself by sleeping, eating and drinking regularly for forty-eight hours. His room, like all the other adepts' rooms, was dome-shaped (in fact, shaped like the interior of a flying saucer) and so spartan that it contained only a mattress on the stone floor, a blanket, some earthenware utensils for basic food and drink, and a low, glass-topped table holding items that could be used for his exercises in psychometry and thoughtography.

  As part of their training, the adepts, all Michael's age, would often enter another adept's room and walk around touching various items, to leave traces of their presence in the room when they quit it again.

  These traces, invisible to the naked eye, could be 'read' by one trained in psychometry: it was part of the individual adept's training that, upon entering his own room, he would attempt to ascertain if anyone had been there in his absence and, if so, seek to identify that person by the traces of himself that he had left behind. Michael did this, walking around his room and lightly touching various objects while concentrating upon them with his eyes closed. His concentration was fierce, highly developed over years of practice, and soon he could sense that someone had indeed been in the room in his absence, touching various objects to superimpose his own presence, or leave his own traces, over Michael's. Once Michael had managed to confirm this, he picked up a CD-ROM diskette, the object upon which he had most strongly felt the traces of the other individual, and concentrated upon it, keeping his eyes shut tightly, until he could visualize that other person with his inner eye. Recognizing another adept, Leon Turturro, he called him on his cellular phone.

  'Yes?' Turturro responded.

  'It's Michael. Did you enter my room while I was away?'

  'No.'

  'Yes, you did.'

  'I did not.'

  'You did.'

  'What makes you think that?'

  'I checked a CD-ROM that I haven't used for months and I felt your personality all over it. Once I felt you, I saw you.'

  'This must be love, Michael.'

  'You should be so lucky.'

  Turturro chuckled. 'You've traced the right man,' he admitted. 'Yes, it was me. Very good, Michael.'

  'I might pay you a visit some day.'

  'You do that,' Turturro said.

  Pleased, Michael went to see Lee Brandenberg and found the old man seated behind his desk, studying the computer screen in front of him, framed by the windows that gave a panoramic view of Queen Maud Land. All white. Everything. Plains and mountains alike. When Michael approached him, Brandenberg waved him into the chair at the other side of the desk.

  'So,' he said when Michael was seated, 'you've returned from the wilderness. How did it go?'

  'Excellent,' Michael replied, thinking (as he did every time he entered this room) of how Robert Stanford, Dr Frederick Epstein and the legendary John Wilson had all been, at one time or another, in this very same place. He was awed by the thought. 'I meditated there for many days, almost naked, yet the bitter cold didn't bother me at all. Nor did I have the need for food and drink from start to finish.

  When I returned, I ran all the way as if my feet had wings, completing the journey in less than half the normal time. I was in the trance state.'

  'You suffered no ill effects?'

  'None.'

  'Are you continuing with your training?'

  'Yes.'

  'So why are you here?'

  'Though I've managed in the past to project myself as far as the moon, I've never been able to get into any of the buildings being used by the cyborgs . . . places like the White House and the Pentagon, right here on Earth. I'm going to try again — I'll try to access the White House — but first I wanted to ask you about something that I've never quite understood.'

  'What's that, Michael?'

  'When they first arrived, the cyborgs took over every major government building in the world and most of the top-secret research establishments. While their reasons for taking over the latter were understandable — they wanted to use the facilities and labour of those establishments for their own research projects — their retaining of places such as the White House, Buckingham Palace, the Kremlin and the whole of the Forbidden City in Beijing seemed pointless to me.'

  'Why?'

  'Apart from the Forbidden City, most of those buildings are relatively small and not suitable for massive technological research.'

  'So?'

  'What do the cyborgs want them for?'

  'Psychological warfare,' Brandenberg said without hesitation. 'They're using their possession of those places as a constant reminder to us of just how much the human race has surrendered to them. Those particular buildings represent the highest authority in the country they belong to, so by taking them over and

  remaining in them, by throwing out the monarchies, the presidents, the political leaders, and by continuing to use the buildings for their own purposes, the cyborgs are depriving the humans of their greatest symbols of national pride and unity. The possession of those buildings is, in fact, a slap in the

  face to the people; a constant reminder that their leaders couldn't defend them and that the cyborgs are now in charge.'

  'But we don't really know what the cyborgs are getting up to in those buildings.'

  'No, we don't. As you said, most of them can't be used for large-scale technological research, but they could be used for medical, surgical and computer research — all areas that we know they're obsessed with. Certainly, they won't be wasting the space provided — but God knows what their projects are. So please try again to access the White House because we have to get in there.'

  Returning to his room, Michael squatted in the lotus position on the cold stone floor and placed himself in a 'receptive' state by first attaining complete relaxation, then, in that unnatural condition (complete relaxation being alien to the human condition), concentrating intensely on his inner self. Eventually, after hours that seemed like days, with the physical world dissolving around him and his spirit in free fall, his brain was producing a steady alpha rhythm that enabled it to have telepathic communication over vast distances — a form of astral projection. Once in this state, he prepared himself for his mental assault on the protected White House by concentrating on something easier to get at — the unprotected moon — and in this he succeeded.

  The cyborgs had taken over the dark side of the moon and Michael, through astral projection, saw their self-repairing robot moon-miners digging for plagioclase and anorthosite, which were a source of uranium, and ilmenite, containing titanium and iron. These substances, Michael knew, were used for the building of the cyborgs' flying saucers and other spacecraft. Realizing through this that the cyborgs were still involved in the building