managed to make it through the dubious stretch of houses with boarded-up windows, caged-in shops, heavily guarded pool halls and broken-down bars without being hauled off the motorcycle by some of the dangerous thugs who ruled this area. After passing through that stretch safely, Gumshoe took the first bridge across the Anacostia River, intending to avoid the Mall and the White House area where the cyborg patrols would be out in force, looking for those breaking the midnight curfew.

  This was no help to him.

  He was burning along Ohio Drive when a small, silver-white disc, a so-called football, spinning rapidly on its axis and giving off an eerie glow, shot so quickly out of the darkness of West Potomac Park that it was hovering in mid-air right in front of him before he could avoid it.

  Startled, he wrenched on the handlebars of his motorcycle, intending to go around the football. But it cut abrupdy across his path, stopping in front of him again, and made him take an even sharper turn. He heard Bonnie scream as the motorcycle went into a spin, and he bawled 'Jump!' when he knew he had lost control and was braking to slow it down.

  The bike went into a screeching slide, spinning along the side of the road, hurling up a shower of sparks. As it toppled over, making an awful din, Bonnie jumped off and rolled over the ground.

  Gumshoe let go, following Bonnie's example, and then also rolled over the ground, putting space between himself and the crashing bike. The bike bounced up onto the sidewalk, smashed down onto its side, shuddered violently and eventually was still - though the front wheel kept turning.

  Gumshoe jumped to his feet and saw Bonnie up ahead, shaking her head from side to side, trying to clear it, as the football, no longer spinning or glowing, now a clear metallic grey, glided towards her.

  Watch out!' Gumshoe bawled.

  He rushed up to Bonnie, pushed her violently sideways and screamed at her to run for it as the football made a half-turn

  towards him, attracted by the sound of his voice. A hole opened up in the sloping top half of the football and a laser beam shot out of it, a thin beam of silvery-white pulsating light filled with sparks, hitting him fully on the face to temporarily blind him, then making his vision explode into a subjective cosmos of spinning stars.

  He felt himself falling, thudding onto the ground, and managed to raise his head just enough to see Bonnie running away, losing herself in the darkness of the park.

  'Good girl,' Gumshoe whispered.

  He tried to sit upright, but he seemed to be paralysed, every bone in his body frozen. As he lay there, filling up with helpless dread, another flying saucer, a much bigger craft, one of the fifty-foot manned saucers known as a paddy wagon, descended upon the road just ahead of him. It stopped just above the road, mere inches from its surface: then a metallic panel swung down from the paddy wagon's side to form a ramp to the ground.

  Two cyborgs emerged and walked directly towards him. They were less than four feet tall, had metallic masks instead of noses and lips, and were dressed in silvery-grey coveralls and black leather boots.

  They both had normal hands, though neither held a weapon.

  They stood over Gumshoe who remained paralysed, in despair, awash with horror and dread. Then they leaned down to grab him by the shoulders and jerk him upright.

  Gumshoe stood on his own two feet, though he couldn't feel a thing — not those feet, not his hands, not his arms, not even his lips. Then he found himself moving towards the hovering saucer, either being carried or dragged there by the cyborgs.

  He moved up the ramp — by what means he could not tell-and then entered the dazzling light of another world. That was when the real nightmare began.

  Chapter Twenty

  The old beat-up truck rattled and rolled beyond Harrisonburg as the sun climbed higher in the sky and Michael coughed to clear his throat of the cigarette smoke filling the cabin from the countless cigarettes of the driver. A sun-withered, rheumy-eyed old farmer wearing a bib-and-brace, he was grilling Michael because he was a stranger hereabouts.

  'Could tell that straightaway,' the fanner, who had introduced himself as Ira Fisher, said. 'I knows 'em all, north and south, east and west, an' I could tell right off that you wasn't from Virginee. That's why I picked you up.'

  'Because I wasn't from here?'

  Right,' Ira said. 'Livin' here, a man gets bored right quick, so a talk with a stranger is edifying. You understand?'

  'Yes, I do,' Michael said.

  So where's you from?'

  Cincinnati,' Michael replied, deciding to stick to his original story.

  Never been to Cincinnati,' Ira informed him. 'Never had the inclination. Too big a place for the likes of me. So what did you do there?'

  'Lecturer at the Xavier University,' Michael lied blandly. 'I was there for a year. My first job after graduation.'

  'Lecturer? Sounds like a cushy number to me. You like teaching, do you?'

  'It's okay,' Michael said, now getting into his role-playing and feeling more comfortable with it. 'It's not exactly what I wanted to do, but things aren't easy these days.'

  'Damned right, they're not,' Ira said. 'Ever since those lousy cyborgs took over, it's been pretty hard all round. Not that it affected me much, me bein' a farmer and all. The cyborgs ain't really interested in rural matters, particularly if you ain't into exports. I mean, me, I deal in oats and groundnuts, selling

  'em in places like Alexandria, so I don't have a problem. It's the bigger fish, like them in the tobacco industry, them dependin' on exportin', that was hit hardest when the cyborgs took over. When those cyborgs grounded the aircraft and docked the ships, they put a stop to exportin' and that ruined a lot of folks. Not me, though. I'm purely local deliveries.'

  'Lucky you,' Michael said.

  'Yeah, lucky me. So where's you headin' for, kid?'

  'Where you're going,' Michael said, deciding not to mention Washington DC again since clearly, given the reaction of young Jim and his mother, people wondered about someone wanting to go there.

  'Alexandria?'

  'Right. I got a job teaching there and I start next week. Do you go there a lot?'

  'Once a week,' Ira said. 'Sell my stuff to the restaurants and shops and there's still a lot of those there.'

  'Nice town?'

  'Yeah, right pretty. Located right there on the Potomac and the Old Town still stays pretty nice 'cause there's nothing there to really interest the cyborgs. Used to have lots of tourists, but that's all died out, of course, since no foreign tourists can get into the goddamned country and American tourists don't wanna go near it 'cause it's too close to Washington DC, where everyone knows the cyborgs are thick on the ground. So it's mostly

  residential now, though it costs a fortune to live there. But that money can still buy good amenities, such as clean roads and street lights. So, yeah, Alexandria's not bad. You could do worse, kid. Just stay out of Washington DC and you should be okay/

  Mindful that Ira could be one of the walking dead, softening him up to loosen his tongue, Michael glanced sideways at him, saw his rheumy, bloodshot eyes and assessed him as a bit of an old soak, not brainwashed at all. Relieved, but still not certain, he said, 'Have you ever had any close encounters with the saucers or cyborg ground patrols?'

  Ira shook his head, then spat out of the window of the truck. 'Naw, not me. Not way out there in

  Shenandoah. See the odd saucer flying overhead occasionally, but usually pretty high up and obviously on its way to somewhere else. They're not really interested in rural areas, from what I've heard; they're more interested in industrial zones and them secret research places and, of course, anything to do with what used to be our national defence — air force bases and so on. That's why they're so thick in Maryland, as well as in the capital. 'Course, you do hear stories, even way out here in Virginee.'

  'Stories?' Michael was gazing out of his window, still trying to get used to the sheer beauty of the World: the rich pastures and orchards, the soft browns of the tree trunks, the golden leaves of the trees themselves, the vivid green of the grassy slopes, the silvery, glittering streams, the white-painted houses and fences, the different, deeper blue of the sky. Used to the vast, relatively featureless whiteness of the Antarctic, he was having problems in taking in all this detail, though he was getting used to it. 'What kind of stories?'

  'Well, as I say, I've personally only ever seen the saucers flying up real high, on their way to some place else, but I'm told that they even come down over Virginee, mostly at nights, and that occasionally people disappear and ain't ever seen again. Sometimes their cars or trucks are found — the doors open, the key still in the ignition — but other times the vehicle vanishes as well. Then, of course, the farmers sometimes talk of cattle and other animals being found dead and mutilated, cut up with surgical skill. The say the cyborgs are doing it — cutting up the animals for spare parts; sometimes draining their blood. I don't know if those stories are true or not, but they sure make a man think.'

  Michael believed the stories. He knew from his research that even as far back as the 1960s and 1970s, way back in the Old Age, Wilson's air crews, some human, others cyborg, had been landing in their saucers to butcher animals, drain them of blood and remove their organs for use in their surgical experiments or as spare parts for more cyborgs. According to what Michael had read, those animal mutilations had terrified the populace even more than the human abductions had, striking some primitive nerve that made them think of ancient, diabolical rituals instead of the ruthless march of an all too human science, which was what it actually was. Even Michael, when he thought of the animal mutilations, found himself shivering inwardly at the thought of what that butchery signified, of what possibly still went on behind the closed doors of the cyborg community. The cyborgs were half human, half machine, and a lot of butchery had been practised to make them that way. The very thought was nightmarish.

  'Are we getting near Alexandria?' he asked.

  'Yep,' Ira said. 'About another ten minutes.'

  Michael checked his wristwatch. It was just after eleven in the morning. He had hit the road at eight, walked for about thirty minutes, then was lucky enough to have been picked up by Ira, who was going all the way to Alexandria. The whole journey, from start to finish, had only taken three hours and would have been even quicker if Ira's truck hadn't been so slow. Now, looking out of the truck at the outskirts of Alexandria, he saw tree-shaded brick walks and a mixture of colonial clapboard houses and Georgian mansions. Glancing up at the sky, which was blue and streaked with white clouds, he saw no flying saucers. Looking out again as they entered the Old Town

  quarter, he glimpsed a waterfront lined with restaurants and boutiques. The women on the sidewalks were elegant and the men all looked prosperous.

  'It all looks pretty normal,' Michael said. 'No flying saucers, no cyborg patrols.'

  'Like I mentioned before,' Ira said, turning away from the waterfront and slowing down to stop in front of a colonial clapboard building in what Michael noticed was King Street. Ira turned to stare at him

  with his rheumy, bloodshot eyes, jabbing his finger at the attractive building they were parked beside.

  'The old Ramsay House Visitors' Centre,' he said. 'Not too many visitors these days, but they still give you information about how to get where you want to go or where you can stay.' He hesitated. 'Where are you going?'

  Michael momentarily went blank, then, to his horror, instead of visualizing where he was going, he had a vision of the Freedom Bay mountain, soaring white and craggy above the vast snow-covered plains of Queen Maud Land in Antarctica. He was shocked that this should have happened when he had so carefully worked to ensure that all such thoughts should be blocked from his mind, this being a major part of his parapsychological training. Yet he felt that some outside force, perhaps someone else with similar training, had actually broken into his mind and wrenched from it what he had been suppressing.

  He found himself staring at Ira Fisher with a new and disturbing perception.

  The eyes of Ira Fisher were no longer rheumy and bloodshot but clear and hard, as if a sudden surge of energy had burned out of his brain to clear them. He was staring steadily, unblinkingly at Michael as if looking deep into him.

  Mount Vernon College,' Michael said, at last recalling his research and picking a location outside of the capital.

  Fisher continued to look steadily, searchingly, at him, then said, 'Nice job you got there.'

  'I hope so.' Michael opened his door and started sliding out of

  the truck, letting the rucksack, which had been resting on his lap, down first.

  'You got somewhere to stay?' Fisher asked him, his voice suddenly flat, without timbre.

  'Not yet,' Michael replied as he dropped down out of the truck. Sliding the straps of his rucksack back over his shoulders, he looked up at Fisher and saw those unnaturally bright eyes studying him coldly.

  Fisher nodded in the direction of Ramsay House. 'They might be able to help you over there,' he said, still speaking in the flat monotone that seemed oddly inhuman.

  'I'll try them,' Michael said. 'Thanks for the lift.'

  'Don't mention it,' Fisher said, not smiling at all.

  Michael turned away and walked across the sidewalk to Ramsay House. When he reached the entrance, he glanced back over his shoulder and saw that Fisher was still staring steadily at him. Michael waved and entered the colonial clapboard building where he found a small office staffed by a middle-aged woman. The walls were covered with racks of information booklets but there was room for a couple of public telephones. Instead of speaking to the woman behind the counter, he went to the window and looked out. He saw Ira Fisher driving off, but Fisher had only gone about twenty metres when he stopped again, clambered down from his truck and entered a public phone booth, where he could clearly be seen punching in a number. At the same time, the phone rang on the desk of the small office behind Michael. Michael glanced over his shoulder to see the middle-aged woman behind the counter picking up the phone, listening, then putting the phone down again and raising her eyes to stare directly at him. Looking through the window again, Michael saw Fisher leave the telephone booth, clamber back into his battered old truck and drive off, this time turning the corner at the far end of the road, obviously continuing his journey. Turning away from the window, Michael saw the middle-aged woman fix him with a glacial smile and a searching gaze.

  'Yes?' she said. 'Can I help you? With accommodation, perhaps?'

  'No, thanks,' Michael said.

  Convinced that the woman had been the recipient of the phone call made by Fisher and that Fisher, contrary to Michael's initial belief, was a brainwashed former cyborg abductee, Michael hurriedly left the building and asked the first person passing by outside where he could find the westbound DASH

  bus. Given instructions, he made his way to the station and boarded the first bus leaving Alexandria.

  The bus took him into the capital via the George Washington Memorial Parkway and deposited him shortly after outside the King Street Station Metro. During that brief journey he saw cyborg flying saucers hovering in the sky in the direction of the National Airport, the Pentagon and, across the Potomac, the White House area and Capitol Hill. He took the Metro from King Street Station to Gallery Place, being careful to meet no one's gaze, and emerged into the old Chinatown, which was now in a dilapidated state of repair and filled, as he knew from his research, with relatively cheap accommodation run by hoodlums and taken up mostly by hard-pressed people of his own age group. As he would be searching for people his own age, this was where he would stay.

  The place looked like a war zone. Spread around a vast, clearly neglected sports arena, the old MCI Centre, it was a wasteland of dilapidated buildings that had once been Chinese restaurants but were now living accommodations for the new, mostly white, disenfranchised. Drunks and drug addicts were standing forlornly around the doorways of what Michael assumed were bars for the consumption of alcohol (which, as a Freedom Bay adept, he had not yet tried) or squatting or lying shamelessly on the sidewalks in the light of the noonday sun. Young people of both sexes were also crowding the sidewalks, many near their motorcycles, most of them wearing a wide range of unsophisticated clothing, the kind that was a throwback to the Old Age with its emphasis on black leather jackets, decorative chains, hair of many

  colours and weird styles, plus bizarre make-up that included stripe-painted faces and rings through ears, noses and lips.

  Michael saw no policemen. This, he knew, was due to the fact that since the arrival of the cyborgs —

  who now controlled everything but only sanctioned what was in their own interest — social matters such as local law and order, transport, sanitation, the financing of City Hall, and the general welfare of the populace had been more or less ignored. The human beings nominally in charge were, because of financial restraints imposed by the lack of commercial enterprise, rendered virtually helpless. The cyborgs had a programme of their own and, though its purpose was as yet unknown, it certainly did not appear to include the everyday welfare of those they had conquered. That was clear here in Chinatown.

  Flying saucers, Michael noted, were hovering above Chinatown almost constandy, though he saw none descending. He was becoming used to the fact that he was a stranger in a strange land and was also aware that the so-called walking dead, as personified by Ira Fisher, could disguise themselves perfectly well. He was pretty certain that Fisher had almost certainly read his mind and had reported him to another of his own kind — the woman in the information centre at Ramsay House — as someone worth watching. Michael used all of his parapsychological skills to tune into the thoughts of others as he looked for a reasonably decent place to stay while avoiding the more dubious types loitering about the place. Eventually, after walking the streets for about an hour and talking to a few people, some of whom were against the cyborgs while others had clearly been brainwashed by them, he found an old Federal-styled building located almost direcdy opposite the sports stadium. It looked considerably better than anything else he had seen, with no drunks or drug addicts cluttering up its doorway. Taking a deep breath, reminding himself to stay cool, he entered the building.