'I like Gumshoe,' Michael said. 'Maybe that's why I was taken aback when I heard about you and him.'

  'I like Gumshoe,' Bonnie informed him. 'Just about everyone likes Gumshoe — he's a popular guy. I mean, it gets back to class — what he could have had and what he lost. He still has it in his funny little way and that's what makes him appealing. He doesn't have your good manners, your nice way of talking — he's been brutalized by lowlife — but no way is he on the level of the Speed Freaks and they respect him for it. He can deal with them, talk their language, bike around with them, taking his chances against the cyborgs, but they all know he isn't really like them, that he lives in his own space, and that kinda makes him special to them. I mean, Snake Eyes is the current leader of the Speed Freaks, but Gumshoe has even more respect than he has and that's pretty weird. Don't you think?'

  Yes, I do.'

  'I got no class, Mike. You know it and I know it. You and me, sooner or later we'll go our own ways

  'cause our ways are so different. You'll go back to where you came from — no, I'm not asking where —

  and I'll go back to the gutter I crawled out of and remember you fondly.'

  You don't belong in the gutter,' Michael said. You just think you do. If I do go back to where I came from, I'll remember you fondly.'

  Jesus, you say the sweetest things! Let's go it one more time.'

  She had placed her hand on his cock and was about to massage it, but he smiled and took hold of her wrist and gently removed her hand. 'I'd love to,' he said, 'but I've got to go. I'm meeting Ben Wilkerson.'

  Bonnie raised her hand and kissed the fingers that had been curled around his cock, then she gave him a thoughtful look. You and Ben are seeing a lot of each other, Mike.'

  'Yes, we are,' Michael said.

  Ben's pretty heavyweight in his light-hearted way and he's determined to bring the cyborgs down. He's the head of a pretty

  big pack and that means he's in danger. If he is, you will be.'

  'I know that,' Michael said.

  'You're helping him?'

  'We're helping each other.'

  'Be careful out there, Mike. Be very careful.'

  'I will,' Michael said.

  Naked, he rolled off the bed and entered the bathroom, where he washed and got dressed. He and Bonnie had been in bed most of the afternoon and darkness had already fallen outside. When Michael emerged from the bathroom, Bonnie was still sitting upright on the bed, but was now wearing a dressing gown and watching a quiz show on TV. Michael walked to the bed, leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. Bonnie's smile was radiant.

  'Mmmm,' she murmured. 'Nice.'

  'I'll see you later,' Michael said.

  'Be careful,' Bonnie repeated.

  Michael nodded and left the room, closing the door behind him. He made his way down the stairs, stepped into the street, then hurried past the hookers and druggies and winos on the sidewalk, being careful as he went, knowing that they could be unpredictable and dangerous. Turning into H Street, he headed straight for Lafayette Square, keeping his eyes peeled, at this relatively early hour of the evening, for drug-crazed muggers or the biker gangs that came over from Anacostia to rob, rape and murder. As usual, an enormous flying saucer, a mother ship, was hovering high in the night sky, obviously over the White House, the coloured lights around its edge flashing on and off repeatedly, and he saw an unusually large number of spinning, glowing footballs over that same area, rising and falling and shooting out in all directions to form a dazzling mosaic in the night sky. Studying them, he was reminded of the fact that over the past few weeks the protective ring of saucers and cyborg ground patrols around the whole White House area had dramatically increased while, at the same time, there had been an equally dramatic decrease in the number of people picked up by the patrols, almost as if the cyborgs no longer required their customary intake of abductees and were losing interest in what was happening in the city.

  Nevertheless, Michael remained careful about keeping his eyes peeled, not only for muggers and Anacostia bikers, but also for the cyborgs' SARGEs and Prowlers as he made his way along the erratically lamplit pavement to the sadly neglected St John's Church, located on the north side of the park in Lafayette Square. As he had done when first coming here, he entered the ruined building by way of the pillared porch on the west side, then went up the dark, dusty stairs in an eerie, echoing silence to the bell tower at the top. There he found Ben Wilkerson, Lenny Travis and Richie Pitt kneeling behind their old Thorn EMI multi-role thermal imager and STG laser surveillance system.

  Glancing beyond them, Michael could see all the way across Lafayette Square and Pennsylvania Avenue to the front of the White House. He could also see, more clearly than he had from H Street, the majestic flying saucer hovering above the building and the unusual number of spinning, glowing footballs rising and falling over the whole area. It was a magical sight.

  'What's happening?' he asked, kneeling behind his three friends. 'Same as usual?'

  'No,' Ben Wilkerson said. 'Not the same as usual. We've been watching this place for three solid days and nights because it's not the same as usual. Look down there, for a start.'

  Michael followed the direction of Ben's pointing finger and found himself looking at the north side lawns of the White House. Down there, at the far side of Pennsylvania Avenue and in the avenue itself, was the usual contingent of Prowlers and SARGES.

  'So?' Michael asked.

  You don't notice anything different?'

  'Tell me,' Michael said.

  Those fuckers aren't moving,' Lenny Travis said, 'and they haven't moved since we've been here.'

  'What?'

  'They're not patrolling any more,' Richie Pitt explained. 'They're just sitting there, stone cold.'

  'And can you see any cyborgs down there?' Ben asked.

  'No,' Michael said.

  'Exactly,' Ben responded. 'The ground patrols aren't operating any longer and the cyborgs have all disappeared inside the building. Now look up there.' He jabbed his index finger at various parts of the sky around the White House, where the footballs were ascending and descending under the majestic mother ship still hovering directly over the building. The mother ship was a gigantic kaleidoscope, its coloured lights flashing rapidly, endlessly, on and off.

  'Have you ever seen as much football activity before?' Ben asked. 'Those things are going frantic, just shooting up and down, to and fro, between the White House and the mother ship, like a bunch of fucking yo-yos.'

  'More like a bunch of agitated neurons,' Lenny Travis said with a lopsided grin. 'Like the neurons in the head of someone having an epileptic fit, shooting this way, thataway, every which way. Real crazy, man. Weird.'

  Studying the extraordinary number of footballs, which were ascending and descending vertically and also shooting sideways and back again as if out of control, tracing streaks of phosphorescence in the night sky, Michael could indeed visualize them as the neurons in an immense, extremely agitated brain.

  They had turned the darkness around the White House into a silvery, constantly changing tapestry, into a magical son et lumiere spectacle. When he had the feeling that they were inside his own head, he quickly lowered his gaze again.

  'As for that mother ship,' Ben said, 'its lights, normally dead when it's just hovering, were flashing on and off when we got here three days ago and they haven't stopped since. Given that and the behaviour of the footballs, we've gotta assume that something unusual is happening.'

  'Not to mention our surveillance equipment,' Richie Pitt put

  in.

  'The surveillance equipment?' Michael asked.

  'Fucking bananas,' Richie said. 'For about an hour after we first got here, we could, as usual, track body heat and check the movements of those inside the building, be they cyborgs or clones. Then, suddenly

  — zap! — it all went fucking crazy and all we could record was what seemed like some kind of weird static. That's all we've been getting ever since.'

  'Not quite true,' Lenny corrected him. 'We're still here, all of three days later, because we keep getting flashes of the activity inside and each time we do we find ourselves with less body heat to track.

  Movement? Yeah, lots of it . . . and it seems to be mostly the movement of bodies going down into the basement.'

  'Meaning?'

  'The three floors of the White House seem to be emptying out their biological occupants — cyborgs, clones and the walking dead — while filling up with some kind of electrical energy that's blocking our laser surveillance systems.'

  'What about the Pentagon?' Michael asked, turning to Ben Wilkerson.

  Ben shrugged and raised his hands in the air, the palms upturned. 'Exactly the same. Whatever's happening here is happening there.'

  'No Prowler or SARGE movement?'

  'None.'

  'No cyborgs outside?'

  'Nope. It's all dead ground across the Potomac'

  'What do you think the electrical energy is?'

  Haven't a fucking clue,' Lenny Travis said. 'But I'll tell you this much . . . Whatever it is, it's making our laser surveillance systems malfunction and it's also stopping the engines of automobiles driving around the White House area. It's making them just cut out.'

  Michael felt the cold worm of fear slithering down his spine

  and eating its way through to his innards. He also felt unreal. When a vision of Freedom Bay filled his mind, the fear deepened and cut him more.

  'I've got to get back to my place/ he said, clambering back to his feet.

  'Why?' Ben asked him. 'Stick around and see what happens here.'

  'You do that,' Michael said. Then he repeated, as if losing his mind, I've got to get back to my place.'

  'You got something back there that we haven't got here?' Ben asked laconically.

  'Maybe,' Michael said. 'Don't ask questions. Just trust me. Stay here and keep an eye on what's happening.'

  'Are you coming back?'

  'If I don't, you'll find me in my room.'

  'Fair enough,' Ben said.

  Michael slipped out of the bell tower, made his way back down the dark, dusty stairs, left the church and hurried back to the converted building in Chinatown. Entering his rented room, he instantly went into the lotus position in the middle of the floor and willed himself into deep meditation. He went down through himself, to his normally hidden centre, making mind and matter one, then hurled himself forth, vaulting over time and space, trying once again to penetrate the White House by using mental telepathy. He had never succeeded in doing it properly before — the telepathic defences of the cyborgs had always blocked him — but this time there was no wall, no mental force pushing him back, and he came down over the building like a bird on the wing.

  At first surrounded on all sides by the glowing, spinning footballs, the neural network of what was possibly some kind of vast consciousness, Michael dropped lower to melt through the roof as if it did not exist and emerged onto the floor once reserved for the Presidential Family — now visible only as an open space filled with dazzling light and dancing fireflies. Seeing no physical entities, neither cyborg nor human, he moved down to the second floor, then crossed from

  the State Dining Room to the East Room, passing through the Red and Blue and Green rooms, only to find them all as empty as the third floor and, like that floor, filled with dazzling light and the dancing fireflies of what was, he was increasingly certain, some kind of electronic energy source.

  Frustrated, Michael went down farther, through the ceiling to the first floor where, as on the higher levels, the formerly grand rooms were all empty — the 2,700 volumes removed from the Library, the French and English gilded silver removed from the Vermeil Room, the China Room and Diplomatic Reception Room no more than gutted shells illuminated by that same dazzling light filled with millions of darting electronic nodes. But here, for a change, there were cyborgs and normal human beings, albeit cloned or brain-dead, moving to and fro, back and forth, though always gravitating to the stairs that led to the basement and clearly making their way down there.

  Michael tried to follow them, to find out what was down there. But when he reached the stairs he was stopped by a mental force greater than his own, the force of a tremendous number of interconnected minds, a massed mental telepathy that dazzled and scorched him. It formed an invisible wall in front of him, then picked him up with the strength of a cyclone and hurled him violently backwards — back across time and space, back into himself, compelling him to rise up from his psychic centre and return to his room where, regaining consciousness, he found himself breathing harshly, bathed in sweat, his every limb shaking. He almost sobbed when he fell sideways to the floor and lay there, transfixed. He felt like the walking dead.

  Eventually, breathing more evenly, his heartbeat back to normal, Michael rose from the floor and made himself a cup of coffee. While drinking it, he thought back on what he had experienced during his telepathic penetration of the White House. Notable was the fact that the three floors of the building had been stripped completely, with all the furniture, paintings and other antiques removed; while clearly, judging by the brilliant light filled with fireflies (some kind of electrons, he assumed), the rooms had been used for incredibly advanced scientific work. Also notable was the fact that all living creatures, including the cyborgs, had moved out of the top two floors of the building and that those remaining on the ground floor were obviously in the midst of vacating that level also, in order to move down into the basement.

  Michael then recalled the awesome force that had sensed his attempt to penetrate the basement and had instantly exploded like a cyclone to beat him away. That force, he was convinced, was some form of intelligent life — possibly created by the interlinked telepathic powers of a great number of cyborgs —

  and it had been aware of his presence there and acted like a thinking creature to resist him, hurling him back out of the White House with tremendous force. Finally, he thought of what he had eyeballed outside the White House, on the north lawns and on Pennsylvania Avenue: the Prowlers and SARGEs stone-cold on the ground, deserted by the cyborgs.

  Clearly something — something really big — was happening.

  Deciding to contact Lee Brandenberg in Freedom Bay, Michael pulled his 1000MB laptop out of his desk drawer, then sat down and opened it, intending to send a coded e-mail. To his surprise, he found an e-mail from Brandenberg waiting for him. He was even more surprised to find that it was not in the customary coded language.

  From:

  urgently require confirmation of receipt of this to show that communications are still open.

  confirmation required because telecommunications and freedom bay defence systems being disrupted by extraordinary electronic interference, saucers malfunctioning also caused by interference.

  AOA

  intelligence indicates that this interference originates in extraordinary electronic impulses being beamed into outer space simultaneously from the white house, the pentagon, the kremlin, st paul's cathedral in london, england, and from every other major building or establishment held by the cyborgs.

  urgently require first-hand intelligence on the nature of these electronic impulses, immediate response required.

  Michael was shocked to read this — particularly Brandenberg's reference to the malfunctioning of Freedom Bay's flying saucers and defence systems, which included their force field. He thought instantly of the unnaturally agitated footballs around the White House, the constantly flashing lights of the mother ship above the same building, the still, silent Prowlers and SARGEs and, finally, the moving of the cyborgs, clones and walking dead from the three floors of the White House into its vast underground area. He also recalled Ben Wilkerson telling him that the same thing was happening in the Pentagon and that the immense Pentagon underground redoubt was linked to the White House basement by a tunnel running under the Potomac. Clearly, then, given Brandenberg's e-mail, what was happening here in Washington DC was happening all over the world. This confirmed that whatever it was, it was indeed really big. Instantly, Michael sent an e-mail back.

  From: your communication received.

  no first-hand intelligence on the nature of electronic interference but can confirm that similar interference has been noted here in the vicinity of the white house and the pentagon, occupants of the former are deserting the main building in favour of the basement and saucers, though not grounded, are in a state of unnatural agitation as if losing control.

  reports indicate that the same is happening at the pentagon.

  telepathic penetration of the white house has revealed that it is filling up with some kind of extraordinary electronic force

  possibly of an artificial neural nature.

  almost certainly the extraordinary force is being created in

  other cyborg hqs around the world and being beamed into

  outer space causing electronic interference en route.

  cannot ascertain the nature of the force without physically

  penetrating one of the buildings.

  first choice the white house.

  the bird requires urgent guidance.

  From: penetrate the white house.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Gumshoe and Ben Wilkerson met in the latter's office in the rooming house and instantly moved down to the basement. Though Gumshoe had never been down there, he was not surprised to find it recently plastered, painted white, illuminated with strip lights, and filled with tables that were being used as desks and work benches for the production of forged documents and plastic cards of all kinds. The computers were all leftovers from the Old Age, circa the late 1990s, so though they couldn't match

  anything used by the cyborgs they were advanced enough to be able to scan photographs and documents for the purposes of forgery. Gumshoe gave a low whistle of appreciation as he glanced about him.

  Good, eh?' Ben said, grinning.

  Damned good,' Gumshoe replied. 'I could do with you guys in my line of work — like when e-mailing or hacking into systems with false documentation. Where've you been all my life?'

 

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