MATTHEW THOMAS
Terror Firma

Copyright

Voyager An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.voyager-books.com

A Voyager paperback original 2001

Copyright © Matthew Thomas 2000

The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Source ISBN: 9780007100224

Ebook Edition © FEBRUARY 2016 ISBN: 9780007485413

Version: 2015-12-16

For Lisa and Dan

‘There are two secrets to the successful clandestine management of human affairs. One, never let on all you know.’

Becker, MJ13

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Epigraph

1. All Good Kings Must Come to an End

2. Foiled Again

3. Invasion

4. Revelations

5. ‘Mr Frosty’ is One of Them

6. Publication

7. Strange Harvest

8. Aurora Bored-Me-Senseless

9. If You Tolerate This Your CD Collection Will Be Next

10. Containment

11. Assault

12. The Jimmy Maxwell Show

13. Cabal

14. Mail

15. Rendezvous

16. Hypemeister Extraordinaire

17. Awakening

18. Briefing

19. Exposé

20. Rolling Along

21. It Came from the Desert

22. Treason

23. Deadly Toys

24. Documentation

25. Terminal Termination Blues

26. Indigestion

27. Semtex Boogie Woogie

28. Airborne

29. A Line in the Snow

30. Communications

31. Satan’s Little Helpers

32. Reception Committee

33. Reunions

34. Operation ‘Golden Yak’

35. On the Run

36. Grey Dawn

37. Studio

38. The Emperor’s Real Clothes

39. Evasions

40. ‘Golden Yak’ Goes In

41. Invitation

42. Your Days Are Numbered

43. Communion

44. The Awful Truth

45. Machu Picchu Revisited

46. Please Aim Here

47. East Grinstead A-Go-Go

48. High and Dry and Dead

49. Gatecrashers from Hell

50. Hangar 912

51. Frank Spills the Beans

52. Fly Me to the Moon

53. So Much Done to So Many, by Some Who Flew

54. Unhappy Landings

55. With Friends Like These

56. Initiation

57. Four Play

58. Penetration

59. Attackus Interruptus

60. Multiple Organisms

61. Blow Your Mind

62. Premature Detonation

63. Did the Earth Move?

64. On the Beach

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About the Author

By Matthew Thomas

About the Publisher

1. All Good Kings Must Come to an End
Present day, somewhere, South Pacific

Elvis knew his days were numbered.

Over the past few hectic weeks he’d noticed a number of disturbing trends – a sharp decline in his ongoing manifestation schedule and a steady increase in his already abundant food allowance. They’d upped the steroid dosage too; he was feeling younger than he had for years. Last Tuesday he’d caught himself gyrating his pelvis while pitch-forking a specially prepared ‘King’-sized sausage from the weekly beach barbie. He hadn’t even known he was doing it. Worse, he’d grabbed John Lennon’s guitar as he led the evening campfire singalong and told him to quit with that hippy shit and play somethin’ rockin’.

But the implications of what were behind these changes were less palatable that the triple cheese-burger with extra gherkins he’d polished off for breakfast. There was no escaping the conclusion that his time on The Island was coming to an end. He could tell by the way his strange guards watched him that the moment for one last final mission was at hand. And they wouldn’t be bothered about stepping on his blue suede shoes, not even ramming their steel toe-capped jack-boots down his throat for that matter – their dull dead dark eyes held no pity, and no understanding as far as he could tell. Elvis felt certain this would be a come-back tour without an encore. He wouldn’t be returning from this gig – a final deadly road-trip to end them all.

This knowledge stirred little emotion in his straining drug-drenched heart, apart perhaps from a sense of weary relief. There was only so much of The Island you could take without losing what was left of your sanity – and he’d lounged in this hellishly opulent five-star prison for the best part of thirty years. After the first decade the rejuvenation treatments and brain-washing began to take their toll. So a big part of him – which meant all of him, because all parts of him were big – would look forward to the onset of the warm smothering blackness he knew would accompany his final sortie.

He didn’t have to look forward for long. As the sun reached its zenith over the crystal-shimmering lagoon the King watched the black triangular craft, all sleek lines and eye-watering inhuman curves, skim towards him with unnatural speed. It didn’t so much glide over the waves as bully them into submission – splicing the whining air-molecules with a low-pitched electromagnetic hum. Then he saw others approach suddenly, right across the horizon, winking out of nothingness. He had seen many different types of such runabouts in his time – ridden in quite a few on his short bewildering trips back to civilization – but he’d never seen such a density of air-traffic as currently hovered over their lush tropical atoll. They were all there; the usual triangles and glowing orbs, plus the ones disguised to look like clouds – even some of the old steam-powered saucers that were crashed on purpose to mislead those Air Force suckers.

Leading the formation was the black triangle. It had his name on it, he knew. He felt it in his waters. And his waters, though frequent, were never wrong. He was as certain of this fact as he was that Jimmy and Janice should stay off the nose candy – those kids could play when they put their half-fried minds to it. But there was no time for idle speculation. Slowly, the craft set down at the edge of the shallow lapping waves and a black gangway glided across the water and onto the sand.

He barely had time to finish his drink. As was customary, few of the other inmates who were scattered along the stretch of bone-white sand paid much attention to the diminutive pilots. You kept your profile low as a limbo dancer while these guys were around. Twenty yards away a wider-than-he-was-tall former media mogul lolled on a double deckchair reading a newspaper, occasionally shaking his head with knowing contempt and letting out a subterranean chuckle – standards had obviously dropped since he’d taken his involuntary swan-dive off his yacht. But as the craft’s pilots marched past he buried his sunburnt face in his paper, seemingly enthralled with the small print. If only his former employees had done the same with their pension schemes.

All too soon the newcomers halted at Elvis’s spot in the sand and reached out their spindly three-fingered hands. The King didn’t wait for them to resort to the lethal force he knew they had at their disposal. With weary resignation he shoe-horned his enormous frame from his badly warped sun-lounger and stooped to kiss his quietly sobbing companion goodbye.

Norma might have seen better days, but her eyes still held some of their innocent, sultry charm. And now they were filling with tears. Elvis was touched. Involuntarily, his top lip curled back, and his beefy loins set off on a frightening frequency all their own.

‘Aha-haau. Don’t cry little chickadee. Say goodbye to mah rebel Jim for me. And tell the Princess I’ll save the last song for her.’

There was no time for more elaborate goodbyes, not even regrets that he’d turned down Norma’s last offer to ‘love him tender’ – at their age no amount of lubrication could prevent it becoming an all-too painful literal truth. She’d get over him just like she’d got over all the others.

Sadly, Elvis turned to follow his dead-eyed captors towards the craft.

At least he’d be free of the evil Warden who oversaw their stretch. If he closed his watery eyes he could see her contemptuous sneer – so different from that of the sweet innocent she’d been switched for in public life. It was a supreme irony that he trudged past the demure original right now, as she sat in her swimsuit thumbing through a copy of Horse and Hounds, blissfully unaware of the depraved machinations of the genetically modified doppelganger who had usurped her throne.

Just how the inhabitants of The Island fitted into the Warden’s schemes Elvis could only guess at, but it was unlikely they were going to be used for anything as mundane as entertaining the troops. Very little of what he did know made sense, but then he’d long suspected that was part of the plan.

The King was just glad he wouldn’t be around to see it happen. He only wished he could say the same for the rest of the poor deceived human race.

2. Foiled Again
Present day, central Nevada, USA

The unmarked military trucks raced through the starry night as if chased by all the demons of Hell. Huge off-road tyres churned the dusty trackway into a hurricane of debris as they tore through tumbleweed and over the mummified remains of ancient cacti. But on this crisp desert evening these trucks weren’t the quarry in some devilish game of cat and mouse – they were the hunters. In fact, if their trackers were correct, their prey lay smouldering just over the next rise.

In the back of the lead vehicle Captain Cyrus Freemantle, US Special Forces, briefed his elite team of Air Force Black Berets. ‘OK men, I want a nice clean dispersal, just like we practised. This is not a drill. We have ourselves a Case Red situation so trespassers will not be prosecuted – if you do your jobs they won’t live long enough to get to a court of law. Do I make myself clear?’

The curt nods from his squad told him all he needed to know. These men were hand-picked veterans, fanatically loyal to him personally; the sort who would, if it were in the country’s interest, gladly shoot their grandmothers – and enjoy it.

As one they removed safety catches from their machine pistols and lowered NBC warfare gas-masks – not strictly necessary but they scared the shit out of your enemy.

With a screech of brakes the trucks skidded to a halt atop the first ridgeline. Freemantle lifted the canvas awning and focused his image-intensifying goggles on the dried streambed beneath. The gully was clearly visible as a dark slash across his green, phosphorescent field of view. Within seconds, he’d located the target: a beacon of white heat amidst the encroaching darkness.

He tutted to himself. ‘For super-intelligent beings they seem real fond of crashing.’

With a resigned shake of his head, Freemantle refocused his night scope. Against all the odds, one of the little bug-eyed incompetents had survived the carnage. It had clambered out of the wreckage and was now jerking around like some inbred at a hoe-down. In doing so it was in no way aided by the large satchel it cradled in its fragile arms. The trail of faintly glowing green blood it left as it stumbled from cactus to cactus hinted that perhaps all was not as it should be. The creature might not have been as dead as its hapless co-pilots but it was pretty close.

‘Looks like we’ve got ourselves a live one, people. Move!’ But before Freemantle could turn back to his men he felt the blood freeze in his veins. Something else was moving in the valley, and moving fast. Instantly, the scope homed in on the intruder.

There was no denying he was human, a realization which for a fraction of a second made Freemantle panic. Then, almost instantaneously, professionalism kicked in and he started shouting again.

‘WE HAVE A HOSTILE WITHIN THE PERIMETER! Terminate with extreeeeeme prejudice! I want this bastard rattling like maracas when we slap him on the slab. Where the hell are the choppers? Johnson, get me Control on comms – now!’

As his troops sprang into action, Freemantle stayed glued to the viewfinder. Down in the gully some hippie freeloader was attempting to piss on the Captain’s parade, and Freemantle intended to pre-emptively yank shut his zipper.

But for now he had to content himself with watching proceedings as if on some sickly green video game. If their uninvited guest was allowed to escape, Freemantle was under no illusions as to the reality of the consequences. Tantalizingly beyond his reach the contest unfolded at breath-taking speed.

Adroitly, the troopers raced to take firing positions, as a hundred yards away the newcomer continued his headlong charge towards the UFO. Showing an unnerving talent for tactical movement he made full use of every twig of available cover, as if it were second nature to him. Finally, his way clear, he hurdled a line of low scrub and threw himself at their target. Freemantle’s gritty jawline hung open as he watched the stranger tackle the alien with the full weight of one wiry shoulder. No sooner had they gone down, they were off again, the survivor hefted upright in a fireman’s lift.

Momentarily, the kidnapper regained his breath; his hot face standing out clearly against the cool desert landscape. It was now that Freemantle got his second nasty shock of the evening – with a startled gasp the Captain recognized him.

The intruder seemed to pause for a second, spotting something else on the ground for the first time. Bending at the knee he lifted the large satchel the creature had been carrying and was off again, running a jinking course as the first bullets impacted around him. Diving for the dried streambed, he disappeared from view as a hail of fire flew over him.

‘Cut him off. He’s getting away!’ But by this stage it was far too late. In the confused darkness his troops set about riddling anything that moved with bullets. As most of the moving was being done by a platoon of overdrilled psychopaths attempting not to get shot, the results were depressingly familiar.

One by one empty magazines slipped from lifeless fingers until only a few of his men were left standing. Calmly, the communications technician informed Freemantle that air support was on its way, and that his boss was riding in the lead chopper. Silently, Freemantle reflected that today was turning into a very bad. They all started off as a less than satisfactory, because that’s how life went. You don’t expect miracles, you’re not disappointed when they unmiraculously fail to turn up. Occasionally, a day would rise to the dizzying heights of an OK, but don’t get too excited. Usually they stayed stable, and that’s how Cyrus liked it. But today was a very bad and heading for an I’m not going to talk about it which was worst of all.

‘What’s going on?’ came the Colonel’s gruff voice from the radio. ‘Thought we heard shooting. Hope you ain’t using coyotes for target practice again.’

Freemantle took a deep breath. ‘Sir, we have a security breach at the incident site. Request an immediate thermal scan of the terrain beyond our position. Whoever’s out there won’t get far.’

When it came, the Colonel’s reply was full of suppressed menace. ‘Better not, son, for your sake. We’ll get the infra-red scope on the sucker in no time flat.’

As Freemantle silently crossed all of his available fingers and toes, the helicopters thundered overhead.

Half a mile down-range the kidnapper halted. He had no time to reflect on his monumental good fortune. As he’d discovered in the jungles of South East Asia and the deserts of the Persian Gulf, you made your own luck in this business. The best way to manufacture such a slippery commodity was through lavish amounts of patience, meticulous planning and armaments. With regard to the first of those virtues he’d spent months awaiting an opportunity like this – camped out in this alternately scorching and freezing desert, with nothing but his binoculars and service rucksack for company as he scanned the vast empty skies. With regard to the second, he quickly dropped his unnatural load and peeled off his rucksack. Stuffed just inside the camouflaged canvas sack was twenty metres of catering grade aluminium Bacofoil. Working quickly, he swathed the semiconscious alien in the stuff. With regard to the third, well, he was fond of explosives and would use them if necessary. But for the moment he contented himself with a swift kick to the alien’s head, saying: ‘How’s this for a turnaround, you sneaky grey bastard? One of us abducting one of you for a change?’

Then he hastily stuffed the creature under a nearby thorn-bush and turned his attention to his own survival. Now came the tricky part. In practice he’d got it down to thirty seconds flat, but whether it was the excitement of doing it for real, or the thought of his former colleagues bearing down on him like a pack of hounds, he now managed it in half that time.

Soon the desert’s diverse fauna had a new addition: a six-foot silver caterpillar wriggling its way under a convenient tangle of tumbleweed. Until the first wave had passed him by all he could do was wait, lying perfectly still, his ears straining to count the number of rotor blades they’d sent to find him.

Twenty minutes later, aboard the unmarked Black-Ops helicopter gunship that hovered overhead like some diabolical nocturnal insect, Freemantle’s superior was in a state one step beyond apoplexy and immediately adjacent to an embolism. After failing to find so much as a hot-dog over the sort of distance even the fastest man could cover on foot, he had proceeded to administer to Captain Freemantle the sort of ear-bashing normally reserved for British heavyweight boxers.

As he listened, crippled by embarrassment and shame, Freemantle silently made himself a solemn oath. It was the sort of oath best made in deserted crypts at midnight, with candles made from boiled-down choir-boys and pentagrams of virgins’ blood daubed on the floor in case of misfire. He knew exactly who had got him into this career-threatening mess, he knew just how the renegade’s burnt-out fried egg of a brain worked, and as far as he was concerned this knowledge gave him a crucial edge. As the Colonel ranted on, Freemantle began to marinade in the vitriol of his planned revenge.

‘You’re gonna have to answer to some very influential people over this, Freemantle, do you hear me? Very influential. When it gets out you’ve mislaid a visitor, security agencies you ain’t even heard of are gonna be queuing up to mince your manhood! Freemantle, you there? … Freemaaaaantle!’

But the Captain had already embarked on a personal blitzkrieg all his own. Brandishing his combat knife, he went charging off into the gloom shrieking like a banshee with toothache.

A hundred metres to his rear, weighed down by a cargo never meant to walk this Earth, and discarding tinfoil like a born-again Christmas turkey, Frank was too busy running for his life in the opposite direction to care.

3. Invasion
Present day, somewhere far above North America

The vast alien mother ship slid silently through the interstellar void. Round about it the de rigueur invincible space armada jostled for position as it plunged towards the small defenceless disc of Earth.

Or perhaps not. From behind an insignificant, and conveniently placed, asteroid a handful of single-seat fighters swooped to the rescue. Crewed by pilots representing the full ethnic and sexual diversity of their home planet, this brave band of warriors charged to almost certain death. Sportingly, the aliens held back the myriad of wonder-weapons their ancient civilization was no doubt able to deploy, instead launching swarms of their own tiny fighters. These craft, bearing an uncanny resemblance to various Earth insects, were piloted by the most clumsy and ham-tentacled of their species. Those that made it out of the vast hangar doors without crashing engaged the Earthlings in a swarming battle of instant death. Even so, due to the sheer numbers of alien craft, the humans faced an uphill struggle. Today was no day to be without their hotshot ace pilot.

Aboard the alien Emperor’s personal star-barge Captain Troy Meteor, Hero of the Earth Defence Force and Olympic Low-G Fencing Champion, stood tied to an over-endowed and scantily clad cheerleader. It had been a tough break getting captured the way he had. Odds of 9000–1 were not usually a problem, but then Troy knew all about tough breaks, just like he knew all about ‘War is hell’, Officer’s Club banter and YMCA gymnasium showers.

The alien commander squatted in a vat of bubbling indigo goo atop an unholy dais. ‘So you see, our plans are quite simple,’ it croaked like a multi-hued perversion of a tobacco company’s research-lab beagle. ‘Even though our two races developed light-years apart, changes in the radiation signature of our sun mean we can obtain sustenance from one source and one source only.’

‘But why are you telling me all this?’ muttered Meteor darkly, trying hard to make it look like he was attempting to free his hands, but all the while touching-up the cheerleader’s bottom. ‘If I escape I’ll know every detail of your conniving scheme.’

Bringing forth his ceremonial gorging straw the Emperor cackled. ‘It matters not, my simian-based friend, for very soon, via your nasal cavity, I shall have sucked out what passes for your brain!’

Half way down aisle C, Dave yanked the lightweight plastic headphones from his aching ears and shook his head in stupefied disbelief. How was his fledgling science ever to be taken seriously when they continued to churn out this Troy Meteor shit? It was enough to make him weep. Beckoning a glassy-eyed stewardess, Dave ordered himself a stiff drink and made yet another effort to read the in-flight magazine.

But it was no use. The text that made up the thirty pages of glossy advertising copy was completely unreadable for anyone with a mental age higher than their shoe size. The words seemed to slip under Dave’s conscious brain only to be sucked into the subconscious box marked forget forever. With a weary sigh, he settled back in his economy seat and did what he always did at times like this. He thought of Kate.

He had asked her to come with him, but he had done it with that same air of hopeless, optimistic resignation that he asked her to do anything – go to a movie, share a curry, or on those rare occasions when copious amounts of lager got the better of his natural timidity, let him get inside her knickers. The answer to the last of these, as always, was no. A movie and curry were OK, but hot gusset action wasn’t the sort of thing best friends did.

‘But what if I meet a stunning Californian babe and we fall madly in love – what will you do then?’ he’d asked her.

‘Then I’ll look forward to the wedding and pray you name your first trans-Atlantic toddler after me. But if that’s the biggest risk I’m running letting you go on your own, fine. It’s not even a proper holiday. If you expect a girl to put up with two weeks of emotional blackmail, the least you can do is throw in a beach and a gallon of pina colada.’ Then she’d paused, looked at him searchingly, sadly maybe, and said: ‘Does everything you ever do have to be tied in with that ridiculous magazine?’

He’d been hurt, as he always was. The ‘ridiculous magazine’, as Kate insisted on calling it, was Dave’s pride and joy: none other than the internationally renowned ScUFODIN Monthly – the official journal of the Scientific UFO Discovery and Information Network. And the international renown bit was no idle boast, either; only last month Dave had received an enthusiastic letter from Belgium.

Kate steadfastly refused to acknowledge the journalistic worth of the magazine Dave edited. ‘It’s written by cranks, for cranks,’ she said.

‘And where does that leave me?’

‘Lovable but misguided? Your letters page reads like the visitors’ book of a care-in-the-community drop-in centre.’

It was hard to disagree with this particular point in her otherwise unfounded argument. All of his formal education had trained him for a career in science, viewing the world as a rational and logical place. Inevitably enough he often found himself at odds with the New Age and conspiracy theory wings of the movement. He did his best to keep things on an even keel, but it was an uphill battle – like trying to catch a monsoon in a thimble. As an editor who largely relied on the contributions of his readers Dave was at the mercy of the zealots. By the time he’d cut out pieces on ‘Holes at the Poles’, Flat Earth Society propaganda and ‘I’ve had sex with an alien who looked like Helena Bonham-Carter’ abduction stories from the live-at-home-with-my-mum boys, his heavyweight magazine was regularly reduced to a flyweight pamphlet.

And then there was the question of funding. For a journal that at best sold a few thousand copies, and was then universally consigned to a dentist’s waiting room in Aberdeen or the bottom of budgie cages, Dave was never short of operating cash. It wasn’t as if he ever had to go cap in hand to the magazine’s publicity-shy owners. Where it all came from was a mystery. Accounting had never been one of Dave’s strong points, but even he found himself a little uneasy at times over the prodigious quantities of cash that came pouring through the magazine’s bank account.

As far as he could make out, most of it was simply given to him, though by whom and for what was harder to pin down. No doubt some came from wealthy and elderly benefactors, humoured in their final years and at least glad to have a ready source of emergency toilet paper. But who on Earth were ‘The Institute for Meteorological Advancement’ and the ‘The International Council of Illuminanti’? One month, when Dave took a stand in the interests of scientific integrity and devoted the entire issue to real testable theories, the mystery funding dried up. Dave was no financial whiz-kid but he knew not to rock a boat that didn’t even have a keel. Not wanting to incur the wrath of his normally dormant publishers, next month the lunatic fringe returned with a vengeance. And so did the money.

So, truly scientific investigation of the UFO phenomena was currently at a low ebb, lower even than Dave’s love life – and as tides went that particular ocean surge was so far down the beach you could smell the rotting seaweed and had to step over the occasional surfer dying of toxic shock. But with Kate steadfastly declining his amorous advances, constantly maintaining that she wanted them to remain ‘just best friends’, for better or worse, ScUFODIN Monthly remained the real partner in Dave’s life.

An overly cheerful mechanical voice, asking him to fasten his seatbelt, brought Dave back to the present with a bump. He was meant to be putting all that behind him on this trip of a lifetime, but as Kate was so fond of saying, ‘You don’t just bring your work home with you, you sleep with it. If you were female, you’d have its babies.’

When he came down to it he had to admit she was right about the motives for his journey. Sure enough, he was claiming it as holiday, the first he’d had in three years as editor. But in his rare moments of self-honesty Dave knew there was only one reason he was visiting Nevada, and it wasn’t because he liked one-arm bandits or dancing girls with ostrich feathers sprouting from their pants. Well, OK leave in the last bit, but really this was a pilgrimage he’d wanted to make all his life. A holy journey you had to do once in a lifetime. Even though his personal desert Mecca was enshrined in triple-thickness security fences, antipersonnel minefields and luminous day-glo signs reading PROPERTY OF UNITED STATES AIR FORCE, TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT WITH BIG GUNS he’d be there to worship at the first opportunity.

Ten minutes later, with a cheerful smile and an optimistic swagger, he stepped off the plane at Las Vegas International Airport and gazed up at the star-filled desert sky. Kate or no Kate, while he was here, he knew he was going to have one hell of a time.

4. Revelations
February 1969, somewhere deep beneath North America

The politician stepped onto the circular pedestal and self-consciously smoothed back his sweat-laced hair. One trouser leg was rolled up to the knee, revealing a pallid vein-riddled lower leg. Around him the intense darkness pressed in from all sides. When the beam of white light flooded in from above he squinted through heavy-browed eyes, his weighty jowls quivering as he searched for figures in the blackness beyond. Shortly, the sort of computerized voice that was much in fashion before computers had very much to say gave its verdict.

‘Subject confirmed as Richard Millhouse Nixon. Thirty-seventh President of the United States, and Chairman of the Committee of 300.’ From a rather tinny loudspeaker somewhere far above drifted the first few bars of ‘Hail to the Chief’. It was hard to escape the feeling it had done this many times before.

The new President tentatively stepped down and shielded his eyes from the glare. Nothing moved, apart from a small vein at the side of his temple. Then, accompanied only by a faint whiff of sweat, which Nixon quickly realized was his own, a dark figure stepped from the shadows. The newcomer’s voice was like gallows-yard gravel ground under an executioner’s heel, yet as smooth and cultured as an upper-cut from an Oxford Don.

‘Can’t be too careful these days, Mr Chairman. Traitors where you least expect.’ There was no doubt which of his guest’s titles afforded the most respect.

The Commander-in-Chief offered a half-hearted salute, then thought better of it and turned it into a cheerless wave. ‘Well no, I guess not. Reds … and worse shades, everywhere. You must be …’

‘They call me Becker. Some call me worse things, but when the enemies of justice hate your guts you know you’re doing something right. You can roll down that trouser leg too – we don’t pander to mysticism down here.’

His guest looked to be in two minds. ‘I thought you Committee boys were sticklers for tradition?’

Becker’s eyes held the faintest trace of annoyance. ‘We don’t stand on ceremony, as long as it doesn’t stand on us. I suspect you’ve been misled by some of your senior partners. Would you walk this way, please.’

They stepped onto a conveyor belt which whisked them off down a seemingly endless corridor of smooth walls and no doors. The leader of the Free World took the chance to study his companion. He was a big man, wearing an impeccably tailored black suit cut in the ‘organization man’ style of the early fifties. In his big grizzled hand he held a dark and sinister package. At his wrist was some sort of complex flashing electrical device. Though his craggy features were cast in shadow, somehow his eyes seemed darker still.

Small talk was neither of their specialities, though nervously the President felt an urge to try. ‘Quite a facility you have here. Good to know the public’s tax dollars aren’t all wasted, even the ones we don’t account for.’

The Dark Man looked back coldly at his nominal superior. Then, after a heart-stopping instant, his broad face creased into a mirthless smile which got no nearer his eyes than Lee Harvey Oswald’s bullets had to JFK. ‘We know you’re one of us, sir. Those who took you this far will ensure you stay in power. The Committee will back you to the hilt, and beyond – as long as you fulfil your role.’

At this assurance the President grinned his dumbest vote-catching grin. As was his custom, Becker didn’t. Further conversation was now clearly inappropriate.

Dark and silent minutes passed, until at last the walkway glided to a halt before a huge and featureless wall.

‘The time has come for you to learn what all who hold your high office must know – I speak not of the Presidency but your other, more fundamental brief. Beyond this wall is our organization’s most closely guarded secret, hidden even from the likes of yourself – one of our most promising associate members. It’s my opinion that if this information ever leaks out the bedrock on which the Committee’s power rests will crumble. Unfortunately, not all your colleagues share my views. I have reason to worry about their motives. Prepare yourself.’

The President looked on agog, an expression he was practised at, as Becker fiddled with the device strapped to his wrist. Slowly and steadily a section of the vast wall slid away before them.

What gradually appeared was the interior of a hall the size of an aircraft hangar. The first thing to strike Nixon as odd was the small grassy hill rising from the floor not twenty yards from where he stood. Larger than the infamous Texan ‘grassy knoll’, it was nevertheless similar enough to touch off a spark of guilty panic in the President’s underemployed heart.

That was the first odd thing. Then everything else struck him at once. In the middle distance grew anaemic-looking trees. Overhead, great banks of spotlights produced a sun-like glare. Far away, a snatch of bird-song that warbled for a moment then died off then repeated – tinny and false, clearly recorded. But these details were mere bit-players in the rich pageant of unreason that unfolded before his eyes. Atop the hill was a ramshackle old house with wooden walls which had seen better days, though where, when and how was another matter. The chimney would have embarrassed Pisa’s leaning tower. Windows were untidily boarded up. Along its front stretched a tumbledown porch ringed by a crumbling rail. Finally, scattered around this strange scene lounged half a dozen scruffy little children.

But Nixon’s eyes were drawn inexorably back to the dusty bare-dirt driveway, and what was suspended above it. Parked up on blocks sat a battered thirty-foot metallic saucer, the type which would have embarrassed even the most short-sighted B-movie special-effects supremo.

The President was about to ask what sort of insane practical joke this was when he took a closer look at one of the children who had now turned at his approach. It stared back at him through huge almond-shaped black eyes set in a featureless grey face. He checked the others again. They were all the same. These weren’t children, they were … they were … When the thing that was staring at the President saw his shock, it sprang into jerky action. Seeing this, the others followed suit.

From beneath rag-torn dungarees and hopelessly stained gingham frocks they produced an assortment of musical instruments out of nowhere and got down to work. Banjos and home-made double-bass were much in evidence. It looked like the Walton family had got into a fight with a nuclear reactor and lost. With a quick glance around to see that all were ready, the creatures started to play what appeared to be a rehearsed song. Except that it was a song which had no rhythm, no timing and no tune.

A grim-faced Becker turned to his guest. ‘The Visitors like to greet their new ‘‘Big Pink Chief’’ with this traditional cultural display. They maintain they’ve brought it all the way from their home planet, though personally I have my doubts.’

He coolly continued to study Nixon’s open-mouthed, goggle-eyed face. ‘Best to show polite disdain, that way it doesn’t go on for too long. Eisenhower made the mistake of looking impressed and they kept it up all day. We had to shoot three of them to make ‘em stop.’

If anything, the wild revels seemed to be growing in intensity. Two of the more sprightly aliens grasped each other’s slender arms and did a fair impression of a Highland jig, the blonde pigtails of a wigged ‘female’ twirling as it spun. Perched at the rear, granpaw-alien’s harmonica playing became so frenzied he fell off his rocking-chair, though it didn’t seem to bother him much. Meanwhile the hand-clapper-and-stomper at the front put his foot through a rotten board.

Nixon looked on aghast. ‘But they’re …’

‘Idiots. I know sir. Cosmic trailer-park grey scum. Call them what you will. It seems the universe is full of hillbillies. Our top minds have been trying to figure it out for the past twenty-two years.’

‘Twenty-two years! It’s been going on that long?’

Becker shrugged. ‘Maybe longer.’

Taking it in, Nixon forced himself to adopt a bit of composure. ‘So, these top minds of ours – what did they conclude?’

For the first time Becker displayed a modicum of unease. ‘At present we have only non-positive results to show for considerable endeavour.’

‘Meaning we’ve got jackshit.’

In the darkness next to him Nixon’s host gave the faintest shake of his head.

Like many before him the President looked perplexed. ‘But how did they get here? It makes no sense. We spend billions on our space programme, employing the best Nazis money can buy, and it’s all we can do to launch a monkey round the moon. Then these space freaks turn up and show us how primitive we really are. It’s beyond reason … And, frankly, it’s not fair.’

The Dark Man looked about to say something, wavered, then decided to go for it. ‘There is one possibility – a malignant theory that slowly and painfully extends its tentacles of proof by the day. But I have to warn you, Mr Chairman, the rest of the Committee are reluctant to look at my evidence in a rational manner. The policies they pursue might even unwittingly aid whoever is behind these extraterrestrial aberrations.’

‘God in heaven, speak English, man. What’re you talking about?’

If Becker was offended by this outburst, he didn’t show it. ‘It’s long been calculated that our uneducated brethren would not cope well with the sudden undeniable proof of alien existence. Our most covert think-tanks tell us this knowledge would cause a paradigm shift from which the human race might never recover – a shock so great it could break us as a race. But for whoever’s behind this scheme even that does not seem enough. It’s as if they want to rub our under-evolved noses in it. I believe we are the victims of … a manipulation. What better way to scupper humanity’s infatuation with science and technology, to cast us back into a dark age of unreason and superstition, than by showing us another darker path offering better results? Someone or something wants to make us paranoid and superstitious, and they’ll go to almost any lengths to do so.’

Nixon squinted at the man again. He wasn’t sure he liked him. ‘Let me get this straight … You think this isn’t it? You think there’s more, that someone’s hurling brain-dead aliens from the sky at us to make the poor old human race feel bad? What sort of half-assed theory is that?’

Becker drew himself up to his full impressive height. ‘The Committee must end their policy of encouraging conspiracy theories and paranoia – it will play directly into our opponents’ hands. There’s even talk of leaking information on our grey friends – doctored of course to make it appear we have the situation under control. Sir, I need your help to convince the Committee they’re wrong.’

Nixon looked at him, puzzled. ‘Why should I do that, if I don’t believe you either?’

Becker judged it a good time to give him the evidence. ‘Read this, Mr President.’ He handed over the package he’d held throughout their meeting – a thick blue folder. ‘Read it, sir. And try not to weep.’

5. ‘Mr Frosty’ is One of Them
Present day, Tonopah, northern Nevada

Frank pressed himself flat against the damp wall of his shabby apartment, further crumpling the ancient Che Guevara poster in the process. He knew from careful experimentation that in this position he couldn’t be seen from the street below, though he could peer behind the tattered tinfoil-lined curtains at the frenetic street scene beneath.

The van was back again, two minutes thirty-seven seconds earlier than the day before. So they were varying their routine, trying to catch him out, but he could see through their shallow games. The operative was apparently busy serving a fast-growing line of eager children, handing them towering ice-cream cones and pocketing their payment, no doubt every cent going to swell the black-budget coffers that bankrolled the insidious Shadow Government. That in itself was a give-away. The real ‘Mr Frosty’ never gave more than two scoops. What a shit-kicking amateur!

As Frank had been taught during his days with the ill-fated Michigan Militia, the best form of camouflage was often to be seen but ignored. ‘The human scarecrow approach,’ his crazed Boer weapons instructor called it. Once Frank had pointed out that trying to teach him anything about military field-craft was like teaching a Federal employee how to waste taxes (which he’d done by ambushing the South African as he took a thigh-trembling dump into a plastic bag in the bushes behind their firing range), they’d instructed the class together. What Frank had been able to pass on from his dimly remembered days in the military had served the band of flabby-bellied, flabby-brained fanatics well – but in the long run it had done them little good. After Waco and Oklahoma City their troop had been busted faster than you could say ‘One World Government’.

But that had been in better days, before this intense harassment began, before the United Nations funded Gestapo had started bombarding his head with voices and flashbacks – some of them most disturbing. It seemed at times he was being made to remember details of his former life. It seemed microwave energy was good for more than just heating waffles and frying the brains of gullible mobile-phone users.

Whichever government black-ops coven was behind this current mission, they knew what they were about. For a split second Frank experienced a rare iota of panic; he was up against some frighteningly clever opponents. Slowly, using a little-known Zen technique picked up in the jungles of Vietnam, he re-levelled his inner karma. This was undoubtedly part of an ongoing routine surveillance – if they knew he had the merchandise he would have been taken out by now.

Frank pulled himself away from the window and loped across his cluttered flat, made all the worse by his preparations for imminent departure. He’d deal with ‘Mr Frosty’ when he was good and ready. Even Frank admitted that as far as manifestations went of the International Papist/Masonic plot to elevate the Queen of England to a position of world power, enslaving humanity in the process, old ‘Two Scoops Freddy’ was hardly the most deadly component. Recently he’d heard rumours of something big brewing in the Far East – some fiendish consumer device which would finally tip the balance in the Illuminantis’ favour – though how and when he had no clue. What was certain was that in the coming struggle Frank was going to need every weapon he could get his badly blistered trigger-finger to.

Rubbing puffy red-rimmed eyes, Frank pushed aside a mound of ScUFODIN Monthly magazines and copies of badly printed pamphlets (Kennedy – The Denture Suicide Hypothesis), to kneel down besides his battered VCR. After thumbing the well-worn eject button he slipped the cassette into its lurid rental-store case. The lengths the Military-Industrial-Entertainment Complex would go to influence the minds of the public never ceased to amaze him. What Troy Meteor lacked in subtlety he more than made up for in xenophobic gung-ho. Frank had noted all the passages containing subliminal messages, not that they were needed – this particular piece of anti-alien propaganda laid it on pretty thick – negotiations must have taken a turn for the worse since ET. It had been a long night of constant freeze-framing, but well worth the risk to his already tattered sanity. In time, Frank’s findings would be passed on to the relevant groups fighting the imposition of the New World Order.

In moments of doubt he wondered if it was worth it. Would they ever be free from the corrosive tentacles sprouting from the cancerous institutions of the state? At times it almost seemed a hopeless fight. The forces stacked against the brave few champions of liberty were insurmountable. What was needed was a victory that would shake the world to its very foundations – with that thought Frank allowed himself a knowing smile.

Feeling a terrible thirst, he made his way over the jaundiced lino to his prehistoric fridge. He’d given up drinking the bottled water; they could get to that as easily as the tap supply. Beer was now his only hope.

Tearing at the ring-pull he did his best to ignore the sickly-sweet smell that spilled from the chiller-cabinet. Wedged inside, his slowly putrefying houseguest looked back at him with big oval, black eyes, its three-fingered hands still clutching the bulging hieroglyph-covered satchel. Frank undid the oddly shaped latch and slipped out the large blue folder marked MJ13 – Property of the Committee.

With a sardonic grin he mused that the disinformation started on the very cover. That its contents were entirely true he had no doubt, but if this document really was known to the Shadow Government, then its author was in very deep trouble indeed. It read quite differently from any official report Frank had ever seen. During his time in the Service several of his officers had kept similar journals. They had invariably been scrawled in dog-eared notebooks, in the brief shattered minutes before last lights, or in the odd disjointed moments of spare time that a military career afforded. None had been neatly typed and housed in an armour-plated folder that seemed to warp space-time with its very gravitas. The thought of some junior officer carting this tome around on active service, in the hope of one day being hailed as a syphilis-free Ernest Hemingway, couldn’t help but make Frank chuckle.

Besides, few government reports were written in the first person. Randomly Frank thumbed to a page and began to read.

After what happened to Apollo 11 there was no way we could go back to the moon. We had been warned off in no uncertain terms. Of course the great unwashed never got to know. A twenty-second transmission delay and ‘solar interference’ saw to that.

‘Twelve’ was ready to go and on the launch pad, but we pulled the astronauts and launched the empty ship instead – possibly the most expensive Fourth of July rocket to go up in history. My heart was heavy to think what my department could have done with the funds – got another Committee member to the top of the Kremlin perhaps, but then first time around that had caused more trouble than it solved. Uncle Joe went soft on us when it mattered.

Thirteen was a nice touch if I do say so myself. By then we were better prepared to properly stage the event – the entire production went down like clockwork. Not having to film the surface sequences made it less of a headache, and the fact that the ‘mission’ was a ‘near disaster’ meant that no one suspected a set-up. The simplest plans are always best.

One day I knew the story would make a good old-fashioned heart-warming patriotic film, we’d keep that one up our sleeve until we needed it most. Our Hollywood contacts were proving increasingly skilful at influencing mob psychology, and would only get better as the years progressed.

Needless to say, the later ops were an entire fabrication. Golf on the moon – I ask you! Filming them wasn’t cheap, but far less expensive than actually firing those Jet Jocks off into space. Our unofficial funding was given some modicum of support when the billions of dollars officially earmarked for the space programme were diverted to our cause.

If he hadn’t been such an arrogant son-of-a-bitch Frank could almost have grown to like the document’s shady author – a true professional in his chosen field. But Frank didn’t have to read far from any point in the manuscript to be reminded just what an insidiously evil, hard-assed bastard this guy was – the sort of faceless bureaucrat who usurped his nation’s power to weave his own personal web of lies and deceit, all the while, no doubt, believing himself to be a patriot.

Frank would nail him. Frank would nail them all soon enough, and he’d especially nail ‘Mr Frosty’. His secret weapon, in this most secret of black wars, currently gazed back at him lifelessly from his fridge.

‘Not long now, good buddy,’ Frank said, taking the first sip of beer as he closed the file. ‘You’re my grey ace in the hole.’

6. Publication
West Virginia, USA

At his remote mountain retreat high in the Appalachian wilderness Becker’s personal phone was ringing. He was much older now than he had been on that fateful night many years before when he’d initiated that wide-eyed fool Nixon into the darkest secrets of the Committee, but even carrying his advanced years Becker moved nimbly for a big man. There was more than one telephone receiver on his cluttered writing desk, but it wasn’t hard to know which one to answer.

One phone was so black it seemed to create its own gravity-field. A series of flashing lights along its extended surface indicated sophisticated scrambling circuits were in operation. It connected Becker to the Executive Section’s Head of Communications in a bunker deep under DC. It didn’t ring often – Becker’s underlings knew better than to disturb him when he was at the cabin. On the few occasions there had been call to answer it a superpower had been toppled or a pope had been shot.

The second phone was a translucent red. When it rang and flashed insanely it could only mean one thing, and it wasn’t that Gotham City needed Batman to pop a rolled-up sock down his tights. It could only mean the saintly head-of-state of Becker’s own ‘Great Nation’ had got himself into very hot water and needed bailing out. After all, everyone needed a legitimate day job, if nothing else to keep those IRS bloodsuckers off your back. What a waste of his talents, Becker often pondered, to be reduced to buying off two-bit whores and arranging ‘accidents’ for jewellery-encrusted pimps. Of late this second phone had done more ringing than the first. But today wasn’t to be its day.

The third telephone was shaped like Mickey Mouse. There was no good reason why this should be so, but some things were beyond explanation, as Becker knew only too well. Of the three it rang least often, but when it did the thing more than made up for it. The whole plastic mouse would vibrate and wobble, its receiver-holding arm pumping away like a body-builder. When Becker had first purchased the cabin, to allow himself to escape the tortured freneticism of his double working-life, he’d discovered the monstrosity in a box of junk pushed to the back of an outhouse. In a fit of whimsy, the sort that can only descend over a man under the mind-buckling pressure that he experienced every day, Becker had made it his own personal phone.

Today Mickey looked like he was having an epileptic fit. His eerily electric voice screamed, ‘IT’S FOR YOU! IT’S FOR YOU!’ Becker reached for the bright yellow handset in disgust, as much to put the radar-eared rodent out of his misery as to answer the call.

But when the caller introduced herself, the Dark Man’s face lightened considerably – it was an editor from Karl Popf Stein, the major New York publishing house whose address he knew only too well. Two months earlier Becker had sent her a very special package. But as the conversation progressed, the look of hope slipped from Becker’s face, badly staining his shirt in the process.

‘Look, Mr Decker. Time for a bit of honesty, I think. There’s no call for this sort of fiction anymore. The public don’t go for this heavy-handed the world’s in peril stuff. They want fluff, and I doubt very much you can do fluff. So please, stop harassing this office or I’ll be forced to call in the authorities. Your hysterical e-mails are giving our server a nervous breakdown.’

Becker’s face began to exude the sort of infrared radiation which had been known to cause men to spontaneously combust. This was too much to take, coming no doubt from someone who was a dope-smoking English Lit major, who probably wet her unbleached Nicaraguan-cotton panties at the first sign of a parking ticket.

‘It’s … not … fiction,’ he just about managed to stammer. ‘That manuscript covers my experiences running the Secret Government’s Black Operations Programme. It details why ‘‘what happens’’ happens. It’s all explained – from what really went on at Pear Harbor to the lies behind alien abduction. From the Gulf War to ‘‘daytime chat shows’’. It’s political dynamite. Have you got any idea what a risk I’m taking just sending it to you!’

She cut him off mid stride. ‘Quite frankly the only risk involved must have been to the poor Federal Mail employee who delivered it to our door – quite a tome, isn’t it. It needs severe pruning. I suggest you get yourself a ruler and a red pen and starting with the first line, get cutting. Then keep cutting all the way to the end.’

Darkest despair gripped Becker, as his cultured voice reached a thunderous new intensity. ‘But it’s all true! Don’t you recognize the blockbuster of the century when you read it? This book lays the secrets of the world bare and breathless, like a big-haired White House intern – one who’s just had done to her what you can do to your competitors.’

The editor sounded wary, perhaps suspicious of being further sucked in by the madman down the line. ‘But why would an individual in your position bare his soul like this? If half of what you say is true you must be crazier than if it isn’t.’

Becker couldn’t believe some people’s cynicism. The words tumbled forth in an avalanche that had been building for years. ‘Have you even bothered to read my conclusion on the last page? There’s a paralysis at the very top of our leadership. A reluctance to face facts. We can’t rule out the possibility that someone high up on the Committee has an agenda all their own!’

‘I’m afraid I didn’t get that far. I found your claim that the Vietnam protest movement was all part of some vast CIA mind-control experiment alarming and offensive. I was part of that movement and I can assure you that CIA agents did not supply any of the LSD I took. I suppose you’ll be claiming they were sleeping with us next to monitor our responses.’

Becker could only make strangled wheezing noises as the editor continued. He didn’t know whether to be impressed by her insight or appalled by her lack of vision.

‘And as for your prediction that ‘‘The Subversive Power undermining the Committee will soon up the stakes by staging ever-more irrational and paranoia-inducing events,’’ well, I found that simply bizarre. What is this ‘‘final killer blow prior to harvesting’’ you are forever alluding to? Our Science Fiction department might be interested, but we certainly couldn’t publish it as a biography, we’d be the laughing stock of the publishing world – and believe me that’s a hard-fought title. I suppose what I’m trying to say is please stop phoning us every day, you’re wasting our time and yours. I’d recommend a shrink but I don’t want to hurt him.’

Before Becker could respond the line went dead. His rage was frightening to behold. Mickey went flying through a window, braining a passing skunk as it ploughed into the needle-covered forest floor.

Slowly, and with many choice curses in several different languages, Becker got his reeling emotions back under control. When he was his normal Antarctic self he picked up the black phone and dialled a very special number. Half a mile beneath the Pentagon a four-star Air Force General sprang to his feet and saluted when he heard his master’s voice.

‘Start me a war. It doesn’t have to be big, but make it bloody and make it soon. Our friend in Baghdad is due another spanking.’

Perhaps sensing this wasn’t the best time to be the bearer of bad news, there was a note of agitation in the General’s voice. ‘That might not be a problem for long, sir – you haven’t heard the news from Urgistan? But there’s something even more urgent you should know. There’s been a Case Red incident in Nevada.’

Instantly Becker’s mood changed. ‘You know the drill, we’ve been through it enough times in the past.’

‘I’m afraid it’s different this time, sir. Some other agency beat us to the draw. One of the Visitors was abducted, along with certain papers of yours they had in their possession.’

The telephone line went ominously quiet. ‘What sort of … personal papers?’

‘We don’t as of yet know. But somehow, before the Visitors went AWOL from their holding area at the Mesa Facility, they broke into your personal apartment and rifled through your things. We have surveillance footage of them exiting the base carrying a large blue book. Image enhancement can just make out the letters ‘‘MJ’’ embossed on the cover. We ran checks but there’s no record of it being an official file. Sir? Are you still there, sir?’

The receiver slipped from Becker’s grasp. With a sob of rage he reflected that publication of his manuscript might not be a problem in the near future. The harm it would cause if it were done in the wrong way made him shiver.

7. Strange Harvest
Somerset, UK

Kate Jennings prided herself on her open mind, cool professional objectivity and the control she exercised over her career, but this job was beginning to get under her skin. There was something about it that made her brain itch, as if a thousand locusts were dancing on her scalp.

‘Maybe you should go through it again from the top, Mr Smith,’ she said.

The subject of her interview didn’t seem any more comfortable. The young man glanced around the untidy farmhouse kitchen as if expecting to be pounced on at any moment. ‘It was like I said to your researcher on the phone – not of this Earth.’

Kate tried hard to appreciate his guarded country ways for what they were – a charming aspect of rural life that would not survive the building of one more motorway but even that was beginning to irritate her now. ‘Start again – slowly from the beginning, and I’ll just turn on my tape recorder, this time without you getting upset.’

The young farmer looked at her oddly for a second. ‘There’s no need to patronize me, Miss Jennings. Just because I don’t live within gobbing range of a tube station and dodge hordes of muggers each time I go to work, to push bits of paper from one side of a desk to another, doesn’t mean I don’t know which way to sit on a lavatory. We have traffic jams and dog-shit pavements in the country too, you know. If you saw what I saw I’m sure you’d get ‘‘a little bit upset’’.’

Kate sighed wearily. ‘Look, I’m sorry. I’ve had a long day. Rest assured I’d very much appreciate any information you could give me for the show. Please go on.’

OK, she admitted to herself, a daytime true-life confession programme wasn’t what she’d thought she’d end up working on when she got into TV journalism, but Panorama wasn’t hiring at the moment. It didn’t mean the team of dedicated researchers she headed had no intention of doing a thorough job.

The worried-looking Mr Smith coughed weakly and began again. ‘Like I said, it all started last May eve. It was a beautifully clear spring evening, not a cloud in the sky. There’d been a meteor shower earlier but nothing else of note.

‘I’d just brought the cows in from the top field when Ned, my hired hand, points up to the southern sky and brings my attention to a bright light hovering in the far distance. Didn’t think much of it at the time, probably one of them new military planes they’re always testing up at the secret air base on the heath. But now I know it was the beginning of a nightmare that would come to haunt my family far worse even than that unpleasantness with Aunt Betty and the prize bullock from down Yeovil way.’

Kate leaned forward intently, determined to get some sense from her subject this time. The young farmer continued.

‘Anyway, me and Ned returned to the farmhouse without giving it a second thought. Just as we were entering for our tea Ned says, ‘‘Look, it’s still there, Smithy.’’ I told him to forget it before I gave him a sheep-dip shampoo. But all through tea Ned kept looking out the window, muttering to himself that it was coming closer, and something about ‘‘the CIA messing with his mind’’. Not much there to mess with, but there you go. After pudding, Ned was on his way. The funny thing was, as I saw him off, I could have sworn the light was nearer, though it was most likely my imagination.

‘After that me and the missis put the kids to bed. Little Gretchen said she wanted a story, so I read her one about a load of elves carting off a bitchy princess until some mad King paid the ransom. By then I was pretty tired myself, so I got my head down too. Don’t suppose you townies have an inkling what time cows set their alarms in the morning.’

Don’t suppose you have an inkling what time my neighbours get back from clubbing, thought Kate, but managed to look suitably unsure of herself.

‘All seemed normal enough till just past midnight. Tell the truth I had a funny dream about two nuns locked in a greengrocers, but that’s not the confession you’re looking for, is it? Anyway, come the witching hour I was awakened by a bright light hovering above the house. My first thought was that the roof was alight, but I could hear no sound apart from a low-pitched humming. The other thing that convinced me it weren’t a fire was its colour. It was the brightest white light you’d ever seen, not red like from flames, but tinged with blue as if from a welding torch. It seemed to be inside the attic. Shafts of light were streaming down the chimney and up through the cracks in the floorboards. I half expected a strange urge to build a copy of Glastonbury Tor in my front room, but oddly enough none came.

‘Now you might think any right-minded individual would be pretty keen to discover what had landed on his house, but not me. I was overcome with a strange lethargy. Dead casual, I got out of bed and wandered downstairs as if I didn’t have a care in the world. Didn’t stop to wake the wife. Didn’t stop to fetch the kids. Just plodded off as if this was a regular occurrence.

‘By the time I’d reached the back door the light had moved on. It seemed to have landed a hundred yards away in one of my arable fields, behind a line of trees. So I opened the back door and trekked towards it.

‘Now I’ve seen some pretty peculiar things in my time – a Ministry vet trying to explain to Twelve-Gauge Trev why all his cattle had to be slaughtered at cost price, that hunt-saboteur ravaged by fox-hounds last winter – but they were nothing compared to the debauched scene that met my eyes on that foul night.

‘The thing was as big as a barn. And not one of those cheap prefabricated modern monstrosities neither. This was like something from the days when they really knew how to build an outhouse, not that you’d want to keep your hay in this perversion against God and nature – not unless you were completely insane, that is.’

Kate lowered the levels on her mini tape-recorder as she tried to ignore the mindless cackling her host had broken into. ‘Do you think you can describe the craft?’

Mr Smith composed himself. ‘It was all silver looking, and shaped like a giant saucer. Hovering over my cornfield it was, just hanging in the air. Beneath it the crop was bent out of shape, as if by some sort of vortex. But that’s not all, see. There was this row of bright windows about half-way up the thing, and inside its occupants were doing a strange cosmic jig. Though if it’s dancing that tickles your fancy it wouldn’t have been those inside that caught your eye – no indeed. Between me and the ship was another group of them, and what they were doing was disgusting.’

Kate looked on seriously, intent on confirming this crucial point.

‘Morris dancing!’ stated her host as he barely suppressed a shiver. ‘Though no internationally recognized or authenticated routine was this. If the lads at the Amalgamated Federation of Traditional Country Stick Banging had seen them they would have had a fit – that’s if they hadn’t run screaming from the vicinity before a ‘‘hey’’ had even been ‘‘nonny nonned’’.’

Kate leaned forward as the farmer regained his breath. ‘And the Maypole, Mr Smith, can you tell me about that one more time?’

The young man winced. ‘Well, they were prancing about a sorry perversion of that traditionally wholesome symbol of English village life, though it was decorated in a fashion that makes me shudder. Atop its crown sat the head of my prize Guernsey milker, Daisy. All down its length were draped her still steaming innards. As the small grey pixies danced about its base they waved other bits of her in the air. Pig’s bladders are what we normally use, though it is customary to remove them from inside the pig first. Sickening it was, though at the time I just stood transfixed and stared.’

‘So what happened next?’

‘One of the little grey elves broke off from the pagan rite and skipped towards me. Led me by the hand it did, up into the belly of the saucer, into a dazzling bright light. That’s where I met … her.’

His voice dropped by several poignant octaves at that single menacing word. ‘Her, Mr Smith?’ Kate enquired.

‘Yes, her. Though no human woman was she. Tall, blonde, and with eyes like two burning sapphires. Not one word did she speak, but it were clear enough what she craved. Wanted me to perform … acts upon her.’

‘What sort of acts?’

Smith looked hesitant. ‘Strange … unnatural acts. The sort of perverted bedroom antics that no decent man should be asked to contemplate – not even if he marries a girl from Swindon.’

‘And that’s when you blacked out?’

Her host slowly shook his head. ‘Not quite. She pushed some sort of wriggling creature onto me forehead. Like a multi-legged small puppy, it was. The thing seemed to feed on my mental juices, sucking them out as if it needed them to grow. That’s when I finally blacked out. From what little I do remember that was a blessed mercy. Woke up the next morning in the empty field with nothing but Daisy’s mangled carcass and a screaming headache for company. But if only that were all. Had to forgo marital obligations for the best part of a month, such was me groinal discomfort.’

Kate tried to look sympathetic but failed. It wasn’t so much that she found this hard to believe, but rather the story seemed to strike some deep-rooted chord, a suppressed race memory best left untwanged. It wasn’t even as if the climactic top-self conclusion was the end of the matter. ‘So tell me about your second visitors.’

Smith took a deep breath. ‘Well, not much happened for a week or two, then things really started getting strange. The first day I’d felt well enough to go back to work I was having me tea when there was a banging at the door. Hurrying to answer it I found these three strangers dressed in black glaring back at me. Kitted out real odd, they were, – old-fashioned dark suits and hats to match. One of them was carrying a small black box. But the strangest thing about them was they were all wearing make-up, and none too subtly applied at that. They had white foundation smeared on good and thick, and each bore bright red lipstick too. Their eyes were hidden behind horn-rimmed shades.

‘Now as folks round here will tell you, I’m a bloke who likes his privacy. ‘‘That Smithy loves his privacy,’’ they say. When intimidating strangers come calling, as a rule, I’m more likely to send them packing with two barrels of buckshot than offer tea and drop scones. But on this occasion that’s just what I done. I’d lost my innate belligerence.’

‘What did they want?’

‘That’s just it. Nothing as such. Just asked me lots of silly questions. The one with the box was silent throughout; just stood there staring at me and holding his contraption as if it were some sort of gift. One of the others seemed fascinated by my TV. Asked me how it worked, then shut up after that. Their leader did most of the talking.’

‘What sort of questions did he ask?’

Smith looked genuinely baffled. ‘Mostly stuff about my nightly visitation. But not the obvious things, nothing to do with the craft, or the Morris dancers, or what I thought they were doing, just … odd things. He seemed obsessed with knowing if I had any physical scars to show for my adventures. Not so much a scarring, I told him, more of a soreness to be quite frank. Even to this day I have to be careful if I sit down at the wrong angle, and the sight of my dairy herd’s pendulous udders can spark off an excitement that leaves me doubled up in pain. Needless to say Mrs Smith ain’t as impressed as she used to be.’

The young farmer looked suddenly crestfallen down at his feet as Kate pushed. ‘And that’s when they made their threats?’

The farmer nodded. ‘Yeah, all suddenly the mood turned real nasty. Once they’d convinced themselves I bore no lasting marks they crowded round all threatening. The leader told me that if I ever mentioned their visit, or my enforced night of passion, terrible things would happen to me. After the terrible things that had already happened I was in no mood to argue. Then he handed me these.’

He showed Kate a selection of gaudy promotional fliers for what looked like a New Age mystic religion. The organization claimed to be able to make sense of the most bizarre psychic experiences – new recruits were always welcome. She wasn’t certain but she felt sure she’d heard of the Cult of Planet Love somewhere before.

Tearing her eyes from the strangely compelling, almost hypnotic symbols on the covers, she refocused on her subject. ‘But you feel able to talk about your ordeal now?’

‘Too bloody right,’ said Mr Smith, jumping to his feet and barely wincing in pain. ‘If their sort comes calling again I’ll be ready for them with my gun. I just … wasn’t ready at the time, that’s all.’

Kate stopped her tape recorder and sighed wearily. She had never heard the term ‘Men in Black’, but she had a close personal friend who knew only too much about them.

8. Aurora Bored-Me-Senseless

The star-speckled sky arched above Dave’s head like God’s very own dandruff-covered blanket. For the briefest of seconds he suffered a stomach-churning attack of vertigo, his reeling senses telling him he was falling headlong into the infinity of endless night.

With a jolt that almost threw him off balance Dave came crashing back to earth. The piece of earth he came crashing back to was a small patch of rocky desert, beside a dusty highway, eighty miles north of Las Vegas, Nevada. The wilderness around him was very still and very quiet, but he was not alone. Nearby a motley assortment of individuals from every walk and some stumbles of life stood silently, just as Dave did, peering up at the moonless night sky. They had only one thing in common. Hope shone from all their eyes like the light from a flickering candle flame.

Dave stood at a very special spot. This sandy roadside verge was the nearest an unauthorized civilian (and when it came to matters like these there wasn’t really any other sort) could get to the Mecca, St Peter’s, Wailing Wall and 74 Station Road, Aberdeen of Ufology. Twenty yards away, down the gently sloping desert, a double razor-wire fence stretched off as far as the eye could see in both directions. The signs were evenly spaced: ‘USE OF DEADLY FORCE PERMITTED’. The signs were there for one very good reason. Over the jagged ridge on the horizon lay the top-secret US Air Force base known as ‘Dreamland’, or Area 51.

This facility was so secret that officially it didn’t even exist – it said so in all the tourist brochures, books, magazines, films, TV shows and pamphlets that had been published on the matter over the past forty years. In the nearby one-stop town of Rachel you could buy a T-shirt that told you much the same thing. As far as secrets went ‘Dreamland’ was about as well kept as Colonel Gaddafi’s hair.

Area 51. Some claimed that forty-two levels beneath the burning desert there lay a junkyard full of crashed alien craft. Others claimed that the very aliens themselves were housed here, their brains picked over by the sort of government scientist who giggled a lot and hadn’t learned to shave. But tonight Dave and the others weren’t here to speculate, they were here for the show. And as regular as an atomic clock, they weren’t to be disappointed.

At eight-thirty precisely the first lights glided serenely above the horizon. They must have been more than ten miles away but against the translucent indigo sky they stood out like nuns in a whorehouse. As if on cue, a barely audible sigh rose from the congregation. Deferentially, camcorders were raised in unison as the nightly act of worship began.

The display was much the same as it ever was. For thirty minutes the lights bobbed and weaved, dived and swooped. It mattered not that the event was caught on over twenty cameras, the tapes of ‘assorted coloured lights dancing in the sky’ had been seen many times on TV before. It took much more to impress a cynical public these days.

Shortly, Dave was conscious of a figure standing closer to him than the others. ‘Mighty fine sight,’ said the newcomer, not taking his eyes from the display for a second. ‘Makes you proud to be American.’

Dave looked his companion up and down. He was the sort of middle-aged man who had been fit once, but pizza and Miller Lite had taken their toll. Covering his broad belly was a T-shirt depicting an Arab terrorist cowering beneath a cruise missile. ‘Go On–Make My Day’ begged the caption.

‘Name’s Ray,’ he beamed holding out a vast hand that could have easily encased both of Dave’s. ‘Fifty-eight combat missions over Nam and not a hint of post-traumatic stress disorder.’

Dave nodded meekly. ‘Dave. Twenty-six copies of ScUFODIN Monthly, and no trace of a book deal yet. Actually I’m not American, I’m on holiday from the UK.’ Instantly he was wondering if this was further into conversation than he wanted to get.

‘Ah – England!’ his new friend gushed. ‘We can always rely on you guys to back us up. Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher – now they were leaders with real balls, but this new guy of yours makes them look like pussies. Not like the wet farts we have leading us over here.’

Dave correctly surmised that he should direct the conversation away from politics. ‘So, have you been interested in UFOs for long?’

Ray chuckled good-naturedly. ‘Oh, they ain’t no flying saucers, boy. That there’s good old Yankee know-how driving those babies. If I was twenty years younger I’d take a shot at piloting one myself.’

‘So you think they’re just the latest military hardware? If that’s the case why is your government so secretive about them? Why not show them off to the world’s press to help deter aggression?’

Ray looked pityingly at Dave. ‘They ain’t just any sort of aircraft. They’re the very latest in super-secret stealth technology recon birds. If everyone knows we’ve got them, what’s the point in having a stealth plane?’

Dave looked thoughtful for a long while. ‘If it’s a super-secret high-tech stealth plane, why is it doing an aerial jig above the horizon and flashing like a traffic light having a nervous breakdown in front of twenty cameras?’

Ray looked confused, an expression which seemed to suite his fat red face. ‘Why … they gotta test fly them. Can’t just send them into combat without putting them through their paces first.’

‘Quite,’ muttered Dave, rapidly losing patience. ‘But if it is a secret military craft why do they have to test it in quite such a public manner? It doesn’t make any sense to test a secret stealth plane in front of a bunch of snap-happy tourists.’

‘But they ain’t,’ growled Ray, a new edge in his voice. ‘This here’s the Free World’s most secure covert base. Ain’t nothing comes in or out of there that the Powers That Be don’t want to. We’re privileged to get a sneak preview. Next time you see those babies they’ll be on the Six O’Clock News beating the hell outa Saddam.’

Dave pondered this long and hard. ‘Perhaps you’re right. Ain’t nothing comes in or out of there that they don’t want to.’ With that he turned on the soft desert sand and traipsed back to his waiting hire-car. He felt the display he’d just witnessed lacked just one thing – a large glowing sign projected onto the low clouds reading ‘Your Tax Dollars At Work’. Perhaps it could be subtitled ‘Return to your homes, and your 92 channels of home-shopping cable TV, safe in the knowledge that we have it all under control.’

It had been Dave’s long and burning ambition to see Area 51 in person, but now that he had, he couldn’t help but wonder what was going on at Areas 52 and 53.

When he returned to his motel, despite the late hour, Dave was sufficiently stirred by his thoughts to do a spot of research. In fact, as long as it involved sitting at a desk with a nice weak cup of tea, it never took very much to spur him into a flurry of investigation. As long as he had a nice cosy library full of books, or better still a microfilm reader packed with ancient newspaper cuttings, Dave was in his element. Actually getting out into the field to collect hard evidence was a far less appealing prospect. On this road trip, however, all he had with him was his laptop, and that meant, in order find what he was looking for, Dave was going to have to use the internet. The very thought sent a shiver down his spine.

Dave had been slow to jump on the internet bandwagon; as a result it had almost run over him. It was only a glorified version of teletext after all – with just a bit more on it. Now there was a medium which had never been fully exploited. Dave’s rational, scientific soul was deeply troubled by the way that pinnacle of 1970s technology had been superseded by its younger, flashier cousin. About the only thing you could get on the Net which you couldn’t conceivably receive via Ceefax was hard-core pornography – and that was hardly much of a recommendation. It still made Dave fume to think about it – the ultimate triumph of form over content. Dave was not a man to be drawn in by what he saw as incessant hype, quite the reverse in fact. If he saw what he thought was a fad he’d do his best to ignore it. He liked to think he was above the fickle meanderings of the common herd. Lots of Dave’s acquaintances liked to think he was a bit of a sad weirdo.

But in the last year even Dave had had to screw up his pride and establish an on-line presence. His beloved magazine would not have been taken seriously unless he had done. Against his better judgement www.scufodin.org had been born. Fortunately the setting up of the site had not had to break the bank. Dave’s friend Chris was more than happy to build it for nothing more than all the tea he could drink and his own weight in chocolate hob-nobs. Nice one, Chris, milk with two sugars, isn’t it.

It an attempt to ‘do it properly’ Dave had conducted a rigorous scientific analysis of what the world-wide-wacko had to offer. His conclusions left him deeply troubled. What had Dave most bothered about it, especially the bits he was prone to visit, was, not to put too fine a point on it, the unmitigated amount of pure, unadulterated crap there was sloshing about. Was there something about the very medium which brought out the crank in everybody? Reading some of the conspiracy sites it was hard to escape that worrying conclusion.

I ask you – that the English Royal Family was behind a global plot to usurp political power through its communist-riddled puppet, the United Nations … what sort of brain-dead paranoid gun-nut dreamt up crap like that? Or that somewhere in the South Pacific there was an island populated by genetically engineered versions of apparently ‘dead’ celebrities, which some shady organization was using to manipulate the masses in a campaign to spread hysteria and irrationalism. Just where did they get it from? Some people (some Americans, Dave thought smugly) just weren’t right in the head. Why did they allow net access in mental asylums, after all?

Things only got worse when Dave began to interact with the cyberspace community. There seemed to be something about messages posted on newsgroups or bulletin boards which led normally sane, polite people to take them completely the wrong way, no matter how many ;) or :) you inserted. It was almost as if they thought you were laughing at them. There was also the bizarre and completely inexplicable tendency for all trans-Atlantic communications to deteriorate onto two-way rants on one highly contentious subject – that one great napalm-fuelled flame-war to end them all.

Dave’s earnest postings to a software discussion forum regarding the perceived inadequacies in Nanosoft’s latest word processor (Why was it slower on his new 1200 MHz Cray clone than Write Perfect V.1 had been on his 286?) would be met with a barrage of nationalistic vitriol. If American software was so poor, why didn’t he use the British alternative? As patiently as he was able, Dave would point out it was far from easy getting hold of an operational BBC model B these days, let alone the software to use it. His reasoned response would not matter, however, as all too soon the discussion would mutate into the same one it always did whenever Brits and Yanks started getting a bit shirty. Somehow the subject would metamorphose into gun-control, or rather the lack of it.

‘How can you guys in England be truly free when your government doesn’t allow you to carry guns?’

Dave would take many hours poring over his answer, conducting lengthy background reading to help make his point.

‘If you truly believe you live under a clandestinely oppressive regime do you really think a Kalashnikov and a landmine-strewn patio is the best solution? Aren’t you playing them at their own game? Surely the tactics employed by individual citizens must reflect our own strengths and abilities. Through the spread of knowledge and information we can conduct a peaceable campaign to bring any such travesty to the attention of all right-thinking citizens, thereby halting any dastardly schemes in their tracks.’

This was what he’d mean to write. What he’d actually post would be:

‘You’re a smelly poo. And you smell of poo.

So there. Poo-off you smelly poo.

Vietnam, hahaha.’

Of course the exchange could only go downhill from there. With the remorseless, blood-boiling belligerence of the World-Wide-Whine the reply would be posted.

‘Geeze. If it wasn’t for the US and its citizens’ skill with guns you guys would be ruled by a gang of mad, emotionally repressed militaristic right-wing Germans right now. Drop dead and rot, commie-loving scum!’

There was not really any answer to this, apart from to ask if the irate colonial had ever heard of Buckingham Palace – but this would just add more fuel to a fire that hardly needed it.

Dave would honestly try his best to bring a modicum of rationality to the debate, but it would be too much for him in the end, such was brain-numbing effect of ‘newsgroup rage’. Dave had even begun to wonder if there was some subtle undertone to the very medium which reduced reasoned, lucid discussion to the level of the school yard. But no, that was paranoid nonsense, wasn’t it – almost the sort of thing you’d read on the internet, in fact. When you took into account that the whole thing had initially been set up by the US military to help them survive a nuclear war, it got you to thinking …

As so often in the past, on this evening Dave’s research didn’t so much hit a brick wall as get subsumed into the bland mass of meaningless drivel he found at every turn. As the internet proved all too conclusively, quantity in no way made up for quality when it was information you were after. All the web seemed good for was reinforcing a whole battery of previously conceived misconceptions, strengthening and hammering them home.

More confused and bewildered than ever, Dave fell asleep slumped over his keyboard – the slowly accumulating pool of dribble moulding his moist cheeks to the contours of the harsh plastic keys. When he woke the next day it took nearly an hour of careful massage to coax his face back into its world-weary and slightly less rectangular form.

9. If You Tolerate This Your CD Collection Will Be Next

Not far from where Kate had conducted her interview with farmer Smith, a swampy field just outside Glastonbury was packed with people, just as it always was at this time of year.

But the crowds of bleary-eyed festival-goers weren’t solely here for the music. Judging by the mud, and the queues for the toilets, they weren’t here for their health either. There existed third-world refugee camps with better sanitary conditions than these. But at least the victims of mankind’s latest war weren’t crowded out by gaudily tie-dyed stalls manned by grey-haired hippies trying to sell everything from Abduction Survival Kits and King Arthur radio clock alarms to Make Quorn Edible recipe books. There was more crystal in this quiet Somerset town than all the chandeliers in the Versailles Hall of Mirrors put together, but fortunately there wasn’t a delegation of high-level Germans getting stitched up nearby. The ‘Glastonbury Experience’ was designed to cater for far more than just the anally-retentive masochistic music fan, it was ingeniously crafted to appeal to people wishing to make a ‘lifestyle choice’.

And what a choice it was. The masses of combat-trouser-clad off-duty estate agents and junior management consultants were there for the dope. If they’d wanted music they had perfectly good CD players in their Audis and BMWs clogging the huge car parks nearby. They were doing something far more profound than simply having a boogie – they were making a stand against the relentless drive of consumerism, and they thought £49.95¹ a head to do so was a bit of a bargain.

Some went with the loud intention of dropping a few ‘e’s’. But the only letter these frustrated public-school boys had ever dropped were ‘h’s’, in a sad attempt to sound more working class.

The admission was a particular bargain this year, though the organizers didn’t realize that yet. If they had known the identity of that year’s mystery gate-crasher they could have safely trebled the prices, and still sold out ten times over. Lounging in their distant Tuscan villas, value for money had been the last thing in mind – but then soon enough, so too would be mere profit.

As the latest mumbling, moody three-piece band to crawl from the mean streets of Newport left the stage, safe in the knowledge that if you’re Welsh and grew up in a terraced house no one would ever accuse you of being pretentious, the next act was warming up ready to go on. But this performer wasn’t limbering up backstage. No mineral-water-equipped green room hung with nubile groupies was temporary home to this show-biz heavy weight, just as he wasn’t to be flown in last minute on a private luxury jet. The anxious stage manager didn’t know it yet, but the next visitor was zooming in from much further afield, both in space and time.

Accompanied by a bone-shaking electrical hum, a perfectly triangular black craft slowly descended through the veil of low grey cloud. It came to rest hovering two hundred feet above the sea of upturned awe-struck faces, bathing them in the single baleful yellow light that shone from its keel like an unblinking evil eye. Without a sound the ship effortlessly glided further forward, stopping to float directly over the deserted stage.

The golden light pulsated for a moment, then a single radiant figure slowly descended through the glowing column, as if suspended by an unseen wire.

If the crowd had been speechless before, soon they were hypnotized by the man hunched statue-still up on stage. He wore a spotless white jump-suit, flared cuffs glittering sequin-laced under the eerie light. Behind his lavishly coiffured head stretched an arching radar-dish collar. His bloated top lip was curled in a famous uncontemptuous sneer, as he pressed it hard against a rhinestone-encrusted radio-mike; his other jewel-heavy hand thrust back and up behind him in a quivering stance. The wrap-around shades he wore would have done a welder or an oversensitive vampire proud.

If this was a publicity stunt then it was well worth the admission fee alone. This was the best Elvis impersonator anyone had ever seen, and he certainly knew how to make an entrance. The sideburns were a touch too long and curly, and shot through with grey if truth be told, but every other detail was spot on. Authentically enough he didn’t seem to have missed too many meals lately – what a commendable touch of professionalism in this slapdash age.

Elvis didn’t move his ostentatiously bowed head from where it was hunched over the mike. He had the voice down pat too – a harmonious Dixie drawl wrapped up in a diamond-studded velvet glove.

‘I’d just like to tell y’all, I don’t eat meat no more – not since the military started pumping it full of filthy GM hormones. This next number goes out to all those reformed meat-eaters out there – and by that I don’t mean hamburger lovers, you dig?’ He formed his upturned hand into a Churchillian victory salute, ‘Viva Lost Vegans, everywhere.’

The King then broke into a stirring rendition of one of his best-loved numbers. Accompanied by an unseen orchestra, which seemed to blare out from the black ship above, he tore through ‘Always On My Mind’, singing not just to the audience but the entire human race. Any doubts that he was the real thing evaporated the moment he opened his mouth. When he pleaded with them to ‘give me one more chance to keep you satisfied’ the crowd would have hit the roof, if there’d been a roof to hit.

When the noise had subsided to a mere deafening roar, Elvis held up a shaky hand for silence. ‘Where’ve ya been, ya Highness?’ yelled an impatient reveller from the crowd’s rippling front row.

One of the King’s trembling trouser legs started wobbling of its own accord, generating a terrific breeze as it did so. ‘Well, howdy there, li’l pardner. Been staying up at the government-run heartbreak hotel, but now I’ve come back to you folks for good – aha huuuu.’

The crowd erupted into ecstatic screaming delight. Elvis held up a calming hand once again. A fistful of glittering jewellery sparkled amidst the golden light.

‘First I’ve got some news to tell ya. Don’t figure y’all like it much.’

As one the crowd fell silent. Elvis continued in his lilting sing-song voice.

‘I ain’t been gone of my own free will. Been a prisoner dancing to a dishonest warden’s very own jailhouse rock. For all those long years I been gone, I was held hostage by darkly sinister forces. Yes folks, there’s a conspiracy going on behind your backs, perpetrated by your evil governments and the corrupt politicians who spin you their cynical lies.’

There was a howl of incredulous rage, plus some shouts for further songs by some of the less politically-aware festival goers. But this crowd was far from dubious of the great man’s claims, there were plenty here today well capable of believing what he told, many who were completely unsurprised by it in fact – and didn’t the unseen puppeteers just know it.

‘Those same good ole boys who got to Kennedy, well they got to me too. Kidnapped me from my very own john. Well now I’m here in Engle-land for the very first time, ready to start my come-back tour. Gonna be some show!’

Meanwhile a single unmarked helicopter had come to hover above the crowd. Those camped beneath it felt the brutal effects of its rotor down-wash – tents and teepees flattening beneath its steady thumping force; but its turbines gave off no sound. As it hung there like a spiteful wasp Elvis continued his heart-felt manifesto.

‘Hard to believe, I know, but there’s more to their depraved schemings than just my heinous incarceration. Your governments have kidnapped others too – but not just men and women like you and me. They’ve got hangars full of crashed space-aliens – little peace-loving grey brothers who mean to do us no harm. Help me to set them free!’

Those unlucky few beneath the suspicious black chopper clearly saw a hatch swing open in the side of its smoked-glass cockpit. Those not wrapped up in the King’s astonishing revelations watched as a long gun barrel protruded from this hole. Their screams of warning were lost in the crowd’s angry roar.

As was the single crack of high-powered rifle fire.

‘ALIENS GOOD, GOVERNMENTS BAD …’ Elvis led the steadily rising chant, or at least he did until his vaporized brains sprayed backwards across the stage in an ever-widening cloud.

The first the masses knew of the hit was when they saw their idol’s arms jerk forward in an oddly familiar motion, and the condensing cranial matter reform to perform a brief come-back tour of its own as it trickled down the garish display at the back of the set – every detail caught on the giant-sized screens either side of the stage. There was a second of stunned silence, then a massive and strangely resigned moan rose up from the throng.

Somehow managing to look scared for its life, the black triangle beamed up Elvis’s remains the same way they had come down and beat a hasty retreat up into the clouds. The hovering black chopper went after it in hot pursuit.

That was when the riot began.

When the official forces of government arrived, in the shape of the hard-pressed British police, they had to use tear-gas and electric cattle-prods to disperse the baying crowd. But their efforts to engineer a peaceful conclusion were to no avail. In a quest for instant retribution the surging hordes went on the rampage down Glastonbury’s sleepy main street; their target, any symbol of the heartless Establishment brave or foolish enough to stand in their way.

A corner-shop post office, three Tourist Information Centres and twelve New Age bookshops paid the ultimate price for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

They said the pall of choking incense, given off by a thousand burning josticks, hung over the deserted town for generations to come.

They were right.

¹ Losing a potential additional 4p on every ticket sold, but this tactic had been carefully and cunningly thought out. What this price-point policy, in accordance with the very latest marketing theories, said was: No, we don’t think you’re stupid enough to imagine there’s a difference between 49.99 and 50, but we’re banking on you being seduced by that saving of 5p. We’re not satisfied selling you an overpriced concert ticket, with the honour of suffering diarrhoea in a draughty chemical toilet thrown in for free, we intend to patronize you first, too. Card number and expiry date please, you gullible fuckwit.

10. Containment

The hospital ward was packed with the sort of hi-tech equipment which could have made the most hardened gadget-freak go weak at the knees – that’s if the strangely lifeless air and epilepsy-inducing lighting didn’t get to him first. However, overcrowding was not likely to become a problem in the near future; this ward contained just one very special patient, but then this was one very special hospital.

Like many of its more conventional counterparts it was of a multi-storey construction, but that’s where the similarity ended. While the traditional direction to build a hospital was upwards, this one delved into the bowels of the earth like an overly zealous intern given his first taste of surgery and a very sharp laser scalpel.

Three levels up from the current floor, and nearly twenty years back in time, the bright boys who ministered to the Shadow Government had discovered a general cure for every form of cancer under the sun. Their discovery hadn’t made the evening news.

Market forces precluded its release – which was to say there were still way too many tax-funded research dollars sloshing around the Cancer Cure Industry for the pharmaceutical conglomerates to let this particular cat out of the bag just yet. On the surface, capitalism might have relied on competition to drive its stuttering heart – not so the cosy tight-lipped gaggle of cartels which gerrymandered this shady world. As long as everyone kept quiet, all could prosper. You scratch my back, I’ll watch yours.

Like so many other groundbreaking discoveries, the wonder drugs had been locked away in the deepest, darkest vaults; along with the common-cold remedies, everlasting light-bulbs and high-calorie foodstuffs which could have solved the world hunger crisis before you could say ‘Do ya want fries with that?’ There were now so many prototype water-driven engines on the 42nd floor they were fast running out of space to store them. That fossilized dinosaur steam engine was going to have to be moved.

These miracles of modern technology were not for general consumption,¹ they had been created for the benefit of the all-powerful ruling elite – first by benefiting them directly, and then by benefiting their bank accounts. The Illuminanti had paid for the R&D, why shouldn’t they have sole usage until comprehensive strategies for full exploitation could be formed? When your timescale ran to centuries a few decades here or there made no difference. This was an organization which could afford to take the longest view. The Committee had a duty to see the profits and power of its descendants maximized – it was only fair after all.

Some of the real money-spinners, wisely held back by their forefathers, were only now being hatched into profitable schemes. A bio-technology bonanza was in the offing and for once it would have nothing to do with overexposure to pesticides. As soon as the public could be manoeuvred into accepting animal transplantation as a matter of course, and not a cause for Luddite revulsion, the real profits would start rolling in. A fresh killing was patiently waiting to be made, and this beast had blood-shot rolled-back eyes.

Years before, those woolly-minded do-gooders voted into power had allowed themselves to be bullied by a superstitious, small-minded public into banning the sale of human organs – something about it being ‘immoral’. Hypocrites and killjoys, the lot of them, the Committee had concluded. Well, that distant setback was about to be avenged.

Pig hearts had one big advantage over human ones, pulled from the dwindling supply of public-spirited accident victims. Cute little porkers reared in labs could have their vital organs ripped out to be legally sold at $12,000 a pop – so much better for the balance sheet than printing more of those fiddly donor cards. It was a loophole which would allow the drug firms their final slice of the lucrative Transplant Organ Pie.¹

Even the other 99.9% of the valiant animal could be put to profitable use. Slap it in a pitta bread, drench it in chilli sauce and no one would ever be the wiser – a sustainable income stream from waste products. This was what the Project’s Para-Accountants and Ninja-Management Consultants liked to call a ‘win-win’ situation. Which was a rather better situation than the secret hospital’s only current patient was presently in.

This particular invalid wasn’t lucky enough to be a member of the Committee of 300 – he was an expendable minion, but one with a crucial tale to tell. If he could tell it all.

All told, Captain Freemantle had seen better days. And judging by the look of intense frustration splashed across his weathered features, so too had the lumbering figure towering above him.

Nearby a nervous surgeon eyed Becker with considerable disdain, as only a member of his profession could hope to get away with and live to tell the tale.

‘You know that this dosage will probably kill him? This much babble-juice will not sit happily will the medication we’ve used to stabilize his condition.’

The Dark Man fixed the surgeon with a stare that had brought slack-jawed presidents to their knees, and reduced more than one pope to a blubbering wreck.

‘This is a matter of planetary security. Have you heard what went on in England? Daily the Opposition ups the stakes – we might not have much time left. He’s only a grunt, he knew the risks when he took his oath, just like you and me. Do your duty, so that he can do his.’

With a heavy sigh the surgeon uncapped a syringe and flicked its large-bore needle. He had watched the news reports from across the pond – there could have been few humans who hadn’t. As to the significance of what he’d seen he was currently reserving judgement; better stick to what he knew. With practised ease he found a vein and administered the dose.

Freemantle went rigid from head to toe. For a moment Becker thought rigor mortis must have set in with exceptional speed, but then, with a convulsion that nearly shook their subterranean bunker, the captain’s eyes snapped open and the words flooded forth.

His rantings wouldn’t have made sense to an outsider. Fortunately Becker was about as much of an insider as you could get without actually becoming inside out. He had also come prepared. Holding a small dictaphone as close to Freemantle as his rabid saliva-flecked monologue would allow, Becker recorded every word for posterity and for the next chapter of his voluminous memoirs.

When the tirade had run its course the surgeon looked bemused. ‘Machu Picchu. That’s the Inca capital in the Andes, isn’t it?

But when he turned to question Becker further he was faced only by a furiously swinging door.

¹ These days it isn’t only angst-ridden poets in fluffy white shirts who die of TB. With the help of virulent new strains resistant to those tried and tested (i.e. cheap, out-of-patent) drugs, almost anyone can receive the benefits of the ultimate creative muse. All over the globe this old favourite was making a comeback as the most efficient regulator of the urban poor, not to mention a most efficient filler of drug corporations’ bank accounts. Potent new strains require potent new cures, which in turn require potent research grants and tax incentives.

¹ Not to be confused with the Donor Kebab. As in: ‘I wish I could donate my stomach to science. Pass me a fresh bucket please.’

11. Assault

For no obvious reason, suddenly Frank was alert.

Nothing had changed in the dingy third-floor apartment, but like a US Marine’s genitals on his first trip ashore in Manila, the hairs on the back of McIntyre’s neck had become instantly erect. The TV news still blared in the corner – a hectic report about a military take-over in some tin-pot Central Asian republic. The bowl of Coco Puffs still hovered above Frank’s heroically stained T-shirt,¹ the spoonful of the same choc-flavoured corn-based breakfast cereal still suspended precariously half-way to his lips.

But something was different.

Some unknown set of relays had clicked inside Frank’s head. The highly tuned sixth sense which had saved his skin on countless occasions had kicked in again. So Frank McIntyre, Master Sergeant US Special Forces (ret), was in danger, but (as he reflected with a detached professional confidence) as of that instant not half as much danger as the other guy.

Just who that ‘other guy’ might be didn’t bother him at this stage. Frank hadn’t stopped to consider who had been wearing the Vietcong-issue pyjamas, or enquire after the health of the balaclava-swathed terrorists. The personalities behind the Federal Marshals’ badges hadn’t entered into the equation. He’d simply seen them as enemies, obstacles to his continued existence – and now there were other ‘obstacles’ crowding in on him. Frank was an equal opportunities killing machine, as free with his political allegiances as he was with his ammunition.

That was another good point. His Heckler & Koch sub-machine gun was tucked safely under the bed – no way to reach that now. The laser sight was a toy, but one that gave him and the drivers of the big eighteen-wheel semis that thundered beneath his window constant amusement. Frank owned a fine collection of handguns, but his Colt automatic was shut in his desk draw. His .345 Smith & Wesson Magnum was, as usual, taped to the inside of the toilet cistern. With bitter irony he reflected that he was currently equidistant from all his carefully placed hardware.

If he was going to leave with his guest when the fun started he was going to have to move very fast indeed. Abandoning his guns was not a happy thought, but he knew the deadliest weapon of all was carried with him. The United Nations had never tried to ban it, nor had it been the subject of arms limitation talks, yet its facility to unleash unrivalled mayhem and slaughter was impossible to match. It was the twin handful of pink-grey blancmange that quivered between Frank’s ears, and what’s more it was currently working overtime.

For the briefest of seconds he contemplated leaving the contents of his fridge undisturbed. No way, hosayovich. His uncommunicative guest represented the chance of several million lifetimes. He had no doubt it was the thing in his chiller cabinet ‘they’ were after. It was too much of a coincidence to hope his former employers wanted a chat for anything less. They also wanted to take him alive. Otherwise he’d already be dead. Frank knew how these guys operated – he’d all but written the manual himself. But knowing he was wanted for interrogation gave him a slender advantage, and right now he needed all the help he could get.

These thoughts went through Frank’s head in a split second. He didn’t have to think about them, the act of knowing he’d been compromised and analysing the tactical situation happened so fast as to be instantaneous. How would he plan it if he were commanding the assault? First off he’d place a sniper team in the derelict warehouse across the street. Secondly, he’d put a back-up squad at the bottom of the fire escape, to rush up when the main team hit the front door. He’d make sure he had every detail planned three ways in advance. But the time for preparation was at an end, now it was time for action.

Slowly, Frank lowered his bowl and made a careful show of appearing relaxed. The surveillance spooks would have him scoped at that very moment; his every move carefully analysed for signs of stress. As Frank got up and stretched, from the corner of the room, the confessional TV show presenter pointed out the problems faced by single-parent-transvestite households. There was a careful line Frank had to tread between haste and circumspection. Too fast and he risked letting on he knew of the raid, too slow and he’d be yesterday’s enchiladas before you could say ‘justifiable force’. As nonchalantly as he was able he headed for the kitchen, as if to fetch a morning beer.

His speed/stealth quandary was resolved for him. Before he’d gone three steps with low-battery flatness his musical doorbell creaked to life. When the first bars of ‘Do You Know the Way to San José?’ had trailed away, a carefully measured voice (too quick) called out, ‘Floral delivery for Mr McIntyre. I need your signature.’

The image of fifteen black berets, spread-eagled along the threadbare hallway, shotguns and battering rams at the ready, one reading from a carefully prepared script, sprung alarmingly to mind and refused to go away. That settled things. Speed was of the essence, and he’d have to leave by the window. Painful, but not half as painful as getting shot.

‘Coming,’ Frank called in a none-too-convincing effort to buy time, as he ducked into the kitchen. He knew that wouldn’t stall them for long, but at least he was hidden from view in the pokey windowless room.

Working quickly, he bundled his decaying guest from the fridge, removing its satchel as he did so. Checking the inhuman buckle he securely fastened the bulging sack around his neck. The document it contained was most definitely leaving with him. Next, he jammed the alien under one sinewy arm and tucked its legs up into his armpit. This way he was able to carry the feather-light carcass with surprising ease.

Now came the minor matter of making his escape. Talented and trained he might have been, but Frank held no illusions as to his chances. With a softly spoken ‘Hail Mary’ he crawled back into the living room. He had the makings of a plan. It wasn’t good, but it was painfully simple – with the emphasis very much on the painful part.

Stealthily he backed up against one damp mould-encrusted wall. Next to him the apartment’s main window overlooked the busy street below. Luckily they hadn’t stopped the traffic going past, otherwise his embryonic plan would have fallen in tatters at his sneaker-clad feet. A loud crash from the hallway’s front door told him that the ‘delivery man’ really wanted to give him those flowers. Sure enough tear-gas soon followed.

The full-length window next to him opened out onto a small balcony, the apartment’s single redeeming feature. With an impressive shower of glass Frank kicked his way through it and was onto the veranda in a tobacco-stained flash. Instantly a high-velocity ‘whoosh’ came racing in from the building across the street. A split second later a black-flighted crossbow-bolt embedded itself in the rail scant inches from his elbow. Frank recognized the lethal projectile before it had stopped twanging; he had used them himself on more than one occasion. But this was no time to stand around admiring the view. It was just as well that out of the corner of his twitching eye he spotted just what he was after. Up at the intersection a big eighteen-wheel road-transporter rounded the corner and ponderously accelerated down the main street beneath him.

With recklessness born of desperation Frank threw himself from the balcony, his unearthly passenger grasped tightly for dear life. For a stomach-churning second he thought he’d gone too soon, and would slam into the dusty roadway in the vehicle’s path. But then, as if in slow motion, the hissing juggernaut arrived beneath him. A bone-crunching impact later and Frank was attached like a limpet to the container section’s boxy flank.

One arm grasped the canvas-covered top as the other clung to the alien with grim determination. The bulk of the transporter now shielded Frank from the tactical position across the street. Shortly his pursuers were firing more than just arrows. Within seconds the gaudy awning was peppered with the gaping exit wounds of automatic fire. Soon the barrage was augmented from his rear, as the assault-team joined the party from the balcony above. Frank’s flaring nostrils filled with the evil smell of cordite, dragged along amidst the turbulent airflow of the truck’s lengthening wake.

The vehicle thundered on, the driver either unaware of the hail of bullets or more likely terrified out of his wits. Frank decided he could hardly blame him. Remorselessly he began the slow process of clambering up on top of the hurtling juggernaut.

By now they were well clear of the apartment block and quickly leaving the crackle of gunfire behind them. Frank judged he was in more danger of being thrown off than of getting hit by a lucky long-range shot. There was a nasty moment as they sped around a corner, the highlight of which saw Frank clinging on by mere fingernails, his glassy-eyed companion grasped desperately by the other hand – spread-eagled like a bony grey starfish – but as they slalomed through the crowded streets the centrifugal forces flung them both back into the body of the careering lorry.

Grimly Frank hauled himself along the length of the tarpaulin. When he reached the container’s leading edge he had good reason to thank the gods of chance once more. In front of him, across the metre-wide gap that separated the cab from its articulated container section, the driver’s window lay open.

With a superhuman effort Frank swung his posthumous passenger in a wide arc and in through the open window. Seconds later Frank followed his mouldy companion through the opening.

The driver was looking more than a trifle alarmed, as well he might. Yelling at the top of his prodigious lungs he wrestled with the lifeless freeze-dried alien, simultaneously struggling to steer the big vehicle with his enormous belly. Frank’s wide-eyed arrival did nothing to calm him.

‘Get the fuck out of my cab!’ he screamed, scant moments before Frank’s fist undid $900 of careful dental bridgework.

‘Mmmmrrrph!’ the driver spluttered, spitting like a popcorn machine, as Frank unlatched the door and bundled him from the cab.

The ex-commando had no time for remorse, not that he would have fallen victim to such an emotion anyway. All his nerve-endings had long since been cauterized by the searing heat of battle. This was a shooting war now and the occasional civilian was bound to get hurt. Frank was neither stimulated nor disturbed by this certainty, he merely accepted it as matter-of-factly as he’d accept the readout on a laser range-finder. Besides, it was the forces of ‘law and order’ which had fired the first shots – he knew from bitter experience they would be no more careful with the lives of the electorate than they had to be.

But there was another good reason why Frank had no time to feel guilty. With testicle-tightening certainty the thought came crashing home that, along with a semi-mummified extra-terrestrial, he was suddenly in control of a decidedly out-of-control juggernaut. The very act of not crashing was going to be a major achievement in itself, never mind the slightly more complex issue of safely bringing the vehicle under control and escaping his omniscient pursuers.

Either side of the highway the city limits gave way to desert at a shuddering pace. This fact at least brought a partial improvement; Frank was no longer in danger of taking half a city block with him on his final death charge. Unfortunately the petering-out of civilization had another, less welcome effect – the road surface over which they flew was no longer capable of sustaining such a speed. When Frank hit the first series of potholes the truck seemed to buck from under him like a Saigon call-girl he’d once known. Stamping on the brakes did little to improve matters, merely sparking off the sort of skid that could have brought tears to the Michelin Man’s eyes.

Ahead the road ran up a gentle gradient which did little to bleed off the frightening momentum. Worse was to follow. As the highway plunged over the far side it veered to the left. The wheels barely touching the ground, there was no way Frank could steer his mount around this bend. But it wasn’t just a large sandy hill that blocked his path. Half way up the rise a towering advertising hoarding for ‘Yoke Cola – as real as you’ll want to get!’ blocked their path. Across it, a scantily-clad young lady frolicked on a deserted beach, red lips clasped around the distinctly shaped bottle.

Seconds later the hoarding no longer blocked Frank’s path, because the juggernaut had slammed through it, to embed itself cab-deep in the dusty slope beyond.

Moments before impact Frank had buckled himself into the cab’s elaborate strapping system. He was fortunate this truck was a luxury top-of-the-range model. It was fitted with the sort of safety features which could have done spacecraft proud. The gel-filled air-bag offered the ultimate in protection, but also the ultimate in subliminal advertising – being carefully designed to maximize customer exposure to the brand logo at a moment of maximum stress and susceptibility. Frank was saved from serious injury, but left with a peculiar everlasting urge to purchase Ford motor vehicles for the remainder of his unnatural life. Unbeknownst to him his terrified mind had been subjected to some of the most effective and subtle advertising yet known to man.¹

Admittedly there were strange-coloured shapes dancing before his eyes, and far off in the distance he could have sworn he heard an ice-cream van jingle, but there was nothing new in that. A few scratches and scrapes, and tomorrow some seriously impressive bruising, was all he was going to have to show for his morning’s adventure. Unfortunately the same could not be said for the alien.

Amidst the general mayhem the cab’s glove compartment had sprung open – somehow the creature’s bulbous cranium had got wedged inside. On impact its head had been clasped firmly in this vice-like grip, while its frail body was free to snap wildly around. A fearful whiplash had resulted that by rights should have decapitated the poor creature. If it had been a horse it would have almost certainly been shot by now to put it out of its misery – that’s if it hadn’t already been long dead of course.

Grabbing the satchel and prising the tenderized alien from its resting place, Frank jumped out into the clear morning air. Clambering out of the gaping hole cut in the towering young lady’s blossoming left breast, he surveyed the swathe of destruction cut through cacti and tumbleweed alike. Briefly he paused, experiencing a terrible and sudden desire for a fizzy sugar-filled caramel-based drink, but he shook it from his mind with iron military discipline.

Gulping past the pain of his itching throat, Frank checked his ponderous load and began trekking off into the baking desert. It was going to be a blazingly hot day, but he had a lot of ground to cover by nightfall. He was going to have to find a more controllable transport if he was to put sufficient distance between himself and his pursuers.

¹ ‘LIVE FREE and BUY! I’ve visited Preacher Jack’s Old-Time Trading Post and Ammunition Store: Free Wyoming’s foremost survivalist retail outlet. Discounts available with NRA membership cards. (No Queers, Papists or UN Stooges.)’

¹ Even more effective than the compelling 1990s campaign by the MIEC to enslave the masses to mobile phone use. Conducted over decades, through a combination of cultural familiarization (‘Star Trek’ communicators), electromagnetic long-distant brainwashing (those relay transmitters don’t just ‘boost the signal’), and cynically blatant association with a well-known TV show depicting the uncovering of the One World Shadow Government. Who needs an ID card when everyone carries a transponder and their very own number-of-the-beast?

12. The Jimmy Maxwell Show

The studio audience had been whipped up into a frenzy of anticipation. For Kate Jennings, standing off in one darkened wing watching the recording on a monitor, the transformation never ceased to be a surreal and slightly scary experience. No matter how many true-life confessionals she worked on it was always a little alarming just how easily a group of otherwise sane human beings could be agitated into a baying mob; each herd-member impatient for the moment they could sink their fangs into the carnival of human misfortune paraded before them. What had, until half an hour before, been nothing more than a studio full of perfectly normal Britons, united admittedly in the fact that they had nothing better to do than attend the recording of a daytime TV show, was no longer a pretty sight. Each individual’s identity and inhibitions was lost in the anonymity of the pack.

It wasn’t as if the techniques Kate’s show used were particularly sophisticated. The procession of hadn’t-been comedians and enthusiastic young floor-assistants were not what instantly sprung to mind when you thought of subtle weapons of psychological warfare. But they were all that was needed.

A more informative and depressing insight into the darker reaches of the human psyche you’d be hard pressed to find – and the show hadn’t even begun yet. With the first bars of the terminally cheerful theme tune, Kate knew the unnaturally orange host couldn’t be far behind.

Kate wasn’t to be disappointed. As the ‘Applause’ lights flashed their strident instruction, Jimmy Maxwell sprung from an alcove and bounded down the audience aisle stairs leaping, slapping hands with the people and whooping with every breath. Britain’s favourite daytime TV celeb might have had the body and face of a middle-aged angel, but put him in front of a tight-lipped guest and he’d rip their tale from them like his career depended on it – which it did. He was undeniably the biggest fish in a small pond, but Maxwell had agents working round the clock to facilitate the move he craved. There was only so far you could take this format in the closeted and provincial TV backwater that was the UK. North America beckoned, like a cut-price whore offering twice as many bangs for the buck. It was rumoured that a major Hollywood producer had flown in today to watch him perform.

Unlike his hair Jimmy Maxwell’s appeal was harder to pin down. His voice retained just enough of a regional accent to smack of the exotic, setting the pulses of the housebound ladies of the Home Counties aflutter with hints of the mysterious hinterlands beyond the Stockbroker Belt. His strange mixture of Cockney-Scouse-Brooklyn was as distinctive as his cantilevered hair and trademark grey suit. Ever since the groundbreaking ‘I Married My Stalker’ episode last season the British public couldn’t get enough of him. Between two fingers he currently held a radio microphone like a magician’s wand.

‘Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to this our hundredth show, and what a show we have for you today. In a moment we’ll be meeting our first guests, but first a word on our topic today – meaningful relationships within a loving family group and how hard it can be to maintain those traditional values in today’s hectic world.’

Jimmy cast an indulgent glance over his besotted audience, and ran a manicured hand over his spotless silk tie. He was a self-made man, and worshipped his creation.

‘It’s easy for us to judge the lives of others and to form snapshot opinions on their lifestyles, especially if those lifestyles differ from our own. At this point I’d like to ask you all to come to today’s show with an open mind and a forgiving heart, and the awareness that we all follow different lanes down the long and pot-holed motorway of life.’

It was all Kate could do to fight back the waves of nausea that shuddered through her body. These opening speeches reassured the harried station execs that they were paying for a worthwhile piece of informative public service broadcasting, and not half an hour of bandwagon-jumping emotional warfare that dragged the lowest common denominator down to previously unheard of depths. Jimmy’s monologues served as a convenient counter to the show’s myriad critics, but it was hard not to be cynical when you knew what was to come. You almost had to admire the cheek of the man for his ability to blurt them out with a cheddary grin smeared across his tea-stain coloured face. Amidst his adoring audience Jimmy hardly paused for breath.

‘With those thoughts in mind let’s meet our first guest. Come on out, Lucinda!’

The stage was mocked up to give the appearance of a well-to-do family lounge, though no such room Kate was aware of sported six different cameras, enough lighting to beckon down a jumbo jet and a barely restrained audience seated within easy abuse-hurling range. Five chairs formed a stark line across the sumptuous red carpet, chosen that way so as not to show the blood. Behind the carefully polished potted plants a series of painted-on windows looked out over an idyllic view of rolling downland. Onto this surreal tableau bounced the first victim.

Lucinda didn’t look the type to get embroiled in the sort of tale this show thrived on, but then that was always half the appeal. She was a little bunny-rabbit of a girl, one who took the word ‘wholesome’ into entirely new territory – where she rode metaphorical ponies through dewy meadows and won blue ribbons in gymkhanas. Her sweater was as tight as her bottom and as rosy as her smile.

Maxwell barely gave her time to settle in. ‘Welcome, my dear. Why don’t you start by telling us why you’re here today?’

Lucinda was only too eager to oblige. ‘Hi Jimmy. I’m here to tell you about my wonderful family. We’re so close and loving that I just want all the world to share what we’re doing right.’ At that instant two small boxes appeared in the corners of Kate’s monitor. One showed a head and shoulders close-up of a well-dressed middle-aged couple, beaming in a slightly forced manner from ear to ear; the other, a vacantly handsome young man with an unreadable expression splashed across his pallid features.

‘That’s a very worthy sentiment,’ said Jimmy, with the first hint of a smile breaking across his chiselled jaw-line. ‘Let’s just make this clear, you come from a perfectly ordinary, middle-class family from a leafy London suburb. Is that right?’

‘That’s right,’ said Lucy a little self-consciously. ‘Though we do have a second home in the Dordogne – helps Daddy with his wine import business.’

Jimmy’s smile widened. Kate could see he was going to enjoy this more than usual. ‘Why don’t you tell us all about the people who make up this ideal group.’

Lucinda leaned forward in her chair. ‘Well, there’s Mummy and Daddy, or Edward and Virginia as they’re known to their friends. They’re the best parents a girl could wish for. There’ve always been there for me, but have let me know from an early age I’ve the freedom to discover life’s wonders for myself. That freedom ensured I didn’t once go off the rails like some girls did.’

Jimmy’s eyes lit up, his voice chokingly eager. ‘What do you mean by ‘‘going off the rails’’ exactly?’

Lucy dimpled and looked demure. ‘Well, you know, ‘‘boy trouble’’. I knew some girls at finishing-school who got into all sorts of bother. Some of them were even expelled and had to attend the local comprehensive.’

‘Shocking,’ agreed Jimmy. ‘But these days you’re completely sorted out in the ‘‘boy department’’, I understand?’

‘That’s right. I’ve known Toby since we met at Jemima’s, that’s his older sister’s, coming out ball. He’s perfect, we’re getting married next spring.’

Jimmy looked pleased with himself. ‘Well, you know, Lucy, we’ve got a surprise for you today. Toby, your loving fiancé, is actually backstage. Let’s hear it, ladies and gentlemen, for Toby!’

Onto the stage shuffled the sad and stooped figure Kate had seen in the ‘picture in picture’ shot. His eyes were downcast as he mounted the short flight of steps, barely acknowledging his bride-to-be as she made a brave attempt at a one-way hug. Lucy looked genuinely surprised and more than a little bewildered by her boyfriend’s standoffish behaviour.

Jimmy began pacing back and forth amidst the highly expectant congregation. ‘Welcome, Toby, take a seat. Let’s not draw this out any longer than we have to. Why don’t you tell the lovely Lucy why you’re here today.’

Toby’s eyes never left his highly polished shoes as he mumbled, ‘Lucinda, I’ve got something I have to tell you.’

Lucinda looked on with growing incomprehension, as Jimmy pressed for the kill. ‘Why don’t you share it with us, Toby? You’ll feel better once you’ve got it off your chest.’

Toby cast a furtive glance over the audience of strangers that he knew would soon turn against him, then retreated behind his ponderous fringe. ‘This isn’t easy for me to say, but I’ve been having an affair behind your back.’

Even though they had known what was coming, the audience let out a collective gasp which seemed to suck the air out of the room. Kate felt her eardrums bulge outwards as, up on stage, Lucy put her dainty hands to her mouth and turned an ashen shade.

Jimmy wanted more. ‘That’s not all you have to tell Lucinda, is it, Toby? ‘‘Behind her back’’ is a more fitting phrase in this case than in most others. Why don’t you tell us who this liaison has been with?’

Through some strange compulsion not to let his tormentors down, Toby carried on, barely suppressing a self-conscious smile. ‘Sorry, Lucy, but I’ve been sleeping with your mum.’

Another gasp from the audience. Kate could have sworn it was getting harder to breathe. She saw on the monitor beside her that the Director had playfully cut back to a shot of Lucy’s smiling parents, still waiting in the green room, oblivious to events on stage.

That raised another point that had always left her baffled. Why the hell did people agree to come on this sort of show? If you were invited to be a guest of Jimmy Maxwell, along with several members of your immediate family, for no obvious reason, surely even the most inept viewer would realize it was not to be given ‘good news’.

Meanwhile, as usual, events onstage did not leave much time for sober reflection. Jimmy was playing the crowd for all he was worth, and at last count that was quite a bit.

‘Well, I’m sure you can guess who we’ve got back stage, can’t you folks? They haven’t heard what’s happened to this point, but there’s plenty of time to correct that right now. Come on out, Eddy and Ginny!’

Half the audience broke into spontaneous cheers, while the other half set up a chorus of boos which would have made an ugly sister feel at home. To her credit Lucinda wasted no time in getting her retaliation in first.

‘BITCH!’ she screamed, as she threw herself at her bewildered mother.

As the burly security guards peeled her off her reeling parents, Jimmy felt the need to bring them up to speed on recent developments. ‘Welcome, Eddy and Virginia. Toby has just been telling us about your very close and special relationship.’

‘Mummy’ went as white as one of her suspiciously stained bed-sheets. ‘Oh my God!’ she gasped, sinking to her chair.

‘What on earth is all this about?’ demanded ‘Daddy’, as he comforted his wailing daughter.

Jimmy smirked. ‘Seems Toby and Ginny have been indulging in a spot of the old double-divan boogie-woogie. Virginia by name, but not, apparently, by nature.’

The audience loved that, this was even better than Maxwell’s infamous ‘I’m a Fat Transvestite Bisexual Who Sleeps Around’ show. There had been crowds in the Roman Colosseum which had given Christian rookie lion-tamers an easier time. Eddy looked on aghast at his wife. ‘Is this true, Virginia?’

It was all Ginny could do to nod her head. ‘It was him,’ she stammered, pointing a trembling finger in Toby’s direction. ‘He had me under some sort of hypnotic spell. I couldn’t say no to his depraved demands.’

All eyes turned to young Toby. Lucy stared at her former fiancé for a second along with everyone else, then made a heroic effort to break from her minder to tear his throat out. The crowd loved that too. There was a spontaneous standing ovation for the plucky young woman, who all knew had been done a great and terrible wrong.

Jimmy stepped up to the stage, a life-raft of tolerance amidst the ocean of chaos. ‘Now, now. Why don’t we all calm down and talk about this like sensible adults? But first I’d like to welcome a very special mystery guest. None of you knew she was coming tonight, but please put your hands together for Toby’s sister Jemima!’

The make-up and costume departments had obviously gone to town on Jemima. She looked like an extra from a certain sort of continental film that found favour with a late-night audience on Channel 5. As the heavily mascara-ed young woman oozed onto the stage she had ‘femme fatal’ written all over her.

‘Hello, uncle Eddy,’ said Jemima with come to bed eyes, and a let’s stay there smile. ‘Remember me?’

Edward’s brow furrowed. ‘Uh, I don’t see what relevance she has to this discussion.’

‘Oh really,’ sneered Jimmy. ‘I think she might have every relevance. Ever accused any kettles of being overly on the dark side?’

‘Edward! You never did?’ sobbed Virginia, as she cowered under her daughter’s continued stream of abuse.

‘He most certainly did, Virginia,’ said Jemima in the sort of husky baritone which could have melted pack-ice. ‘And may I take this opportunity to compliment you on your choice of husband, or Rock Steady Eddy as I used to call him. No need for Viagra there.’

‘Rock steady Eddy’ sank to the floor with his head in his hands and began to tremble. An over-excited member of the audience let out a half-hearted ‘whoop’, then stopped when they realized no one else was joining in. It was strange how, even in these trans-Atlantic times, some traditional elements did not transfer well across the pond.

Jimmy took the time to seat himself next to Toby’s chair. ‘Well, young man, you and your sister seem to be the catalyst for all this mess. Do you have any sort of excuse to explain your appalling behaviour?’

Toby looked like he was about to burst into tears. ‘I’d just like to say, Jimmy, that I’m the real victim here. If I hadn’t have got involved with that cult none of this would have happened.’

‘Victims, victims everywhere!’ exclaimed Jimmy. ‘Seems that if you’re not a victim these days then there must be something wrong with you. Better make a note, gotta be a show in that. What cult are you talking about, son?’

Toby looked more than a trifle embarrassed. ‘They latched onto me when I was at my lowest ebb. They’re called the Temple of Planet Love. I didn’t even become a full member, just attended one of their missionary sessions. They treated me like I was special … but that was before they started doing things to my mind, giving me strange pills to take. Before they attached me to that living machine.’ Toby rubbed his forehead and looked distraught. ‘I don’t remember much else, but when they turfed me out I was prepared to shag anything that moved, and quite a lot that didn’t.’

‘Thanks very much!’ screamed Virginia, still busily lunging for her husband.

Toby continued. ‘After a while the effects died off. That was when I came to my senses, but it was too late. Jemima wasn’t so lucky, they got to her too. Seems they still have.’

Jimmy looked disgusted. ‘So not only did you debase your own body, but you dragged your poor innocent sister down into the pit of moral despair with you – that’s appalling. I hope you’re ashamed of yourself.’

Over the cheering and applause, Jemima could just be heard to say, ‘Less of the innocent, if you don’t mind. What are you doing after the show, big boy?’

But Jimmy had more important things on his mind. He looked directly into a conveniently placed camera. ‘Interestingly enough, folks, in just a few days time, in a special one-off show, we focus on these goofy oriental nut-cases themselves. If you didn’t already know it, the Temple of Planet Love is the whacky UFO cult that’s been hitting the headlines, as well as the nation’s bed-sheets, of late. If it’s not exactly ‘‘free love’’ they preach then at least they offer very competitive credit terms. Don’t forget to make a date with us, and them, on our Alien Abduction Extravaganza!’

Off in one dark corner Kate looked on, her sense of shame at being involved in this horrific farce mounting by the minute. Whatever else today proved it at least laid to rest that favourite tabloid rumour, that Maxwell’s guests were fakes. Real actors were not this good. This family’s story was so outlandish that it could only be true. But the circus wasn’t over yet. Much to her disgust Kate’s intrepid team of researchers had unearthed one more precious nugget of information – and Jimmy was too much of a pro to let it slip. Jogging down the stage he returned to where Lucinda was pinned to the floor by two burly bouncers.

‘How do you feel right now, Lucy?’ He rammed his mike in her livid face.

‘How do you think I feel, you fucking moron? I’ve just found out my boyfriend’s been banging my mum, and my father’s a pervert doing it to a whore half his age. I’m more than a little PISSED OFF!’

Jimmy was unfazed, he’d heard much worse in his time. ‘Want to tell the world your own sordid secret?’

Lucinda’s eyes held a reckless abandon. ‘Why not. OK, Toby, I want you to know that it’s not only Daddy who’s been seeing your sister. She’s more of a man between the sheets than you ever were, hypnotic mind control or not! If you took Viagra you’d just get taller.’

The audience exploded into a maelstrom of ecstatic delight. Jimmy sensed the time was right to wrap up proceedings.

‘Toby, do you have anything else to say to Lucy and your sister at this stage?’

‘Er, yes I do actually. I’ve always felt I was a lesbian trapped inside a man’s body. Next time you get it together, can I watch?’

This didn’t so much add fuel to the fire as napalm the entire lot. Lucy’s lunge to separate Toby from his testicles was the cue for Virginia to take a swipe at her unforgiven husband, who meanwhile saw his chance to hurl a chair at the sultry Jemima, who had done more than her share to jack-knife the applecart of family peace. The overworked studio hands did their best ‘United Nations Peace-Keepers’ impersonations and, despite the absence of blue berets and kevlar armour, just like their impersonatees abjectly failed to maintain order.

Whatever had become of the famously English stiff upper lip, wondered Kate.

Doggedly the bouncers rushed to separate the warring factions, and the camera cut back to a radiant Jimmy Maxwell, well pleased another segment had concluded so successfully.

‘That’s all we have time for today, folks,’ he beamed as the theme tune started up. ‘But remember, it’s a complex world we inhabit, and things are often not what they first seem. Society would be a better place if we all stopped being so judgmental and were less keen to poke our noses into our neighbour’s affairs – even when they are as juicy as this one! With that thought in mind, I’ll see you all next time for our Flying Saucer Special, where we’ll be elaborating on some of the themes explored today. Don’t miss it for this, or any other world! Take care of yourselves and our sponsors. Goodbye!’

As the titles rolled the camera pulled back to reveal a studio in turmoil. The audience were on their feet, cheering on their selected faction, as each group slugged it out with Security in their desperation to get to grips with each other.

Mercifully off stage, Kate put her head in her hands and, not for the first time, pondered the worth of this career. The conclusions she came to did not make for a happy frame of mind. Fortunately it wasn’t the only option open to her. Steeling herself she reached for her note-pad and began to scribble rapidly – she had an important report to file, but it wasn’t destined to be read by Maxwell.

13. Cabal
Deep Underground Facility, Pine Gap, Australia

Like an arms-dealer’s smile, the conference table was needlessly large and over-polished. To address a member sitting on the far side a delegate would have needed a loudhailer and considerable patience to overcome the pitifully slow speed of sound. So perhaps it was just as well that in front of each exceptionally plush leather bucket-seat, rising up through the reflective mahogany surface, was the sort of computer terminal not seen since the Starship Enterprise had boldly gone on and on.

Stalkish microphones were linked to each device, tand hrough them to a ring of loudspeakers carefully hidden in the darkness beyond the bowl of soft mellow light that spilled from the room’s impressive centrepiece. Above the table hung an ancient sigil of perturbing design. It was a solid marble pyramid, each carved block picked out on its sloping sides. Two thirds of the way to its glistening summit an orb of dewy radiance cast its baleful light upon the room. Few who entered the chamber could look upon it without experiencing the first gropings of the clammy fingers of insanity. Few who got this far had all that far to go.

More conventional note-keeping equipment was readily to hand at each seat. Genetically-engineered notepads and nuclear-powered pens were laid out with pedantic neatness at each place setting. Next to each sat a clear glass of a fizzy black liquid.

There was surprisingly little communication between the participants as they took their places. These men were not the kind prone to idle banter. For some the journey here had been long and hard. For others the journey back would be harder still.

One by one the twelve members of the Inner Circle of the Committee made their reports. It had been a busy six months. One major civil war had been ended and another begun. In both cases their remorseless agenda had been advanced. On four continents six problematic politicians had been eliminated; three by the standard-issue sexual-pantomime media frenzy, two by assassin’s bullet, and one by far more Semtex than was strictly necessary. In central Africa another Armageddon plague had been released, as much to foster a healthy paranoia amidst the Western public as to boost pharmaceutical share prices. The coup in Urgistan was a minor hiccup, but nothing that couldn’t be quickly nullified.

The members of the Inner Circle of the Committee of 300 were a diverse group, a gang of boardroom thugs and back-stairs crypto-Nazis, linked only by their membership of this exclusive club. They were the owners of the dark satanic mills, the project managers of hate, guardians of the Status Quo.¹ This was the twitching nervous-system of the Military-Industrial-Entertainment Complex, and it was overdue a major fit. Its members were the powers behind the thrones, and in some cases on them.

National dress was much in evidence around the dim hall – at least the national dress of the capitalist World State. Seven attendees were smartly suited middle-aged men, the sort of captains of industry who commanded very big ships, and in one case several stealth bombers. Two were Japanese, but they represented the only splash of ethnic colour on an otherwise pallid, grey-white face. Amidst them the Vatican’s top dog winced and fidgeted – the shoes of the fisherman were tight these days, and didn’t half pinch his toes.

Next, in more traditional garb, came three wise men from the East – the bubbling, mad, bad and dangerous-to-know Middle East in fact. But they hadn’t brought gold, frankincense, or even a whiff of myrrh in their radar-absorbent executive stealth jets. What they did bring to the table was oil, oil and more oil. Between them they commanded four-fifths of the planet’s petroleum production, and judging by the state of their skin in the humid, tense bunker most of it was seeping through their pores at that very moment. They had good reason to sweat. At MIT there was a cold-fusion lab they very badly wanted shutting down – with terminal force if necessary. Despite their common goals the three were seated equidistantly around the table. More than one world war had kicked off thanks to misunderstandings in gatherings such as this. Past Chairmen had discovered to their cost that it never did to be too careful.

The final member stood out from the rest in more ways than one. She’d held her post for fifteen years, ever since the previous incumbent had regrettably fallen off his yacht. Despite what the press had been told, this had not been down to a slippery deck and one-too-many G&Ts. He had rubbed the wrong people up the wrong way – always a fatal move when those people were sat in this room.

The figurative leader before the reluctant swimmer had doubled as America’s Head of State – not a happy combination as it turned out. A carefully staged break-in and the threat of impeachment later, and he had gone as quietly as his insane tape-recorded ramblings would allow. The Committee had learned an important lesson with him: no more career politicians, their power was illusionary at best and too easily swayed by the pathetic whim of the great unwashed. The real power in the world was gathered here today, like pus in a festering wound. And at its centre sat a malevolent yet inconspicuous foreign body.

OPEC’s leading light was just ending off a rambling rhetorical monologue, on the satanic evils encased in the atom, when the Chairman felt the need to interject. She wasn’t the first of her line to hold this post, for her power was very much a family affair – as was her perfectly formed accent. She spoke the Queen’s English, as well she might.

‘Yes, thank you, Yashif. One takes your point.’ Reaching for a glass of fizzy black liquid she paused to address the haughty corporate head seated next to her. ‘This cola, Bertram, I trust it’s not the mind-altering kind you feed to the masses?’

The Corporate Man looked shocked. ‘Of course not, Ma’am. These days we’ve far more effective means of market penetration. Read the Abduction-Scenario Report and see for yourself. The stuff we drink is as pure as new snow.’

‘Not as pure as the glowing snow lying outside these devil-built reactors, I hope,’ muttered the Arab delegate, clearly heard over the elaborate sound system. The others chose to ignore this slight to Madame Chairman’s power; not so the lady in question. She had an unnaturally long memory for insults and an infinite appetite for revenge. But that could wait. Revenge was a dish best served cold, and she was colder than most. The Chairman felt the need move the discussion along, before they were sidetracked any further.

‘Now to more pressing business. I trust you are all aware that Operation Madcap is ready to begin? Potentially a most profitable endeavour for us all. The funds for the campaign are available and the production lines spool up as we speak. The merchandise will soon fill the warehouses. One simply requires the formality of an authorizing vote, then selected agents can be instructed to get the party going.’

She’d get no dissent on this one. Too many round the table had fingers rammed in this particular pie to take them out and lick just yet. The voting console before her lit up pure green, signifying unanimous assent.

‘Good, we can proceed. But now to a less happy task. It has come to One’s attention that our Executive Section has been conducting an operation to recover certain … items that have fallen into the wrong hands. I’ve taken the liberty of summoning the head of that section to account for his actions. I know that some of you have reservations regarding his motives in this matter. Shall we call him to state his case?’

A scattered affirmative rumble ran around the room. The Chairman thumbed a console switch. ‘You may enter now, Mr Becker.’

The Dark Man looked defiant as he strode purposefully through a pair of vast sliding doors. The faces of his superiors were lost in shadow, but he knew each of them by voice, as well as reputation.

The CEO of the world’s biggest aerospace corporation came straight to the point. ‘There’s been a serious leak from your department. We’re going to hold you personally responsible, Becker. You’re not going to weasel your way out of this one, like you did that Jamestown fiasco.’

The intelligence chief snorted. ‘If it’s blame you’re looking to apportion may I remind you the Visitors escaped in one of the back-engineered craft your corporation were testing at the Nevada site. If your craft hadn’t been so easy to shoot down we’d be in a lot more trouble than we’re in right now.’

The aerospace CEO looked ready to explode. It was left to the Chairman to raise a restraining hand. ‘Now, gentlemen, let’s not descend into fruitless bickering. Why do you both assume this leak to be a bad thing?’

The newcomer shifted his weight, while marvelling at Old World aristocratic eccentricity. ‘Ma’am, there has been a serious breach of security, that I admit. We are currently mounting operations to recover the remainder of the crashed material. They have not gone smoothly to date, but you have my assurance our resources will tighten to crush the saboteurs in due course.’

One of the sheiks chipped in from the shadows, his accent as thick as the tension-filled air. Few noticed the knowing glance he exchanged with Madame Chairman; Becker wasn’t one of them. ‘Why do we need to recover this material? Why not simply debunk it as we have done so successfully in the past? Remember the fake autopsy footage?’

For the briefest instant Becker showed the first signs of stress. ‘In this case the evidence will be impossible to refute. If it gets into the public domain the truth of our Visitors’ presence will be in the open once and for all. We all know what that could do to the public’s fragile state of mind.’

The head of a major entertainment conglomerate had to disagree. ‘You haven’t been keeping up with our latest research. Hard physical evidence has leaked before; we’ve even released it ourselves to help further our aims. On each occasion the majority haven’t given it a moment’s credence, while those few paranoids who do believe our lies help bolster our hold on power.’

Madame Chairman nodded with an inscrutable smile that sent an icy shiver down Becker’s spine. His face, however, showed no sign of such emotion. ‘This time things are different. Events have quickly spiralled out of control, almost as if an exterior force were aiding the terrorists as they fled. I have proof that …’

The Chairman interrupted him impatiently. ‘This is most worrying, Becker. There are rumours that your concern for the retrieval stretches to a personal matter. Can you assure us that nothing of the sort clouds your judgement?’

Becker fixed her with the sort of frosty stare which could have triggered an ice age.¹ ‘It is my professional opinion, Ma’am, that the dangerous lunatics who have the creature must be stopped at any cost. And stop them I will. But this situation highlights an issue I feel duty bound to bring to your attention once again.

‘I grow increasingly alarmed at the unintended results of Unified Conspiracy Theory. I fear our willingness to spread paranoia and irrationalism could turn out to be disastrously counterproductive. Already some unknown player seems to match us in an undesired duet. Whoever initiated the Glastonbury operation, it certainly wasn’t me. I have some very unusual satellite photos of the South Pacific you all must see.’

Madame Chairman had heard enough. She held up a restraining hand and shut her eyes in disgust. Did Becker imagine it, or was she showing the first imperceptible signs of distress?

‘Yes, yes,’ hastened the aerospace CEO. ‘We’re all aware of your pet theories, Becker. But I find it hard to believe that we are playing into the hands of some unseen enemy. Our efforts to engender a widespread belief in conspiracies have been most effective. As long as the public think we know more than we do, they’re more likely to let us get on with running the show. No one seriously expects their leaders to be honest and open anymore. As long as we make the airlines run on time, and TV drip feeds them a constant stream of mindless crap, the rank-and-file scum live happily in their cosseted world.’

Becker looked at him as if he were a small child who’d recently overpopulated his nappy. ‘I’m not arguing with the success of the policy, I myself have been instrumental in making it so. What concerns me is the mood of apathetic irrationalism that has spread like wildfire throughout the lower orders. We’re not simply making them believe we are cleverer than we really are, we’re making them believe everything. Hasn’t it ever crossed your mind that we might have been set up for a very long fall? Our dim-witted charges are ripe for the plucking, but not for harvesting by us.’

Now it was the turn of the Chairman herself to fix him with a frigid stare. ‘One summoned you here, Becker, to answer for your actions, not to bore us with your own ungrounded fears. You’re blowing this incident up out of all proportion. After all, it’s only one dead Grey. Learn to ‘‘let it go’’. One orders you not to try to retrieve this material, Becker – its exposure can’t possibly do us harm.’

Becker’s jaw twitched for a moment, then was still. ‘Very well, Madame Chairman, as you wish. Are there any other duties you require me to perform, to help me fill my empty days?’

She gazed at him with open contempt. ‘As a matter of fact, there are. You know what must be done in Urgistan, we’re due another war. The case file is in your in-tray. See the plan is initiated by the end of the week.’ The aerospace CEO nodded to their leader his heart-felt respects. Madame Chairman acknowledged him graciously with a smile.

‘You may go, Becker. Let us draw a line under this matter, once and for all. Is One understood?’

Becker nodded and smiled his sweetest alligator smile, all the while promising himself this was not the end by a long way. He was well used to his theories being ridiculed, but this time the reaction of his superiors went further still. Some other force was at play. For the moment he’d bide his time, tamely following orders – well, some of them at least; meanwhile he’d remain vigilant, forever searching for the final confirmation he craved.

Much later, as he boarded his personal black-operations helicopter, Becker played back the meeting in his head. Perhaps it wasn’t only him who was following a personal agenda all his own. But surely such tainted corruption couldn’t reach to such lofty heights?

¹ Responsible for the publication of all their albums.

¹ But not as effectively as the Committee’s last-ditch ‘Doomsday Weapon’, housed in central Greenland – control of which was forever being sought (for ‘testing’ purposes only) by the power generation lobby. Not even they knew the device was currently working overtime in a hopeless struggle to counteract the effects of global warming.

14. Mail

Dave sat in the shabby motel room, staring at his laptop computer screen, sipping warm flat beer, seriously considering suicide.

In truth he didn’t ‘seriously consider suicide’. He didn’t have the bottle to do anything that would have annoyed his mum that much. Flirting with suicide was just the sort of thing he liked to think he did from time to time, a bit like cleaning the fridge or having sex with another person present. It fitted his perception of himself as a tragic hero. But it was getting harder to dodge the inescapable conclusion that he had the first part of that ambition down pat, while the second eluded him like the smallest piece of soap in a very big and cloudy bath.

His and Kate’s love was not doomed to failure because of some unbridgeable class divide, nor an incurable fatal illness; it was doomed because one half of it wasn’t really interested in shagging the other. But that didn’t stop Dave’s gothic daydreams continuing to roll on and on in a grainy black and white film noir.

When he had been a teenager Dave had been heavily influenced by a certain type of eighties band; the sort that wore baggy black jumpers, stuck daffodils down their pants and wrote morose songs about their girlfriends getting flattened by JCBs. Listening to this kind of music hadn’t made Dave feel any better about himself, it had just convinced him that somewhere, someone with a silly haircut was more depressed than he was. This would help for a while, until he began thinking that – at that very moment – the apparently dour mop-haired waif was no doubt hammering his sports car around LA as he siphoned champagne from a groupie’s navel and snorted cocaine through a rolled-up royalty cheque which could have kept Hendrix in purple haze long enough for him to be reclassified as a new type of meteorological phenomenon. This sure knowledge tended to throw the pop star’s professional depression into stark contrast with Dave’s purely amateur, yet far more profound, melancholy state.

So Dave had come to the painful conclusion that there was only one thing more depressing that being young, sensitive and celibate; that was to be young, sensitive, celibate and listening to a mopey record. This horrendous state of affairs was in no way mitigated by his perception that everyone else on the surface of the planet was humping away like it was going out of fashion, including the dewy-eyed singer – who was currently droning on about how tough life was, coming from his home town and being unemployed – unless of course you happened to be in a chart-topping band, in which case it was much, much worse.

Back then Dave had only one refuge from this heady mix of sixth-form poetry and synth-based pop. Taking a copy of Busting Out All Over – Underwear for the Larger Lady, he’d retire to his room, if not exactly to spank the monkey then at least to give it a jolly stern talking to. Thankfully these days he had more meaning to his life, or at least that’s what he tried to tell himself. The pages of ScUFODIN Magazine would wait for no man, not even if he was the victim of unrequited love and what Dave was fast coming to believe was a vast and awesomely subtle hoax that made a mockery of his entire working life. In the absence of a suitably morbid record, or any mail-order catalogues for that matter, Dave got back down to work.

Currently he was attempting to type up an account of the previous night’s UFO event, if you could go so far as to call it that. It was a tried and trusted routine he always performed after one of his ‘encounters’, as he liked to call them. Best get it down while it was still fresh in his mind.

But it wasn’t just the infuriating vagueness of last night’s incident which had him depressed. Dave was no stranger to the intense feeling of anticlimax which often followed a sighting – this went deeper than that. He had often reflected how UFO watching was much like being in the infantry in time of war; ninety-nine per cent stupefying boredom, one per cent shirt-drenching panic. After any fleeting high came an equally dramatic and far less fleeting low. The growing suspicion that someone, somewhere, in a darkened room, wanted it that way didn’t help in the slightest.

With a heavy sigh Dave concluded that this depression, like most of his others, could be traced back to a far less mysterious source. For the ninth time that day he checked his email to see if Kate still cared whether he lived or died. The answer on this occasion was no different from his previous eight attempts to will his incoming mail prompter to go ‘ping’. Not for the first time that day he re-read her last message.

Dear Dave,

Hope you’re enjoying yourself as much as I know you are able. Have you met any other Californian beach babes yet? I do like a spring wedding.

All hell’s broken loose back home. Have you heard the news of what went on at Glastonbury? It’s all people are talking about over here.

All hell’s broken loose at work too. After one of the most nauseating shows I can remember we’ve started researching a special one-off to go out in just a few days time. Word’s come down from the very top that we have to be on-air ASAP. It’s to be the usual format, Mr Sunbed-Tan and a studio full of ‘real people’ queuing up to have their insanity beamed out for all the world to see. But this time, the subject matter will interest you. We’re getting an audience together of folks who claim they’ve seen flying saucers. You know, ‘I’m having an alien’s love-child,’ that sort of thing, all the stuff you’re into.

Went over to the west country the other day to interview a farmer with a funny tale. I’ll pass on the details when you get back. Perhaps you can line me up some other cranks to swell the ranks. You must know a few? It’s appalling that my ‘career’ has come to this. Thinking of you as I scan the appointments pages.

Love K

x

P.S. Give me a chance to reply, why don’t you. Some of us do have better things to do than sit in front of a computer all day typing emails – even if we aren’t on holiday.

When he finished it Dave re-read it a second time. It was hard to focus on her sudden interest in Ufology, or the latest rock-and-roll PR stunts, with such a clear subtext underpinning her every word. Was it his imagination or were there signs of a subtly increased level of affection tucked in there? Of course she always ended with ‘Love K’, though this time he got the sense she’d wanted to say much, much more.

But wait a minute, she had only signed off with a single lower-case ‘x’. All last week she’d used capitals, and on Wednesday she’d used three. Dutifully Dave got out the small notebook he carried with him everywhere and entered this month’s total email kisses. At home he had a wall-planner solely devoted to graphically charting the perceived fluctuations in her affection; it would be filled in on his return.

It was at this moment that Dave concluded, not for the first time, that he was a very sad individual indeed. Yet if he could recognize that fact, didn’t that mean he wasn’t so sad after all? Or, alternately, all the sadder for being unable to do anything about it? Catching himself before he could slip into one of his all too unproductive bouts of doubt and self-loathing, of which this was just the relatively mild first stage, he composed another reply to the woman of his dreams. The fact that he’d sent three now without response didn’t deter him for an instant.

Dear Kate,

As you know, the trip so far has been a resounding success. Obviously I can’t go into details over an open channel, but I know you’ll be enthralled when I show you my snaps of Area 51. The up-coming show on ‘The Phenomena’ sounds good – glad to see you’ve finally taken an interest. Perhaps you can get me tickets.

The people over here are so friendly I’ve hardly had a moment to myself. Despite the impression I might have given in my last note, I’m just friends with April and Nadine. I’m meeting them both for drinks later. Who knows where we’ll end up – probably back in their jacuzzi again. Gosh, they wear me out.

Gotta run, I’m giving a speech to the Nevada State Saucer Convention. I’ll have to write it in the limo they’ll send to pick me up.

Love as always, see you soon,

Dave

He didn’t put any ‘x’s’ on the end of his mail. Despite the overwhelming emotions he felt for Kate, Dave couldn’t bring himself to remind them both of it at every opportunity – there was only so much his fragile ego could take. She knew how he felt about her, and he had no desire to appear as desperate as he actually was.

Dave felt no guilt over the little white lies he told to spice up the trip, Kate would see through them immediately. What was important was that Kate knew she hadn’t entirely crushed his heroically indomitable spirit.

Dave was startled by the melodic chimes which signified incoming mail. For one second he thought it might be from her – wasn’t she getting eager? But when he saw the address his heart sank. It was undoubtedly junk-mail advertising some sordid anatomically-minded site. Who had ever heard of Alien@Outerspace.org anyway? Already filling with righteous indignation, he clicked open the message and read it, waiting to be incensed. He wasn’t to be disappointed.

Greetings Earthling,

I am an Alien. Hard to believe I know, but in this case completely true.

If you want to meet up, I shall be at the Hungry Dog Diner, at the junction of Lincoln and Twelfth Street, for the next two hours. It’s not far from your motel – get back to the main street and walk three blocks west. When you arrive my companion will make himself known to you.

I need your help. Please come quickly, and be sure to come alone.

Yours,

An exotic Friend.

Dave snorted in disgust. Another feeble practical joke. He was reminded of the wave of obviously faked photographs his magazine had been sent over the previous month, and of that ridiculous Glastonbury stunt – the lengths some hoaxers were prepared to go to made him shudder. Advanced alien civilizations no more used email to communicate with mankind than they used crop circles or thirteenth-century Mayan tomb carvings, despite what some of Dave’s esteemed colleagues might think. That some spotty thirteen-year-old hacker had obtained details of his personal account was only slightly less preposterous than the notion that aliens resort to 3D Martian landscape graffiti to get their message across.

When it came to his life’s work Dave had a very poor sense of humour. He’d met enough cranks in his time to take his privacy just as seriously as he took his UFOs. They’d be at the diner all right – hunched in some dingy corner, sniggering into their crusty keyboard laptop. He meant to find the individual responsible and give them a very stiff lecture on responsibility in this wired world. After all, he was a busy man. Or at least he would be if the Nevada State Saucer Convention ever actually phoned.

Even so, despite his best efforts Dave couldn’t help a tiny buzz of intense hope charging through his veins. There was always the million-to-one chance that this tip-off was genuine. If he didn’t check it out he’d never know for sure. After all, it wasn’t as if he had anything better to do. Grabbing his shades and wallet, Dave hurried to the door.

15. Rendezvous

Frank looked up from his cheeseburger and checked the highway one more time. Good – no ice-cream vans, and none of the equally ubiquitous black stretch-limousines with the tinted windows, which the clandestine forces of government used when they were undercover and attempting to be discreet.

He’d cruised down Sunset Strip earlier that day in his stolen vehicle, experiencing a perplexing mixture of numb amazement and dim recognition. He knew this town, but he didn’t think he’d ever lived here, or even come to visit before. Driving past the casinos and the theme-park-sized hotels he’d been struck by their splendour, but also by their monotonous familiarity.

Frank was reminded yet again of the one central fact of his existence – there were huge chunks of his life which remained forever off limits to his straining memory. Over and above the fact that he’d once served in a very special military unit, the rest was just a blur. These days he accepted his black patches the same way he accepted the ever-present mutterings in his head. It was that just at moments like this, when some small detail sparked a flash of recollection – like the shape of a building, or the smell of gasoline from across the street – it became hardest to bear. The voices didn’t help. Though the upside of being a paranoid schizophrenic was at least you always had someone to talk to, even if the conversations weren’t up to much. The one claiming to be God which told him to go out and kill prostitutes was rather worrying, but he kept it well under control. He’d got the better of them and knew he’d beat these memory lapses too. He swore he’d beat them; he would do if it killed him.

At long last his aimless journey had taken him to the less opulent side of town. He didn’t know where he was going, just that he was fleeing his former flat and the uninvited guests he’d left many tired miles behind. The dull rumble from the trunk reminded him why they’d come a-calling.

When he spotted the run-down diner he experienced a maddening sense of déjà vu, all over again. He was sure he’d been here before, just as he was sure the short-order chef was a huge shovel-handed New Yorker with Marine Corps tattoos plastered up each arm. It wasn’t until he’d almost drawn level with the establishment that he realized he hadn’t eaten since his cereal that morning had been so rudely interrupted. His rumbling stomach had the final say in the matter. Swerving across two lanes of late-afternoon traffic he hung a left into the half-empty car park.

That had been more than two hours ago. In that time Frank had consumed four cheeseburgers, exchanging several wary nods of recognition with the sweat-laced kitchen-hand through the cluttered serving hatch.

For Frank this was a familiarly maddening experience. But you couldn’t just go up to folks who seemed to recognize you to ask ‘Where do you know me from?’ – it got you funny looks at the very least. For the time being Frank contented himself with the thought that their acquaintance must date back to some chance encounter before his army service came to an abrupt and painful end. He didn’t know for sure, but he felt certain he’d been happier then, with the warm companionship of comrades-in-arms to pull him through. He’d been alone so long now he’d almost forgotten what friendship meant.

Maybe he was going crazy. Carefully, he checked his hands for the first signs of palm-hair, just like the old wives’ tales advised. Outside in the trunk of his battered vehicle what was undoubtedly the find of the century was slowly rotting – so why was he suddenly so assailed by doubt? Maybe he should hire a room and buy some whisky and pills to end it all. Was this war really worth the fight? Slowly Frank rubbed his throbbing temples. What he needed most of all was a confidant; someone to remind him, after he’d gazed upon his insane find, or read that terrible book, that this was real after all and his mind hadn’t entirely slipped its gears. He also had problems of a more practical nature – like what to do next. Grand strategy had never been his area of expertise, the nitty-gritty of combat was his speciality. Frank needed an accomplice he could trust. He rocked slowly back and forth in his seat until his head sank so low it was scant inches above his plate. Closing his eyes he did something he hadn’t done for years: Frank prayed for guidance, for some sign that his struggle wouldn’t be in vain.

The sound of the bell above the doorway brought him sharply back to his senses – Frank couldn’t allow his survival instincts to let up for an instant. That was when he got his first clear look at the clean-cut young man who strode in like someone with a very definite mission in mind. But to be more precise it wasn’t the first time Frank had spotted him; he’d seen that face many times before, and that was why he now sat bolt upright in his chair. The newcomer had the sunburnt, gormless look of a tourist about him, but also the determined body language of a man searching for something he very badly needed to find.

There was no question how Frank recognized him. Not three days ago he’d read his carefully chosen words, and studied the small grainy picture above his magazine’s editorial – that was how he knew those serious, bookish features. Frank might have considered Dave to be hopelessly naïve in his conclusions, but there was no denying the young man produced a thorough and well-researched magazine, most of the time devoid of the usual mystic crap. For the moment, Frank was too shocked to appreciate his good fortune.

Pieces of half-chewed cheeseburger cascading down his tie-dyed T-shirt, he lurched to his feet and staggered towards the man he already felt he knew. Frank regretted not having tried religion sooner – he could appreciate what folks saw in it now. It seemed his fervent prayers had been answered.

For his part Dave saw the sad perversion of a human being stumble towards him far too late to do anything about it. For one horrible moment he thought the wild-eyed freak was going to pull a gun and demand money. Either that or beg the price of a cup of coffee.

‘You … you came so quickly.’ The vagrant croaked.

Dave spoke with some venom.

‘Of course I came quickly. When someone reaches me that way I always want to hear how they did it. You’re party to information not available to the general public and I’d like to keep it that way. I hope you know how sensitive we are to such things.’

Frank stared back at him with mounting admiration, and not a little awe. How could this man be so blasé about his breathtaking telepathic powers? He must take them for granted, just like any other individual’s ability to read or write. And here he was asking Frank how he’d done it – the clairvoyant elite had obviously guarded its secrets jealously.

Frank lightly tapped the grubby side of his head, just below his tattered bandanna. ‘Don’t worry, chum, your secret’s safe with me. We’ll say no more about it. What’s important is that you came.’

‘Just make sure it doesn’t happen again,’ Dave muttered. He looked the unkempt interloper up and down and came to a rapid but eerily perceptive conclusion. Just like Upton Park, this bloke was only two stops short of Barking. He was perhaps the most wizened man Dave had ever seen. His face had that ‘lived in’ look. Dave got the distinct impression he’d been round the block so many times he’d lapped people twice his age. Old before his time, perhaps, but he was hale and hearty like a seasoned tiger. His taut skin was like tea-stained leather, his wiry beard could have comfortably housed a family of voles. He was as thin as a rake, but well corded with sinuous muscle from head to toe. Very slowly, as if speaking to the inmate of an asylum for the terminally inane, Dave spelled out every word for the crazed stranger. ‘How – did – you – recognize – my – face?’

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