'That's a long way away.'

  'Not for them,' Michael said.

  Glancing up at the enormous video screen angled above the entrance to one of the electronic game parlours, he saw newsreel footage of bloody riots in India. The TV cameraman appeared to be gloating over close-ups of the atrocities now so commonplace in that country: this heartless pursuit of sensationalism, Michael knew, was being shown by the games parlour as a come-on to customers with a taste for the more extreme porno-violence shown on video inside the building. This in itself was another grim reminder to Michael that the cyborgs had only interfered in the world where and when it suited them.

  Indeed, while the cyborgs had made some kind of appearance in most parts of the world, at least initially, their influence on the planet had been felt most strongly by the industrialized and technologically advanced nations such as the United States, Europe, Russia and China, while the usurpers had pretty much turned a blind eye to the Third World. Indeed, having stopped all shipping and air travel, the cyborgs had isolated the Third World countries from the rest of the globe and forced them back

  to fending for themselves, but without foreign aid or the benefits of new technology. As a result, old ethnic and territorial conflicts had been resurrected and were raging right now in India, the Lebanon, the Philippines, Chad, Angola, Ethiopia, South Africa, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Peru, Samolia and Afghanistan. In Rwanda, where the conflicts between Hutus and Tutsis had been coming to an end before the cyborgs took over, the country's subsequent isolation had led to the fresh eruption of a genocidal conflict that had by now virtually wiped out both tribes. Without the intervention of the US

  and the UN, both rendered toothless by the cyborgs, the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians had gone from bad to worse; Sri Lanka's civil war was an unending bloodbath that was decimating the population, and the slaughter of the innocents in Burma, Malaysia and Indonesia was continuing unimpeded.

  On the other hand, where the cyborgs had a particular interest — namely, in the developed countries —

  they had taken definite, often brutal, steps to subdue troubled areas. Thus the Croat, Muslim and Serb armies in Bosnia had all been smashed and the war brought to an end to let the cyborgs take over the whole of Europe. Likewise, the warring armies that had been tearing asunder the former Soviet colossus — in Azerbaijan, Chechnya, Georgia and Tajikistan — had been pounded into oblivion by fleets of flying saucers armed with laser weapons, leaving the cyborgs in control there also, to concentrate almost exclusively on the running of Russia's many top-secret military and research establishments.

  Surprisingly, in Northern Ireland, despite frequent cyborg patrols over the province and despite the fact that the British had pulled out for good, the hard men on both sides continued to wage their 'historic'

  war against each other, though on a much reduced scale, thus proving, for good or for ill, that the human spirit had not been completely crushed by the cyborgs. Ironically, this fact was also made clear nightly through the defiance of the youthful Speed Freaks right here in Washington DC. Michael admired them for that.

  2VC

  'This is it,' Ben said, stopping on the crowded sidewalk and nodding to indicate the neon-lit doorway of a retro dance club called Be-Bop~a~Lula, named after an old hit song of the 1950s. That name was flashing on and off in brightly-lit neon letters above the doorway, with a neon guitar flashing above it.

  On both sides of the door, holographic girls in string panties and spiked heels were gyrating sensually to the electronic dance music booming out of powerful speakers built into the walls. A bouncer over six feet tall and weighing about sixteen stone, wearing black denims and a black T-shirt with a yellow tiger painted on it, a knuckleduster covering the thick fingers of his right hand, was standing square in the entrance, inspecting those wanting to get in and saying 'Fuck off!' to those he didn't like. When he saw Ben, he grinned.

  'Emiliano Zapata!' he exclaimed by way of greeting, referring to Ben's shoulder-length hair and drooping moustache, recently popularized anew by Marlon Brando in a 'colourized' version of the old black-and-white movie Viva Zapata. 'So how's the fucking desk clerk this evening?'

  'Same as always,' Ben replied. 'Red-blooded, AIDs-free and rarin' to go. So do we get in or not?'

  The big bouncer glanced at Michael. 'Your friend looks like a fucking choirboy with his blond hair and blue eyes. He'll get eaten alive in there.'

  'That's what he's after,' Ben retorted. 'To be gobbled and drained dry.'

  'Well, he's come to the right place. In you go, nerds.'

  He stepped aside to let them pass. Directly behind him was a narrow, dimly-lit hallway with a locked turnstile between it and the main auditorium. The gate could only be opened by the insertion of a plastic credit card into the slot in one wall. Michael and Ben both paid by slipping their cards into the slot and letting the machine deduct what it demanded. As they withdrew the cards, one after the other, the gate opened to admit them one at a time. They stepped into the main room of the club. As large as a barn, it had numerous dance floors broken up with neon-lit bars of various shapes, small candle-lit drug parlours, and raised stages where stunningly lifelike holographic images of almost naked, sensually gyrating young girls and famous rock stars of the Old Age entertained the audience. Right now, Elvis Presley, who had made another major comeback as a holographic image and was the biggest thing in the music business all over again, was belting out his hip-shaking rendition of 'Bossa Nova Baby' from his old movie Fun in Acapulco. A crowd had gathered around to watch his performance and girls were having hysterics.

  'Like it?' Ben shouted to make himself heard over the grossly amplified singing of Elvis, the screaming of his hysterical fans, and the general babble from other sections of the club.

  'Noisy!' Michael shouted back.

  'Fucking A, it's noisy,' Ben said. 'That's the whole idea. Come on, let's go for a drink.'

  As they pushed their way through the crowd of mostly young, freaky people, many drunk, others stoned on a wide variety of drugs, Michael glanced up at the nearest stage where the holographic Elvis, wearing a white coat and black trousers, was shaking his legs, swinging his arms, and moving his hips

  with more grace and sensuality than the holographic girls farther back in the dazzling strobe-and-neon-lit club or even the real girls writhing half-naked on the dance floors.

  Although he had only been in Washington a few days, Michael already knew just how 'big' Elvis was

  — the most popular star of the day — and found himself fascinated by him. Reportedly, before his death Elvis had been the most famous singer in history and the most widely known individual in the world; now, nearly fifty years on, he was as big as ever. Seeing him up there on the stage, as large as life and just as lifelike, Michael realized that he had never seen anyone quite like him; that he wasn t simply handsome but somehow otherworldly, as if he had been cloned from DNA strands taken from a wide variety or human tissues, thus growing into an androgynous, almost 277

  alien beauty who appealed to men and women alike. Also, no doubt about it, in this age of electronic music, with its drug-based, hallucinatory, unmelodious clamour, Elvis's voice was remarkably real and expressive, wringing the last drop of juice out of every word of a lyric, no matter how intrinsically banal. In short, he had something for everyone and represented, now more than ever, in this age of cyborg repression, a pure, absolute freedom.

  'What do you want to drink?' Ben asked when they had reached the bar and, crushed between bizarrely dressed young men and half-naked young women, he was trying frantically to attract the attention of the busy barman.

  'Anything,' Michael said, never having drunk alcohol before and not wanting Ben to notice this fact.

  'Whatever you're having.'

  'A couple of Tutti Fruttis,' Ben said. 'That should make us feel good.' He managed to gain the attention of the sweating barman and called out his order, then turned away to look across the packed, strobe-lit room at Elvis. 'God, that Elvis, he's something else, right? They don't make 'em like him no more.'

  'How do they do it?' Michael asked.

  'What?'

  'Make those holographic images of Elvis and other famous entertainers and movie stars.'

  'They take 'em from old movies and so on. I mean, that particular song comes from that old movie, Fun in—'

  'Right,' Michael said, 'I know. It's a holographic reproduction of a number from an old movie. But I've also seen Elvis all over the place, as a holographic image, singing songs he never sang in real life. How come?'

  'That's a real goddamned mystery, I tell you,' Ben replied, 'and no one really knows the truth of it. I'll tell you what some of us think, though.'

  'What?'

  'We think it's possible that Elvis has been cloned by the

  cyborgs from skin tissue taken off his corpse and that the cyborgs are using the cloned Elvis to distract young people from their dissatisfactions. Same with Brando and Madonna and the others who've made these big comebacks. I mean, particularly with Elvis, those new songs have convinced a lot of kids —

  like those ones screaming over there — that Elvis is a real, living being. And those kids, they're more concerned with worshipping him than they are with taking a stand against the cyborgs. I mean, you keep potentially rebellious kids distracted enough and you'll keep 'em pacified.'

  'You really think that's possible?' Michael asked.

  'It's not necessarily true, but it's certainly possible. It's a known fact that during the first weeks of their take-over the

  orgs dug up a lot of graves and took away a lot of corpses that were still in a reasonable condition, being embalmed and so on. They were nearly all famous people in their day and Elvis was one of 'em.'

  'And Brando and James Dean and Madonna.'

  'Yeah. Great icons of the twentieth century, but loved particularly by young people, so particularly useful as a means of distraction for our generation. I mean, look at Madonna there!' Michael glanced at the stage and saw that Elvis had been replaced by Madonna in her Nazi-dominatrix period, singing

  'Justify My Love' while wearing scant black lingerie, an outrageous conical bra and skyscraper heels, kissing and fondling another female while surrounded by male dancers in fishnet stockings and leather.

  'The old girl may still be alive somewhere,' Ben continued, 'though no one seems to know exactly where. Yet there she is up on the stage, unchanged, forever young. Maybe the cyborgs abducted her and cloned a replica from her DNA. What else would explain her total disappearance about five years ago?

  My bet is the cyborgs.'

  According to what Michael had read, Madonna had been the most famous female performer of her day, almost as big as Elvis in his time, but had ended up like that old silent movie star, Mae West, pitifully trying to keep her audience by becoming even more outrageous and thus emphasizing, rather than hiding, her advancing years. She had still been doing that, desperately trying to preserve her flagging career, when she had disappeared abruptly from her home in Bel Air in what was widely believed to have been a cyborg abduction. Since then, she had only been seen on old videos and holographic performances, some of which included songs she had never sung before. The possibility that she, like Elvis, might have been cloned by the cyborgs was therefore a real one.

  The harassed barman finally brought their Tutti Fruttis and Michael had his first alcoholic drink, though it was, in fact, something more than that. Sipping it, he felt it go immediately to his head, making him slightly, temporarily dizzy, then heightening his perceptions to make everything around him vividly clear.

  'What's in it?' he asked.

  'Gin and vodka and whisky and orange juice and liquid methamphetamine. A pretty good brew.'

  As the drink rushed to his head, Michael glanced at the group of young people pressing against his right shoulder and saw a young girl in profile, her hair chopped fashionably short and tinted with coloured stripes, her full lips painted bright red, her creamy breasts, untouched by the sun, bulging out of a skintight T-shirt, her long legs emphasized by hotpants, sheer nylon stockings and stiletto-heeled boots. The sudden sight of her almost took his breath away, gave him an instant erection and, combined with the heady effects of the Tutti Frutti, made him feel corrupt. Back in Freedom Bay, where relationships between the sexes were only encouraged when both parties were serious, Michael, still a virgin, had used his adept's skills and meditation to sublimate his sexual desires. But here, where sexuality was paraded so blatantly, he was constantly being taken unawares and tormented more frequently with erotic fantasies. This in turn made him aware that the World was changing him, perhaps even weakening him, and that he would have to apply a great deal of self-control in order not to succumb to an involvement that could corrupt or weaken him even more and cause him to make a mistake or give himself away to the wrong person. He was in grave danger here.

  'It's so noisy here,' he said to Ben, repeating his previous complaint, 'I can hardly hear myself speak.

  Why do you come here?' He nodded, indicating the many young people crowding both sides of him.

  'Why do they come here?'

  'To meet each other, of course,' Ben replied. 'To make friends and meet potential partners. To get drunk or drugged and, if you're into real-time sex, to get that as well. That's pretty obvious, isn't it?'

  'But why here in particular?' Michael asked. 'Why not somewhere quieter? Do they get high on the noise?'

  'Christ, you're so fucking innocent,' Ben retorted. 'Where the fuck did you spring from?'

  Realizing that he had almost made his first mistake, Michael did not reply.

  'Yeah, they come for the noise. They get high on the noise. But they also come to joints like this because the noise is what makes them among the few places in the city where you can't be overheard by cyborg bugging devices. They come to places like this because they're safe — or relatively so.

  Though there might be the odd clone or brain-implant spy in here, by and large the cyborgs leave these joints alone, probably grateful because, so they think, they keep us drunk and drugged and off the streets. But a lot of us, when we're planning something against the cyborgs, we come here to talk . . .

  And for the other things, naturally.' He grinned and nodded in the direction of the half-naked girls beside Michael. 'We're not all into cybersex,' he added. 'Some of us, boys and girls alike, prefer it in real time. So what about you?'

  I just want to find my girlfriend,' Michael lied. You won't find her,' Ben retorted bluntly. 'So drink up.

  Drown your sorrows.'

  281

  By the time Michael was halfway through his second Tutti Frutti, he was feeling as high as he sometimes felt when meditating. But he was not nearly so much in control of himself. His gaze wandered repeatedly, helplessly, around the noisy, strobe-and-neon-lit room to take in the holographic stars and dancing girls, as well as the real-life girls who were either having hysterics over another holographic Elvis performance, gyrating with male and female partners on the dance floor, or smiling invitingly at him, Michael, as they brushed or pressed against him at the bar, ostensibly ordering drinks.

  Losing his inhibitions, but forcing himself to remember what he was here for, he said to Ben, 'What kind of things do you plan against the cyborgs?'

  'Anything we can do to disrupt them,' Ben replied, having another sip of his Tutti Frutti and looking as high as a kite himself, his eyes glazed from the potent mix. 'Putting SARGEs and Prowlers out of action with home-made bombs, firing at hovering paddy wagons with sub-machine guns, distracting the footballs with hot-rod and motorcycle runs, keeping an eye out for cloned or brain-implanted spies and putting out their fucking lights—'

  'You mean killing them?'

  'Right . . . and monitoring the White House, the Pentagon and other establishments held by them to try and find out just what they're up to in the short and long term.'

  'How do you monitor them?'

  'Computer hacking, laser surveillance systems, infra-red thermal imagers, and good old-fashioned eyeball reconnaissance with military binoculars and SLR cameras with long-distance lenses. We use the old-fashioned methods, in particular, for large, fenced-in areas such as air force bases and military research complexes, where we can't get physically close. The computer hacking and laser surveillance systems are used on the White House and the Pentagon. So far, we haven't come up with much, but we're hoping that patience and time will produce dividends. You want to see it first-hand?'

  'Yes,' Michael said.

  'You're willing to go into the White House area with me?'

  'Absolutely,' Michael said.

  'That's a dangerous place to go,' Ben warned him.

  'I don't give a damn,' Michael retorted, wanting to get out of the retro dance club, away from the hellish noise, the hallucinatory strobe lights, the young girls who were pressing up against him to distract him and weaken him. Wanting, in fact, to concentrate his scattered thoughts, bring himself down from his high, and do the work he had come here to do. 'I'm up and running when you are.'

  'Let's go,' Ben said.

  It was just before midnight, the hour of the cyborg curfew, the most dangerous time of all, when Ben led Michael out of the club into the squalid, neon-light streets, then back to their converted apartment block facing the old sports stadium where, Michael noticed, the Speed Freaks had boldly gathered and were making a lot of noise, clearly drinking and taking drugs, winding themselves up before embarking on their ritualistic, infinitely dangerous harassment of the cyborg patrols. Ben did not enter the apartment building, but instead went straight past it and kept going until he had reached the far corner of the crumbling National Portrait Gallery.

  'We're walking?' Michael asked.

  'That's right,' Ben said as he turned into F Street, heading west and taking Michael with him. 'Walking's a lot safer after curfew cause the cyborg ground patrols have less chance of seeing you and the footballs' surveillance systems mainly pick up the vibration and sound of automobiles and motorcycles.