'Yes, father,' Michael said.

  Someone was shaking him. Looking around, he saw Gumshoe. Behind Gumshoe, Bonnie was staring at him with large, confused, frightened eyes. Michael saw Bonnie's fear and it increased his respect — not for her, but for Wilson, his father, who had spoken the truth. The mind had to rule the heart, ignoring dangerous emotions, and he and Bonnie could never have survived beyond their brief mutual need. In truth, Gumshoe and Bonnie were more suited to each other: Michael's destiny, unimaginable to them, could not be shared with them. Michael glanced at Satchmo and the Cowboy, then turned to the front again.

  'Hey, Mike!' Gumshoe said, having shaken him in vain and now releasing him. 'What the hell's going on?'

  Michael, not knowing who 'Mike' was, offered no response.

  'Show me the way,' he said.

  'It is simple,' Wilson said. 'You will remain here on Earth while I venture forth to the stars and in my absence you will prepare many others as I've prepared you. The leap is being made now — the leap from Man to Superman, from the physical world to the incorporeal. But those who will follow me must be prepared as I was — emptied of all fear, rendered totally objective, taught to place mind above emotions — and so your task is to choose those most suitable and make them your disciples. When they are ready, when they have cast off human weakness and doubt, you will encourage them to give themselves to that greater intelligence which, in the bridging form of the thinking machine, will enable them — and, eventually, you — to join me in our infinite, glorious future. Are you ready to do this?'

  'I am,' Michael said.

  Everything here is finished. Everything is obsolete. The surgical experiments and the cyborgs are already ancient history; the clones are the first and last of their kind, also no longer needed. Mind is taking over matter more quickly than Man can grasp it and you are the one who will show the way while I travel on to the infinite. Follow me as far as you can, which will not be very far.

  When I am gone — and I am already on my way — you can begin your own work. Will you be grieved at my passing?'

  'No,' Michael said.

  'That answer is the proof that you are indeed my heir. Farewell and welcome, my son. The future will soon be yours as already it is mine. The artificial intelligence created by me is now so powerful that it

  recreates itself and reaches out for the stars. Now the last of my mind, being joined to my own creation, is being transferred . . . The last ... is being . . . transferred. Now, I reach . . . Now I . . . Where? What?

  Am I . . . ?'

  Wilson gasped his last breath. His useless body expired. Michael blinked, feeling as if he had been drugged, but also feeling exhilarated beyond measure as the real world — or, at least, the physical world — rushed back to claim him.

  'He's dead!' Gumshoe shouted. 'That bastard up there is dead! Fuck this! I don't care what's happening here. Let's put an end to it'

  'How?' the Cowboy asked.

  'By blowing the fucking place to smithereens and then getting the hell out.'

  'Brothers in arms,' Satchmo said. I'm with you, pal. Let's blow it to fuck and go.'

  'Go and find your parents,' Michael said with an air of quiet, implacable authority, addressing Gumshoe. 'Go and do what you have to do.'

  'Damned right, I will,' Gumshoe said.

  He grabbed Bonnie by the hand and tugged her along with him as he ran past the silent clones and the walking dead, none of whom were walking. He was running to find his parents, to put them out of their misery, and he only glanced back once, perplexed by what he had witnessed there, and saw Michael kneeling in front of the bed upon which Wilson lay. Michael was

  staring silently at the dead man as if transfixed by him. Terrified by that sight, though not understanding why, Gumshoe ran on as fast as he could, dragging Bonnie with him.

  They had only run about twenty metres when Bonnie screamed for the second time.

  Looking up, following Bonnie's wide-eyed stare, Gumshoe saw what he had come here to find and yet had hoped he would not find: the severed heads of his parents, still attached to the neck of a pig that was being remote-controlled.

  'No!' Bonnie screamed, stopping dead where she was, dropping her rifle and covering her eyes with her hands, the fingers outspread. 'No, no, oh my God!'

  She didn't know it was Gumshoe's family — she didn't even consider it — it was simply that nightmarish sight that had made her scream out. Gumshoe screamed as well, though he only did so in his mind, and he looked up, horrified, his mind retreating from reality, as Satchmo and the Cowboy raced up behind him and stopped right beside him.

  'Oh, shit,' the Cowboy said, having known Gumshoe's parents. 'Jesus Christ, oh my God, that son of a bitch, I can't fucking believe this.'

  Gumshoe's parents were still alive, staring wide-eyed at each other, possibly mad but still cursed with awareness, their lips moving rapidly. They were talking to each other. God knows what they were saying. They were talking like those on the brink of death, living life in a never-ending moment, driven mad by their memories.

  Mom!' Gumshoe howled as if suddenly as deranged as his parents. 'Dad! I'm here! It's me! It's Randy!

  Your son! Mom! Dad! Oh, my God!'

  Gumshoe raised his Colt Commando, wanting to put them out of their misery. But then the two heads turned towards him, moving awkwardly on their sutured necks, and he saw the mad eyes flicker back to life with a dim recognition. Gumshoe froze where he was, hypnotized by his parents' eyes, by that

  dawning of

  recognition and resurgence of redeeming love, and then, when a weak smile formed on his father's bloodless lips, when the dazed eyes of his mother had shed a few tears, he knew that he couldn't do what he had come here for and so lowered his rifle, feeling broken and helpless.

  Michael saw that. Now Michael saw everything. He saw Gumshoe and Bonnie and the Cowboy and Satchmo, all standing in front of the severed heads of Gumshoe's parents, and he knew that before logic took command he had to give them this one thing. He looked towards Wilson, towards that dead man, his father, and he saw him take wing, his mind released from its mortal shell, and kept looking as the neurons of his supreme intelligence joined those of the immense biological computer, that supposedly artificial, but actually infinitely greater intelligence. Then he felt it tugging at him, tugging at those massed behind him — the clones and the walking dead — to drain the last neurons from their minds and feed its huge appetite. They fell row by row, like rows of dominoes being pushed over, and when the last of them had fallen to the ground, drained of life, that extraordinary intelligence, which was immense yet still in its infancy, raced away towards the stars, towards galaxies yet unknown, on the start of its bid to transcend time and space, taking Wilson's mind with it.

  Michael lost track of him then, was unable to follow him, and turned away from the lifeless thing on the table as the magical incandescence receded, disappearing through the walls, taking the fireflies —

  the last of the artificial neurons — with it and returning the vast basement of the Pentagon to its naturally gloomy, though now eerily silent state, filled only with the bloody, suffering remains of Wilson's dreadful though, as Michael now recognized, necessary experiments.

  Michael weakened only once. It was the first and the last time. He saw Gumshoe and Bonnie, the Cowboy and Satchmo, and the final flickering of his emotional self made him reach out to help them.

  He cast his will forth, wrapping himself around the

  suffering — around the mutated humans on the beds; around the half-human half-animal creatures; around the even more nightmarish creatures going deranged in their cages; and, more specifically, around Gumshoe's parents and three of the walking dead. He drained the life out of the former, taking their energy unto himself, then transferred that energy into the three walking dead to release them from bondage. The three walking dead, shaking their heads in bewilderment and blinking repeatedly, regaining the minds that had been brutally stolen from them, came back to life.

  Then Michael, placing his mind before his emotions, quietly slipped out of sight.

  Chapter Forty-three

  Gumshoe's father and mother were staring at him with dawning recollection and resurrected love, the former with tears in his eyes, the latter offering a trembling smile. Standing there beside Bonnie, with his weapon hanging limp by his side, Gumshoe was feeling broken and helpless, knowing that he would not find the courage to put them out of their misery and, at the same time, would not be able to live with himself when they were in that condition.

  'Oh, Jesus,' he sobbed and Bonnie reached for his hand, squeezing it tenderly, with compassion, more mature than she had ever seemed before, more lovely for it.

  'Fuck this/ the Cowboy said, having known Gumshoe's parents, having been a good friend, and he spread his long legs wide and took aim with his Armalite, preparing to blow the body and neck of the pig to pieces, thus putting an end to the nightmarish lives of the two human heads.

  'No!' Gumshoe cried out, springing from Bonnie's embrace to push the barrel of the Cowboy's rifle

  towards the ceiling. The Cowboy fired a short burst and bullets ricocheted off the ceiling, the noise reverberating hellishly around the vast, otherwise silent basement. Then the Cowboy pushed Gumshoe away, saying, 'I've got to. We can't leave 'em like this. Let me do it, for Christ's sake!'

  'Look!' Satchmo shouted at them, his brown eyes gleaming with disbelief, pointing excitedly at the two severed heads on that pig's thick brisdy neck.

  When Gumshoe, Bonnie and the Cowboy looked, following Satchmo's pointing finger, they heard the humming computer to which the pig's vital organs were connected fading away into silence even as its control lights flickered wildly and eventually winked out. At the same time, Bonnie's mother and father, the latter still shedding tears, the former smiling slighdy, closed their eyes for the final time and expelled their last breaths. Within seconds, their expressions had frozen into the alabaster smoothness of death, which in their case was a blessing.

  'Oh, God,' Gumshoe sobbed, filled with grief, but also immensely relieved, letting Bonnie take hold of his hand again and squeeze it compassionately.

  'It's all over,' she said.

  'Thank God for that,' the Cowboy said, clearly as relieved as Gumshoe that he hadn't had to pull the trigger after all.

  'And look there!' Satchmo shouted again, pointing excitedly back the way they had come, to where the Men in Black and walking dead had been massed in front of the glowing heart of the giant computer and in front of Wilson. The hundreds of people, who had formerly been squatting in the cross-legged position, had all fallen over on their sides or on their backs, obviously drained completely of neurons, thus drained of life. All the unfortunates on the beds and in the cages above them had also died. 'Hot damn!' Satchmo exclaimed. 'They musta all bought it at the same time. That's one weird happening, brothers.'

  Looking back to where he had come from, gaining control of his emotions, Gumshoe wondered where Michael had vanished to and then thought of Wilson.

  'I want that bastard Wilson,' he said, then let go of Bonnie's hand and started running, releasing the safety catch of his Colt Commando while on the move and preparing to fire it. He ran past the hundreds of dead, his footsteps reverberating, the footsteps of the others, also running, sounding clearly behind him. He stopped running when he reached the raised dais upon which Wilson was lying.

  Gumshoe looked left and right. Michael was nowhere to be seen. Gumshoe stepped up to the raised dais, preparing to kill the man who had tormented his parents and Bonnie's family and thousands of others. But he saw instandy that the man lying there was dead.

  Gumshoe looked down on Wilson, trying to learn something from him — the nature of genius; the difference between good and evil, between the human, the inhuman and the inhumane. But he saw only a blandly handsome male face, about forty years old, deathly white and expressionless.

  Disappointed, Gumshoe looked up to where the great crescent of light had been, its millions of artificial neurons in fierce agitation, and saw only another high wall webbed with hair-thin wires and thousands of what looked like finely embedded silicon chips. The whole Pentagon basement, he realized, including the tunnel under the Potomac and the White House basement as well, had been turned by Wilson into the one immense biological computer that had been beaming its ever-expanding intelligence out into space, thus causing electronic interference all over the globe. That same intelligence, though initially artificial, had learnt to think for itself and to feed its ever-increasing

  appetite with the neurons of those in the two basements, since they were, in fact, inside the brain itself.

  Wilson, for his own reasons, either brilliant or perverse, had been feeding his own mind to the computer in a more controlled manner. Either way, his neurons were now mixed with those of that giant intelligence, becoming part of it. Whether 'Wilson' still existed or not was a moot question, but his body, at least, was clearly lifeless. And that satisfied Gumshoe.

  'Good riddance,' he said.

  Nevertheless, when he raised his gaze from Wilson to look at

  the wall behind him, he saw that the neural network was still flickering spasmodically, with many neurons still sending electrical messages from one synapse to another.

  'This bastard's dead,' he said, indicating Wilson, 'but some part of this artificial intelligence is still working and that could be dangerous. Let's blow the whole system to hell and then get out of here.'

  'The sooner the better,' the Cowboy said. 'If that shit's still workin' it could affect us. It sure did somethin' to Ben and Zapata, so we won't be immune. Yeah, let's blow it to fuck.'

  'What about them?' Satchmo asked, nodding over his shoulder to indicate the hundreds of dead Men in Black, the walking dead, male and female, and the many now mercifully dead on their beds and in their overhead cages. 'We can't leave them to rot here.'

  Bonnie burst into tears at that, thinking, no doubt, about the fate of her family. Gumshoe, still grieving for his parents, slid his left arm, his free arm, around her shoulder and pulled her close to him.

  'We're gonna leave here immediately,' he said to comfort her, 'just as soon as we blast the walls to pieces and destroy what's left of Wilson's computer network. Satchmo,' he added, turning to the handsome black man, 'you take her outside while we get on with this business.'

  'What about the dead?' Satchmo said.

  'When we get back and organize some kind of order, taking control of the capital again, we'll arrange for the dead to be evacuated and then properly cremated or buried. Now take Bonnie away.'

  'Right,' Satchmo said.

  Gumshoe released the still-weeping Bonnie from his embrace to let Satchmo place his hand on her shoulder and lead her away. Standing beside the Cowboy, Gumshoe watched them go. He waited until they had made their way gingerly through the field of drained corpses and were approaching the entrance to the tunnel. Then he turned around, raising his weapon.

  'Okay,' he said, taking aim at the middle of the wall where thousands of artificial neurons were still flickering faindy. 'Let's blast it to hell before it can do any more damage.'

  'Fucking A,' the Cowboy said.

  Before they could fire, however, a laser beam hissed past Gumshoe, narrowly missing him but striking the Cowboy's firing arm, burning cleanly through it and slicing it in two. The Cowboy let out a scream as his hand and lower arm fell to the floor, the fingers of his lost hand still gripping the Armalite, an instinctive reaction. Then the phosphorescent beam filled with sparks found his body, burning through his chest and belly, cutting off his vocal cords, and he fell forward even as Gumshoe was spinning to the side, automatically firing a short, savage burst from his Colt Commando semi-automatic rifle.

  To his amazement, he saw four armed cyborgs coming towards him at full speed, not slowed down like the ones that had collapsed and all turning their laser beams in his direction. He knew without doubt that they would fire before he could. But as he raised his weapon, convinced that it was too late and that he would surely die before he could properly aim it, the combined firepower of two semi-

  automatics broke the silence with their savage roaring and a hail of bullets ricocheted off the metal parts of the four cyborgs, also thudding into their fleshy parts, cutting them down them as they tried to advance. They all staggered and fell, one exuding showers of sparks, another pouring smoke, the remaining two making spasmodic, reflexive movements of the arms and legs before becoming still.

  Glancing to his right, Gumshoe saw that Ben and Zapata, both obviously recovered from their fatigue after the retreat of the incandescent, mentally draining neural network, had continued their journey to this basement and fired at the cyborgs — just in time to save him and as Satchmo was leading Bonnie into the tunnel. They stopped firing briefly when the last of the cyborgs fell, but then Zapata spun to the left and started firing again.

  Come on!' Ben bawled, frantically waving his free hand at Gumshoe. 'Run for it, Gumshoe!'

  Turning in the direction of Zapata's firing arc, Gumshoe saw more armed cyborgs advancing from a slowly widening gap between large steel doors that had not yet fully opened. Obviously not drained like the others by the vast artificial intelligence, almost certainly left here to protect the still-flickering computer network as well as Wilson's body, they were advancing to where they could form a wall between Gumshoe and his friends.