'Right,' Michael said.

  'What the hell were you doing walking out there anyway? You must know that you don't walk out at night.'

  'Me and my friend were just visiting someone,' Michael lied, 'and we thought it would be safer walking than using a motorcycle or car.'

  'Oh, yeah? How come?'

  'The Prowlers and SARGEs can detect the heat and noise of vehicles a lot easier than they can detect someone walking. If you're walking and you see them in time, you can freeze and they'll often pass you by, particularly if you're not in their line of sight. You can't do that in a car and certainly not on a motorcycle.'

  'I never thought about that,' the girl said, 'but I guess there's some truth in it.'

  'There sure is.' Michael glanced left and right as the motorcycle crossed Dupont Circle, cutting around the marble fountain which was no longer working, and turned into Massachusetts Avenue. He saw the empty mansion homes of the former moneyed classes and then looked again to the front. The road ran as straight as an arrow, between more mansions and historic buildings, their bas-relief panels, pedimented dormers, balconies, Beaux-Arts ornamentation and wrought iron railings beautifully illuminated in moonlight, through Downtown and all the way to Union Station. 'Where are we going?'

  'Chinatown,' the girl said. Avoiding the White House area. In the back way, by Mount Vernon Square. I mean, that's where I happen to live. What about you?'

  'Same place,' Michael said. 'A converted house facing the old sports stadium.'

  'Gee, we must be practically neighbours,' the girl said. 'I'm only a block away from the stadium. This is cool. Pretty neat. So what were you really doing out after curfew? Trying to find a little bit of real-time tail?'

  'No,' Michael said, amused by her quaintly old-fashioned way of talking — the language taken straight out of 1950s teen movies — but also embarrassed by her blunt reference to sexual matters. 'I told you: we were just visiting a friend.'

  I'll bet!' the girl exclaimed sarcastically. Burning into Mount Vernon Square, she cut across the north end, then turned down into Chinatown and eventually stopped in front of a crumbling building located just off 7th Street, between a rough-looking bar and an old boarded-up Chinese restaurant. 'So!' she said chirpily. Home sweet home. Slide your ass off that seat, pal.'

  Michael slid backwards off the motorcycle. After swinging her long leg over the saddle, the girl pushed the motorcycle towards him, saying, 'Can you hold it while I open the door? It wouldn't last two seconds out here. Thieves all over the place.'

  Yes, I know,' Michael said.

  You talk real fancy,' the girl said as she turned a key in the lock of the front door of the building.

  'Sounds like you had a classy education.'

  'Harvard,' Michael lied, knowing that that revered institution

  was still functioning, albeit not too successfully, for the lucky few who could still afford it.

  'Oh, boy!' the girl said, opening the door and then stepping aside to let Michael push the motorcycle in.

  'I'm in real fancy company. Put 'er in here.'

  Michael pushed the motorcycle into the hallway of the building and noted instantly that it was in a bad state of disrepair, unlit and stale-smelling. The girl hurried along to the end of the hallway, then turned another key in the last door and opened it for him. 'In here,' she said, switching on the light. Michael pushed the motorcycle into a large, untidy room that had an adjoining bathroom. The middle of the room was dominated by a minitower composed of six Powermac 9500 hard drives, a PowerPC

  microprocessor, a couple of Radius Pressview colour monitors, scanners and colour printers, all surrounded by a clutter of digital cameras, remote controls, mouses, boxes of floppies, every

  imaginable kind of software, and a veritable junkshop of discarded modems and obsolete hardware.

  Apart from those, there was a twenty-three-inch TV, a video recorder, a badly torn sofa and two matching soft chairs. The carpet on the floor was covered with holes and the curtains were filthy.

  As Michael propped the motorcycle up on the floor, just beside the main door, the girl closed the curtains and turned back to face him. Her face was painted as bizarrely as her short-cropped green-andred hair and she was wearing a tight white T-shirt, a black leather jacket, matching hot-pants and leather boots. To Michael, who was used to the conservative clothing and modest make-up of Freedom Bay, this girl was a striking sight.

  Grinning, she indicated the mass of computer equipment with a wave of her hand. 'Not mine,' she said.

  'I hardly know how to work it. It belonged to this guy I was shacking up with, but he was zapped by a football and then taken away in a paddy wagon. Knowing that the cyborgs always place surveillance on the pads

  of people they've captured, hoping to pick up friends or relatives at a later date, I immediately moved myself and the electronic gear out of there and into this dump. I give weekly blow jobs to a friend in return for the privilege. He's still addicted to real-time. So what kind are you?'

  'Pardon?' Michael said, not knowing what she meant, embarrassed to be alone with her, but still over-excited by his recent misadventure and feeling distinctly unreal. The girl, he noted, had wonderful legs and terrific breasts, which the tightness of her T-shirt showed off. Michael, celibate in Freedom Bay, felt his mind reeling here.

  'Are you into real-time interaction or cybersex? Oh, my God, you're blushing!'

  Which was certainly true, since Michael could feel his cheeks burning. 'Well, I . . .'

  'You're a virgin!' the girl exclaimed, delighted and grinning. 'Certainly a virgin in real time. Boy, where do you come from?'

  'Originally from New York,' Michael lied. 'But my parents fled from there a few years after the cyborgs took over. I was two or three years old at the time.'

  'So where are they now?'

  Michael shrugged.

  'The cyborgs got 'em, right?'

  'Right,' Michael lied. 'They'd gone to live in Virginia, way up in the mountains, well away, as they thought, from the cyborg patrols, and certainly they were safe there for a long time . . . until last year, in fact. Last August, they drove off to see some friends and never returned. As there were saucer sightings in the vicinity at the time, I can only assume, as did everyone else, that the cyborgs got them.'

  And that's why you're in Washington DC? Hoping to find your folks?'

  'Yes,' Michael lied.

  You haven't a prayer,' the girl said, just as Ben had done a few weeks earlier. 'When they're gone, they're gone. Unless, of

  course, they're returned with brain implants, in which case they'd be inserted somewhere they weren't known previously, to be used as spies for the cyborgs. Either way, you won't find 'em in Washington.

  Best to call it a day, kid.'

  'I'm not a kid. I'm as old as you are.'

  'But you seem like a kid. So terribly well spoken and quick to blush and never had your hands on a real-

  time gal. Come on, kid, relax! Take a seat and let's recover from our ordeal with some high-grade speed. Life's for the living, right?'

  'Right,' Michael said.

  He sat on the sofa and the girl, instead of taking one of the chairs, sat close beside him, her soft, warm thigh pressed against his. Then the already tight white T-shirt tightened even more on her body as she wriggled out of the black leather jacket and twisted away from him to reach for something on the table just behind her. When she turned back to face him, she was holding a syrette in either hand.

  'Hit the road, Jack,' she said, handing one of the syrettes to Michael. He looked at the short needle and asked her what it was. 'Amphetamine,' she replied. 'You ever had it?'

  'No.'

  'Try it. It'll make you feel relaxed. Take you places you've never been before. You frightened of needles?'

  'No,' Michael said.

  'Then prove it. Jab it in and let's cook.'

  She jabbed the short needle into her own arm and Michael, not wanting her to guess just how inexperienced he was, a stranger in a strange land, not one of her kind, the kind born and bred here in the World, did the same, flinching only a little. He saw her taking a deep breath and so he did the same as he pulled the needle out. Then he felt the rush of the amphetamine coursing through him, making his heart palpitate, illuminating his mind and letting him see everything around him with a clarity he had only previously known in intense meditation.

  This feeling, however, was not the same as the other. Quite

  the opposite, in fact. The high of meditation was calm and transcendent, a spiritual journey to inner peace — but this high had a dangerous wildness that he wasn't used to yet found impossible to resist.

  He let the rush hit him, carry him downstream, to the rapids, and he felt the lambent heat of the girl's body, so close to him, permeate him and start to draw him in. She was smiling at him, amused by his innocence, and he wanted to prove her wrong.

  'How do you feel?' she asked him.

  'Incredible,' he replied.

  'You're unbelievably handsome,' she said. 'Has any girl ever told you that?'

  'No.'

  'I don't believe you.'

  'I'm pretty normal-looking, really.'

  'You're golden-haired and handsome and well-spoken and as sweet as a schoolboy. You don't belong in Chinatown — no, not at all — and I don't think you're here to find your parents, but I'm asking no questions. Only one. What's your name?'

  'Mike Johnson,' he said, by now using his fictitious surname as casually as if it were his own. 'And yours?'

  'I'm a bad girl, Mike. I'm a very bad girl. I feel privileged to be with a guy like you, so I don't care who you really are. Let's get it on, Mike. I'm all alone and in need of company. I'm high on the speed and I'm being pretty saucy and I can tell by the look in your eyes that you're no longer shocked. That's the

  speed as well, Mike. It makes everything so much easier. You and me, we could do nice things together with no grief on either side. So why don't we do it, Mike?'

  What's your name?' Michael repeated, now feeling that he was in some kind of trance, divorced from himself, no longer in control, his every sense focused absolutely on this strange girl who still hadn't told him her name - not that it mattered. All that mattered was what he felt, these new feelings, sensuality, the penile erection that destroyed his self-control, unshackled him

  27.CI

  from the chains of a lifetime of discipline. And this girl who overwhelmed him with her singular presence: the long line of her legs, one crossed over the other; the half-moons of her hips, emphasized by the hot-pants; the fullness of her breasts and the slimness of her waist, both clearly revealed by the skintight belted T-shirt; her tongue touching her moist upper lip; her amused, mesmerizing gaze . . . Oh, yes, this was all that really mattered and it mattered a great deal. He wanted to drown in her.

  'This is real time,' she said, still not answering his question. 'This isn't on-line time between two perns playing safe games in cyberspace. This is the real thing, Mike — the real thing in real time — and you can tell that by feeling my breast in the cup of your hand . . . Ah, yes, Mike, that's nice.'

  He felt her breast beneath the T-shirt, opening his hand and pressing down. Her nipple hardened against the palm of his hand and it made him expand, becoming bigger, harder like her nipple, more ruthless than he had thought he could be, focused only on one thing . . . the heat of her body.

  'God, you're beautiful,' he said before he could stop himself, the words tumbling out unbidden at the sight of her naked upper body when she pulled the T-shirt up over her head and let it fall to the floor.

  'God, yes, you're lovely!'

  'You think so?'

  'Oh, yes!'

  'Then keep looking, Mike.'

  She took the rest of her clothes off, not moving from the sofa, staying close to him every second, and he looked and was captivated, seeing a completely naked woman for the first time and almost losing his mind. She wrapped herself around him, arms and legs like thongs of silk, and then he found himself as naked as she was and becoming part of her. He entered her with ease, probing her softness with his hardness, pushing into her or being drawn into her (he could not tell which) and was enraptured, surrendering himself for the first time, beyond his

  wildest imaginings. Draining down to his own centre, briefly losing his own identity, betraying his lifetime's work, forgetting Freedom Bay and his family and friends, John Wilson and the cyborgs, the footballs and paddy wagons, the great mission upon which he had so hopefully embarked, he gave in to his base lust, to the rapid rise towards climax, to the spasms that shook him leaf and bough and then left him spent. Once spent, he collapsed within himself and came back down to Earth.

  He looked down, not at Earth, but at the green eyes of the girl whose body he was stretched out upon, but now separate from her, alone, back in his own shell. He felt this loss as a gain.

  'What's your name?' he asked for the third time.

  'Bonnie Packard,' she said.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Science. The root of life, the tree of all knowledge. This belief is what I have lived by and abided by, and I stand by it still.

  Without science we are doomed, without mind we are nothing, and anything that stands in the way of progress must be viewed as negative.

  We began in the dark seas, then progressed to the dark cave. But once there, we looked constantly to the sky and sensed, even before we could think clearly, that that was where our destiny lay. The evolution of Man is the shaping of that destiny, the building of that bridge between the cave and the stars, and the individual is mere mortar for the structure of the future, a cog in the wheel.

  Think of this when you call me cruel, when you accuse me of being inhuman, when you charge me with crimes against humanity, when you suggest that I am playing God by perverting the natural order of things. For, indeed, what is natural?

  The only natural law is change. All things in nature are bom only to die and in between birth and death they are in a state of constant change. Likewise with Mankind, whose history is one of change. Men have been changing since they first crawled from the primordial slime and the changes have often been painful Pain, too, is natural.

  From the cave to the stars, from Man to Superman: this is what the change is all about — and it cannot be stopped. The human being, as we know him, is neither natural nor constant; he is merely a primitive tool of evolution and will soon pass away. Not die off like the dinosaurs, not melt away like other species, but instead evolve, evolve into another species altogether, a creature of pure mind, no longer imprisoned in a physical, mortal body, nor governed by primitive emotions. When we learn to rid ourselves of those outmoded emotions, which so often are self-destructive, there is nothing we won't be able to do. Then Man becomes Superman.

  I realized this as a child, when I first learnt that the sun would die, causing Earth to die as well, and I never once doubted it thereafter. I stood, a mere ten years of age, in afield of wheat, the sunlight of Iowa warming my face, and realized that Earth was but a transient stop for Mankind; that sooner or later this planet would come to an end, and that before that end came Mankind, if it was to hope to continue, must reach for the stars. That became my life's mission — to be a bridge to the stars

  — and I accepted that, in order to do it, I would have to place it before everything else in life — which was just what I did.

  When other young men of my own age were dreaming their vain dreams, obsessed with money and girls, living their lives through dime novels and vaudeville shows, I was treating the world as a laboratory and all those in it, including my mother and father, as objects to be placed, as it were, under a microscope and minutely studied. Indeed, while other boys my own age were in thrall to their orgasms, I was academically examining the stain of semen in my hand, tasting it with my tongue, thinking in awe of the journey of two hundred million spermatozoa that would end either in life or in death. By the time I was fifteen, I was studying my own sperm under a microscope and reducing the mystery of life to its biological reality. There were no dreams, vain or otherwise, in this; there was only a goal to reach.

  The death of my mother brought me closer to liberty, which was why it did not cause me pain; and later, when my father died, my only response was to feel free for the first time. Indeed, the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, then MIT, followed by Cornell College, Ithaca, New York, were the only kind of homes I ever wanted, and they nurtured me well. I was obsessed with knowledge, with learning all there was to know, particularly concerning aerodynamics and, eventually, spaceflight.

  The stupidity of my fellow students appalled me, their interests being so narrow, so devoid of true aspiration (expensive houses and good jobs and beautiful women as trophies) that I felt revulsion just listening to them talking and gradually drew away from them. I became a private person, an island, a bachelor living for and by himself — but one with a secret, grandiose mission. By the time I left university and went to work, I knew just what that mission was.

  Thus I built the first airships, was betrayed by my own government, became anonymous for many years after that, working here and there, the length and breadth of the country, offering gold for bread, until eventually I assisted my one hero, Robert H. Goddard, with the production of his first liquid-fuelled rockets. Then, having assisted him only to learn from him, I left him as pragmatically as I had joined him. Yes, I went to find those who could deliver the finance and fanaticism that would be needed for what I wanted to do. They were, of course, the Nazis.

  You have condemned me for this. But what else could I do? Betrayed by my own countrymen, rejected by my own government, my work stolen and then neglected, I had no choice but to use those who would use me because their plans were as grandiose. Insane, but grandiose, with one belief that I shared, albeit more rationally: the belief that they could create the Superman, a Super Race, and rule the world for the foreseeable future. They were perverted in their reasoning, obscene in their methods, but they gave me the only opportunity I was likely to get and for that reason alone I had to take it.