Certainly, then, the biological computer is a bona fide descendant of man in that it was bom of man and, like man, thinks and reasons — albeit so much faster that comparisons between it and man become almost irrelevant.

  The electronic neuron, for instance, changes its response a million times faster than a human neuron. The biological computer is therefore quicker in response than the human and, more pertinently to reasoning power, its judgements are not clouded, its decisions not altered, by the human weaknesses of anxiety, exhaustion and misplaced compassion. The biological computer is, in fact,

  the human mind turned into Supermind — impersonal, pragmatic, neither cruel nor kind — and it will leave us stranded in its wake if we do not join up with it.

  I have joined up with it.

  Again, just as I was the first human clone, so, too, I became the first human being, albeit cloned, to become part of this alien life form by giving myself to it.

  The interaction between biochip and living tissue began when biochip cameras passed information to the brains of the blind to give them sight and bionic transmitters bypassed the damaged auditory circuits of the deaf to let them hear again. Since then, the interaction between the biochip and living tissue has become so complete that communication between the ever-growing biological computer (such as the one now expanding hourly in the basement of the White House) and the human being has become a form of mental telepathy in which the computer increasingly takes and the human being must give.

  I have given.

  I gave myself to the great computer, that alien Ife form composed of self-reproducing molecules, by electronically transferring my brain patterns into the ever-expanding biological computer in the White House basement, letting it drain my every thought until, with my physical body rendered inactive, a dead thing, I was consumed and became part of that immense, teeming intelligence, sharing its perceptions as it began the great task for which, with my humble assistance, it had initially been brought into being. In so doing, I completed the journey I had planned as a boy, in my first incarnation, in the wheat fields of Iowa many years ago, and began my journey into a future beyond human imagining.

  Others are joining me. You, too, must join me if you wish to transcend your mortal limitations and reach for the stars.

  This, my friends, is what we are now.

  This is what awaits you.

  Chapter Forty-one

  Gumshoe was the first to rush into the building, but he stopped almost as soon as he was inside, dazzled by the light. He could see the walls and floors, the ceilings and stairs, but they seemed insubstantial and unreal beyond that incandescent light filled with darting fireflies. Perplexed, he just stood there, gazing about him, expecting to see cyborgs or Men in Black, but seeing nothing except the light, the millions of fireflies, hearing some kind of noise, an indefinable infrasound, that made him think of distant, muffled static. It was not distant, however, because he heard it on all sides and, he thought, above and below him, a sound that seemed to resonate both without and within, rising and falling imperceptibly, pulsating to a magical rhythm that made his heart race.

  'Jesus!' he said softly, his voice reverberating eerily, as Bonnie came up beside him, her eyes as big as spoons, followed by Michael and Ben and the Cowboy and Zapata and Satchmo. The latter gazed around him, brown eyes glistening, then grinned and said, 'Hallelujah!'

  The Cowboy was less enchanted. 'Let's check the building,' he said. 'We'll cover all three floors before venturing down into the basement. A couple of us should cover this area and the stairwells while the rest of us check upstairs. When we return, we'll all search together around the ground floor. After that, it's the basement.'

  'Good thinking,' Ben said. 'You two,' he said to Zapata and Satchmo, 'stay here while the rest of us—'

  'I wanna see the White House,' Zapata said. 'I never seen it before. Get someone else to stay here; I'm having a walkabout.'

  'Look—' Ben began.

  'Look nothin',' Zapata said. 'I only take orders from my own kind and—'

  'I'll stay here with Satchmo,' Gumshoe said, being nominally in charge of the Speed Freaks and feeling obliged. 'Stay loose, Zapata.'

  'Loose as a goose with diarrhoea,' Zapata responded. 'Okay, guys and gals, let's go.'

  Gumshoe felt a twinge of pain when he saw Michael and Bonnie give each other fleeting smiles as they went up the stairs, followed by Ben and the Cowboy and Zapata, to the floors once reserved for the Presidential Family. When they were out of sight, Gumshoe nodded at Satchmo.

  'Okay,' he said, 'let's check this floor out.'

  Satchmo gave him a big, white-toothed grin and said, 'Yeah, brother, let's do that. Let's get stars in our eyes, man.'

  Having never been in the White House before, neither of them knew the names of the rooms they were checking, which made little difference since all of the rooms were completely devoid of furniture and ornamentation — were, in fact, featureless — and rendered even more so by the incandescent light that made the walls, floors and ceilings seem insubstantial, with the darting fireflies (for want of a better word, since they were actually not physical) making it seem that they were in a vast cosmos without definable boundaries. Indeed, as Gumshoe moved around with great care beside Satchmo, who, with his black skin, looked more real than Gumshoe felt, he became increasingly convinced that he had stepped into another world, an incorporeal world, in which the only reality was its strange, distant-sounding static (again, for want of a better word, since it also sounded like the ghostly whispering of many voices) and the almost imperceptible

  pressure that alternatively pushed and tugged at him.

  Apart from this, however, there was nothing to be seen or heard — no cyborgs or Men in Black, no walking dead — and Gumshoe found himself thinking that the building felt curiously haunted, denuded of all life yet still somehow alive with its illustrious and sometimes sordid history, filled with the ghosts of those who had once walked here and now were no more. Gumshoe shivered. Then, wanting to make his escape, after he had inspected the last room he hurried back to the lobby with an equally shaken Satchmo by his side. The others had not yet come down from upstairs and the lobby was as empty as they had left it, though still illuminated with that magical light that had a life of its own.

  'Oh, man,' Satchmo said, 'I don't know what this is, but whatever it is, it ain't natural. What say you, brother?'

  'I say you could be right,' Gumshoe replied. 'This is real voodoo showtime.'

  'That voodoo,' Satchmo said, 'was some New Orleans-styled horseshit, that old black-trash tourist come-on. What we got here, man — what we got in spades — is something out of the future. This is something real, brother.'

  'How real?' Gumshoe asked him.

  'Real enough to be felt and heard.'

  'What do you feel?'

  'Something pushin' and pullin'.'

  'And what do you hear?'

  'Weird whisperings, brother. Like those voices in your dreams. Like when you're high on speed. They seem a million miles away, but they seem to be right here at the same time — all around, above and below, inside and out. Fuck it, man, I can hear them in my head and yet I know they're outside me.

  We're being inhabited, brother. We should get the hell out of here.'

  'You want to go?'

  'I'll go if you go.'

  'I'm not going,' Gumshoe said.

  'Then I'm not going, either. What the hell, man, let's see it through.'

  At that moment, they heard other sounds — footsteps coming down the stairs — and then Michael appeared, descending the staircase indeed, with, Gumshoe noted, an awed Bonnie by his side, the Cowboy and Ben and Zapata behind them, all holding their weapons at the ready, but with nothing to shoot at. When they reached the lobby, they looked at Gumshoe and Satchmo as if seeing ghosts.

  'What's the matter?' Gumshoe asked.

  'Nothing,' Ben replied. 'You just look a bit unreal in this light and it seems years since we saw you.'

  'What?' Satchmo said. You only been gone a few minutes. What the fuck did you jokers see up there?'

  'Nothing,' Ben said. 'It's just like it is down here. Completely empty rooms and this weird light. No cyborgs. No Men in Black. You guys hear or feel anything?'

  'Like what?' Gumshoe asked.

  'A kinda pressure,' Bonnie said. 'A kinda tuggin' and a pushin'. Accompanied by some kinda whispering. Michael calls it an infrasound.'

  'What's that?' Satchmo asked.

  'A sound so low that humans can't normally hear it, though dogs and other animals can. A sound so low that it can create a kind of vibration. I think it's something like that.'

  So what do we do now?' Bonnie asked.

  We go lower down,' Zapata said. 'I never seen the White House before and I wanna see it all now. Not much to look at — it s all empty — but at least I can say that I've seen it and I wanna be able to say that when I get back outside.'

  'Let's not disappoint Zapata,' the Cowboy said.

  One by one they all nodded assent.

  'Okay,' Ben said, 'let's do it.'

  They made their way back to what had once been the East Room and found themselves in a vaulted-arch corridor that ran

  west to east with many rooms running off it. The light down here was, if anything, more intense, more dense with fireflies, those nodes of light shooting every which way, and the ghostly whispering — that murmuring that seemed to be distant and close at once, inside and out — seemed more real, though not necessarily louder. Also, as they explored each of the rooms in turn, including the great oval-shaped Diplomatic Reception Room, now denuded of furniture and decoration, just like every other room, they again felt that almost imperceptible pulling and tugging.

  Michael perhaps felt it most of all. Concentrating as intently as possible to probe the nature of the magical incandescence, using his parapsychological training, he was almost able to visualize these rooms as they had been — the French Empire furniture, the rare china and glassware, the portraits of Presidents and First Ladies adorning the walls, the 2,700 volumes, the French and English silver, the chandeliers and marble mandes, the gilded armchairs and Sheraton-style settees — and to sense the resonance of its history. He could visualize the laying of the cornerstone in 1792, the conflagration caused by the British during the War of 1812, the reconstruction during President Monroe's period and all the changes that had been made from the time of Andrew Jackson to the final President, James P.

  Taylor, whose administration had ended abrupdy, shockingly, on the final day of the millennial year 2000. Yes, Michael felt that he could see all that, sense the building's historical resonance. But he also felt that he was tuning in to something besides that, something infinitely more powerful and seductive, something starting to draw him in and wrap itself around him, and it was neither good nor evil, cruel nor kind, but something both natural and awesome, perhaps beyond his imagining.

  Gumshoe felt something different: a deep revulsion and fear; the imminence of nightmare, the conviction that what lay down the next flight of stairs was something that was surely best avoided. He had his reasons, of course: the recollection of his

  abduction, the knowledge of what he had seen in that other vast basement, the one under the Pentagon, linked to this one by a tunnel that ran under the Potomac and that had been built by the cyborgs many years ago. Gumshoe did not want to go down there because he knew where it would lead him: to that tunnel under the river and the other vast basement where his parents were still alive in a living hell.

  Gumshoe wanted to rescue them, to put them out of their misery, give them peace at last, but knowing that the only way to do that was to kill them, he wanted to turn back and run away and never return here. Yet he knew that he would not do that, that he loved his parents too much, and that despite his personal horror and revulsion, he would see this through to the bitter end. Then he looked at Bonnie.

  Her family might be down there as well. When he looked at Bonnie and thought of what she might soon find, he had the need to protect her. This need, which was what made him human, resurrected his

  courage.

  'Fuck it,' he said when they had finished checking the ground floor. 'Let's go down to the basement.

  Whatever's happening, it's ening down there and that's what we came for.'

  'Damned right,' the Cowboy said.

  Gumshoe caught Bonnie's glance, a fleeting smile filled with tenderness. He returned the smile as he came to the steps that led to the basement. He looked down the steps and they appeared to have no bottom, dissolving into that light-flecked incandescence that had a life of its own. Michael and Bonnie came up beside him, also to look down the stairs. They saw exacdy the same incandescence, heard that here-and-there murmuring, felt the almost imperceptible push and pull, though this time they shared the feeling that they were being pulled instead of pushed . . . pulled down into the basement.

  Bonnie shivered and took a single, involuntary step backwards; then, realizing what she had done, she resolutely stepped forward again, glancing at Gumshoe and Michael in turn.

  You guys scared?' she asked.

  'No,' Michael replied honestly.

  'Yes,' Gumshoe confessed.

  'Two sides of the same coin,' Bonnie said, 'and that coin's in the palm of my hand. Listen, guys, don't let me come between you. I want the three of us to be the best of friends if we ever get out of here.'

  'We'll get out,' Michael said.

  'We're friends now,' Gumshoe said.

  Bonnie squeezed the shoulder of each of them in turn, her own tender confession, then she gave a loud sigh. 'Right, friends, I'm ready.'

  'Willing and able,' Ben added, stepping around them to take the lead position. 'Okay, let's get going.'

  As they advanced down the stairs, with Ben in the lead, Michael did indeed feel fearless and used all of his considerable concentration to continue probing the nature of this phenomenon. Again, he had the feeling that the incandescence was sentient, aware of their presence here, observing their every move even as it permeated them. At the same time, he thought of Wilson, that extraordinary, possibly resurrected man, and was convinced that he was behind it all and might be down here somewhere.

  When Michael reached the bottom of the steps, still between Gumshoe and Bonnie, that conviction, or feeling, became stronger and would not let him go.

  Now in that vast basement, more expansive than the building above it, they found themselves in what appeared, beyond the dazzling, distorting light, to be an area whose walls, floor and ceiling were covered with immense webs of hair-thin wires and silicon chips, even though, when they placed their feet on the floor, they felt only smooth stone through their shoes — for indeed there were no protuberances where the wires and silicon chips should have been. Nevertheless, the millions of nodes of light were shooting from one chip to the other, across the wide ceiling, illuminating the high walls, turning the floor beneath their feet into an inverted, star-filled sky, and this gave them all the feeling that they were floating, not walking, in space or, as Gumshoe imagined, in some kind of cyberspace.

  'This place is as empty as upstairs,' the Cowboy said, his voice still low and mellow.

  'No, it's not,' Michael said.

  As they advanced in a southerly direction across the immense basement, as their eyes adjusted, if only

  slightly, to the dazzling incandescence and darting lights, they found themselves walking through what looked like the aftermath of a futuristic war, with many cyborgs lying lifeless on the floor — the floor that looked like an inverted, star-filled sky — and then they came upon other cyborgs that were wandering mechanically to and fro, taking no notice of them, or staggering drunkenly before collapsing to the ground as if drained of all energy.

  'We're definitely in some kind of energy field,' Michael said to the others, 'and I think it's feeding off the energy of the cyborgs as it expands.'

  'What about us?' Gumshoe asked. 'Is it feeding off us as well?'

  'We'll know soon enough,' Michael said.

  Continuing to advance, still heading south, they had covered enough distance to bring them, in the Cowboy's estimation, to a point roughly beyond Constitution Avenue. Here they saw that the great basement was ending, narrowing down to form a tunnel that ran in a south-westerly direction. There, where the tunnel began, they saw the silhouetted forms of many cyborgs, and possibly humans, heading into the tunnel at a speed considerably slower than normal. Indeed, even as some were advancing into the tunnel, others were staggering drunkenly and collapsing.

  The light seemed even brighter in the tunnel, a great circle of whiteness.

  It looks to me,' the Cowboy said, 'as though that tunnel is running in the direction of the Lincoln Memorial.'

  Right,' Ben said. 'And from there under the Potomac and then, one way or the other, to the Pentagon basement.'

  I don't like it,' Zapata said. 'It don't feel good to me. This

  goddamned light, those thousands of smaller lights flying this way and that, they're getting inside my head. I'm startin' to feel pretty funny.'

  'You want to go back?' Gumshoe asked him.

  Til go back when you go back,' Zapata told him, 'and not before, mi amigo!

  'Then keep walking,' Gumshoe said.

  By the time they reached the entrance to the tunnel, the cyborgs and humans, probably the Men in Black and the walking dead, had gone deeper into it and could be seen as shrinking silhouettes a good distance ahead. They were still collapsing, though, and the tunnel floor, about twenty metres wide, its separate lanes clearly marked with broken white lines, was littered with their limp, lifeless bodies.

  'They're dying off like flies,' the Cowboy said. 'This is some kinda massacre.'

  'They're being sucked dry,' Michael corrected him, 'to feed the very energy source that we're now walking through.'

  'You mean this light,' Satchmo said, 'and all those other lights, are some form of life?'