'I won't,' Gumshoe signalled.

  He put his head back on the pillow, closed his eyes and felt himself being wheeled out of the room.

  Snake Eyes stopped briefly in order to close the door, then he pushed the stretcher forward again, obviously heading along a straight corridor. Lying there with his eyes closed, Gumshoe listened to the soft drumming of the stretcher's wheels on the floor and heard footsteps approaching, passing by and moving away as people moved in both directions along the corridor. Though he couldn't see them, he shuddered to think of them, the 'walking dead' in Snake Eyes's words, the clones and the brain-altered, eyes flat, faces closed, all human feeling killed off in them. Then he recalled with a vivid intensity his mother and father in that immense surgical laboratory, their severed heads on that thick pig's neck, their eyes wide and wild with deep trauma. Hideous though that image was, filling him up with revulsion and grief, he also felt the searing pain of loss at the knowledge that he was trying to escape while leaving his parents to their dreadful fate. He vowed silently, then, with all the passion at his command, to return some day and set them both free.

  He would do that in the only way now possible: by switching off the machine that kept them alive. He vowed to make that day soon.

  The wheeled stretcher stopped moving. Then Gumshoe heard doors opening, sliding open, and he was pushed forward again, this time only about a metre, into what he sensed was an enclosed space. This time, when the doors closed, they did so behind him. Almost instantly, he heard a soft humming noise and felt a sinking sensation.

  I'm in an elevator, he thought. Going down. If this is the underground nuclear shelter of the Pentagon, it must have levels even deeper than the one I was on.

  The elevator stopped descending. Gumshoe heard the doors opening. The wheeled stretcher was pushed forward again, turning left into another straight corridor, then, after advancing for about fifteen metres, it came to a halt. Gumshoe heard a door

  2AA.

  opening, this one obviously on hinges, then he was pushed forward a couple of metres and heard the door closing, this time just behind him. The sheet was flipped off his body, then someone's fingers gripped the collar of his smock and shook him violently.

  Gumshoe opened his eyes to see Snake Eyes staring down at him, his index finger to his lips, indicating that he, Gumshoe, should not speak. Gumshoe nodded, then glanced about him. He was in a different room, another single bedroom, and a dark-haired young man, just slightly over Gumshoe's age, was stretched out on top of the bed, fully clothed, in an open-necked shirt, windcheater jacket, blue denims and leather boots. He was clearly unconscious and there was, as Snake Eyes had said there would be, a name tag pinned to the breast of his jacket.

  Snake Eyes's hands and fingers began to wave again as he used sign language. 'Okay. Get off the stretcher and help me undress this poor bastard.'

  Gumshoe did as he was instructed, rolling off the stretcher and then helping Snake Eyes to undress the unconscious man. This wasn't as easy as Gumshoe had thought it would be — it was like manhandling a dead man — but eventually all the clothes had been removed and the man was stark naked. Snake Eyes held the man's wrists, Gumshoe held him by the ankles, and together they lifted him off the bed, lowered him to the floor, then rolled him out of sight under the bed.

  When they straightened up, Snake Eyes nodded towards the man's clothes and Gumshoe proceeded to put them on. Just before donning the windcheater jacket, which he had left to the last, he checked the name tag and saw the name 'Danny Greenfeld'. After letting that name sink into his head, to ensure that it came naturally to his tongue when he woke up at the LZ, he went through the pockets of the jacket to check that the billfold and identification papers were all there. They were.

  Satisfied, he turned back to Snake Eyes who was already holding up a syrette and testing it by releasing a dribble of serum.

  Satisfied that it was working, he nodded towards the bed, indicating that Gumshoe should stretch out, fully clothed, upon it. When Gumshoe had complied, Snake Eyes tapped his right wrist with his forefinger, indicating that he should roll up the sleeves of his jacket and shirt. Gumshoe did so. Snake Eyes pinched Gumshoe's skin between his thumb and index finger, then expertly jabbed the needle in, just as he had so often done when taking speed. It did not hurt, though Gumshoe felt the warm rush of the serum as it entered his bloodstream. Snake Eyes put the syrette down on the trolley beside the bed and indicated that Gumshoe should roll the sleeves of his shirt and jacket back down. Gumshoe did so.

  His eyes were becoming heavy.

  'Can you manage on your own?' Gumshoe managed to ask, still using sign language.

  'Yes,' Snake Eyes said, also using sign language. 'Now close your eyes and let yourself go to sleep.

  With luck, we'll meet up back in Washington. I have to go now.'

  'Thanks,' Gumshoe signalled.

  Snake Eyes nodded and left the room, closing the door behind him as Gumshoe closed his eyes and surrendered to sleep.

  His sleep was deep and dreamless. Gumshoe couldn't remember a thing about it. He had closed his eyes just as Snake Eyes had left the room and he opened them again to find that he was somewhere else altogether and that another white-smocked man, not Snake Eyes, was staring down at him. This man had a flat gaze and pale, inexpressive features.

  A dazzling white light was blazing above the man's head, straight into Gumshoe's face, but he saw that the wall beyond him was all white and curved, indicating that they were now in a flying saucer.

  Hearing an almost imperceptible bass humming sound all around him, he knew that the flying saucer was still in flight, though almost certainly making a slow, vertical descent and about to land.

  Sit up,' the man said.

  Gumshoe sat upright and noted that he was still wearing the

  casual clothes with the name tag saying 'Danny Greenfeld'. Glancing about him, he saw that he was in what appeared to be an exceptionally clean garage area, but one with a high, dome-shaped ceiling and, as he had noticed before, a long, curving wall of pure white steel. This area was shaped like a slice of cake and was filled with automobiles.

  Gumshoe turned back to the white-smocked man, met his flat gaze, and remembered to keep his face expressionless.

  'Take off the name tag,' the man said tonelessly.

  Gumshoe removed the tag and handed it to the man, who placed it in his side pocket, then gave him four keys on a plain silver ring. 'That's your car over there,' the man said, pointing to a red Honda Accord. 'You'll find the papers for it in the glove compartment, along with your new address in Albuquerque. The small key is for the car and the large one's for your apartment. The other two are spares. You'll find everything else you need, including your orders, in the desk drawer in the living room of the apartment. Now, please sit in the car and drive off as soon as the doors open. You have two minutes to get well away before we ascend again. Head due north and follow the first road sign indicating Albuquerque. We'll be in touch when we need you. Any questions?'

  'No.'

  'Good. Now, please go and wait in the car,' the man repeated.

  Gumshoe nodded, swung his legs off the bed and walked to the red Honda Accord as the bass humming noise tapered off into silence, indicating that the flying saucer had landed. He noticed that the only people in this area were himself and the man in the white smock, though some cyborgs were crossing a catwalk just below the high, dome-shaped ceiling. Opening the car door, he slipped into the driver's seat, closed the door again, strapped himself in, then put the key in the ignition and sat back to wait.

  Glancing over his shoulder, he saw that the man in the white smock was watching him.

  Suddenly afraid, Gumshoe looked to the front again as

  another sound broke the silence, a higher-pitched humming sound, and a panel in the white wall moved outwards and down, its top end tilting forward, giving him a rapidly expanding view of a vast desert plain and a night sky covered in brilliant stars, the whole view illuminated by bright moonlight. The top end of the panel fell slowly, smoothly, as low as it could go, then stopped moving and was silent, forming a ramp wide enough for the car.

  Instantly, though carefully, as if simply obeying instructions, indicating no sense of urgency, Gumshoe turned the key in the ignition and drove the automobile down the ramp. Bouncing onto the dusty desert plain, he accelerated smoothly and drove away from the ramp which was, he had noticed, already pointing in a northerly direction. Fighting to contain the exhilaration that was coursing through him and could cause him to make a mistake, he kept driving, bouncing and shuddering across the potholes and fissures of the dusty plain, still heading north as instructed, towards a region of high plateaux and mountains lit brightly by stars, streaked with moonlight.

  When he was less than a mile away from the flying saucer he heard a bass humming sound, felt the ground vibrating even through the moving car, and glanced in his rear-view mirror. He saw the flying saucer, a 300-foot-wide transport, silvery-white and dome-shaped, lights flashing on and off repeatedly around its immense rim, first forming a kaleidoscope, then an eerie, pulsating glow, a floating cathedral for the New Age, rising majestically to the heavens. He braked to a halt and watched it ascending higher, rising magically, vertically, until it was no more than the size of a dime. It stopped briefly, just hovering, suspended in space, then shot off to the east like a shooting star and abruptly blinked out.

  When Gumshoe saw that the flying saucer had gone, he too turned east, ignoring the instructions given to him by the white-smocked man in the flying saucer. Instead, he began his long journey across New Mexico, across the deserts and the mountains, through the heat and the dust, determined to go all the way

  to Oklahoma, to Arkansas and then Kentucky, through West Virginia and back to Washington DC.

  Exhilarated beyond measure, practically ecstatic, he was on the move, travelling. A free man again.

  Chapter Thirty

  The Bird was in deep pain. The Bird had found a nest but felt constantly endangered, not only by outside predators in the shape of the cyborgs but also by his own wayward emotions. The bird was Michael, sending his e-mails to Freedom Bay via a false Cincinnati address, which was actually a home page in Freedom Bay, to be read only by Dr Lee Brandenberg whom he revered and whom he hated cheating. This was, indeed, what he was doing, not by telling lies, not exactly, but by withholding information about his precise relationship with Bonnie Packard, from whom he was receiving valuable information.

  Michael and Bonnie were having an affair which, being Michael's first sexual experience, was filling him with guilt, not only because Bonnie was an Outsider — not from Freedom Bay — but also because she was his weak point, his one area of potential failure: he knew that she could colour his judgement and destroy his objectivity. She was helpful to what he was doing, knowing everything that was happening, streetwise to the last degree. But the very fact that he wanted her and, worse, thought that he might be in love with her, was exactly what made him feel defenceless and, when communicating with Freedom Bay, not truly honest.

  Michael, as the Bird, sent e-mails to Dr Lee Brandenberg and

  always, unfailingly, received polite, if suspiciously correct, possibly concerned, replies . . .

  From:

  the bird has left its nest and flown high and wide only to find

  that everything is close to its feathery wingtips.

  in white houses and rectilineal plane figures of five sides and

  five angles the hybrids multiply and do what still cannot be

  known.

  it will be known.

  the bird has found a friend and is being guided to the right

  path which will lead eventually to what the hybrids do.

  the bird has the confidence of expectation and heads into the

  light.

  that light wih surely reveal all.

  From:

  the bird flies well but may trust too much to instinct.

  it is best to be wary of friends who do not fly

  towards the light from the same nest.

  by all means seek the light but at the same time let

  us know more of the friend.

  friends are easy to find but often hard to lose.

  think of this as you fly.

  Michael was more than willing to convey information about the White House and the Pentagon, about Wilson and the cyborgs and the clones, and about the lack of real knowledge of what they were up to.

  But he found it very difficult to talk honestly about his 'friend' who was, of course, Bonnie Packard.

  Since the first morning with her, after she had rescued him from the cyborg patrol, he had become addicted to her, seduced not only by new sexual experience but by her remarkable personality — at once tough and tender, streetwise and childlike, crude yet at times surprisingly sensitive — so unlike the more

  conservative personalities that he had known in Freedom Bay. In Freedom Bay, young girls didn't talk like Bonnie, didn't dress like her, didn't practise free love and shoot up speed and drink beer and smoke as if there was no tomorrow. Bonnie did so, she had explained, because for her and her kind there might really be no tomorrow: each day could be their last, since they were prey to the cyborgs and could never forget it. So, Bonnie had explained, they all lived for the moment, not concerned for the future, and their behaviour was an act of defiance against a world that had clearly turned against them — the world of the cyborgs.

  'Where do you come from?' Bonnie asked him one day when they were lying side by side, naked, on his bed, having just made love, as they did often. 'I mean, where do you really come from? You live here in Chinatown, but you're not like us at all — you're not lowlife — so where were you really brought up?

  And what are you doing here?'

  'I told you. I was born in New York but raised mainly in Virginia. The people there are pretty damned conservative and largely ignored by the cyborgs.'

  "There's more to it than that,' Bonnie said. 'I'm pretty damned sure of that. But we all have our secrets in Chinatown, so I guess you can keep yours.'

  In fact, Michael wanted very much to tell her about Freedom Bay, about where he really came from and why he was here. But he knew that to do so could be dangerous, particularly if she was picked up by the cyborgs, who almost certainly had infallible methods of making people talk. He did, on the other hand, pump her constantly for information about the cyborg patrols (the areas they covered most and what routines they stuck to), about the people she knew (who hated the cyborgs most and who might be working for them) and about the general talk in the streets, which could reveal a surprising amount about cyborg activities. He felt guilty doing this, aware that he was using her or, at least, not levelling with her, but he had to use everything he could get in order to complete his 2C2

  picture of the cyborg world and send the details back to Lee Brandenberg in Freedom Bay.

  From:

  the bird pursues hybrids and sees them in great numbers.

  they enter and leave by east and west while protecting north

  and south with hovering eagles.

  where five sides and five angles form a whole the same pattern

  applies.

  here where the chinese are no more there are those who would

  attempt to breach walls if they were given the leadership.

  in order to lead one must be known and the bird remains

  unknown.

  for the bird to take wing he must have brothers and friends

  even though they do not come from the same nest.

  the friend is one who could lead me to those who might

  become the brothers who breach walls, even though they do

  not come from the same nest.

  let the bird seek its brothers.

  From:

  i repeat that friends are easy to find but often hard to lose.

  think of this as you fly.

  fly however and seek out the friends who might become

  brothers.

  do not attempt to breach walls while in flight as your wings

  may get broken.

  let the bird's song be heard.

  While continuing to collect intelligence on the movements of the cyborgs in and out of the White House and the Pentagon, both guarded constantly by hovering mother ships, and e-mailing that intelligence to Lee Brandenberg in Freedom Bay, Michael was moving closer to the point where he would have to, albeit with extreme caution, reveal himself. He needed, with growing urgency, to recruit friends who could help him find out what was going on inside those buildings. He was by now convinced that there was only one way that this could be done.

  While he was attempting every day to penetrate the White House with his parapsychological skills, his most intense concentration had so far only produced shadowy images of the cyborgs moving here and there about the front of the building. This, however, was enough to reveal that the cyborgs, clones and walking dead were constantly descending to and emerging from the basement of the building.

  The basement was, Michael knew, a vast underground complex that had originally been built during the Cold War as a presidential shelter in the event of a nuclear attack by the Soviet Union, later Russia. But the subterranean complex had been extended since then and now stretched all the way to the Pentagon, linked to that building's similar underground redoubt by a four-lane tunnel running under the Potomac River.