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Eleven

  A remote valley in the Tienshan Mountains, 2055 AD

  Donna opened her eyes, instantly awake. She was curled up in a chair, for there was no need of a bed, and the first hint of dawn was lightening the blackness beyond her open window. Jumping up, she opened a box of matches on her dressing table and lit the candle, then pulled a shawl over her naked body and unfastened the door. It was adjacent to the window, and it opened onto a small balcony.

  A few moments ago she had been floating in the sunlit waters off Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands, drifting peacefully into a trance, now she was the high priest in a parallel universe, staring out over the moonlit roofs and chimneys of a small town that would not have looked out of place in Shakespeare’s England. Her balcony faced south, down the valley, and to each side the dark mass of the enclosing mountains rose up to merge with the blue-black of the pre-dawn sky.

  Her room was on the first floor of a group of cottages at the edge of the temple precinct. Stepping out onto the balcony, she could see to her left the golden façade of the magnificent temple. This was quite unlike anything from late 16th century England, for it glowed in the darkness, casting a golden aura over the quaint dwellings surrounding the precinct.

  The other inhabitants of Eden would also be stirring, and soon smoke would be rising from those chimneys as they went about their business. Later on, in workshops across the town, artisans would be busily making all manner of toys and ornaments and bits and bobs, as well as useful artefacts such as candles and the matches to light them. Outside the town, in a castle further up the valley, soldiers would be marching and parading and practising their swordsmanship, and on the surrounding farms the workers would be tending their fields.

  There were no computers or machine tools or cars or factories in Eden. It would have been easy to modify the dream and conjure up labour-saving gadgets and an abundance of wealth, but what would be the point? For this great enterprise had an altogether loftier purpose.

  Like the others, Donna enjoyed working with her hands. Her clay models littered the various surfaces in the room. Mythological monsters such as dragons and centaurs and chimera were her favourites, but she’d enjoyed making vases and other ornaments as well. She painted them in bright colours, and a potter who lived nearby had fired them, and now her creations could be found in several of the small art galleries across the town.

  She and all the other inhabitants of Eden were bottlenose dolphins in real life. Their genetically-modified brains were more human than dolphin, with capabilities that couldn’t be satisfied by their physical bodies. That was why they all liked working with their human hands during the two hours each day they spent here. It was an opportunity to fulfil a deeply-felt need. And it was also why, every morning in their artificial lagoon at Crocodile Bay near Honiara, their human masters fed them their magic fish – fish that had been genetically modified to produce a powerful psychoactive drug. The resulting state of transcendental trance into which they jointly entered enabled them to recreate, each day, their communal mind and with it this Shakespearian paradise.

  To all outward appearances Donna was no different from the other GM dolphins. Unknown to the others, however, her genome had been secretly augmented by dragon genes. Those genes could never be detected by any science known to man, for they existed not in the physical world but in the parallel universe of neurospace.

  Like Dawn, her dragon mother, Donna was able to enter neurospace without the assistance of the magic fish. Despite this, she always joined the others in their midday meal – partly because she was always hungry, and partly because she had to keep her strange capabilities a secret. The drug also ensured that she remained in the trance state for the same length of time as the others, and that was something she couldn’t otherwise guarantee. Without such an aid, even Dawn found it difficult to control the duration of her spirit journeys.

  The sky to the east was growing brighter now. The meal the dolphins had eaten was always timed so that they would wake at the start of a new day on the other side of the world. Donna hastened back inside, for she had to get ready for the temple service welcoming the dawn.

  She opened the wardrobe and inspected her vestments. A local tailor had made her several fetching outfits, in different colours to suit her moods. First there was a flowery green garment, the one she wore when she was feeling frivolous, then there was blue, the colour of thoughtfulness, then a sober brown for sadness. Next was a glamorous red number, the one she wore when feeling amorous. Red was definitely today’s colour, she decided. She’d been feeling frisky back in the lagoon before entering her trance state, and her mood hadn’t changed. She could still feel that unearthly warmth in her belly.

  Quickly dressing, Donna sat at her dressing table and carefully applied some matching lipstick and then some dark eyeliner, and after that combed her long black hair. She was always meticulous about such matters, for most of the township attended the temple services and she liked to look her best. Attendance was good because the service was short, everyone enjoyed the singing, and afterwards they would gather in the temple forecourt chatting to friends using human speech rather than their limited dolphin language of whistles and clicks. As well as that, there were usually some popular after-church activities like art lessons and games.

  Face and hair done, Donna reached down and opened a drawer in her dressing table to reveal a pair of high-heeled shoes. They were the same shade of red as her dress and very elegant, and when she’d first worn them there had been quite a few raised eyebrows. Not only were they entirely out of place in this historical setting, their exquisite workmanship surpassed anything that could be achieved in the workshops here. But Donna was the leader of the community, with privileged access to the Mind, so no one dared say anything.

  After a final check in the mirror, Donna blew out the candle, slipped on those shoes, and went out into the early dawn. A flight of wooden steps led down from her balcony to the temple forecourt. The forecourt itself was cobbled, as were all the squares and alleyways in the town, but she had persuaded a stonemason to lay a nice smooth path from the foot of her steps to the temple entrance. Glamorous heels and old-fashioned cobbles, she had discovered, make an unhappy combination.

  Donna clattered down the steps and hurried across to the temple entrance, which was still shrouded in darkness. Stepping inside, she emerged into an imposing pentagonal structure, with huge marble pillars and painted walls, and, barely visible above her in the gloom, a high arched ceiling decorated with a representation of the night sky, with all the constellations and some of the planets and, to the side, a crescent moon. No one had built the temple, it had been conjured up by the Mind, as indeed had all the dwellings round about and everything else in Eden.

  Clara, the new temple assistant, had already arrived and was busily lighting the candles around the altar. This splendid object was covered in gold leaf and encrusted with jewels which sparkled brightly in the flickering candlelight, and it was the seat of consciousness of the Mind. Clara was careful not to touch it, or indeed to approach it too closely, for to do so would to risk being hurled to the ground by a bolt of lightning. Several people had suffered this fate, and although they had quickly recovered they had never dared go near it again.

  Donna greeted her, then watched as the girl took the lighted taper from candle to candle. Unlike the others, who were often quite clumsy, she was a fast, efficient worker, and soon the interior of the temple was aglow with flickering light. Clara was obviously completely at ease in her human body, as indeed Donna was.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you before,” Donna had said to her when the girl had arrived out of the blue a week ago, looking for work. People swapped jobs regularly in Eden, for the sole purpose of work – which was voluntary – was to accumulate human experiences and exercise their human brains.

  “I’ve never lived in the town before, Ma’am. My last job was on a farm, and before that I worked in the castle.”

  “I’m still
surprised we haven’t met. For instance at the swimming competitions in the river. Everyone goes to those.”

  “I’m not keen on them, Ma’am. I do enough swimming as a dolphin. I like doing human things here.”

  Donna nodded approvingly. “You’re certainly good with your hands.”

  “Thank you, Ma’am.”

  “No doubt we’ve met in our dolphin bodies.”

  “I expect so, Ma’am.”

  Which had been an odd thing to say. Donna was the leader of the GM dolphin community, and Clara would certainly have known if they’d met. In fact they must have met, for there were only a thousand or so of them in total. But she seemed a shy girl who kept herself to herself, and in these human bodies it was impossible to read her emotions or have any inkling of what might lie behind that strange remark. Donna hadn’t pursued the matter, as she didn’t want to upset someone who was so good with candles and incense and serving up tea and toast afterwards as well as helping with the other temple chores.

  She glanced around, checking that nothing was out of place. Clara was now busily lighting the candles that were fixed to the walls, and Donna could make out clearly the five small chapels set into the five sides of the temple, each decorated with mythological figures and scenes from the Bible. It was an extraordinary feat of the imagination, conjured up by the dolphin communal mind.

  But then, the Mind itself was extraordinary. It was probably the most significant outcome of the GM dolphin project. Eden itself with its temple and township and Elizabethan society was a mere by-product of that mind and of no real interest to the dolphins’ human masters. And although the dolphins would one day rule the seas and help mankind to farm them, that enterprise would only partly solve the problem of global food supplies.

  No one fully understood the Mind, although all the dolphins unconsciously participated in it. Indeed everything here originated in their brains: all the artefacts they made or pictures they painted or poetry they wrote were stored in its communal memory, to be resurrected each day when Eden reappeared.

  The Mind was the unification of the non-human telepathic faculties of all their individual minds, able to access their combined memories and cognitive functions. The closest analogy was a network of computers, each individual computer being autonomous while at the same time sharing its resources with all the others. The Mind was a telepathic network, waking each day when the dolphin population entered their trance. Although it lacked the number-crunching and data storage powers of computer networks, in terms of genuine intelligence and knowledge it was unsurpassed.

  The colours in the stained-glass windows of the temple were coming alive in the dawn light, and now worshippers were trickling in. Watching them take their seats, Donna reflected that the Mind was somewhat like an act of worship. If everyone sang their own song the place would be filled with a mindless babble, whereas by singing in unison they were able to create a harmonious sound. From the beginning this had been Dawn’s grand concept, that the dolphins should all enter their trance together and with a common purpose, to merge their minds into a single coherent intelligence.

  At the beginning, when the dolphins were young, Dawn had participated in this daily ritual, imposing her vision of a 16th century township upon their joint imagination. She had also organised a large number of experts in many fields to spend time with the dolphins, so that each dolphin had a personal mentor who imparted to them their specialist knowledge. This did not involve conventional teaching but a radical new learning technique that depended on the dolphins’ telepathic abilities, and in effect it involved downloading the mentor’s knowledge directly into the dolphins’ brains. The dolphins themselves were unable to make much sense of most of it, and certainly they made little use of it in their daily lives, but the Mind was able to make sense of it, and it had integrated the knowledge of all these experts in different fields to create a vast expert system.

  Five years earlier, when she was only seven, Donna herself had made the initial discovery that had led to this learning technique. Dawn, who treated her like a daughter, had sometimes let her invade her mind to explore her memories. Possessing dragon genes, Donna was easily able to the disembodied state and fly through neurospace from the dolphin lagoon to Dawn’s house in Honiara and slip into her mind.

  Donna remembered clearly the first time she had done this. It was a totally new experience, and although Dawn had warned her what to expect it was still very strange to find herself as a girl standing in a shadowy cathedral with a golden altar and a stained-glass window at the far end and doorways spaced out along the walls.

  After several such visits, she had found the doorway leading to the area of Dawn’s brain where her specialist psychological knowledge was stored. After poking around in here for a while she had made the momentous discovery that if she paced up and down through this room like a farmer ploughing a field, so that she covered every inch, she could copy its entire contents into her own brain. The knowledge she assimilated in this way was disjointed and disorganised, but for a short while afterwards she was able to recall all kinds of facts about psychology that she had never known before.

  Although most of it had quickly faded from her mind, it had occurred to Dawn that if she repeated this procedure day after day for several weeks, then most of what she assimilated would find its way into her long-term memories. And so it transpired. Although Donna did not become an expert in the subject, for she had understood little of it, when tested a few weeks after the trial she could recall a great many facts. And when Dawn repeated these tests on the Mind, during a visit to Eden, she discovered that it too could recall those facts. Not only that, the mind seemed able to integrate those facts with all the other knowledge at its disposal and to arrive at a deep understanding of the subject.

  Dawn carried out further trials with more dolphins and other human experts, and when those were also successful she mounted a full-scale programme to transfer as much human knowledge as possible to the dolphin communal mind. Over the course of two or three years experts in many fields visited the dolphin reserve on Guadalcanal. The initial visit would last about a month, and during this time their knowledge would be laid down in their pupils’ long-term memories, and after that they would visit twice a year for a few days to refresh the dolphins’ memories and impart any new knowledge.

  The trickle of worshippers had grown to a chattering throng. The front rows were already full, for this was a Wednesday. Dawn only worked mornings on Wednesdays, and in the afternoons she would fit in a trip here before a session at the Honiara gym. The purpose of this weekly visit was to talk to the community about any developments that might affect the dolphin project and answer any questions. Although she could address them equally well in her physical body back at the lagoon, it was only here, in their human bodies, that the dolphins could talk to her.

  And after that would come Donna’s happiest times, when Dawn accompanied her back to her room. There she would sit with her and thoroughly spoil her, chatting like a mother to a daughter, sharing her deepest secrets and making a big fuss of her, and even modifying the dream to give Donna a few treats like the red high-heeled shoes she was wearing now.

  “Morning, Donna,” someone called out. She turned to see Jonah, eyeing her glamorous outfit and carefully combed hair approvingly. He was a respected member of the community and a close friend.

  The life-cycle of dolphins is similar to that of humans. At the age of 12 the GM dolphins had already reached puberty, with full adulthood just a few years off. However, the growth of their near-human brains had been artificially accelerated, and this, combined with their intensive educational programme, made them the intellectual equivalents of human 18-year-olds. That was the apparent age of all the inhabitants of Eden.

  “Red suits you,” Jonah said, coming over to her. “You always look good in it.”

  She felt the warmth in her belly return, and she gave him a coy smile. “That’s because I’ve got Dawn’s black hair and dark eye
s. She says red’s her best colour.”

  Donna had no intention of letting on that she always wore red when she was in a romantic mood. Jonah would probably run a mile if he knew.

  Jonah’s mentor was a man called John Anderson, and so he resembled him, or rather an 18-year-old version of him. Dr Anderson had at one time worked at the dolphinarium in Honiara, but he had since returned to his academic roots. He had become an expert in English social history, and now taught the subject at some university in Australia. When he heard about Dawn’s teaching project he had offered his services, and in due course had downloaded his expert knowledge of the subject into Jonah’s brain. Many of the architectural features of the township and the castle had been drawn from Jonah’s brain by the Mind, as well as many of the features of this temple.

  Jonah glanced around at the people crowding into the temple. “Where’s Dawn? It’s Wednesday, isn’t it?”

  An impish look came into Donna’s eyes. “I might be her, for all you know.”

  He laughed. “No, I can tell. You’re much prettier than she is.”

  “Oh. Do you really think so?” Donna felt a sudden breathlessness as her insides filled with fire.

  “Yes, you’re much prettier. Your breasts are smaller and your tummy’s bigger.”

  Donna felt flattered and insulted at the same time. It was her dolphin nature that made her that shape, of course, as it did all the people here. Certainly Jonah had intended that remark as a compliment, for his sexual orientation, like that of the other male inhabitants of Eden, was towards the female dolphin form. Donna looked away from him, pretending to watch the people taking their seats, in reality to hide her sadness and frustration. For her secret desire was to be loved in the human way.

  “Dawn isn’t coming today,” she told him brusquely.

  His eyes lit up. “In that case, how about a walk by the river after the service?”

  His evident desire for her made her feel hot and bothered again, and she giggled. “If it’s to chat me up so you can mate with me when we wake up, forget it. But if you fancy getting up to something in these human bodies…”

  Jonah shied away from her, as she knew he would. The thought of engaging in human coupling was repugnant to him, as it was to all the dolphins. All apart from Donna.

  Her insides returned to normality. “Let’s go for a walk anyway,” she said with a sigh.

  Helena had arrived and was inserting the numbers of the hymns she had chosen into the wooden holder near the pulpit. She was the organist, and her mentor was Helen Lockhart, a professor of music at an American university. Donna reflected that the Mind must have drawn upon the knowledge that had been deposited in Helena’s brain to conjure up the temple organ with its huge pipes and traditional keyboard. Even so, Helena had to practise hard to bang out her hymns, and she still made the odd mistake. Donna couldn’t help wondering if Clara with her nimble fingers might not make a better job of it.

  High above them a bell tolled. It was the signal that the first rays of the sun had touched the western peaks and that it was time to welcome the dawn. Donna walked over to the pulpit and climbed up the steps. The buzz of conversation died down only slightly, and she had to clap her hands sharply to bring the assembly to order.

  “All right everyone, let’s get started. I’m afraid Dawn won’t be joining us today as she’s visiting someone in hospital in Australia. But James has organized a games morning in the crypt if anyone wants to join him there after the service, and Christa will be holding her pottery class in the Ivory Chapel. And don’t forget that the next Passion play episode will be staged on Sunday in the temple forecourt. Now, Helena’s chosen a couple of new hymns for us to have a go at. The first is number 63 in the blue book…”

  Half an hour later, the service over, Donna walked with Jonah down the narrow alley that led between the cottages and workshops to the bridge over the Chilik, the river that flowed through the valley. She’d changed out of her red dress and high heels into more sensible traditional clothing. It was a bright new day, and the air was filled with the smell of wood fires and forges and food being cooked as well as the sound of hammering and snatches of conversation and laughter. There was plenty of time for talking, for everything here was done for enjoyment and personal fulfilment rather than to meet any economic need.

  When they reached the Chilik they walked in silence along its grassy bank. The river was broad and slow-moving here, and home to several species of duck and a family of swans. Fishing was a favourite pastime, and spaced out along it were several people with fishing rods.

  The Chilik, like the town and the rest of Eden, was a product of the Mind, as were the water birds and the fish that inhabited it. Donna knew that there was a real river Chilik meandering through the physical landscape hereabouts, and by looking hard she could sometimes make out its ghostly outline, but the parallel world to which it belonged didn’t impinge at all upon the neurospace world of Eden.

  The source of the Chilik – the neurospace Chilik, that is – was a huge glacier nestling high in the mountains at the valley head, several miles to the north. This too was a creation of the Mind, for there were no longer any physical glaciers of this size in these mountains. As it meandered south the river was fed by thermal springs, and by the time it reached the township the water was quite warm. The valley came to an abrupt end a few miles further south, where the river plunged through a rift in the mountains on its way south. Although Donna had never explored the rift, she understood that the river disappeared into a large hole in the ground somewhere along it, at the point where the neurospace world of Eden ended.

  They stopped beneath a tree and sat down at the water’s edge. “Why won’t you be my mate?” Jonah asked her suddenly. “You know I really like you. We could have a wedding ceremony if you like, here in the temple. I’m sure Dawn would be happy to marry us.”

  He had been pestering her in a gentle, teasing way for several weeks, and she had not discouraged him, but in the last few days he had become increasingly forthright about the matter. Her continued prevarication was obviously irking him.

  She touched his hand. “I like you too, Jonah.”

  “So what’s the problem?”

  She gazed out across the river, avoiding his eye, but the gently flowing water merely mocked her inner turmoil. The ‘problem’, as he put it, had in recent months grown large within her, and now it seemed to overshadow everything. She was scarcely able to confess the truth of the matter to herself, let alone to him, but now that he had asked her directly, she could prevaricate no longer. She would have to tell him sometime, and there was no time like the present – as Dawn might say.

  She swallowed “I… I don’t want a mate, Jonah. Not a dolphin mate, that is.”

  He stared at her uncomprehendingly. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Conflicting emotions were swelling within her, and she felt close to tears. “I’m all mixed up inside, Jonah,” she said in a small voice. “I’ve never told you this, but I’m not like you and the others. You just visit the minds of your human mentors for a few times each year. You go into their minds and check out their expert knowledge, and that’s that. It’s different for me, I go into Dawn’s mind every Saturday–”

  “When there are no services at the temple–”

  “And often at other times as well.” Now that she was finally revealing her secret the words were tumbling out. “I’ve absorbed much more than Dawn’s expert knowledge, I’ve made all her memories my own. All of them, you see. It’s like I’m becoming her. All my desires and my feelings are her feelings. It’s not just my intellect that’s human, it’s my desires as well. Do you understand what I’m trying to tell you, Jonah? I’m more human than dolphin!”

  “So you were serious when you asked me if I’d like to fool around in these human bodies?” He almost spat the words out.

  “Yes, Jonah, I was. Very serious. I want you in your human body, not as a dolphin.”

  He stared at h
er, appalled. “That’s disgusting,” he muttered. “In fact it’s perverted. I can’t believe you’re like this. You’re the leader of the community, dammit!”

  She managed to hold her gaze steady. “I’m sorry, Jonah, but please try to understand. I’m like this because I’ve shared all of Dawn’s experiences. All of them…”

  It was not something that Dawn herself had wanted. But about a year ago, during their regular Wednesday morning tête-à-têtes in Eden, Donna had pestered her.

  “Why won’t you let come into your mind while you’re making love to Rick? You’ve let me be in you while you’re at work, and when you’re meeting your parents, as well as going to the toilet and doing everything else. Why not while you’re making love? I so want to.”

  “Human love-making is very private, that’s why. We don’t like to share that kind of thing. It’s something between me and Rick and no one else.”

  “You mean you don’t ever do it in public?”

  “We never do it in public.”

  “But…but I’ve seen it on television. Loads of times!”

  “That’s television, not real life. Most people would never make love in public. Anyway, why do you want experience it?”

  “Because there’s something of you in me. I’m more than just a GM dolphin.”

  Dawn gazed at her silently. Unlike all the other GM dolphins, Donna was not a test-tube baby, and Dawn’s mind went back to that moment, 13 years ago, when she’d gone on a spirit journey into the womb of Eve, the first experimental female GM dolphin, to impregnate her newly-fertilized egg with dragon genes. That egg had grown to become Donna, and Donna had finally reached puberty. Now her hormones were signalling her maturity, and a strange organ hidden deep within her brain had been activated and her dragon genes had been switched on. Her dragon nature starting to express itself.

  Dawn put her arms round her young protégé. “It’s the fire I told you about, my darling,” she whispered. “You’re beginning to feel it. It makes you a goddess of war, but it also makes you a goddess of love. That’s why you desire human love. It’s the only truly romantic love on this planet.”

  Donna was given some magic fish that evening, as she was not yet able to induce a trance without it, and a little later, when she slipped into the cathedral of Dawn’s mind, Dawn allowed her to alight upon the altar and share her consciousness. And so that night Donna experienced the fire surging through Dawn’s body as she gave Rick a sensational love-goddess kiss, and she felt the urgent caresses of Rick’s hands and the warmth of his lips on her throat and her breasts. And after many other intimate acts of love she shared Dawn’s passion rise powerfully within her, finally reaching an ecstatic climax in which she seemed to soar up to the highest heavens.

  It was an experience that profoundly affected Donna. The hormones that flooded through her own physical body while it was taking place seemed to accelerate the neurological changes in her brain, and in the days that followed she became very aware of the dragonness forming within her and of the mysterious fire in her belly. At the same time the conviction grew within her that she could never be satisfied with dolphin love. For dolphins have no hands, and their lips had not evolved for kissing.

  Donna couldn’t tell Jonah about these changes, for it was all a secret, but as they resumed their walk along the riverbank she told him about her experience of human love. His initial shock that she could have done such a thing quickly gave way to curiosity as he listened to her account.

  “Dawn never told Rick that I shared their love-making,” she said at the end of her tale. “She let me experience it several times after that, but still she never told him.”

  Jonah glanced at her in surprise. “Why on earth not?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps she felt embarrassed. Humans are strange that way. I wanted her to let me take her over completely so that it would be me and not her making love to Rick. I told her that I needed to practise, but she wouldn’t hear of it.”

  “How odd! It seems a reasonable enough request. I don’t suppose Rick would have noticed the difference. I bet you’d be pretty good at it.”

  “That’s what I told her. Anyway, she refused, though she wouldn’t say why. Well, I said to her, if Rick’s out of bounds, then perhaps I can borrow your body to make love to someone else.”

  “Fair enough. What did she say to that?”

  “What didn’t she say! She practically hit the roof. It was like I was going to shit in her pants!”

  She kicked morosely at a stone. It rolled into the river with a splash, startling a small water bird. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like me to kiss you, Jonah? I know I could do it really well.”

  He grimaced. “I’m sorry, I really don’t fancy it. I would probably throw up all over you.”

  She sighed. “It doesn’t matter. Those sexy kisses probably won’t work on these neurospace bodies anyway.”

  “Look!” he exclaimed suddenly. “What’s that?” She followed his gaze upwards. What looked like a red shooting star was streaking across the sky.

  “That’ll be Dawn.”

  “Wow! She must be in a tearing hurry. How on earth does she fly so fast?”

  “She always flies like that. Usually she arrives when it’s still dark, that’s why you haven’t seen her. Anyway, I’d better get back to my quarters, it’s me she’s coming to see. Something must have happened at that hospital.”

  “What on earth has that got to do with you?”

  “Search me.”

  Twelve

  At the same moment that Donna was waking up in Eden, Dawn was locking herself into her office on the other side of the world. She didn’t want to be disturbed. Outside her window the sun was shining brightly, for it was the middle of a sweltering tropical day, but it was pleasantly cool in here. Like all the GeneSys offices on Guadalcanal, hers was air-conditioned.

  She unlocked her filing cabinet and carefully extracted from it a metal object about the size and shape of a shoebox. It was quite heavy, and she held it close as she carried it over to her desk.

  “I’m depending on you, Baby,” she murmured as she gently set the metal box down.

  Baby didn’t respond. Baby wasn’t even aware that she’d been spoken to, for she had no ears. Her only sensor was the lens at the front of the box, and her only output device was the small monitor screen at the rear. And although she could detect Dawn’s affection for her, it gave her no pleasure, for she had no circuitry for either pleasure or pain.

  Dawn turned the box round so that the lens was pointing away from her, rotating its housing to give a wide-angle view, then she checked the screen at the rear. It displayed a grainy, out-of-focus picture of the opposite wall with the window and the hazy sky beyond.

  “Good girl,” she murmured. The spirit detector was working perfectly.

  The poor-quality image was not the result of any fault in the device but of the imperfect information reaching its neurons. For they were not picking up light or electrical signals or any other form of electromagnetic radiation, but they were detecting what for a better term might be called clairvoyance, in other words information originating in the parallel universe of neurospace. Dawn didn’t understand the physics behind it, except that it had something to do with quantum mechanics and the interconnectedness of everything in the universe.

  She picked up Baby again and carried her to the window. Resting her on the sill, she pointed the lens in first one direction and then another over Crocodile Bay, and then she turned the box round to scan her office. Wherever she pointed the lens, the picture on the screen remained a ghostly blur.

  She grunted in satisfaction. The last thing she wanted was to see something that was sharp and detailed, for that would have been a spirit. The screen showed ghosts and spirits not as wraiths but as solid objects, whereas physical objects appeared as wraiths. Baby reversed the normal human view of the world.

  She put the device back on the desk and ran her fingers across the cold metal surface. Baby co
uldn’t feel her touch, though she could detect the emotion that lay behind it. Had Rick been present he would have undoubtedly have teased his wife. What do you think is inside that thing? A cuddly puppy?

  There was something alive inside the box, but it wasn’t a ball of fur or anything cuddly. It wasn’t even sentient in any normal sense. It was a small squishy part of Dawn’s brain, or rather a copy of a small squishy part of her brain, kept alive by half a pint of her blood. This was pumped through it by a tiny artificial heart, and fuelled by oxygen bubbling into a miniature lung and nutrient dripping into a miniature intestine. The box itself was insulated, and its electronic temperature control system maintained Baby at body heat.

  Dawn was emotionally attached to the device not because she had any illusions about the nature of the half-creature that dwelt within it, but because she had been intimately involved in its development. She had come up with the original concept six years ago, and after that she had been closely involved in the isolation of the relevant parts of her DNA and in their insertion into a host cell. And it was she who had painstakingly guided the development and growth of the strange, misshapen embryo that was to ultimately become Baby.

  The part of Dawn’s brain that Baby replicated was an organ that was sometimes called the god-spot. In Dawn it was unusually well-developed, and MRI scans had shown it to be hyperactive when she went on spirit journeys. In Baby this organ was used to detect clairvoyant information. Part of Dawn’s visual cortex had also been replicated, as this was needed to process and output the clairvoyance to the screen, and there were also copies of her retinal cells, to register the input from the lens.

  Baby’s purpose was to monitor Dawn’s immediate surroundings when she was in a trance in case a demon or some other spirit tried to invade her body. If a demon was detected a loud alarm would be activated, which would immediately awaken Dawn and prevent an attack. Up until that time, she had always gone into a trance securely handcuffed, in case something evil took over her body.

  The dolphins were also at risk during their trance, and Dawn sometimes took it upon herself to patrol neurospace in the vicinity of Crocodile Bay. If Baby continued to work successfully – and trials with Donna acting as the invading spirit had proved very successful – then more of the devices would be produced to watch over the dolphins. Not that there were many demons left in the Solomon Islands, for Dawn had slaughtered most of them.

  This was the first time that Dawn had entrusted her entranced body to the device, and she wasn’t sure where to put it. She decided the corner shelf would be best, as that would give the widest view. Placing Baby on it, Dawn pressed the Menu button and checked the various settings, and then pressed the Recording button. This had been set to automatically start recording when a spirit appeared, then stop when it disappeared. That done, Dawn closed the blinds of her window, sat back in her chair, closed her eyes, and then let her mind drift into that well-worn fantasy that invariably induced a trance.

  Moments later she was floating above her sleeping body, and now her office and everything in it had taken on a ghostly appearance. She glanced across at Baby, and noted that the red warning light was flashing. That was good, for it meant that Baby had detected her. Her spirit body would form a clear, sharp image in its visual cortex and on the screen, in contrast to the pale haziness of everything else. The alarm wasn’t sounding, because Baby was telepathic and had also detected her emotions, classifying them as benign. Had there been the slightest hint of evil or malice, there would be a huge din and Rick would come racing down the corridor. A different menu setting would have triggered the alarm whatever the emotional status of the spirit.

  Satisfied that everything was in order, Dawn prepared herself for her spirit journey. Normally on these occasions she transformed herself into her native dragon body, but this time she had to travel to Australia and dragon wings were not designed for long journeys. So she conjured up something quite different, though it had the same colour as her dragon body and in its own way equally impressive.

  As she firmed up the imagery in her mind, its structure coalesced about her, completely enclosing her. Now there was a window immediately in front of her, and through it she could see the ghostly outline of her office and its contents. However, this was not the stained-glass window of earlier journeys, and the structure encasing her was not a cathedral. Rather, she was in the driving seat of a bright red vintage VW Beetle, customised with some really nifty features such as a pair of swept-back aeroplane wings extending from its sides.

  Dawn turned the ignition key and the engine roared into life. Although it was mounted in the rear, this was by no means your typical Beetle engine. It was massive, with what looked like an enormous exhaust tube sticking straight out of it. It was in fact a Rolls Royce jet engine, and it throbbed with suppressed energy. She strapped herself in, grasped the steering wheel with one hand and released the handbrake with the other, then pushed the accelerator pedal down hard to the floor. The car leapt forward through the office wall with an ear-splitting roar, and moments later she was hurtling above the tenuous waters of the Pacific Ocean, heading south towards Australia.

  Dawn had figured out how to travel fast through neurospace four years previously. Amazingly, it was some demons who had given her the idea. Dr Juan Song from the UN headquarters in New York had come to visit her, ostensibly to learn about the dolphin project and to see the dolphin lagoon at Crocodile Bay. After examining the facilities there and meeting some of the young dolphins, Dr Song had accompanied Dawn back to her office for a cup of tea and confidential chat. She was a diminutive middle-aged Chinese lady.

  “I’m impressed, Dr Goode,” she murmured. Her English was impeccable, with hardly a trace of an accent.

  “Please call me Dawn. Everyone does.”

  Dr Song smiled briefly. “Your project has aroused a great deal of interest at the UN, Dawn. Even the Secretary General has asked to be kept informed of its progress.”

  “Really?” Dawn shifted uncomfortably in her chair. She didn’t know whether to be pleased or alarmed by that.

  “Yes. We are monitoring what’s going on here, you understand. By all accounts you’re doing an excellent job.”

  “Thank you.” Although Dawn had not been aware of any overt investigations, the dolphin project with its huge potential impact on the world’s oceans was bound to attract the attention of the UN security arm.

  Dr Song sipped her drink and gazed at her thoughtfully. “Your success has had some unfortunate consequences, however,” she said at last.

  Dawn tensed. “What on earth do you mean, Dr Song? I’m not aware of any ‘unfortunate consequences’.”

  “I’m referring to the abduction cults. In particular the Church of the Blessed Rapture and Abduction – COBRA.”

  “Ah. You can hardly blame me for the rise of COBRA, I think.”

  “Indeed not. However, you are the world’s foremost expert on the parallel universe that you call neurospace, and cults such as COBRA operate in that universe. Indeed, they have arisen as a direct result of your work. We are hoping therefore that you would be willing to help us.” She paused and took another sip of her tea.

  Interest in paranormal phenomena had mushroomed over the last few years, mainly thanks to the dolphins’ ability to enter a disembodied state and to telepathically merge their minds. If dolphins could do this, why not humans? And would not this merging of minds be some kind of nirvana, in which the individual would become subsumed in a corporate intelligence? Such ideas soon became mixed up with other weird notions, in particular a belief in alien abduction experiences, and so the abduction cults had been born.

  The biggest of these was the Church of the Blessed Rapture and Abduction, which cloaked its claims in Christian terminology. The COBRA membership numbered many tens of thousands, and ‘believers’ were ‘raptured’ during its meetings and taken to a giant spaceship in the sky called Paradise, where they enjoyed all kinds of pleasurable experiences. Many believers had g
iven large sums of money to the church, as this was a route to church leadership and heightened rapture experiences, and in a short space of time COBRA had become very wealthy and built up powerful business interests. Other abduction cults had amalgamated with it, and now COBRA was a global organisation with branches on every continent.

  “Matters have come to a head,” Dr Song continued, “and we believe that the Church of the Blessed Rapture is becoming a significant threat to mankind.” She paused for effect, and then added: “And also to your dolphins.”

  Dawn looked at her dubiously. Was Dr Song trying to alarm her? No doubt COBRA was a threat, in fact she suspected that alien forces were behind it. Indeed, it might even be demonic, for there was no way that humans, unaided, could conjure up a neurospace structure like a giant spaceship. Even she would be hard-pressed to create something like that.

  But was it any more of a threat than other demonic activities? Maybe it was. Maybe that spaceship was the vehicle that had originally transported the demons to Earth from their home planet. Indeed, if the reports of alien abductions from the last century were to be believed, this ship had been hanging in space above the earth for a very long time. No human telescope would ever be able to detect it, of course, for it was not a physical object.

  “What I’m about to tell you is classified information,” the little Chinese lady said quietly, interrupting Dawn’s train of thought. “It must not go beyond the walls of this room.”

  “I give you my word.”

  “You’re word isn’t sufficient, I’m afraid. You could be bugged.” Dr Song removed what looked like a mobile phone from her handbag, switched it on, and walked slowly around the office, pointing it at all the fittings and furniture. “It will glow red if it detects any kind of transmitting device,” she explained.

  “You’re clean,” she announced at last when she’d checked everything, including Dawn’s clothing.

  “I work for the DGS, the Department of Global Security,” Dr Song told her as she settled back in her seat. “That’s the UN’s investigative department. COBRA has recently come to our attention. A year ago hardly anyone had heard of it, suddenly it is large and powerful, and many of its leaders hold influential posts in government and business organisations. Including GeneSys, by the way.”

  Dawn gaped at her. “GeneSys? I didn’t realise...”

  “That’s hardly surprising. None of these people advertise their connection with COBRA. In case you’re worried, your father isn’t one of them.”

  “I can’t imagine him getting involved with anything like that.”

  “You’d be surprised who is involved. One of our operatives joined the church, to find out what’s going on. She attended a few of its rapture meetings, and reported back that it all looked harmless enough. It seems they use hypnosis to induce their out-of-body ‘rapture’ experiences, together with a drug similar to the one in the GM fish you feed your dolphins.”

  “That’s a pretty harmless drug. It’s not addictive.”

  “So I understand. In her report our operative stated that the rapture trances last about an hour. Afterwards there’s a time of sharing when they give emotional accounts of their experiences.”

  “I’ve read the newspaper reports. They recline on beautiful couches in Paradise, and they’re ministered to by golden angels. And it’s pretty obvious what those ministrations involve.”

  “Quite. Alien abduction experiences have always had strong sexual overtones, even at the beginning in the 1950s. Sometimes they are pleasant, often they are deeply unpleasant. The COBRA abduction experiences, it seems, are all pleasant.”

  “I can guess what happened next. Your operative fancied a bit of that angel delight, so she decided to pay that spaceship a visit. She got herself raptured.”

  Dr Song nodded. “She cleared it with us first, of course. But it was the only way to find out what was really going on. She joined the church and underwent the course of hypnosis, and then she attended one of the rapture meetings and took the drug. She never awoke from her trance. She died of a heart attack.”

  Dawn gaped at her. “You think they discovered she was a spy?”

  “We have to assume that. She was young, there was nothing wrong with her heart. Whether their suspicions were aroused during the hypnosis sessions, or whether they found out when she was raptured, we can’t say, but somehow they engineered her death.”

  “By spiking the drug, perhaps?”

  Dr Song shook her head. “There was no trace of poison in her body. Our people did a thorough check. We think they killed her spirit – or whatever it is that leaves the body during out-of-body experiences.”

  Dawn studied her thoughtfully. “Could be. If the spirit dies, then the brain stops working, I suppose. And if that happens, the heart stops beating.”

  “That’s the conclusion we came to. We ran checks on police records, and it turns out that several other people have died mysteriously in COBRA rapture meetings. In each case the cause of death was heart failure.”

  “It sounds like they’ve discovered a foolproof way of getting rid of awkward people. Make them die of natural causes. And there’s no way the police or your people can find out what’s going on without getting themselves killed. You can’t pin anything on anyone, you don’t even know who’s done it.”

  “That’s why we need your help, Dawn.”

  “You want me to get myself raptured? You must be joking!”

  Dr Song smiled faintly. “Of course not. You have other ways of getting to that COBRA spaceship. I’ll come straight to the point. As I told you, our people have been keeping tabs on this project, and they’ve been able to access the GeneSys computer records of all conversations with the dolphins that involved you. The transcript makes fascinating reading. It seems that your very remarkable powers include the ability to travel at will through the parallel universe and to invade other minds and control them. How and why you are able to do this we do not pretend to understand, but the facts are not in doubt.”

  “You’ve bugged my home!” Dawn’s voice now had a cold, hard edge. “You’ve been listening in to my intimate conversations with Rick!”

  Dr Song saw the steel in her eyes and flinched. “No! We did nothing like that. I told you, we got everything from the GeneSys computer records. We want you as our friend, not our enemy.”

  She hastily rummaged through her handbag for the bug detector and handed it to Dawn. “I want you to have this. It’s state-of-the-art technology and very secret, so don’t let it out of your hands. Please check your house regularly. If you find any bugs, they won’t be ours. Don’t tamper with them, call us.”

  “Thank you, I will.” Her iciness melted, and she gave Dr Song a speculative look. “I’m surprised you want to involve me in this. There must be much bigger threats to the planet than these COBRA crackpots. It’s not just because they’ve eliminated one of your people, is it?”

  “As I said, matters have come to a head. There’s something big going on, and we don’t know what it is. In three weeks’ time they’re holding a very big rapture rally at a convention centre in London. All the leaders from across the world will be there, and thousands of ordinary members as well. They haven’t advertised it, but they’ve let their people know by word of mouth. They’ve even booked the centre under a false name – the Millennium Congress. The word is that they’re going to appoint many more leaders, and then they’ll all be raptured to that spaceship for a great celebration to mark the start of a new age on earth.”

  “Sounds like quite a party. And you want me to blast them out of the sky?”

  “We thought you might be able to follow them to that spaceship of theirs and find out what’s going on there – and take whatever action you think necessary to safeguard the future of the human race.”

  Dawn couldn’t help being intrigued, and although she was careful not to show it, she was very flattered that the UN had come cap in hand seeking her help. She’d wondered before about paying that spa
ceship a visit, but if there were demons involved it would be very risky, and she still hadn’t figured out how to travel long distances in neurospace without endless amounts of wing-flapping. Well, maybe she would venture into space – provided she got something in return.

  “The dolphins are as important to me as the human race. You’re asking me to risk my neck, so what about their future?”

  “You won’t find us ungrateful, Dawn. We are not opposed to your plans for the dolphins. We know you want them recognised as a nation state in their own right. If you help us with this, then the Secretary General gives you his assurance that you will have his full support in this matter. That would of course include all rights under international law, as well as the right to appoint a human representative at the UN.”

  They must be seriously worried about COBRA to make an offer like that, Dawn thought. She would have settled for less. “It’s a deal, Dr Song.”

  Later that day, while she was looking up flights to London, because it was out of the question to attempt such a journey as a wing-flapping dragon, the solution to long-distance travel through neurospace suddenly hit her. If the dark forces behind COBRA were able to conjure up a rocket-propelled vehicle like a spaceship, then so could she. Enclosing herself in a supersonic jet aircraft when she was floating in the air should be no more difficult than surrounding herself in a massive cathedral when floating in someone’s brain.

  The trouble was, she had only the vaguest idea what the cockpit of a supersonic jet looked like, and even if she could conjure it up, she would have no idea how to fly it. On the other hand, she would have no trouble at all with a motorcar, and in neurospace, where the laws of physics broke down, there was nothing to stop a car flying through the air at many times the speed of sound.

  Dawn had been so excited by her idea that she had immediately locked her office door, sat down in the most comfortable chair, and performed the mental exercises that never failed to raise her temperature and launch her into neurospace. Then, floating above her body, she visualised herself being in the driving seat of a car. Not any old car, but the car which for some reason she’d always wanted to own, a vintage VW Beetle. And so Dawn’s magnificent flying machine had been born.

  It was a joy to fly. She could bank to the left or the right by turning the steering wheel in the usual way, and she could point the car up or down by pushing the wheel down towards her lap or away from her. And if she slipped the gear lever into reverse she could fly backwards. Hitting the accelerator, she careered at up to 70 miles per hour over the ghostly houses and the bush and the tenuous grey of the sea, and it didn’t matter at all if she drove into something because she and her car existed in a parallel world.

  She’d almost immediately modified her design by adding that massive Rolls-Royce jet engine mounted in her rear, and a satnav to the dashboard. Both of these completely transformed her driving experience. She was particularly intrigued by the jet engine, for though she hadn’t consciously willed this, there was something very dragon-like about the way it worked. It belched out black smoke and fire, it was very powerful, and if she went on a very long journey – as she did when she’d put her impressive new machine to the test by circumnavigating the world at breakneck speed – she’d be left feeling distinctly peckish. But it was good fun, and she could go so fast that the speedometer recalibrated itself, changing miles per hour to miles per second.

  As for the satnav, that worked pretty well too, though it was not terribly accurate. She would speak into it her destination, and then she would hit the accelerator and the car would roar off in almost the right direction so that she would end up within a mile or so of where she wanted to get. The lack of accuracy was a bit of nuisance, and she guessed it was to do with the general haziness of the spirit world. Just as her spirit eyes could see the real world only indistinctly, so, she supposed, the reception of GPS signals was somewhat indistinct too.

  Although she was soon to gain a vague understanding of the operation of the jet engine, for it was indeed based upon dragon physiology, Dawn never did figure out how the satnav worked. In fact it wasn’t based upon the Global Positioning System but upon a phenomenon known as quantum entanglement, and its inaccuracy was due to the uncertainty principle. That explanation, however, would have to await the development of the mathematics of neurospace, and this lay many decades in the future.

  Thirteen

  And so it was, three weeks after Dr Song’s visit to the dolphin project on Guadalcanal, that Dawn found herself speeding north-east through the night, her engine belching smoke and fire. Just a few minutes after leaving her body lying on her bed at home in the Solomon Islands she had crossed over the shadowy darkness of the Pacific Ocean and the hazy lights of North America were below her. A few moments more and she met the dawn over the Atlantic, and minutes after that she was skidding to a halt above central London.

  Her massive engine throbbing, she hovered in neurospace over the ghostly shape of the Thames with the Houses of Parliament off to the left. Although nothing was distinct in the pale morning sunlight, it was clear that her satnav had brought her to within a mile of her destination, which was a large conference centre located off Trafalgar Square.

  The vehicle winked out of existence as she transformed herself into a dragon. Unfurling her wings, she turned and flew off in what she thought was the right direction, and after about a minute or so she was able to make out the fuzzy outline of Nelson’s column off to her right. Adjusting her course, she recognised some more landmarks, and then she was swooping down to what she took to be the COBRA venue.

  Flying in through the roof, she found herself hovering over a huge auditorium. She knew at once that she’d arrived at the right place, for a powerful aura of demonic evil hit her. It was hanging in the air like a foul odour, and it brought back horrific memories of that encounter with demons on her engagement day almost a decade earlier. Although it had been so many years ago, and so much had happened since, it still gave her nightmares.

  She spun round, her eyes darting this way and that. She could see nothing threatening, but the sense of evil unnerved her, and she beat a hasty retreat upwards and tried to hide above a large light fitting. Although she had mastered the art of travelling through neurospace, she was still only a novice when it came to fighting battles. It was only subsequent to today’s great victories that she would gain sufficient confidence to take on and destroy the demons inhabiting the Solomon Islands.

  Perched high above the auditorium, she peered nervously over the edge of the light fitting at the scene below. The hall was large enough to accommodate several thousand people. Although everything was grey and ghostly, she could make out people trickling in to the auditorium through the various entrances. The meeting wasn’t due to start for another half-hour, but the place looked full and she could hear ghostly music coming from the loudspeakers located above the stage.

  She scanned the walls, the stage, and every corner of her ghostly surroundings, but there was nothing bright and solid to be seen. But disembodied spirits or demons lurked somewhere in this building, she was certain of that. She had expected to find them on the COBRA spaceship, but she hadn’t thought they would be here. Somehow they seemed out of place in the heart of London.

  The sense of evil continued to assail her. Where were those demons hiding? Although she could fly through solid objects such as these walls, she couldn’t actually see through them, so the creatures could be in any of the other rooms or corridors in this building.

  She came to a decision. It was most likely, she reasoned, that any demons here would be monitoring the entrances and doorways for any unwanted visitors, like Dr Song’s unfortunate spy. So she would scour those areas first, and then the corridors and other rooms in the building, and finally she would seek out any demons in the people themselves. Grimly preparing herself for what lay ahead, she summoned up fire in her belly.

  With a final look round the auditorium, she gulped in some air to fan the flames, t
hen launched herself into the air and headed straight for the wall above one of the entrances. She emerged into one of the corridors, above a small group of people. They were, of course, unaware of her presence. She glanced both ways, and immediately spotted a silver disc floating at the far end of the corridor. It was identical to the demons that had attacked her on her engagement day, with the same leering face and sword-like horn. At the same moment the creature spotted her, and she sensed its surprise. Its reflexes were fast, and before she could react it had spun round to face her and launched itself at her, its wings buzzing angrily. She watched in numbed horror as it hurtled towards her belly.

  At the last moment Dawn’s dragon reflexes kicked in, releasing her fire. Lightning streaked from her jaws, wrapping itself around the silver disc and transforming it into a blazing inferno. There was a piercing scream and the creature crashed harmlessly into her belly then fell flaming to the ground, writhing in agony. Dawn twisted her head and followed it down with her fire, and in moments only a few blackened scraps and a wisp of acrid smoke remained.

  The group of people below were now strolling into the auditorium, blissfully unaware of the battle that had been fought above their heads and the smell of smoke and death in the air. But if any more demons lurked in this building, they would have heard that scream and sensed the creature’s agony.

  Certainly she was not safe here. Turning, she flew back through the wall to the middle of the auditorium, as far as possible from any walls and other hiding places. Almost at once a silver demon flew in through one of the doorways, and then a second emerged from the opposite wall. Spotting her instantly, they hurled themselves angrily at her, one from the left and the other from the right, aiming straight at her belly.

  Although lacking experience, Dawn had taken the trouble to devise a number of defensive manoeuvres to protect this most critical part of her body against such an attack. The one she thought offered the greatest protection was to curl up like a hedgehog while jetting a thin blast of fire through pursed lips. It was expensive in terms of energy, and she couldn’t maintain it for more than a couple of minutes, but it turned her into a giant catherine wheel, and by twisting her head to deliver a sideways thrust she was able to adjust her orientation. She had spent a long time practising this manoeuvre, and now her diligence paid off. In moments she was spinning like a top, and with a quick twist of her head she angled herself so that the first of the creatures rushed headlong into a deadly disc of fire. There was an ear-splitting shriek and its flaming body tumbled to the ground.

  The second demon swerved and attacked from the side, and she felt a sharp pain as its vicious horn shattered one of her scales and penetrated her thigh. It wasn’t a deep wound, for the damaged scale had absorbed most of the blow, and the force of her spinning body sent the demon tumbling away, though it quickly righted itself.

  And then, to her dismay, she saw that two more demons had joined the fray. They were circling around, their wings buzzing angrily. Suddenly all three charged her, from different directions, and there was no way that spinning like a catherine wheel would save her from such an attack. Her only hope was to surround herself with a ball of fire.

  Dawn twisted her head at right angles to her body and blasted more fire. The force of it sent her spinning about a second axis, so that what had been a wheel of fire became a ball. She had to open her jaws wide to broaden the jet and achieve the full fireball effect, which would rapidly deplete her reserves, but with three demons attacking her she had no choice. There was an ear-splitting shriek as one demon hit the unexpected wall of fire, followed in quick succession by two more.

  She immediately quenched her fire. That didn’t stop her spinning, and she had to uncurl her body and extend her tail and flap her wings furiously to right herself. Hovering with her wings outstretched once more, she looked around the auditorium to see what had become of her attackers. They were lying on the ground below, charred and writhing. Hurling herself down at them, she raked them with a final blast of fire, turning them to ashes. Then, pulling out of her dive, she swooped high over the auditorium, and to her huge relief could no longer sense demonic evil hanging over the place. She was safe.

  But it wasn’t an unalloyed victory, for all her fires had been spent and she was totally drained of energy. If there had been any more demons she would have to turn tail and try to get away. Fortunately she’d anticipated that something like this might happen, and she’d taken the precaution of eating a large dinner before leaving home with two generous helpings of pudding. It had made her feel uncomfortably full, but it ensured that after a while her strength would return.

  Wearily, she flew back up to the light fitting where she’d perched before and surveyed the ghostly scene. Although she could see and hear nothing clearly, it was obvious that the auditorium has nearly full. Moments later the music stopped, and then someone stood up at the front and addressed the congregation. Dawn strained her ears to make out the words, but it was too much of a mumble. She launched herself from the lighting fitting and swooped down nearer to the loudspeakers, and although she could now make out the odd word most of it was still too muffled to make out what was being said. It was like listening through a wall.

  The only way to find out what was going on would be to invade someone’s mind. She watched as the congregation rose to their feet and started to sing what sounded like a hymn, and then she selected a woman at random and pounced. There was a moment of blackness and a sense of floundering in goo as she entered her skull, and then the walls of the great cathedral coalesced around her and she was standing in the nave gazing up at the stained-glass window – her neurospace representation of the woman’s visual cortex.

  Now the view of the auditorium was crystal-clear, as was the sound of singing. At the front of the stage was a lectern, with a man standing behind it, and filling the stage behind him was a large crowd of seated men and women occupying a dozen or more rows of chairs, all smartly dressed in dark suits. Dawn estimated that there were about 200 of them, and she guessed that these were the church leaders.

  Above the stage was a large screen on which the words of the hymn were displayed. The people sang gustily, and if this were a normal church and a normal hymn then it would be very inspiring. But this was not a normal church, and this was unlike any hymn that she’d ever heard. There was no mention of God or Jesus Christ or the love of God, instead it was all about angels and spirits and the sensual joys of Paradise, and the coming reign of spirits over the earth.

  But the woman seemed to find it uplifting, and Dawn sensed her excitement. The atmosphere in the hall was charged with energy, and people were swaying and even jumping in time to the beat of the music. It was clear that something very important was about to take place. It was also obvious that, with all the excitement and sense of expectancy, the woman hadn’t detected her presence. There was no startlement or any feelings of unease, and Dawn damped down her feelings as much as possible in an attempt to keep herself hidden. It was essential that no one here suspected her presence, or all might be lost. She wondered if anyone had realised that the demon doorkeepers had disappeared.

  The hymn came to an end and everyone sat down. The man standing at the lectern welcomed everyone to this important gathering, paused for dramatic effect, and then gestured to the side of the stage. “Our new leaders!” he proclaimed.

  A stream of smartly-dressed men and women emerged from behind a curtain, and everyone clapped as they walked down a short flight of steps and assembled in front of the stage. More and more leaders trooped out, until they filled the entire space between the stage and the front row of seats. There must have been several hundred of them, and they made an impressive sight.

  “These wonderful people have all been filled with a spirit,” the man proclaimed. “Today they will be ministering to you in Paradise!”

  At this there was more clapping and some cheering. This is a complete travesty of the Christian religion, Dawn thought. Filled with a spirit? What
nonsense! This was London, and these people looked urbane and calm and completely normal. But then she reflected that the woman in whom she was hiding would look completely normal too. If a neurospace dragon could dwell undetected in her, what demonic forces might be hidden in them?

  The clapping died down, and now the leaders sitting behind the speaker stood up, and there was more applause. From what Dr Song had told her, several of these leaders worked for GeneSys, but she was unable to study their faces because the woman’s eyes didn’t rest on any of them but instead kept glancing at some of the younger men among the new leaders gathered below the stage. Dawn’s own gaze was distracted too, for the flame above the golden throne had grown in size and was now flaring up in front of the stained-glass window, and she realised that the woman was becoming aroused by the prospect of being ministered to in Paradise.

  This was her opportunity. When planning her mission, it had struck Dawn that the easiest way to reach the COBRA spaceship was possess one of the church members and so partake in the rapture. But that seemed a risky thing to do, as she would have to arouse someone to possess them, and that would surely give away her presence. Not only that, she would only be possessing her victim’s body, not his spirit, and it was the spirit that ascended to the ship.

  But whatever alien spirits were residing in these leaders, they would surely continue to possess them after they entered the disembodied state. How else could they be transformed into the golden angels that Dr Song had talked about? If those spirits could get to that ship, then she could too.

  Dawn didn’t hesitate. Flapping her wings, she thrust herself into the air and swooped between the cathedral walls, heading straight for the golden altar with the flame leaping high above it. She felt the woman’s sudden alarm as she sensed her presence, but by then she was dropping into the altar and it was too late. The altar embraced her, there was a flicker of blackness and a sense of oneness with the universe, and then she found herself in control of the woman’s body. There was a moment of dizziness, but fortunately the woman was seated, and Dawn was able to steady her new body by grabbing the back of the seat in front.

  Glancing at her flawless hands, she realised that she must have taken over a teenage girl. Sitting next to her was another girl, who nudged her and gave her a knowing look.

  “Are those guys giving you the hots, too?” the girl whispered. “I can’t wait to get up there!”

  “I do feel hot,” Dawn whispered back. “I intend to set them on fire.”

  The girl smirked. “You’ve got it the wrong way round. We’re the ones who’ll be set on fire!”

  “Not this time,” Dawn murmured.

  The man behind the lectern was speaking. “We’ll get straight down to business,” he announced. “Our ushers will pass the communion cups along the rows. Remember not to drink of your cup until I give the word, and then drink all of it. It’ll take just a few minutes to enter your bloodstream, and then we’ll all rise up together. Please relax into your seats after drinking it, and remember that the ushers will remain to watch over your bodies, together with their spirit helpers. Now, please lock the doors and pass round the cups.”

  About 20 ushers, men and women, handed trays containing glasses of a red liquid to each row, and these were passed quickly along, each person taking a cup. Other ushers passed similar trays among the leaders, who all sat down. The job was soon done, and then the man at the lectern sat down and said in a solemn voice, “Now! Everyone drink of the cup!”

  He raised his glass and drank, and everyone in the congregation did the same. The liquid had been flavoured to taste like sweet wine, and flowed easily down Dawn’s throat. She relaxed into her chair, and after about a minute her vision started to blur and her eyelids felt heavy. Slowly her eyes closed, then suddenly she was rising out her body, and the girl’s own spirit was rising with her.

  For a moment they floated together above the girl’s body, which appeared blurred and hazy, as did everything in the auditorium. The girl had her back to her, and Dawn immediately threw arms about the girl’s spirit waist and held her tightly against her. If the girl couldn’t see her, then she wouldn’t be able to identify her when all of this was over. More importantly, if Dawn was to be caught up with this girl and transported to the COBRA ship in the sky, then she needed to cling on to her for dear life.

  The girl twisted and struggled, lashing out with her hands and her feet, desperate to break free. She would have succeeded had not Dawn transformed herself into a dragon and encased her in limbs of steel.

  The girl twisted her head and gaped in horror at her monstrous captor, then started struggling even more desperately. All of a sudden something seemed to snap inside the girl, she gave an agonised gasp, and suddenly she was no longer struggling. She couldn’t have broken a bone, surely, for spirits didn’t have physical bones that could be broken. It was very odd, but for some reason all the fight had gone out of her. Dawn was too relieved to wonder what had happened, and, still holding the girl tightly, turned herself back into her human form.

  Across the auditorium, hundreds of other spirits were now rising up from their sleeping bodies. Dawn glanced around in alarm, thinking that some of them must have witnessed her momentary transformation into a dragon. But no one was paying the slightest attention to her, and she relaxed.

  “It’s OK, it’s OK,” she whispered to the girl, who still had her back to her. “I’m not going to harm you. I just want to hitch a ride to Paradise.”

  The girl nodded in silent acquiescence, and let her captor continue to cling on to her. Dawn wondered about the spirits that it was claimed filled the leaders – were they now gripping them as she was this girl? She twisted her head to face the front of the auditorium, to see what was happening there.

  To her astonishment, her view of the stage and the leaders was blocked by a large golden wall that had suddenly appeared, cutting off the congregation from the leaders. It was a neurospace object, for it was bright and solid, and it meant that whatever was happening to the leaders and their spirits was completely hidden from everyone else.

  Four more golden walls sprang up to each side of the congregation, completely enclosing it and blocking out the physical walls of the auditorium. Glancing upwards, she saw that these five neurospace walls arched inwards to form a domed pentagonal structure similar to the temple of Eden. Like that temple, this was a mental construct, the product of the combined imagination of its inhabitants. Dawn supposed that the course of hypnosis that was required of all COBRA members included training on conjuring up this imagery.

  Dawn gazed around in puzzlement, at a loss to understand the purpose of this golden structure. Its similarity to the Eden temple suggested that it had some religious significance or function, and this was confirmed as details of the decorations on the walls solidified before her eyes. Crosses and other Christian symbols appeared as well as signs of the zodiac and pictures of angels and other creatures that she didn’t recognise.

  By now the temple was becoming quite crowded as more and more spirits emerged from the sleeping bodies. Several spirits jostled against her, but none paid her any attention, despite the fact that she was clinging like a limpet to the girl, which must have looked a little strange.

  Suddenly there was a sound like the blast of trumpet, and everyone around her gulped in air and held their noses. It was as if they were about to jump into a swimming pool. Even the girl, who was otherwise completely listless, raised her hand to her nose. Dawn thought she should do the same, though that meant she had to cling on to the girl with only one arm instead of two.

  Suddenly there was an upward pressure on the girl, and Dawn almost let her slip from her grasp. Desperately clinging on with her free arm, she suddenly found herself in the blackness of space with the Milky Way stretched out fuzzily before her, and off to one side the intensely bright but blurred disc of the sun. This was why everyone had to hold their noses, Dawn realised, else they would die in the vacuum.

  Up ahead a
golden disc emerged out of the blackness, growing quickly larger to become an enormous flying saucer. An opening appeared in its base, and then she and the girl and the whole congregation were inside an enormous airlock and a great door was sliding shut behind them.

  There was a loud hissing as air rushed into the airlock, some lights came on, and Dawn looked around at her cavernous surroundings and the people pressed against her. There must have been thousands crammed in this huge airlock, she supposed. They had stopped holding their noses and were now sucking in the thin air, and Dawn couldn’t help wondering why disembodied spirits needed air to survive. It was most odd, for they didn’t need oxygen to metabolise food or any other physical processes – their physical bodies, back in the auditorium, were looking after that side of things. Then she reflected that she needed to gulp in air when she was a dragon in order to fan the flames of her fire, so oxygen clearly served some function in the spirit world.

  As she gazed around and listened to the noise of the air filling the airlock, it struck her that this cavernous structure was very similar to the golden temple that had formed in the auditorium back on Earth. It too was pentagonal, and the only difference that she could see was the decorations on the walls. They were no longer religious symbols and pictures, instead they depicted giant wasp-like creatures performing strange rituals. Were these aliens from another world? It seemed likely that they were, for they resembled nothing from human mythology. And if they were from another world, then could they be the creatures that had built this flying saucer?

  Most mystifying of all, though, was the extraordinary rapture experience. The entire congregation had crossed many thousands of miles of space – perhaps millions of miles – in literally the twinkling of an eye. It really was amazing. It was as if this temple and its twin back in the auditorium in London were like those hyperspace portals beloved of science fiction writers, allowing almost instantaneous travel between two widely separated locations.

  The more she thought about it, the more she felt sure that this must be the explanation. But how on earth could COBRA have acquired such a technology? A flying saucer with a hyperspace portal could not possibly be the product of human minds. It was amazing enough that COBRA had developed the drugs and techniques for communal out-of-body experiences, let alone this. There must have been some alien input, presumably from those wasp-like creatures depicted on the walls.

  Dawn’s train of thought was interrupted by the sound of whirring machinery, and one of the golden walls slid aside. She caught a glimpse of the vast, brightly lit interior of the spaceship, and then the mass of people was shuffling forward and spilling through the opening into the light. Dawn released the girl, who still had her back to her, intending to disappear into the crowd, but to her dismay the girl immediately twisted round and managed to sneak a glance at her face before Dawn could turn away. She could only hope that this brief glimpse would not result in her eventual unmasking.

  The interior of the flying saucer, when she reached it, was astonishing. She was at the rim of a vast hemisphere which must have been more than a kilometre across. The highest point of the huge domed roof was hundreds of metres above her, and the surface of the dome shone with an inner light that illuminated the entire ship. Everything about her was bright and colourful, there was no hint of any ghostly fuzziness, which meant that there was nothing physical here. This spaceship was entirely a neurospace artefact.

  Dawn could see why these people called this place Paradise, for it was a veritable Garden of Eden. Extending before her over the entire interior of the ship was a manicured park, with grassy banks and clusters of trees and shrubs and colourful flowerbeds and a stream meandering through it, together with many paths leading through the shrubbery to numerous pagodas and other small buildings. A couple of hundred metres away, directly in front of her, was a lake with fountains, and beyond that, in the middle of the ship, was a large five-sided golden temple, again resembling the temple in the dolphin Eden. Unlike that temple, however, it had an oriental-style overhanging roof supported by pillars, and although she was too far away to make out any details, it seemed to be adorned with carvings of those wasp-like creatures. It opened onto a wide forecourt lined with flowering shrubs.

  In contrast to the alien carvings and decorations that she had seen in the airlock and on the temple in the middle of the ship, the tranquil scene before her was entirely of Earth, and she supposed that at least this part of the giant neurospace structure was the product of human minds.

  Along with the rest of the vast congregation, Dawn was not standing in the garden itself but was gazing at it from behind the glass wall of a wide enclosure that extended almost a quarter of the way around the rim of the ship. This wall of glass extended from the floor up to the domed roof, separating the congregation from the park beyond.

  Turning her attention to the enclosure itself, where she was standing, Dawn was reminded of the first-class lounge of an airport, though it was much larger and instead of chairs there were rows of king-size couches, extending as far as she could see, each one covered with red velvet and decorated with gold braid. Underfoot was a vast expanse of deep-pile pink carpet, and there were potted plants growing from large tubs dotted along the curved outer wall. This was five-star luxury on a gargantuan scale.

  As she gazed around, it suddenly struck her that gravity here felt exactly like gravity on Earth. She’d never thought about it before, but it occurred to her that spirits, being non-physical and without mass, shouldn’t really experience gravity at all, and she wondered what Einstein would make of it. It could only be that some neurospace analogue of gravity operated, connecting neurospace objects with their surroundings. If it was possible to create a structure like this through the power of imagination alone, it should certainly be possible to create a gravitational field as well. It was, she supposed, a warping of the fabric of neurospace, just as real-world gravity was a warping of physical space.

  These musings were interrupted by the abrupt realisation that she was the only one left standing. The rest were hurrying to the couches and preparing for what was to happen next. The idea seemed to be that once you had bagged a couch you opened the drawer at its base and selected an appropriate garment to wear: all around her people were undressing and donning these garments.

  The women’s attire was diaphanous and very low-cut, while the men were putting on short tunics. Dawn watched the women adjust their garments and then recline on their couches in seductive poses, and it struck her that this was like a scene from a Roman orgy. What a grotesque parody of Paradise this is, she thought.

  Spotting a vacant couch, Dawn hurried over to it and opened the drawer and pulled out the white diaphanous garment. Trying to ignore the others round about, she hastily removed her clothes and started to pull the thin silky material over her head.

  To her consternation, several whoops and then a great cheer went up, and she grabbed the hem of the garment and frantically pulled it down to cover her nakedness. But, to her relief, no one was cheering her, they were all gazing through the glass at the temple in the middle of the ship, and some of the people were even leaving their couches and hurrying to the glass for a better look. What on earth could be going on? She climbed onto her couch to see what was happening.

  Angels! Dozens of golden angels were streaming out of the temple, their bronzed limbs gleaming under the bright lights. They too were scantily clad in white garments, with what looked like wings folded across their backs. She watched transfixed as more and more angels emerged, until they filled the temple forecourt. There were several hundred of them, men and women, and they had to be the church leaders. They must have travelled separately to the ship, and the temple from which they were emerging was another portal.

  When they had all assembled, there was a loud trumpet blast, and one of their number stepped onto a small raised platform at the edge of the forecourt and started to address them. She couldn’t hear what he was saying, and she couldn’t make out his feat
ures, but he was obviously in charge, and she supposed he was the same man who had addressed the congregation back in the auditorium.

  He finished his short speech, the other angels clapped, and then there was another trumpet blast and they all set off, marching behind him in procession. They were following the broad track that meandered through the park towards the glassed enclosure and the assembled congregation. Here, people were murmuring with excitement, and those who had crowded to the glass were returning to their couches. The great celebration was about to begin.

  Dawn glanced around uncertainly. She could easily turn herself into a dragon and go on the rampage and kill thousands of people, but nothing that she had seen so far could possibly justify such extreme measures. She had no qualms at all about destroying demons, but humans were different. The thought of killing all these people gave her no pleasure at all. Although they were terribly misguided, most of them were not evil. Certainly she’d had no sense of evil when she’d invaded that girl. Her best course of action, she decided, was to join a group that had remained standing near the glass and see how things developed. She climbed off her couch walked over to them.

  “Look how many there are now,” one woman was saying. “The church is growing so fast! It’s amazing.”

  “They say our people are in key positions everywhere,” another woman replied. “Nothing can stop us now.”

  “Yeah, and we’re next in line for leadership,” the man next to her grunted, gesturing to indicate the whole group. “Then we can fuck the whole damn planet!” Everyone laughed at that.

  The procession of angels was now only a couple of hundred metres away, and Dawn could make out their features. Here the track was winding around the lake, so that she had a sideways view of their wings, and she saw that they were covered with white feathers. And then she saw something else, something that filled her with dread.

  Horns! These angels had horns! Each had a single horn sticking out from the middle of their forehead. They were long and sharp, and they looked exactly like the horns of demons. These angels are chimera, she thought, part human and part demon. The leaders of COBRA, having given themselves up to demonic forces on earth, become amalgamated with their demons here. Just as she had managed to hold on to that girl, so these demons had managed to hold on to their hosts during the rapture, and had so infected their minds that they were able to share the same spirit body here.

  She stared in dismay at the army of chimera approaching the lounge. There were hundreds of them, and for all she knew there might be more waiting inside that temple. She was hopelessly outnumbered. Her fire would be exhausted before she’d killed even a fraction of that number, and then the rest would cut her to ribbons with those horns.

  But destroy them she must. She no longer doubted that COBRA with its alien spaceship was energised by demons and a threat to Earth. She felt her heart pounding in her physical body as she watched the golden procession draw nearer. What could she do to defeat them? Would she ever leave this place alive? She was trapped on this ship, just like that UN spy had been.

  What fate had that spy suffered when her cover was blown? They probably threw her out of the airlock into the vacuum of space. Dawn pictured the poor woman gasping for breath with her lungs bursting. And then, as the grizzly scene flashed across her imagination, it came to her what she should do.

  She glanced left and right, looking for a door in the glass wall. She couldn’t see one, but she could see where the broad track was leading and guessed that there must be some kind of entrance there. She walked briskly along the inside of the wall towards it, and sure enough there was a large glass door with a red button at its side. Quite a few people were gathering in that area, waiting for the angels to arrive, and they watched her curiously as she walked up to the door. She kept her face turned towards the glass, hoping that none of them would be able to identify her later.

  “Can’t you wait?” a woman called out as she pressed the red button. “You’re not allowed out there yet. They’ll excommunicate you – or worse!”

  The door slid open and Dawn stepped through it onto the grass. She heard the door slide shut behind her, and now she was alone with the procession of angels. The head of the procession was about 50 metres away to her left, so she ran off away from them, over the grass towards a cluster of trees. They couldn’t fail to see her, of course, and someone yelled out to her.

  “You there! Where the hell d’you think you’re going?”

  She slowed to a halt and turned round. The procession had stopped, and the angel leading it was standing with his hands on his hips. She could make out his face clearly, and he was indeed the man who had addressed the congregation in the auditorium.

  “Get back inside!” he barked. “Now!”

  “I’ve got a little surprise for you,” she called back. “Watch!”

  “For chrissake! Get back inside, I said!”

  Dawn ignored him and broke into a run. Glancing back, she saw the man give a signal, and some of the angels broke ranks and started to chase after her. A couple of them even took to the air, their wings flapping noisily, but their human bodies were not designed for flying and they couldn’t travel any faster than those running over the grass.

  If the demons inhabiting them had chosen to separate themselves from their hosts it would be different story. They would be on her in seconds, cutting her to pieces with their horns. But she was gambling that they would not risk revealing their true identity to all the members of the congregation watching from the lounge. It could destroy the church, and a solitary girl indulging in a futile act of rebellion would not be worth the risk.

  She reached the cover of the trees and ran through them to a small clearing. Panting, she collapsed onto the ground, closed her eyes, and visualised herself as a dragon. There was a brief spasm of pain as her body twisted and stretched itself into its new shape, and then she was gulping in air to ignite her fires while at the same time launching herself into the air. Flapping of wings, she rose above the trees, just as her pursuers reached them.

  They halted in their tracks and stared up at her in astonishment. She didn’t attack them, instead she drove herself upwards, towards the domed roof of the ship. One of the angels cried out in pain and fell to the ground, and glancing back she saw that his wings had shrivelled and that the horn in his forehead had turned silver, and then it was attached not to his forehead but to a silver disc that was emerging from his head.

  His possessing demon was leaving him! It had recognised her for what she was and was prepared to reveal itself to destroy her. The demon floated above the man’s writhing body for a moment, and then its wings whirred furiously and it came hurtling towards her, its horn aimed directly at her belly. Fire exploded up her throat, she aimed her jaws at the creature, and moments later its incandescent remains were spinning to the ground.

  Now more of the angels were screaming out in pain, and she knew that more demons would soon be hurtling at her. She didn’t have much time, but she had reached the ship’s roof and now she was directing her fire at it. To her rear she heard the furious whirring of wings, but they were too late. The roof was already ablaze, its inner surface was peeling away, and now the outer skin was glowing bright red. She held her fire, and at once the outer skin exploded outwards and then air was rushing past her into the blackness of space beyond.

  She held her fire for a few seconds more, directing it at the edge of the gaping aperture, and then the wall of the ship buckled and split wide open and the rush of air was so great that she had to brace her legs against the twisted metal to keep herself from being blown into space.

  There was a stab of intense pain in her side, and her whole body jerked, almost throwing her off-balance. Righting herself, she whipped her head round, and saw that a silver demon had buried its horn in one of her scales, shattering it. She snarled, and fire burst from her jaws and wrapped itself around the creature. There was a howl of agony and a puff of acrid black smoke, then all that was lef
t of the thing was the stub of its horn protruding from her side. She grabbed the stub with her teeth and yanked it hard. The pain shrieked through her, but the horn came out, to be caught by the wind and sent spinning through the jagged hole into the void beyond. Blood spilled from the wound, and it too was caught by the wind and swept away into space.

  The air was noticeably thinner now, and alarms were sounding throughout the ship. Thinner air might compromise her ability to produce fire, and she glanced around anxiously, afraid that more demons might be coming at her and that she would be unable to defend herself. But what met her eyes was a scene of utter panic. Angels were rushing over the grass towards the enclosure, and some had already reached it and were banging on the glass wall and the door in a desperate attempt to get in. The door refused to budge, and Dawn supposed that an automatic emergency system had locked it to prevent air escaping from the enclosure. That meant that the ordinary COBRA members were safe behind the glass, at least for the moment.

  Many of the angels were now collapsing and writhing on the ground, gasping for air, and everywhere demons were emerging out of their skulls. They hopped around by their human hosts like demented frogs, evidently unable to fly in the thin atmosphere and as desperate as their human hosts for oxygen. Even demons abhorred a vacuum, it seemed.

  As for Dawn, her dragon body seemed to be entirely unaffected by the lack of air. This puzzled her, and the explanation only came to her later. It was because she, alone among the spirits gathered here, possessed blood – spirit blood. Not only did that mysterious substance transport energy from her physical body to feed her fire, it fed her sufficient oxygen to sustain her.

  Unaware of this aspect of dragon physiology, she played safe by gulping in as much of the thin air as she could and then transformed herself back into her human form and then promptly enclosed herself in her red VW Beetle. Now she could no longer feel any pain from that stab wound, and when she looked down at herself there was no sign of any blood seeping onto her clothes. That, of course, was because, unlike her dragon body, her human spirit body didn’t have blood. Just like all the other spirits here.

  It also meant that her human spirit would die in the vacuum of space. For the moment, though, she was safe inside her VW Beetle, and now her only question was, would this machine be able to fly in a vacuum?

  She thought it would. She was convinced that the Rolls Royce jet engine in her rear, belching fire and hot gases, utilized her dragon nature. Certainly it wasn’t powered by aviation fuel, and the only alternative that she could think of was that dragon blood flowed through it, feeding it with energy from her sleeping body. She realised later that it was also this blood, flowing through a converter in the engine, that was replenishing the oxygen in her cabin.

  The alarms were no longer sounding, and Dawn guessed that there was now too little air to carry the sound. So would her car really be able to fly in a vacuum? Settling into the driving seat, and with her heart in her mouth, she turned the ignition key. To her great relief, the jet engine roared into life, billowing black smoke and fire. Releasing the handbrake, she spun the steering wheel and gently pressed the accelerator pedal, and the car responded perfectly. Taking her foot off the accelerator, she glided high above the idyllic parkland.

  Above her, the domed roof of the ship was still shining with its internal light, as though nothing was amiss, and below her the grass and the shrubs and the flowers were still full of colour. But that was the only sign of normality, for scattered over the grass and the glass window of the lounge were hundreds of gold and silver bodies, and although many were still twitching most were motionless.

  As she watched, one of the golden bodies suddenly vanished, and then another, and moments later dozens more disappeared. They had ceased to exist in the neurospace universe. Perhaps they had been obliterated, or perhaps they had departed to some kind of afterlife. But whatever their ultimate fate, they were disappearing fast, and in a little while only the motionless bodies of the silver demons remained. Unlike the humans, they were denizens of neurospace, and their bodies survived even death.

  With a light touch on the accelerator pedal, Dawn allowed her Beetle to circle above the park and the temple. Now nothing moved below. Flying past the lounge, she saw through the glass the frightened faces of the people crowded in there, staring out at her. Evidently the air within the lounge was not escaping, or only very slowly, so they would survive.

  She felt hugely pleased with herself. She had accomplished everything she had wanted, and the great mass of innocent – or largely innocent – people were safe. And now, thankfully, she could depart. Steering her car to the gaping hole in the roof, she managed after some reversing and wheel-twisting to manoeuvre it through. The trouble was her wings stuck out quite far, and the gap was only just large enough, and she wasn’t used to having to steer her Beetle with such precision. If this had been a real-world object she could have flown straight through it, of course. However, she was eventually through and speeding out into the blackness of space.

  The golden expanse of the huge flying saucer filled her rear-view mirror. As she watched it shrink to a disc behind her, it struck her that it was shining not with the reflected light of the sun, which was off to one side, but with its own illumination. She was reminded of the temple in Eden, which glowed with an inner light in the early dawn, except that this was a brighter, harsher light.

  The earth, which had been hidden behind the gleaming saucer, swung into view. Unlike the ship, this had a ghostly, washed-out appearance, but she could make out the blueness of sea and the darker colours of some of the continents. Part of it was in darkness, and here she could make out fuzzy splotches of light from the large centres of population. But it was too indistinct to identify what part of the planet she was looking at or where the South Pacific and the Solomon Islands were located. Since she had travelled straight up to the ship from London less than an hour ago, she supposed the Pacific must be on the opposite side of the globe.

  She swung her car round in a wide arc to head for Earth. As she sped past the ship, she noted its high domed roof and its flattened base, and the jagged rupture that she had made in its smooth surface was clearly visible. Studying it, she had no doubt that it must have been fashioned by aliens from another world, and she wondered if any more of their vessels were circling the planet. No physical telescope would be able to see them, and to try to search for them in the vastness of neurospace would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. But whether there was one ship or many, all those tales of alien abductions and flying saucers must have had their origins here.

  She wondered what would become of this ship when all the people in the lounge awoke from their trance. They would find themselves back in their bodies on Earth, and the ship would be left empty. It was a purely mental construction, just like the dolphins’ Eden, so what would happen to it when there were no minds left inside to sustain it? Would it wink out of existence? She was tempted to hang around to see.

  And then it occurred to her that it could be an hour or more before the effects of the rapture drug wore off and the people started to wake up, and in the meantime air could be seeping out of the lounge and many of them might die. The most humane thing to do, she decided, was to fly back to the auditorium as quickly as possible and get the ushers to wake everyone up early.

  And so she hit the accelerator and turned her car towards Earth. She held her foot hard down, and soon the planet was growing visibly larger. Now she could make out the fuzzy shape of Europe, and then the British Isles, and then she was diving towards a huge bank of clouds hanging over southeast England.

  “Central London, Trafalgar Square,” she told her satnav. The steering wheel twisted and yanked beneath her grasp, and the car changed course and drove through the clouds. Half a minute later she was through the clouds and skidding to a halt in the air just a few hundred metres from Nelson’s Column and not far from the conference centre. On this occasion the device had worked almost perfect
ly.

  Transforming herself into a dragon once more, she flew through the roof of the centre and into the auditorium. The scene below was one of complete tranquillity, with everyone slumped in their seats and a few ushers lounging around at the sides. The neurospace temple that had been here before had disappeared; she had expected that, for there were no longer any spirit minds here to sustain it.

  She paused for a moment, testing the atmosphere for any sense of a demonic presence. There was none, and so without more ado she flew straight down and into the head of one of the sleeping bodies. The cathedral of that individual’s mind rose up around her, lit dimly by the flickering flame above the altar at the end of the nave. But it was enough to see by, and in moments she was descending onto the altar and engulfed in a sense of oneness. And then she was inhabiting a man’s body, and she was feeling very drowsy.

  She forced her eyes open and shook her head vigorously to clear it. The grogginess receded slightly, and she managed to push herself up from her seat. She looked around and spotted a group of ushers lounging against the wall near the front of the auditorium. “There’s been a disaster,” she called out to them hoarsely. “The ship’s been attacked! You’ve got to wake everyone!”

  “For God’s sake, keep your voice down,” one of them called back. “You’ll wake everyone up.”

  “We’ve got to wake them, people are dying up there!”

  “You’re crazy, something’s gone wrong with your trance. Now shut up!”

  “People are dying, I tell you,” she yelled, shaking the sleeping woman in the seat to her left. “A rocket ship is attacking us!”

  The woman didn’t immediately respond, and Dawn shook her more violently. Suddenly she awoke and started screaming. Dawn immediately turned to the man on her right and shook him awake too. He opened his eyes blearily, stared at her, then cried out, “They’re dead! Oh God, they’re all dead!”

  “Wake everyone up!” Dawn yelled at him, shaking him hard. Then she turned to the screaming woman and slapped her across the face. The woman stopped screaming and stared dumbly up at her.

  “Pull yourself together,” Dawn hissed. “Get everyone awake. It’s their only chance!”

  The woman blinked, and then she seemed to come to her senses, for she turned to the woman next to her and started shaking her. The ushers had now become very agitated, and several of them were trying to wake up one of the leaders at the front. “Don’t bother with them,” Dawn called out. “They’re all dead!”

  They stared at her, aghast. But instead of rushing to help wake up the ordinary members they turned back to the leaders and tried to shake others awake. Meanwhile Dawn’s small group of helpers were shaking more and more people awake, and soon there were more than 30 at work. They were in a state of shock, and some were sobbing, but they all joined in the task of trying to shake awake everyone around them.

  Dawn felt someone shaking her shoulders. She turned, but to her surprise there was no one there. Mystified, she tried to push the invisible hands away, but the shaking grew stronger, and she realised that the owner of this body that she’d hijacked must be waking up too and was trying to regain control. Since there was nothing more that she could do, she didn’t resist his pressure, and suddenly she found herself back in the cathedral of the man’s mind, standing in front of the golden altar. Now the stained-glass window was alight, and she saw that he was looking around at the people around him desperately trying to get everyone awake.

  Her mission accomplished, it was now time to leave. Closing her eyes, she dismissed the cathedral imagery from her mind and flew up through the cathedral roof into the sky above the conference centre, and moments later she was in her red Beetle and hurtling southwest over the Atlantic Ocean back towards her sleeping body. It would be bedtime back home.

  She had wondered about returning to that spaceship to see what had happened to it after the last person left, but this was merely idle curiosity and in any case she would never find it again in the vastness of space. Besides, she was feeling greatly exhilarated by her great success, and she fancied a large portion of that sticky toffee pudding that she’d left in the fridge and a glass of sweet wine to celebrate. The resulting sugar rush should revive her flagging fires quite nicely, and then she would give Rick one of her red-hot goodnight kisses. It would be a fitting climax to a glorious day.

  Fourteen

  “Australia, Adelaide, Royal Adelaide Hospital.” Dawn spoke these instructions into the satnav on the dashboard. What dangers awaited her there, she wondered?

  This mission was an indirect consequence of her epic journey to London and the spaceship called Paradise, four years earlier, and visions of that army of golden angels and silver demons sprang into her mind. This would be a piece of cake in comparison, for it was just an errand of mercy, though she had reason to believe that dark forces were behind that call for help.

  Her mighty vehicle banked and roared south over the Pacific, and in less than five minutes she had crossed a thousand miles of ocean and a thousand miles of Australia and was shuddering to a halt above Adelaide. She tilted the car to check the cityscape below through the windscreen, and there was the hospital, not half a mile away. She recognised it from the aerial photograph on the internet.

  She had come to visit a comatose patient, one Angela Lane. Angela had been in a coma for four years, and today her life-support system was to be turned off. Although there was almost certainly nothing that could be done to restore Angela’s consciousness and so save her life, Dawn felt that she should at least try. For she had inadvertently caused Angela’s condition.

  She had first heard about Angela Lane two months previously, from one of Rick’s cousins. Dawn had met Karen only briefly 12 years before, shortly after she and Rick had married, but out of the blue they had received an email from her to say she was visiting the Solomons for a short holiday and could she stay with them. Rick had of course agreed, and they had spent a few hectic days showing Karen the sights and trying to entertain her. It should have been easy, for Karen was 30, the same age as Dawn, but things had been quite awkward between them.