'My parents are under stress?'

  Wilson smiled. 'Well, naturally. They miss you. Now please stand up and follow me/

  As if already deprived of his will, Gumshoe stood upright. 'Where are we going?'

  'I'm taking you to see your parents,' Wilson said, 'and, en route, to show you what we do here. Knowing what we do here can be a help in crossing the bridge from the old world to the new. So! This way, please.'

  Wilson stepped aside to let Michael leave the room, which he did when the two cyborgs blocking the door had started along the corridor outside, leading the way. Gumshoe followed them, boiling over with mixed emotions: the tremendous joy that he might soon be reunited with his parents; his fear that Wilson could be lying to him just to keep him pacified; curiosity about what he would find out there; and, finally, his growing dread at the thought of what his own fate might be. All in all, though, he turned into the corridor like a man about to be executed, hoping against hope that a last-minute pardon would save him. Wilson fell in beside him, a tall man, looking down at him.

  Unlike the corridor he had walked along before, this one was not curved but instead went straight, passing many doors. Also, the walls were not made of a whitish metal, as the other walls had been, but appeared to be covered in normal plaster and painted in a fading lime green. Normal-seeming people of both sexes, some wearing black coveralls, others dressed in white smocks, passed them by in the corridors, nodding fearfully at Wilson though saying nothing to him while going into and coming out of the various doors lining the corridor, letting Gumshoe catch fleeting glimpses of what appeared to be linear offices, laboratories and workshops. He was convinced by all this that he was no longer in a flying saucer; that while he had been asleep, or in a temporary, medically induced coma, he had been transferred

  from the mother ship to somewhere else. He wondered, with deepening dread, just where that might be.

  'This isn't a flying saucer,' he said to Wilson as they continued walking along the corridor behind the two fearsome cyborgs.

  'No,' Wilson said, 'it's not. As clearly you've already guessed, you were transported elsewhere.'

  'Where?'

  'Back on dry land,' Wilson said. 'You don't have to know exactly where.'

  With his imagination running riot again, churning up the fear already buried deep within him, Gumshoe recalled that the cyborgs had bases on the Moon and considered, and wondered, with awe and even more fear, if that was where he was.

  'Are we on the Moon?' he asked.

  Wilson smiled bleakly. 'No.'

  'Then we're still on Earth.'

  'Yes. That much I can tell you, but no more. Ask no more. You've already seen some of what we do and I know you were shocked. Be prepared to see more of that, but this time, since you've seen some of it already, try not to be so shocked. It's best to accept the inevitable, no matter how inhuman, how barbarous it might at first seem. Bear in mind that nothing under the sun and Moon is unnatural, that nothing in the whole cosmos is unnatural, and that what is being done here is a perfectly natural evolutionary development.'

  'I'll bet,' Gumshoe said.

  'Progress can never be achieved without suffering,' Wilson continued flatly, this time ignoring Gumshoe's sarcasm, 'and all of us, at one time or another, must suffer accordingly. This is an inviolable, unbending law of life and it can't be ignored. Now, prepare to leave the past and enter the future, knowing that what you see here is merely a bridge between the two, therefore not meant to last. When the leap has been made — the evolutionary leap from Man to Superman — what you see here will no longer

  be required. Think of this when your every natural instinct makes you wish to recoil. Think of this when you're part of it.'

  The two cyborgs up ahead had come to a solid steel door that rose up into the ceiling as if it had sensed their presence. The cyborgs went on through and Gumshoe followed, with Wilson still close by his side. The stuff of Gumshoe's worst nightmares became real on the instant when he found himself stepping into an immense pentagonal space with a high, flat concrete ceiling and many corridors running off its five sides. The feeling that he was deep under the ground struck him immediately, but what struck him even harder was what filled the space between the five great concrete walls: an obscene multiplication of what he had first seen when he had been marched through the bowels of the mother ship five days ago.

  Trying not to recoil, though slipping into disbelief, he saw row upon row of steel-framed beds with surgically mutated humans lying upon them: some in bloody bandages; some with severed limbs and gleaming prosthetic replacements; some with stomachs sliced open and vital organs missing; some with faces peeled off the bone and replaced with membrane-thin metal masks; some breathing through tubes and defecating into plastic bags; some no more than a torso wired up to computer consoles; some half-human, half-animal; others, having survived the first terrible stages, now on the way to being converted into cyborgs: half-human, half-machine. There were hundreds of beds, hundreds of bloody, groaning humans, and above them, in wire cages strung from the ceiling, were creatures so crazed by the physical changes wrought upon them — recognizable neither as humans nor as any kind of known animal — that they were clawing at the bars with mutated, bloody hands or frantically banging their heads against them, clearly trying to kill themselves. It was a basement of hell.

  'Part of it?' Gumshoe said, turning to Wilson, feeling shocked beyond measure. 'How do you mean I'll be part of. . . part of . . . this?

  'Not for ever,' Wilson said, showing a flicker of impatience, as if speaking to an uncomprehending child. 'Already most of what you see here is obsolete, rendered redundant by the advent of cloning which can, for the most part, produce humans to any design we require. It is cloning that is bringing us to the doorstep of the Superman, but we still need to do a few experiments to explore physical and mental endurance. Look,' he continued, jabbing his forefinger repeatedly at the normal men and women, most wearing black coveralls and all looking superbly fit, who were attending to the butchered humans on the beds. 'Humans cloned to a wide variety of DNA patterns to enhance them in specific areas, namely intelligence and physical strength. Those cloned humans are the first in a line that will end with the Superman. The others, those surgically mutated, can soon be dispensed with. Before that, however, there are still some experiments that have to be performed, particularly on the human mind and its powers of endurance. For this we still need the abductees — and you are part of our programme.'

  cMe?' Gumshoe said, staring around him in growing horror and disbelief, losing control of himself.

  'What do you mean, I'll be part of this? What are you planning to do to me?'

  'I need to know if you can communicate with your parents at this point in time. I wish to join the three of you together and see what transpires.'

  What . . .' And Gumshoe almost screamed, 'Where are my parents?

  Wilson pointed. Gumshoe looked. He knew then, on the instant, what the dead-eyed nurse had meant when she had said, What makes you think they were nightmares?' For indeed, he now saw that he had not, in fact, been dreaming, that he had not been having nightmares, but that clearly they had shown him this before when he was in his drugged state.

  Gumshoe saw his mother and father. They looked the same age as they had been when he last saw them, as if eternally young. But they were staring at each other with eyes widened by insanity because their heads had been severed from their bodies and surgically grafted onto the neck-stump of a pig's body to make a nightmarish two-headed creature. Gumshoe's parents were still conscious, fully alive in that sense, but their awareness of what had happened to them had clearly driven them mad.

  Now Wilson wanted to cut off Gumshoe's head and join him to his parents.

  Gumshoe screamed and then fainted.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  'Walk quiedy, tread softly,' Ben joked as he and Michael made their way along F Street in the midnight hour, now passing the Metro Center and heading towards the eastern side of the Treasury Building.

  Nevertheless, although Ben was joking, he was also, Michael noted, keeping his voice low and constantly scanning both sides of the deserted, infrequently lamplit road. He was obviously wary of being accosted by lurking thugs or of suddenly being confronted by a cyborg Prowler, SARGE or football, the latter, in particular, having the ability to approach so quickly that they could hardly be seen until it was too late. So far, they had seen nothing the length and breadth of F Street, but when Michael next raised his gaze, he saw that a dome-shaped flying saucer, over a hundred feet in diameter, its whitish-metallic body not rotating but still giving off an eerie, pulsating glow, was hovering directly over the White House, just beyond the Treasury Building. Other flying saucers, mostly the fifty-foot paddy wagons, were gliding to and fro across the capital, but higher up in the night sky.

  Where are we going?' he asked Ben.

  To check out the White House,' Ben replied, still keeping his voice low and moving his gaze left, right and above as they advanced parallel to the 14th Street Theatre District.

  I know that,' Michael said, frustrated, 'but from where?

  'Have you ever been to church?' Ben asked mockingly.

  'No,' Michael replied.

  'You're going now,' Ben informed him.

  At that moment, a Prowler and two accompanying SARGEs turned into the end of F Street, the former the size and shape of a tank, the latter looking like grotesque dune buggies or giant metal insects, all advancing relentlessly with sensors flashing and turning in all directions. Though Michael had seen those vehicles before in daylight, parked safely outside the White House and other government buildings, he was shocked to see them now, knowing that they would attempt to pick him and Ben up, or call in a paddy wagon, if they came close enough to sense their presence. Obviously knowing this as well, Ben turned quickly into 14th Street and led Michael through the old theatre district. Formerly a lively area, it had been emptied of most human habitation by the close proximity of the cyborgs guarding the White House. The theatres and restaurants had closed down and their derelict husks were, as Ben had previously informed Michael, now occupied by the only human beings who did not fear the cyborgs, namely, drunks, drug addicts and the sexual perverts and psychopaths who preyed on them. It was a dangerous area.

  'Move as quickly as possible without actually running,' Ben whispered, withdrawing what looked like a cyborg stun gun from inside his jacket. 'And keep your eyes peeled. If anyone — anyone — comes towards us, run for your life.'

  Hurrying along 14th Street behind his new friend, Michael glanced from left to right, seeing only the deserted, rubbish-strewn road on his left and the derelict buildings on his right. Not quite deserted, as he could see from the miserable human forms slumped in the dark doorways, either sleeping, slurping automatically from cans and bottles, or injecting themselves with shaking hands. It was a grim reminder to Michael of the dark side of the World he had so often yearned to visit and it made him appreciate even more the disciplines and order of Freedom

  Bay. And thinking of Freedom Bay, of home, he was suddenly overcome with emotion for his mother and father, for Chloe, for his friends and, of course, for his mentor, Dr Lee Brandenberg.

  At that moment, a ragged man with mad eyes stepped out of a doorway, holding an open switchblade in one hand. Two others came out behind him.

  'Freeze or I'll cut your fucking throat,' the knifeman said hoarsely, holding his weapon up higher to let its blade glitter in the moonlight.

  Michael's every instinct was to immobilize the men with his parapsychological powers, perhaps mesmerize them, but he realized that if he did that Ben would have some questions to ask him. Luckily, Ben solved the problem by rapidly raising his stun gun and shooting a laser ray, a pulsating beam filled with sparks that looked like tiny lightning bolts, at the crazed man wielding the knife. The man jerked and straightened up, as if jolted by a burst of electricity, then dropped the knife from paralysed fingers and fell to his knees. As he keeled over, the other two men cursed and practically dived forward, one at Ben, the other at Michael. But Ben fired the stun gun twice more, hitting each man in turn, and both jerked and straightened up, as the first man had done, then, like him, fell to the ground. Without saying a word, Ben lowered the stun gun and continued along the street.

  As they passed another darkened doorway, close to the intersection of 14th and G Street, Michael heard

  a repeated dull thudding sound, followed by muffled grunting. Glancing into the doorway, he saw two shadowy forms, one being punched repeatedly, brutally, in the stomach by the other and clearly too weakened to make any sound other than those breathless, painful grunts. Again, Michael's instinct was to intervene, but Ben had kept going and he, feeling ashamed of himself, had to do the same.

  Crossing G Street, following Ben, he glanced to the left and glimpsed, at the western end of the street, which was deserted,

  the northern wing of the Treasury Building. Even as his glance took in that monolithic granite structure, a Prowler with a SARGE front and rear crossed from north to south, indicating that cyborg ground patrols were guarding the building. Above the building, shedding its eerie, pulsating light upon it, was a silently hovering fifty-foot flying saucer.

  Continuing along 14th Street, but with the dangerous old theatre district now well behind them, Ben and Michael made their way unimpeded to H Street, where they turned left, crossed the road and headed for Lafayette Square. Just before reaching the northern side of the moonlit park, with its tranquil plazas, paved walkways, landscaped gardens and crumbling statues, Ben stopped abruptly, then lowered himself until he was belly down on the sidewalk, in the shadow of the building to his right.

  Michael did the same.

  Looking almost straight ahead, following Ben's gaze, he saw that a foolish, perhaps drunken or drugged motorcyclist had driven into this forbidden area and been caught by a combination of cyborg ground patrol and flying football. The football, which was presently hovering above the overturned motorcycle, casting its eerie glow upon it, had obviously flown in low over the rider, causing him to go into a skid and crash his vehicle. The driver himself had then been hemmed in by a tank-like Prowler and two beetle-like SARGEs and held captive until the arrival of the paddy wagon that would take him away. That paddy wagon, a fifty-foot flying saucer, was now hovering at the other side of H Street, mere inches above the road, while a couple of steel-masked cyborgs encouraged the unfortunate motorcyclist with jolts from their stun guns to go up its ramp and into the dazzling white light of its interior. When the motorcyclist had dissolved into that light, the cyborgs followed him in, the ramp moving back up into the hull of the saucer to make a seamless whole. Then the metallic-grey wing disc-plates began to rotate, their lights flashing on and off. When the wing discs were rotating so rapidly that their edges had become an eerily glowing whitish

  blur, the saucer ascended vertically to about fifty feet, hovered there momentarily, then shot off abruptly in a south-westerly direction, most likely heading for the Pentagon, where many of the abducted were known to be taken. When the saucer had disappeared, the Prowler and the two SARGEs moved off as well, going along the eastern side of the square, then disappearing into Pennsylvania Avenue. They would continue to patrol the whole White House area until just after dawn.

  'Let's go,' Ben said, clambering back to his feet, waiting until Michael had done the same, then leading him across the road to St John's Church, located on the north side of the park. Formerly one of the most elegant, historic and prestigious churches in Washington, widely known as the 'Church of Presidents'

  because every Chief Executive since the church's inception in 1897 had worshipped there while in office, the building had not been used since the coming of the cyborgs and was now in a sad state of disrepair. Nevertheless, Ben ushered Michael inside, entering by way of the pillared porch on the west side then led him up the dark, dusty stairs in an eerie, echoing silence to the top of the bell tower. The tower, fixed up with scaffolding gave a good view across Lafayette Square and Pennsylvania Avenue of the northern entrance, the main entrance, to the White House.

  Two young men about Michael's age, both wearing open-necked shirts, windcheater jackets and blue denims, were kneeling on the scaffolding, one on either side of a group of three long-distance surveillance instruments that had been set up on tripods and were focused on the distant White House.

  They looked up nervously as Ben and Michael entered the ruined bell tower and only relaxed when they recognized the former.

  'Oh, it's you,' one of them, the fair-haired one, said. 'I nearly shit my pants there.'

  You shoulda brought diapers,' Ben retorted. 'Hi, guys. This is a friend, Mike Johnson. He's come to see what we're up to. He's trustworthy, believe me. Mike,' he added, indicating the fair-haired, overweight young man, 'this is Lenny Travis. And this . . .' here he indicated the other young man who had jet-black hair, intense brown eyes, and a lean, pock-marked face '. . . is Richie Pitt.

  They're part of our gang and they specialize in surveillance, which is what they're doing right now.'

  'Hi,' Lenny said.

  'Howya doin'?' Richie said.

  'Pretty good,' Michael replied. 'What have you got there?'

  'This,' Lenny said, patting one of the tripod-mounted instruments that looked like an exceptionally large video camera, 'is a Thorn EMI multi-role thermal imager, including infrared, or IR. It can scan outside walls, track body heat, and reveal the position of those inside any building it's aimed at, by day or by night. We can't tell one clone from another in there, one cyborg from another, but we can tell that they're moving about in there, on all three floors of the building.'

  'And the other one?' Michael nodded to indicate what looked like complicated transmitters, or recording devices, set up on the other two tripods and also aimed at the White House. The object that most looked like a radio receiver was joined to the other by a complex combination of electric cables.