Blocked in his parapsychological explorations by the greater psychic powers of the cyborgs, Michael was now sure that the only way he would find out what was going on inside those buildings would be to enter them physically. He had no idea, just yet, of how he would do it — but he certainly knew that he could not do it alone. He would have to start recruiting, and he had been given permission to do just that in Dr Lee Brandenberg's last e-mail. Encouraged, but still fearful of the enormity of what he was about to undertake, he e-mailed back for encouragement.

  From:

  birds occasionally lose their sense of direction and let themselves be buffeted by the wind which may not be a good thing, given this, should the bird continue to fly.

  From: the bird should continue to fly. be bold and take wing.

  With Brandenberg's permission to reveal his identity to those he thought he could trust and, having done so, to recruit them to his cause, which was to penetrate the White House, and given what he had learned about Ben Wilkerson's surveillance teams, Michael decided to approach the latter for assistance. Like him, Ben had been rescued from the cyborg patrols that night by one of the Speed Freak gang that had included Bonnie. Now he was back running the rooming house as usual. Michael decided to take him out for a drink and then play it by ear. But first he double-checked with Bonnie who, acquainted with just about everyone in Chinatown, knew Ben well.

  'I need to talk to Ben about something that's really important,' Michael said. 'It has to be strictly confidential. Do you think I can trust him?'

  'Jesus,' Bonnie responded from where she was stretched out on the sofa in Michael's room. 'This sounds really heavy. What the hell are you up to?'

  'It's personal,' Michael said.

  'Gee, thanks a lot!'

  'So, is he trustworthy?'

  'In what way?'

  'If I tell him something in confidence, will he keep his mouth shut?'

  'Tell him something about what? I mean, just how important is it, that you can't even tell me? You think I'm some kind of blabbermouth, or what?'

  'I'm sorry, Bonnie. I don't mean to insult you, but I simply can't tell you what it's about. Please don't take offence.'

  'You're such a gentleman,' Bonnie said. 'Just don't tell me it's to do with your secret love life.'

  'You're my only love life,' Michael replied. 'And you aren't a secret.'

  'God, you sure know how to say the nicest things. What a lucky gal I am! Tell me, are you in love with me?'

  'I believe so.'

  Bonnie's smile was like a sunrise. 'You're so sweet, you're like a fourteen-year-old. You're so trusting and innocent. But you don't know what love is, Mike. I'm just your first, is all. You've never had a woman before and guys always think they're in love with the first woman they have. When you're more experienced, when you've learnt to take me for granted, you'll cast your gaze elsewhere because you and me are too different to stay together.'

  'That's not true,' Michael said, though when he thought of introducing Bonnie, with her bizarre appearance and rough ways, to his conservative friends in Freedom Bay, he realized that she would indeed seem a strange choice. That thought, which had only just come to him through this conversation, did not make him feel good.

  'Yes, it is true,' Bonnie insisted. 'You're a classy guy, Mike, and I'm lowlife and those two don't mix.

  But it makes me feel good that you even think you love me. No one's ever felt that way about me before — I was only a decent fuck to the others. That's the kind of life I've led, it's all I know, and you make me feel special. Can you trust Ben with something confidential? I'd say probably yes, though it might depend on what the subject is. Can you give me a clue?'

  'It's to do with the cyborgs.'

  Bonnie frowned, looking concerned. 'The cyborgs? Jesus Christ! Anything to do with them is bad news.

  What's your involvement, Mike?'

  'I didn't say I was involved.'

  'If you want to talk to Ben about the cyborgs, you must have a reason.'

  'I'm looking for someone,' Michael lied, 'and I think he can help me.'

  Well, maybe he can. He certainly keeps tabs on them. He's part of a big gang that's determined to bring the cyborgs down, though I think they're all dreaming. Yeah, if it's anything to do with the cyborgs, he'll keep his mouth shut. You can trust him with that.'

  1C-J

  'Thanks,' Michael said.

  He took Ben for that drink. They went back to the same retro dance club that they'd been in before and watched a holographic Elvis gyrating in the colourized version of his old movie Jailbouse Rock while the girls around him screamed their heads off. Strobe lights were flashing elsewhere in the big room, forming a kaleidoscopic web that made everyone caught in it, the drinkers and the dancers and the druggies, look bizarre and surreal. Elvis moved like a dream.

  'I wanted to talk to you,' Michael said, 'about what you showed me the other night.'

  'You were impressed?'

  'Yes, I was.'

  'Talk away,' Ben said.

  'I'm not from around here,' Michael said, 'and I'm not really looking for an old girlfriend.'

  'I'm intrigued already.'

  'Have you ever heard of Freedom Bay?'

  Ben raised his eyebrows and stared at him with increasing interest. 'You mean in . . . ?'

  'Antarctica.'

  'Yes,' Ben said, very slowly, drawing the word out like a question mark and letting the silence linger for a moment before nodding his head. 'Yeah, I've heard of it. It's one of those places only discussed in whispers and always with a certain amount of doubt. No reference to it anywhere in the literature, but it's rumoured to be a top-secret US military complex that was cut off from the rest of the world when the cyborgs took over. The rumours talk about a technology nearly as advanced as that of the cyborgs and also about flying-saucer construction. According to the rumours, the cyborgs can't get in there and the Freedom Bay people can't get out.'

  'The first is correct, the second is wrong. It's true that the cyborg saucers can't get in there because a force field protects the base — but that field can be turned on and off to let the saucers of Freedom Bay fly out. I know, because that's where I come from and I'm here for a purpose.'

  Now Ben's gaze was direct and frankly sceptical. 'Is this a put-on?'

  'No. I really do come from Freedom Bay and I'm here on a mission that concerns the cyborgs. I want you to help me.'

  'Freedom Bay actually exists?'

  'It sure does.'

  'Tell me about it,' Ben said.

  Michael recounted, in great detail, the whole history of Freedom Bay, beginning with Wilson's secret journey to Antarctica back in 1945, going on to cover Wilson's death and the US takeover in 1982, and concluding with the way the colony was run now and exactly why he, Michael, had been sent here to Washington DC. When he had finished, Ben looked thoughtfully at Michael for some time. Then he shook his head ruefully from side to side and gave a low whistle.

  'Fucking hell,' Ben said softly. 'So now you guys are going to move against the cyborgs. How do you aim to do that? I mean, those bastards are spread worldwide, dug in just about everywhere on Earth.

  You can't cover the whole globe.'

  'From what I've seen of what goes on inside the White House—'

  'From what you've . . . seen? Ben interjected.

  'Yes. Some of us in Freedom Bay are trained in parapsycho-logical skills — mental telepathy and so on

  — and I've used mine to see, in a limited capacity, what's going on in the White House.'

  'Why "limited"?'

  'The cyborgs appear to have similar skills and have used them to make that kind of access difficult.'

  Yeah,' Ben said. 'It's the ones without mouths and noses and, in some cases, without eyes. Like the deaf, dumb and blind, they've developed compensatory senses, but in their case they've developed those senses enormously — extrasensory perception

  and so on. So, yeah, right, they're probably blocking all your attempts at mental penetration. They probably do that automatically. I'm amazed you saw anything at all. Your own skills in that field must be considerable.'

  'They are,' Michael said, simply stating a fact, not intending to boast.

  'Sorry for the distraction. Go on.'

  'We don't intend trying to cover the whole globe. It's our belief, based on what I've seen and what you too have picked up with your laser surveillance equipment, that the cyborgs have taken over the vast underground area that links the White House to the Pentagon via the four-lane highway they constructed to go under the Potomac. It's also our belief, based on intelligence gathered by Freedom Bay over the past twenty years, that the cyborgs worldwide are linked to some kind of vast, controlling intelligence, possibly a biological computer, and that if we can disrupt that link we'll also disrupt the cyborgs on a worldwide basis. Finally, it's our belief that the controlling intelligence, whatever it is, is located right here in Washington DC — in the White House, in the Pentagon, or in both. We therefore have to get into one of those buildings and I've chosen the White House.'

  'Why?'

  'It's a hell of a lot smaller and has no great expanse of ground around it. That makes it more accessible than the Pentagon.'

  'You haven't a prayer. You won't get inside the White House. That place is guarded outside night and day. Inside, as we've both seen, it's crawling with cyborgs, clones and the walking dead.'

  'Where there's a will there's a way,' Michael said. 'And I have the will.'

  'Exceptional will?' Ben asked, sounding slightly sardonic.

  'Yes,' Michael replied with flat conviction. 'I gained it through my intensive parapsychological training in Freedom Bay. I have, despite my juvenile appearance, a will of iron.'

  Ben smiled, then glanced around the room, taking in the flashing strobe lights, the young men and women dancing, the fans being hysterical around their holographic Elvis, who was now performing

  'Trouble' from the colourized version of his old movie King Creole. Ben gazed distractedly at Elvis as he considered what Michael had said, then he turned back to him.

  'Okay,' he said. 'How can I help?'

  'First, by using your surveillance gear to find out any possible way of getting into the White House, with particular emphasis on vehicles coming and going to see if any are on a regular schedule. I also need a record of the precise movements of all saucers taking off or landing, particularly those bringing in — or transferring out — abductees. Naturally, I also need to know if your surveillance equipment picks up any unusual movements inside the building.'

  'Done,' Ben said.

  'Second, I want you to recruit very carefully about twenty of the best people in your gang. They have to be one hundred per cent trustworthy and fearless. If you're absolutely convinced that they are, you can tell them everything I've told you. Don't pick anyone who hesitates for even a second when you tell them what our intentions are. To be crude about it, they have to be fanatical in their hatred of the cyborgs and willingness to risk all to bring them down.'

  'Gotcha,' Ben said. 'Anything else?'

  'No, that's it for now.'

  'How much time have I got?'

  'AH the time in the world. We won't move until we've found a surefire way of getting into that building. If that takes months, or even years, that's how long we'll have to wait. Do you have any questions?'

  Yeah,' Ben said, offering a cocky grin. 'What's Bonnie Packard like in the sack?'

  Don't embarrass me,' Michael said.

  Confident at last, Michael returned to his apartment and sent a confirming e-mail to Freedom Bay.

  From: the bird is in full flight.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Gumshoe's journey from Albuquerque, New Mexico, to Washington DC took him four days, driving most of each day, but stopping quite a bit to ensure that he didn't become too tired. Driving away from Albuquerque and the Rio Grande, feeling like an old-time pioneer, but heading east instead of west, he had not been ignorant of the fact that the cyborgs had inserted him into an area that had once been at the very heart of the American defence establishment and thus at the very centre of the flying saucer mythology of the Old Age.

  It was from Eden Valley, near Roswell, New Mexico, that Robert H. Goddard, aided by the legendary John Wilson, had shot his first liquid-fuelled rockets skyward in the early 1930s. Shortly after World War Two, the Roswell Army Air Field (now Walker AFB) became home to the 509th Bomb Group of the US Army Air Force, then the only combat-trained atom-bomb group in the world. Albuquerque itself was the home of the top-secret Kirtland AFB/Sandia Laboratories complex, south of the city, and the Manzano Nuclear Weapons Storage Facility, east of Kirtland, both of which were rumoured to have

  been involved in some of the early man-made flying saucer projects. New Mexico had also been home to the original scientific community' of Los Alamos, created by the Manhattan (atom bomb) Project in 1943, and still a highly restricted cyborg

  area, noted for its many top-secret research establishments. The White Sands Proving Ground, the US

  government's first rocket centre, lying 250 miles south of Los Alamos, had once been noted for its high incidence of UFO sightings and was now in the hands of the cyborgs too. The town of Alamogordo, located between the Proving Ground and the site of the first atomic explosion, had once proudly advertised itself as 'Home of the Atomic Bomb' and 'Centre of Rocket Development', but the cyborgs, since taking it over, had removed that and all other signs relating to the area's scientific history. The Proving Ground, which covered 4,000 square miles, was mostly a wasteland of sand and sagebrush out of which had sprung the numerous restricted US Army and Air Force bases, including Holloman AFB, the location of a lot of Old Age flying saucer sightings as well as of many of the US Naval Research Laboratory's top-secret experimental establishments — all of which were, of course, now under the tight control of the cyborgs. So, though Gumshoe had not found out just what kind of work the cyborgs had planned for him (or, more precisely, for the unfortunate Danny Greenfeld), he was pretty convinced that it would have been something to do with the experimental work still being undertaken in this vast area.

  Knowing that the cyborgs would put a trace on his car once they discovered that he had not gone to the apartment designated for him in Albuquerque, he deliberately turned south, ditched the car on the outskirts of Roswell, hot-wired a dusty old Ford that was parked outside a farm, then drove north until he arrived back at the road to Amarillo. Taking that road, he drove across those vast, moonlit plains of sand and sagebrush, hearing only the wind beating violently about him, and didn't stop until he reached Amarillo in the early hours of the morning. With no possessions other than the documentation given to him by the cyborgs, which they could easily trace, he used the credit card to withdraw money from a bank — enough to last him for a month — then bought himself a complete set of new clothing. He changed in the stolen car, keeping the other man's identification papers just in case a normal state trooper stopped him, then had breakfast in a diner and lit out again, leaving Amarillo in the still early hours of the morning.

  He passed fields of wheat and grazing cattle and oil rigs, the sun high and dazzling, and kept going until he reached Oklahoma City where the great plains swept down from the northwest. Up to that point, he had seen no signs of cyborg activity, but on the outskirts of the city, where industry was heavy, the evidence appeared in the form of deserted cars, indicating abducted drivers and passengers, then the odd SARGE or Prowler in the grounds of oil refineries and aircraft plants. He skirted around the city itself, then headed for Missouri, crossing the great Ozark Plateau where he saw saucers flying or hovering overhead, though luckily they were high in the sky, en route from one base to another and looking for no one. Coming down off the plateau, sparsely populated, neglected, barely developed, he travelled through a rainstorm to St Louis, saw the mighty Mississippi, and then, on the outskirts of the city, which was a major centre of communications and trade, saw a greater number of SARGE and Prowler patrols, all of which he managed to avoid. Again, he bypassed the city, where the patrols would have been even more numerous, and took the road that led to Cincinnati, passing through Indianapolis and Dayton, Ohio, sleeping in the car at night and stopping during the day only to eat at roadside diners.

  When he reached Charleston, West Virginia, the home of Daniel Boone, he started thinking of his own home, his small apartment in what had once been his parents' house in Georgetown, and the recollection of how he had last seen his mother and father cut through him like a knife with a hot blade.

  He had to stop driving because suddenly he was crying, boiling over with grief and horror and rage.

  But eventually he dried his tears and drove on, now determined more than ever to get back and dedicate

  himself to bringing down the cyborgs, which would be retribution.

  He came down from Charleston through the Shenandoah Valley, through orchards and green pastures, only seeing flying saucers that were very high up. As he neared his destination, Washington DC, he started thinking about Bonnie Packard, who had slipped from his thoughts completely, burned out by the sheer horror of what he had experienced, and was surprised by how much he wanted to see her.

  More surprising, when he thought about it, was that he wanted to make love to her — realtime sex, not cybersex, not masturbation through e-mails — and since he had never had real-time sex in his life, he was overwhelmed by the thought.

  Time to grow up, he thought.

  Entering Washington DC by way of Alexandria, in a pearly-grey late afternoon, he felt the excitement of homecoming — but he also felt the oppressiveness of being back where the cyborgs were highly visible and a constant threat. When he saw a great mother ship hovering direcdy above the Pentagon, the grounds around the building patrolled by SARGEs and Prowlers, he recalled with a shocking intensity exactly what he had witnessed in the basement of that very building, though it now seemed years instead of mere days ago and, with particular regard to his parents, more like a nightmare than a hideous reality.