As Michael came closer, he saw the many aircraft — discshaped, pyramid-shaped, pear-shaped and triangular — resting on their landing zones located around the cave mouths at the base of the towering cliff, protected by overhanging snow- and ice-covered ledges. The biggest craft, the 300-feet diameter saucer-shaped 'mother' craft, rarely used these days, seemed enormously and eerily beautiful from here, glinting a silvery grey in the brilliant Antarctic sunlight.

  Michael kept walking, deliberately avoiding the immense glittering geodesic dome housing the research establishments w order to enter Freedom Bay proper, where he knew that his parents and Dr Brandenberg would be waiting for him — none of

  them too pleased with him. The final steps of his long journey brought him to an immense hallway of unbreakable glass extending from a deeply shadowed cavernous area in the base of the mountain, not far from where the saucers were parked. Just inside the hallway, looking out over the vast snow-covered plains of Antarctica, was the stone statue of Robert Stanford that had been raised there in #1 on the orders of Dr Branden-berg. Looking up at that statue, which showed a young, handsome man with a proud face, Michael felt a similar pride stirring in himself, making him even more eager to return to the World and wrest it back from the cyborgs.

  Using a hand-held remote-control device, he opened the glass door and entered the immense hallway that led into the ground floor of Freedom Bay. The door closed automatically behind him as he walked past the statue of Robert Stanford and entered the great mountain complex through a steel door placed in the solid rock of the mountain's interior. Opening automatically, the door led into the expansive white-walled office, its walls lined with technical and scientific books, that had formerly been used by Robert Stanford's tragic friend, Professor Frederick Epstein, and that was now preserved as a memorial to him. Like Stanford, Epstein had spent many years back in the 1970s trying to unravel the so-called flying saucer mystery', only to end up here as one of John Wilson's brain-implant workers. Indeed, it was in this very room that Robert Stanford had bid his old friend farewell and walked out into the white hell of the Antarctic wilderness, preferring to die rather than stay here as a slave.

  Crossing the office, Michael glanced at the central desk, imagining Dr Epstein sitting behind it and talking to the much younger, healthier Stanford. Erasing this vision from his mind, he entered the elevator at the far side of the room and pressed the button marked ASCEND. Like Epstein's office, the lift had white-painted steel walls, with only a small window in one wall to give a fleeting view of the various floors as Michael was carried up through the hollowed-out interior of the mountain.

  Those glimpses were enough to remind him of the sheer size of the colony and of the fact that Wilson's technological and scientific work - though certainly not his hideous biological and other surgical experiments - was being continued under Dr Brandenberg's supervision for a more humane purpose.

  Out there, Michael knew, hacked from the interior of the mountain, were the original workshops and laboratories where Wilson's master-and-slave colony had created the first great flying saucers, produced an additional wealth of scientific innovation, and, less nobly, conducted gross experiments on human beings to create the cyborgs that now ruled the world. Thankfully, once the Old Age United States had taken over the colony, running it first under the supervision of their own scientists and then

  under that of Dr Brandenberg, the cyborg experimentation had been dropped. Wilson's medical and surgical innovations, once hideously misused, had then been used instead for good, alleviating pain instead of inflicting it and extending human life instead of creating monstrous cyborgs through the ghastly mutation of formerly normal human beings.

  The elevator stopped one floor below the top level, where Dr Brandenberg had Wilson's old office, and Michael stepped out into a corridor that had been, like the rest of the colony, hacked out of the interior of the mountain. The corridor ran in a great circle around it, about thirty metres below the summit.

  Advancing along the constandy curving corridor, on a floor of smooth, tile-covered steel, between walls of white-painted, steel-covered rock, the outer wall bare, the inner one lined with off-white doors (the apartments of various members of the colony), he soon arrived at his own apartment, which he shared with his parents and younger sister. Opening the door with the same hand-held remote-control device that he had used to enter the hallway on the ground floor, he stepped into an apartment of softly rounded, high-ceilinged rooms, so designed because those harmonious shapes had been found to encourage feelings of Peace and well-being. Indeed, Michael had such feelings as soon as he entered the apartment and took in at a glance its soothingly pale-coloured, body-moulded furniture, abstract, almost dreamlike paintings, soft wall-to-wall white carpeting, and potted plants and flowers that survived all year round in the gentle purple-red glow of fluorescent lamps that were radiating in the wavelengths necessary for optimum plant growth.

  Hearing his mother and father talking in the kitchen, obviously preparing supper together, which was something they enjoyed doing, he let the door close automatically behind him, then made his way directly to his own room. Though softly rounded and high-ceilinged like the other rooms, it was much more cluttered. The pale blue-and-yellow walls were covered with shelves of books, the semicircular white-laminated desk was dominated by an advanced computer, printer and tall speakers, and the white-framed bed was littered with CD-ROMs and computer diskettes. One part of the gently curving wall was taken up with a wide-screen TV-and-video with attached music centre; a violin and guitar lay across a triangular, salt-covered table a few feet away, and a white-painted, metre-high cardboard pyramid stood on another table a few metres from the instruments.

  After stripping off his arctic clothing, Michael showered, shaved and then put on casual clothing of the kind that had not changed since the colony had been taken out of Wilson's hands: blue denims, light green roll-neck pullover, socks and rubber-soled brown-leather shoes, all made in a Freedom Bay workshop and distributed free of charge. These clothes could safely be worn inside because the whole colony, including the living accommodations, utilized solar heat, drawing the sun's energy in through immense skylights placed strategically at various points in the mountain, storing it by means of solar-cell panels and heat-retaining eutectic salt containers, and distributing it via solar heat pumps designed by NASA way back in the mid-1970s and later utilized ingeniously by Wilson.

  Before going in to see his parents, wondering if they had

  found out about his absence, Michael distracted himself by checking the contents of his experimental preservation pyramid. Michael's work in the Parapsychological Research Department of Freedom Bay had indicated that just as the shape of a room could influence the human being in that room, so the shape of a container could influence an object placed within it. Studying the Egyptian pyramids as part of his research, he had learnt that the pyramid of Cheops, the Great Pyramid, was known to have unusual properties, such as the ability to promote rapid dehydration and thus preserve bodies in a mummified condition. This had been proven with experimental mice and other rodents deliberately left overnight in the Great Pyramid. Even more intriguing was the fact that blunt razor blades left overnight in the Great Pyramid would be sharp the next morning. This, Michael had deduced, was because the edge of a razor blade had a crystal structure: crystals grew by reproducing themselves, and the Great

  Pyramid, being itself shaped like a crystal or magnetite, acted as a resonator that encouraged crystal growth. Convinced, therefore, that there was a relationship between the shape of a space and the physical, chemical and biological processes taking place within that shape, Michael had constructed his own cardboard replica of the Great Pyramid, carefully making sure that the four isosceles triangles that constituted its sides each had the proportion, base to sides, of 15.7 to 14.94 and stood 10.0 of the same units high. When the structure was completed, he had placed the pyramid so that the base lines faced magnetic north-south and east-west. A stand 3.33 units high had been placed directly under the apex of the pyramid to hold the objects chosen by him for the experiment. Having placed a dead mouse and a used razor blade in the pyramid the day before yesterday, he now checked both and found that the mouse was mummified and the blunt razor blade was sharp again. Satisfied, deciding to use the pyramid on a regular basis for the preservation of certain items, he threw the mummified mouse wto his automatic garbage disposal unit, placed the newly

  sharpened razor blade on his desk, then picked up the violin standing beside the salt-covered table.

  Knowing that if his parents had found out about his absence they would not be pleased with him, he relaxed for fifteen minutes by creating a variety of visible vibration patterns. After laying the violin faceup on the table, he placed a thin metal plate on the instrument, spread a handful of salt on the plate, and then proceeded to create the patterns by drawing his bow across the strings. By falling only on those parts of the plate where there was no vibration, the salt arranged itself in a wide variety of beautiful patterns that had a soothing effect on the observer. Thus, after playing the violin for fifteen minutes, Michael felt relaxed enough to leave his room and go to see his parents.

  He found them in the kitchen, having supper with his sister, Chloe. Two years younger than Michael and much loved by her parents and brother, Chloe, blonde-haired like Michael, but with porcelain skin, large blue eyes and delicate features, was just losing her baby fat and starting to develop into a shapely young lady. Michael's father, Joe Kimbrell, now forty-eight years old, had been a twenty-seven-year-old physicist working for NASA when, in 1999, he had been transferred to Freedom Bay, bringing his brand-new wife, Grace, with him. Grace had then been a meterologist, also working for NASA, and both of them were now doing the same work here in Freedom Bay. Three months after their arrival here, the cyborgs had taken over most of the world and, like most of the others here at that time, they had not been back to the US since. Michael, a planned child, as were all the children in the colony, had been born almost two years later, on 4 November #2, and Chloe, also carefully planned, had followed two years after. Dedicated to his work, which perhaps had kept him youthful, Joe was still a handsome man, looking about ten years younger than his actual age, with a thick thatch of reddish-blond hair and still-bright blue eyes. Grace, a rare beauty in her time, still with golden-blonde hair, was also dedicated to her work, which perhaps, as with her husband, hadk ept her looking much younger than she was.

  On the other hand, Michael thought as he entered the kitchen-diner and caught his parents'

  disapproving looks, all those who lived in the colony did so under certain vitally necessary disciplines, including eating and drinking healthily, exercising regularly, having their health carefully monitored, and receiving medical treatment more advanced than anywhere else on Earth. For that very reason, most of them were more youthful and healthy for their age than they would have been out in the World.

  Ironically, this blessing was yet another of the fruits of John Wilson's hideous medical and biological experiments in the Old Age. Michael found this disturbing. 'Hi,' he said, taking the chair beside Chloe to face his father and mother across the table, its top covered with hot and cold vegetarian dishes made from high-yield crops matured in fluorescent-lit greenhouses right here in the colony and preserved by means of irradiation. The food looked and smelt delicious. 'Sorry I'm late.' 'I'll bet you are,' Chloe retorted, casting him a sideways glance and a mischievous grin. 'Are you?' his father said, not smiling at all. 'I seriously doubt that. I called you at your office in the dome and was told you had gone out. Did you leave the base again?' Unable to tell a lie, Michael confessed, 'Yes, I did.' His mother closed her

  eyes briefly, shaking her head disapprovingly from side to side, then opened her eyes again. They were blue, like Chloe's, and very steady. 'We expressly forbade you to do that,' she said. Michael sighed. 'I know.' It's dangerous out there,' his mother said. 'You know you should never go out there unescorted and you promised not to.' 'No, I didn't,' Michael retorted. 'You and Dad insisted that I shouldn't go out there again, and though I listened to what you had to say, I sure as hell made no promises. I only listened. That's all.' v ery smart,' Chloe said, again glancing sideways at him and grinning at his discomfort. 'I didn't promise; I just didn't reply ... I wish I'd thought of that one.'

  'Shut up,' Michael said without malice.

  'Not smart,' his father said, speaking to Chloe. 'Disingenuous. He uttered no lie, though he was planning to blatantly disobey us even as we were talking. Don't admire him for it.'

  'You sometimes sound so puritanical,' Michael said, 'and it doesn't become you. You're not that kind of guy, Dad.'

  'Smart with your tongue as well, are you?' his mother said tartly, though she, also, was too kind to carry off severity with any great degree of conviction.

  'I'm not trying to be smart, Mom. I'm just stating a fact. From what I've heard about Dad, he wasn't a blue-eyed boy at my age. I mean, you told me that.'

  'Oh, did she, indeed?' his father said, raising his eyebrows and glancing at his wife, clearly amused despite himself. Grace blushed and looked flustered. 'So what else did she tell you?'

  'A lot,' Chloe chipped in, studying the spinach resting on her fork, all wide-eyed innocence. 'All those things you got up to in college, then later at NASA. She said you broke every rule in the book and were always in trouble. Real bright, Mom said, but pretty rebellious, refusing to do what you were told and always in hot water. Just like your son, Dad.'

  'Thanks a million,' Joe said to Grace, who blushed a deeper crimson and became more flustered to see everyone staring at her.

  'Well,' she stuttered, 'you were a little bit. . . And I was really just trying to amuse them with some . . .'

  'Accurate recollections,' Chloe chipped in.

  'Right,' Michael said.

  'Wrong,' his father put in quickly, now finding it next to impossible to look stern. 'Your Mom was just winding you up. I may have done a few things here and there — what kid doesn't? — but I certainly wasn't as disobedient as you — and I did nothing dangerous.'

  'Oh, no?' Chloe said tartly. 'What about the time you climbed the church tower at that military academy and stole the bell? You and some of your drunken buddies.'

  'I might have told your mother that story to wind her up,' Joe said, 'but there's no proof that I was actually involved.'

  'You were too drunk to remember, right?' Chloe said.

  'You be quiet,' Chloe's mother said.

  'Anyway,' Joe continued, turning to Michael, 'that wasn't quite the same thing. We're talking about the Antarctic wilderness here and, as you know damned well, no one is allowed to go out there alone. So why did you do it yet again?'

  'I'm researching the history of Freedom Bay,' Michael began,

  You don't have to go out there to do that. We have all the historical records right here and—'

  'I wanted to photograph the exact spot where Robert Stanford stepped onto that piece of pack ice, choosing his own way to die.'

  'Hero-worship has its place in life, Michael, but not when it encourages you to go out there without an escort.'

  'I was worried sick,' Grace said.

  You look fine,' Michael retorted.

  'I was hoping you'd never come back,' Chloe said deadpan, 'so I could move into your bedroom, which is bigger than mine.'

  'I'm bigger than you,' Michael reminded her, 'so I need more space.'

  'Let's stick to the point,' Joe said. 'More than once you've flagrantly broken the rules of this community and made even Dr Brandenberg angry. You're one of the best young men we've got, you'll be invaluable in the future, yet you're risking it all by ignoring what you're told and doing these crazy things. So why is that, Michael?'

  It's because I'm one of the best,' Michael said before he could stop himself, 'and that means I have a low boredom threshold.

  Everyone tells me that I'm being prepared for the future, that some day I'll be used, but that particular day never seems to come and I'm growing frustrated. I've had enough education — I've done my work

  — now I need to do something more positive. Going out there, finding places like Stanford's departure point, gives me something to do other than study. Also, I go out there to meditate. You can't complain about that.'

  'I'm pleased that you still meditate,' his mother said, 'but surely you don't have to do it out there.'

  'The great silence of the wilderness is the best place of all for that purpose. My mind can roam in that silence.'

  That statement made all of them, including Chloe, fall respectfully silent. Michael's meditation, for which he had been specially trained since childhood, had an almost religious importance in this community that otherwise was not religious. Though the meditation was used to gain temporary spiritually enlightening transcendence, it was also part of Michael's para-psychological training, undertaken to strengthen his skills in telepathy, telekinesis, thoughtography, psychometry and 'eyeless sight*. These skills would be needed for the fight against the cyborgs, many of which had developed certain parapsychological capabilities to replace the senses — hearing, taste and sight — that they had lost during their hideous surgical mutation. It was now known, for instance, that cyborgs whose mouths had been removed could communicate mentally, through telepathy, over great distances and that others, having lost their eyes, had developed eyeless sight: the ability to 'see' by sensing the force field around living creatures and 'feel' the colour of inanimate objects. (Though this seemed incredible, it was, Michael knew, no different from the way in which bats could 'see' with a sonar system that picked up echoes from other creatures or material objects and translated them into meaningful patterns.) Michael's abilities, however, did not stop there. He was also training himself, though meditation, in thoughtography (the ability to get thought images transferred onto photographic plates), which he could use for intelligence gathering from afar; and in psycho-letry, which enabled him to 'read'

 

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