It happened at 8.10 pm on the night of Thursday 15^th February l996. It was the beginning of the start of the Sea Empress supertanker environmental disaster. Not that anyone foresaw quite how the future would unfold for there was a false sense of security since a few months earlier the Borga supertanker had similarly run aground.

You might be wondering what supertankers and environmental disaster have to do with the Normans; warlords or otherwise. But that's how the history of Pembrokeshire is: Pembrokeshire with its Milford Haven Waterway the mouth of the Welsh dragon - look at a map of Wales and you'll see what I mean; snapping wide open into the Atlantic Ocean, the western seaboard of the European Union.

Look east and what do you find? Normans. Look west and what do you see? Islands with Nordic names such as Skokholm, Skomer and Grassholm. Pembrokeshire, where the two lines of Viking bloodlines met. Like some gigantic pincer movement one tribe went south into France and the other west round Scotland and into Ireland, then the jaws snapped shut at Pembrokeshire.

Was it part of some grand design or did it happen naturally? Naturally in the sense of spontaneously. One thing for sure though and that is that the Norman Conquest of Britain which began in 1066 was successful and over nine hundred years later is still the essential reality of the World we live in; not the same but different: our society evolving from the dictatorship of an absolute monarchy to our current vision of democracy.

In Pembrokeshire you can witness this evolution at first hand: the Norman castles and churches - all built of the same grey limestone which blends in perfectly with the blue of sea and sky, and the green of the countryside; in the Milford Haven Waterway the ships which, like the Sea Empress, work with the three oil refineries and power station that provide the energy to fuel our extravagant and wasteful current lifestyles.

There is a beauty about a ship on the sea even if it's one of the ocean's unglamorous workhorses like an oil tanker but even more so if it's a sailing ship. But that glamour would be one of terror if the ship had the sleek lines of a Viking longship or was a clumsy looking Norman merchantman; its hold pregnant with men and munitions.

Or would it? You see Pembrokeshire has always been cosmopolitan, always lots of people migrating here from other parts of Britain and Europe. The engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806 - 59) had a vision of Pembrokeshire as the gateway between the Old World and the New; between Britain and America.

The result of his vision being the Great Western Railway which eventually linked Pembrokeshire (with termini at Fishguard, Neyland, the town of Milford Haven and Pembroke Dock) with London via the Severn Tunnel. Nowadays Neyland no longer has a railway line and Pembroke Dock's has been torn up for its last half-mile so that the Port of Pembroke no longer has a rail terminal. Brunel was a man of vision, a genius: what so those who would destroy his works?

Still, they don't look at it like that because it's peacetime and Pembrokeshire's a long way from London ... and Brussels too. In the Battle of the Atlantic during the Second World War then Pembrokeshire was needed ... but in peacetime; many local people have expressed the view that if the Sea Empress scenario had happened off the coast of South East England then a full-scale military mobilisation would have taken place followed by a public inquiry.

Our biggest industry is nowadays the World's biggest industry: Tourism. In the main our tourists are working class families from England coming for holidays to enjoy the Sun, sea and sand. Sandcastles and Norman castles: what is this fascination with castles which afflicts us all? Some of the castles are small: motte-and-bailey castles like Sentence Castle near Templeton in the south of the county and New Moat near Maenclochog in the north; simply a circular ditch with its contents piled up to form a central mound but still in existence even though built hundreds of years before Columbus discovered America in 1492.

Why did the Normans bother to build their castles? Because they were here to stay. With our modern European Union we think in terms of grandiose schemes like trans-European integrated transport systems: networks of roads, railways, airways and shipping lanes. In Pembrokeshire we've got ferry terminals to Ireland, and roads and railways to the ferry ports of Southern England and so on to Continental Europe. We've got an airport too but not one with scheduled services, the closest one of those being at Cardiff - which since l955 has been the capital of Wales.

So we today and the Normans of so long ago think in terms of Europe: an outward looking Europe built on trade and not an inward looking one with a line of schizophrenia furrowed in its brow with the boundary of the English Channel. So in their ability to think European the Normans were more advanced than us and only now are we beginning to catch them up.

So shall we build castles too? After all that is what Cardiff is doing in its bid to become a major European capital city. But then this story couldn't have been written in Cardiff because Cardiff doesn't possess the mystery and magic of the Preseli Bluestones, which have been preserved for posterity since 1952 within the environs of the Pembrokeshire Coastal National Park.

"What!!?"

"It's based on a piece of reverse engineering from a component which was salvaged from an alien spacecraft which crashlanded in West Wales during the Second World War."

The President of the United States of America looked incredulously at the contraption, which lay on his desk, then at General George Baker the joint chief of staff of the American armed forces, and at Cleopatra Binns who was a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Harvard University. Then he checked the calendar to make sure it wasn't April first. He got up and stood in front of the Oval Office's window surveying the White House grounds then turned his head and spoke to Binns: "It doesn't look much like a computer to me."

"That's because it's not a digital computer, it's an analog computer." Then she added somewhat disparagingly: "I expect your wife would understand."

The President shot a glance at Baker who laughed nervously: "She's quite a girl, isn't she? Sometimes makes me feel so stupid too, ha, ha!"

A thought crossed the President's mind and he grinned seeming to agree with Baker's humour; in fact the pair of them had reminded him of the pair of robots in Star Wars: Baker tall and gangly, Binns short and squat.

Binns reacted angrily: "This wasn't my idea! I was asked to assess some photographs and this is my evaluation based on the so-called facts which for all I know could be a cock-and-bull story made up by some ... some ... somebody who's being silly;" controlling her temper she cast her eyes at the ground and bit her tongue.

Binns was an interesting character, salvaged by a social worker from the inner city streets where she ran wild as a child leading a gang of kids involved in selling drugs, she'd achieved World wide fame for developing as her doctor of philosophy thesis the solution to Albert Einstein's unified field theory and at the age of twenty-nine was a Harvard professor and a visiting professor at Cambridge in England, etcetera.

The President asked Binns: "But if George really made it all up then how come your computer emerged out of it?" The President and Binns found themselves staring into each other's eyes and he found himself wondering whether or not if Baker had not been present then would she be compliant. He chuckled as a thought crossed his mind: 'Would she understand if he told her that his wife didn't understand him?' That thought brought him back to something she'd said: "I know this might be a stupid question, and forgive me if it is, but what did you mean when you said that my wife would understand your computer?"

"A woman's menstrual cycle is related to the period of the Moon's orbit around Earth. As such her body acts as a kind of computer. Not a silicon chip digital computer but a flesh and blood analog computer."

Baker gaily interjected: "I'm glad I didn't say that, I always thought that you had a reputation for being a feminist!"

The President ignored Baker then spoke softly to Binns: "So what you are saying is that this ... this analog computer can actually do something. Tell me, what can it do?"

"It's not so much about what it can do, but what it enables one to do. It's a component, in the same sense that a wheel is a component. If we didn't have wheels we couldn't have automobiles, trucks, trains, planes. To all intents and purposes we'd be back in the Stone Age where if one wanted to go anywhere then one would do so by foot or on the back of another animal."

Baker eagerly interjected: "Mister President this gives us a strategic technological edge in maintaining American status as the World's number one military power. I suggest we set up a programme to evaluate the new technology and incorporate it into our defence plans. We'll need two maybe three hundred, no billion dollars!"

The President didn't seem to hear him. "Are you saying that we could be witnessing the dawn of a new age?"

Binns eyed Baker: "Certainly the end of an old one but whether mankind has a meaningful future will depend not only on our understanding of the new technology but how we exploit it."

The President's voice was grave: "Look guys I'm quite prepared to accept the premise that Life exists elsewhere in the Universe, perhaps forms of Life that are more advanced and intelligent than we are but ... and it's a big but ... the President of the United States of America can't ..."

Baker interjected: "Can't be seen as some science fiction nut who believes in little green men!"

The President nodded: "Precisely."

Baker attempted to exert control: "That's why it's doubly important to keep the project top secret: to maintain our technological edge and the credibility of the Presidency."

"What project?" Asked Binns.

"Err ... That's top secret, you don't need to know."

"You mean you don't know either!"

The President regained control: "Cut the crap guys. We're obviously in a situation where there are more questions than answers and soon I'll have to leave to greet the British Primeminister so we'll meet again at a later date. Okay?"

The office's door opened and the President's wife appeared: "You'd better hurry Bill, Tony's motorcade will be entering the grounds in two minutes ... Oh, Cleopatra, how lovely to see you after so long." The two women embraced and kissed. "Bill, why didn't you tell me that we had such a distinguished guest? Well now you're here I want you to stay. You haven't met Tony and Cherie, have you?"

As the two women walked arm-in-arm out of the office Binns glanced over her shoulder and grinned triumphantly at the scouring Baker.

"Well Tony, now we're on our own there's something I'd like to ask you ... strictly off the record, if you know what I mean."

"Fine with me, Bill."

"Listen ... do you watch Star Trek, the X Files ... all that paranormal science fiction stuff?"

"I have done but I don't really get much time for the TV these days."

"Ha, ha, nor do I but some people believe in all that, do you?"

"Well I don't believe that the stories are true to life and based on factual information but on the other hand ... well, who knows, either we are alone or we are not alone."

"Well put Tony I like that: either we are alone or we are not alone. If you don't mind I think I'll use that, is that okay?"

"Sure thing Bill, be my guest." The British Primeminister sipped from a glass of water and surprised since the President of the United States of America didn't seem to have anything serious to discuss cleared his throat and was going to raise his own agenda.

But the President continued along the same vague chatty theme: "You been to West Wales Tony, to a place called Pembrokeshire?"

"It so happens I was there last year, there was the Sea Empress oil supertanker environmental disaster ... if you remember?"

"I sure do Tony, I sure do. But that's not why I raised the subject. See the thing is we used to have a US Navy facility at a place in Pembrokeshire called Brawdy. Only closed a year or two ago but during the Cold War its job was to monitor the hydrophones we lay along the ocean floor at the approaches to the North Atlantic in order to keep under surveillance the movements of Soviet submarines as they left and returned to their bases at Murmansk.

"As you'll appreciate this operation required a high level of security. By comparing what we knew with the factual information the Soviets would know how efficient our detection systems really were. So we had CIA agents infiltrated amongst the base's US Navy personnel and no one, not even the base commander, would know who they were; probably wouldn't even suspect that such a low key covert operation was being undertaken."

"Makes you people sound a bit more sinister than the KGB!"

"Not really but people can get led astray, hey!" Bill nudged Tony and the two men shared a knowing smile. "Anyway, our man infiltrated the local drugs scene to check it out and by that mechanism made contact with a female scientist who was working at your nearby top secret subterranean research establishment at Trecwn." The President flashed a triumphant smile: "You didn't know we knew that Tony, did you?"

"Knew what?"

"About Trecwn."

"I must admit that I haven't the foggiest idea about what you're talking about."

"Trecwn ... you claim it's just an ammunition store but we know its true designation."

"Well in that case you know more than me, I'll have to look into this later."

"No need I can tell you. Trecwn's been decommissioned, closed down. Which leads to the question: What became of the subterranean top secret laboratories? Have they been closed down too?"

"I simply don't know!"

"Must have been, mustn't they. In which case, where have they been relocated to? That's what I want to know."

"Assuming your scenario is correct, and I have no evidence to make a judgement on its truth or otherwise, would you mind sharing with me why you want to know?"

"It's what George Bush called the New World Order at the time of the Gulf War: USA number one and you Brits big in Europe. Number one in Europe if you play your cards right, we don't mind, we'd like you to be. America and Britain go back a long way, fought and won a lot of wars together but now you're messing all that up, you're holding back on us."

"Are we Bill?"

"Sure are Tony ... don't you think it's time you came clean? New administration, new start. The British people have seen sense, returned to their roots, and voted in you and your colleagues. But wouldn't it be best to make a clean breast of it all and come clean?"

"I'm sorry Bill, I don't understand what on Earth you could be talking about?"

"In that case we're going to have to trust each other. What I'm asking for is for the US Army to send in a team of experts to examine Trecwn from top to bottom. Secret operation, no publicity."

"What would you expect them to find?"

"Can't say Tony, can't say, but this is important enough for me to ask you this favour in the US national interest, and for the future peace and stability of mankind."

"How about if I make enquires of our Ministry of Defence when I return home and give you a ring?"

"So that everything can be removed that you don't want us to know about ... look Tony, how about if our team visits Trecwn to inspect the site for toxic waste; soil samples, test drillings, that sort of low key thing."

"In principle I'd like Britain to cooperate and so build on our special relationship but I do really need a reason."

"UFO."

"Pardon!!?"

Bill laughed: "Unidentified flying objects: seems like there's been considerable UFO activity over Pembrokeshire since the Second World War and we've got proof that the British government believes in UFOs since in the late 1970s a governmental agency known as the Wales' Tourist Board marketed UFO spotting holidays in the Pembrokeshire Coastal National Park. The Pentagon assumes that anyway, they also have reason to believe that contact has been made with aliens of identity unknown. In order to preserve the New World Order we need to know what you know otherwise you've got an unfair technological advantage which could upset the status quo and initiate global conflict."

Tony was serious: "Bill, I'm not really happy with the drift of this conversation. If you believe in little green men then that is really your own concern but there really are more pressing matters to discuss. Such as the environment with regard to Britain's emissions of greenhouse gases, specifically carbondioxide emissions and the plans to import Orimulsion from Venezuela to be burned at Pembroke Power Station ... in the same part of the World, what a coincidence?"

Bill gripped Tony's knee and looked him straight in the eye: "You Brits are good at inventing things, but hopeless at developing them. Computers, jet engines, supersonic jet planes, Harrier jump jets, twin rotor helicopters, trains ... you name it you invented it ... but we developed it ... the tank, good example, military application of technology. The Pentagon believes you possess a piece of new technology and they want to develop it."

Tony was experiencing physical discomfort from Bill's grip of his knee and, given his reputation, found himself wondering what sort of bedroom games he got up to ... then forced himself to confront the issue: "You're saying that the Pentagon believes the Ministry of Defence know something which they are keeping secret from the political establishment?"

"Yes!" Tony winced in pain as Bill's grip instantly tightened: "Sorry Tony ... sometimes the sci-fi nuts come up with stories of the aliens taking over, infiltrating our institutions to the highest levels."

"The press do use science fiction analogies to poke fun at the opposition. One's described as a Vulcan after Mister Spock in Star Trek and their new leader is described as the Mekong after the character in the old Dan Dare stories ... and with Margaret Thatcher as Primeminister it was as if the whole country had been abducted by aliens! ... But Bill, I don't believe they are aliens in that respect, perhaps from humanity but not aliens from outer space."

"Perhaps they've been brainwashed then! Perhaps the aliens are taking over by reprogramming our mentality?"

The thought crossed Tony's mind that perhaps that wouldn't be a bad idea in Bill's case since by reputation he was rather weak on moral values; "But what would they possibly have to gain?"

"Power ... doesn't matter about anything else, whether they have a rational or irrational reason ... at the end of the day it's just about power."

Bullshit baffles brains and the British Primeminister decided to humour the President of the United States of America in order to find a way out of this cosmic maze: "How about a joint undercover team? Pentagon and MI5 too, in line with your suggestion to survey Trecwn for toxic waste?"

"Great thinking Tony, that will do nicely."

"Hmmm ... I was just wondering Bill, whether the United States would like to place an exhibit in my new Millennium Dome ..."

"I have never felt so humiliated in my entire life! That a professor of this establishment should publicly proclaim to be in communication with aliens from outer space!"

"I never said that."

"Then how do you explain this!" Dorothea Deakin, the Principal of Harvard University, flung down a copy of the Wales on Sunday newspaper on to her desk in front of a confused looking Cleopatra Binns.

Binns nudged it away from her: "I've already seen it. I don't know who they've been talking to but it wasn't me."

"Good God woman, in it you claim that aliens told you how to solve Einstein's unified field theory!"

"I ... I ...." Binns bit her tongue: her discussions with the President and General Baker, together with all that went with it, had been top secret and in the interests of national security not to be repeated to third parties; Binns was caught between the devil and the deep blue sea and knew it.

"You claim, and I quote, that aliens showed you how to make a new kind of computer and that enabled you to solve the theory." Deakin almost screamed: "If it wasn't all so unbelievable it would actually be funny! But it isn't even funny, it's stupid, it's so darned stupid. Don't you realise what you're doing, you're admitting to plagiarism!"

"I guess then that that must be why I wasn't given the Nobel Prize for my theory." Spat out Binns defiantly.

"So that's it, is it? All this is some kind of twisted revenge against the scientific establishment ... you must be even more stupid than you look!"

Binns seethed: "Because I don't dye my hair blonde like you and ... and because I don't have a white skin."

Deakin seemed to suddenly realise where the trading of insults was leading her and felt a shiver of fear along her spine: "I apologise, I shouldn't have ..."

"Shouldn't have what?"

Deakin regained self-control: "I really don't think there is any point in us pursuing this conversation. You know as well as me that the reason you didn't receive the Nobel Prize was because you made some rather outlandish predictions. If you had exercised a degree of self-control and published observations which were easily verifiable then I have no doubt that you would have been awarded the Nobel Prize by now."

Binns sulked: "So it's not because I'm short, fat, ugly and black."

Deakin beamed: "Of course not my dear but, remember, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and, who knows ... why, you could walk out of this office and bump into a man to whom you'd be the girl of his dreams."

"Oh come off it, that's so corny, get real!"

After softening Binns up, Deakin attacked: "Perhaps you're the one who should get real. When you published your theory you claimed that it confirmed the fundamental instability of the Solar System. And the scientific community has been in turmoil ever since and God only knows what the socio-economic consequences have been."

Binns shrugged: "So ... the truth's the truth."

Deakin shook her head: "That's where you're wrong. I have a vision for this university. That it should contribute to bringing peace and stability to mankind."

Binns was sarcastic: "So that we all can live happy ever after."

"Yes, why not?"

"Because it ain't like that. We are the stuff of the stars. We human beings are only possible because of the previous evolutionary history of the Universe. If you think that that history has come to an end because we've been invented then you're the one who is stupid!"

"So you don't see much of a future for mankind then?"

"No, not unless we get off this planet."

"So your newspaper story is some kind of warning to raise the level of public consciousness?"

"I told you, that story's got nothing to do with me at all."

"Are you certain of that? After all, you claimed that 2001's total eclipse of the Sun in the South Atlantic will be annular. Do you still stand by that?"

"Yes."

"And if it isn't?"

"It will be."

"Yes, but if you're wrong?"

Binns got Deakin's drift: "Then it will disprove my theory about the fundamental instability of the Solar System and my solution to Einstein's unified field theory will be ..."

Deakin was sympathetic: "You're under a lot of pressure, aren't you?"

"That's the way I live my life. I like to feel the pressure, I like to live on the edge, it gives me a buzz."

Deakin interjected: "Instead of drugs?"

"I don't take drugs."

Deakin with deliberation put on her glasses and opened a file which lay on her desk: "At the age of twelve you had a drugs related criminal record which if you had been an adult would have meant a prison sentence of between twenty and thirty years."

Binns seethed: "But I wasn't, I was just a kid!"

"Admittedly yours was a tragic childhood. A father you never knew who died of a drugs overdose when you were a baby and a mother ... well a mother ..."

"You leave my family out of this!"

"Okay, let's cool it, let's try and be rational. Okay?"

Binns mumbled: "Okay;" she'd guessed what was coming next and it still deeply traumatised her.

"At the age of thirteen you were gang raped and hospitalised for six months. During your stay in hospital a transformation took place ... or shall we say a conversion ... a conversion on a par with Saint Paul's on the road to Damascus for ten years later you had solved the foremost obstacle in mathematics and theoretical physics. For you had obtained a solution to Einstein's unified field theory and ... well, at the end of the day that's why we're sitting here."

Binns was sitting hunched up with her face in her hands, sobbing deeply from the bottom of her lungs.

Deakin took off her glasses and walked around her desk, crouched down and put her arms around Binns: "Now, now, Cleopatra, you're safe now, everything is going to be all right. How about if we took a little holiday? You've been working too hard. Why not take a sabbatical?"

"I ... I ..." then she sobbed uncontrollably.

Deakin sighed: Binns was finished. She knew it, Binns knew it, the World knew it. Still it would be far from easy to find a replacement: Binns was head and shoulders above her contemporaries and was probably the university's most valuable asset in terms of attracting the best students and business sponsorship. But a line had been crossed and the university's credibility was at stake. As far as Deakin was concerned the choice was simple: the longterm future of the university or standing by Binns. She relented: "You know, you're worth your weight in gold to this institution ... it would be a pity to lose you but ..."

"Well help me then" Binns hissed and stared into her eyes.

"We would if we could but what can I say?"

Binns could see a glint in her eyes that seemed to betray the care and compassion of her voice and expression. "Well we'll see about that, I'm going to see the First Lady!" She spat out defiantly. The First Lady naturally held up Binns as a role model of redemption for inner city kids who'd been led astray and through her influence Binns had been made American Woman of the Year ... besides the Congressional Medal of Honour, plus assorted gongs from here, there and everywhere.

Deakin declined to rise to the bait: "Well I think we'd better leave it at that. In the meantime I've cancelled all your classes and tutorials until the university's internal board of inquiry reaches its findings. So you'll have time to take that holiday after all. I hear that Paris is nice in the spring!"

"Well why don't you go there then?"

"Oh I'm needed here. I'm much too busy to take a holiday."

"Too busy! What do you do? You're just a bureaucrat, a pen-pusher, all you do is get in the way of those of us who do the real work around here. Teaching the students and conducting research. You don't even know the difference between a pion and a muon! If a black-hole stared you in the face ..."

The familiar scrap between Deakin and Binns was erupting: Binns who believed that research and teaching should be paramount, Deakin who believed that everyone had to fit on the hierarchical ladder of the institution. At the end of the day it was about who was in charge: Deakin or Binns. At present it was Deakin but they both knew that Binns wanted to reverse that. Deakin had interrupted with an attack: "You're like a retrovirus contaminating the heart of this institution. Out of order you want to bring chaos, out of stability you want to produce anarchy."

Binns seethed: "If I'm a retrovirus then you're a cancer. You're a malignant growth sapping the inspiration that is the lifeblood of this institution in order to build your silly little empire and stifle free-thinking research. You're genetical, that's what you are. It's genetic; it's in your genes. Why don't you go back to Europe where they came from!"

Deakin responded cattily: "And I suppose your hairstyle means you're a native American?"

Deakin was referring to Binns' magnificent Mohican style hairstyle which was adorned with beads and dyed a variety of colours; Binns hissed: "Well if it's good enough for them, it's good enough for me!"

Deakin put on an air: "I think that there's no point in prolonging this meeting. It's served its purpose and until you receive further notification you're to stay away from the university's buildings and amenities."

"You mean I've been grounded?"

"Call it what you will but if you challenge this ruling ..."

"Challenge this ruling! You bet I will, I'm going to see the First Lady!"

"Well go and see her then. That will be all for now. Goodnight Miss Binns."

"And goodnight to you Mrs Deakin."

Deakin called in her secretary who escorted Binns out of the office suite and into the corridor. Binns walked steadfastly towards the exit when she realised that a man, who seemed to have appeared from nowhere, was walking besides her.

"Professor Cleopatra Binns?" He inquired.

"How may I help you?"

He took out his wallet flashing a badge of identity: "I'm CIA agent Tom Carter and I have to ask you to accompany me at once to an urgent meeting with General Baker."

Binns was disappointed: although middle-aged Carter was a tall handsome man with a powerful build; to Binns he looked a bit like her favourite filmstar Harrison Ford. She was sarcastic: "And you can't tell me what it's about because you don't know. But I do, so okay let's go."

Carter drove her in silence for about forty minutes. He'd tried to make small talk conversation but Binns was deep in thought and either ignored him or made monosyllabic answers. They passed through what was described as the entrance of a mental hospital, Carter explaining that the meeting was to take place in a secret US Air Force nuclear command centre bunker that was situated eighty feet below the hospital. They drove from the entrance to the hospital building then through the grounds to an annex. Binns politely thanked him for the ride and they parted on good terms. He watched as she walked towards the entrance and opened a door that closed behind her.

Carter congratulated himself on a job well done and drove home confident in the knowledge of a job well done. For Binns it was the beginning of a nightmare: she'd swapped one institution for another; but instead of being a university professor she was now a mental hospital inmate.

When Carter heard the breakfast news over a cup of coffee the following morning he heard that Professor Binns had voluntarily been admitted to a mental hospital; the university explaining that she had been experiencing hallucinations about aliens: the cause being put down to stress due to overwork and it was hoped that she would soon be able to recommence her responsibilities. Carter looked at his reflection in a mirror, his face ashen grey; he felt a knot in his stomach and a chill in his body like someone walking over his grave. He was part of something he didn't understand and which he didn't like and he felt used; ashamed to be what and who he was, and he'd never felt quite like that before.

After a few humiliating encounters with the ward staff which inevitably ended up in her being physically overpowered, trussed up in a strait-jacket in the padded cell and drugged up to her eyeballs, Binns decided to adopt a co-operative rather than confrontational strategy. She'd ascertained that she was in an assessment type situation and that her current behaviour would determine where she was sent next. To Binns there was a simple choice: confront and be lost in the black-hole of institutionalisation; cooperate and escape. The same dilemma she'd faced as a child criminal in the inner city. Only now she was being treated as if she were somehow a dissident. She'd no doubt that what had happened to her was because she was black. Deakin had been right, she was viewed as a retrovirus: a black retrovirus infiltrating a white World and bringing about cataclysmic change.

Binns had never thought of herself as a political figure before but her experience was telling her that she was important. She'd once read an article in Time magazine in which she was described as the most important black American since Martin Luther King. But King had been assassinated and she knew then that the plan wasn't just to incarcerate her in the gulag of American mental institutions, the plan was to destroy her and all that she stood for. She felt like she had been reborn: she was the political leader in the fight for black equality against white supremacy and was convinced of that fact. She knew that the name of the game for the foreseeable future was survival and then what ... she didn't know. But she was able to ascertain that there was a kind of safety on the ward.

Binns had had a stroke of luck; the Consultant who dealt with her case was black: "To be quite frank with you I don't understand why you're here."

"Neither do I," interjected Binns.

"If you'll hear me out?" Binns nodded her assent. "If you were a member of the public then the fact that you professed a belief in aliens wouldn't necessarily mean that I would pronounce you insane. But since you're internationally recognised to be a genuine genius, generally accepted as the greatest intellect since Albert Einstein, I wouldn't at all be surprised if there were an eccentric side to your personality. But, and please don't take this as an insult, you're so darned ordinary. So why did you voluntarily admit yourself to this institution?"

"I didn't. I was tricked. I ... Oh what the heck, I was supposed to meet someone important in the Pentagon here, in a nuclear bunker hidden beneath the asylum. So I'm crazy, aren't I?"

"So that explains your violent behaviour and you've since realised that the way out doesn't lie in that direction?" Binns was silent and avoided making eye contact. He placed his hand over hers, which were clasped on the table: "Don't worry sister, your enemies make us friends." Binns wiped a tear from her eye. He smiled: "I wish we could have met under different circumstances, you're my kids' hero, I'll do anything I can to help you."

Binns made eye contact: "Then help me escape."

His voice was low and earnest: "Tell me what to do and I'll do it if I can."

"I need to get a message to someone on the outside ... to the First Lady."

"I'll smuggle the message out for you but how will I get it to the First Lady?"

"Give it to Jesse Jackson, he told me a long time ago that if I got trouble due to my skin then to let him help me."

That evening the Consultant had Binns moved from the assessment ward to a long stay ward for patients of a non-violent nature and it was there that she met a man who claimed to have been the first man to walk on the Moon; and so heard the story of JJ the Astronaut and Lunar the Moon Woman.

Of course Binns didn't believe a word of it, especially since she'd actually met Neil Armstrong on a few occasions. But there was something scary about the story which she found confusing. There seemed to be a parallel in the idea of a common ancestor between mankind and the aliens as asserted by the story, which he'd posited as meaning that mankind's origins lay not on Earth, and the computer that the photographs of the wreckage from the alien spacecraft had led her to invent. Perhaps it was just the weirdness of the surroundings but she felt that these ideas were having an hallucinatory effect on her mind - similar to when she'd made the quantum leaps in scientific and mathematical thinking necessary to solve Einstein's unified field theory.

"I'm sorry, but the Reverend Jesse Jackson is out of the country at the moment."

"When will he be back?"

"He's in South Africa but is scheduled to return in ... in ten days from now."

"So I'm stuck here until then?"

"I'm afraid so, unless we can think of another plan. How are you feeling?"

"I feel ... I feel kind of light-headed. It's so bizarre here. While you were away I heard the life story of a man who claimed to be the first man on the Moon."

"Oh yes, I know who you mean. He used to work for NASA but had a nervous breakdown following the Challenger space shuttle disaster of 1986. Did he tell you about his erotic fantasies or did he just stick to the stories about aliens?"

"A bit of both. Do you know that until a couple of weeks ago ... it was top secret so I shouldn't really involve you, okay?" The Consultant nodded his understanding. "I'd never given any serious thought to the concept of alien lifeforms. As a scientist I wasn't prepared to rule out the possibility of there being similar planets to Earth orbiting around similar stars as the Sun in similar galaxies as our Milky Way scattered all around the Universe but ... well, the idea of aliens being here and now with us, as it were, is something I find deeply disturbing. Perhaps that's the wrong words, thought provoking might be a better way of putting it. Less emotional," she smiled.

"You're certainly by no means the odd one out. Your disappearance, if I can call it that, has led to a national debate in the media that the authorities are doing their best to calm down. The President has even addressed the nation live on television. He used an interesting expression to his words; he said something like: 'Either we're alone or we're not alone.' Personally, I thought that that wording somehow summed things up."

"Careful" she beamed "or you'll be locking yourself up ... Oh my God!"

There was an awful fear or anxiousness in her voice and the Consultant gripped her hands: "Tell me ... what is it?"

"I guess ... I guess I'm going crazy. I thought that the janitor I just saw passing along the corridor through that window was someone I knew. The man who brought me here: CIA agent Tom Carter."

The Consultant didn't bat an eyelid but broke eye contact and gazed blankly at the wall behind her. Binns realised that in this place she could trust no one, that this was some sort of human dustbin for those who shared the state's secrets but could no longer be trusted. And she was angry with herself: her tactical plan had led her deeper into the abyss.

Still, she was resilient and drew on that quality which was deeply embedded in her character: "I guess all of us here are living in our own little Worlds. Descartes said: 'I think, therefore I am;' and I guess that's especially true here."

"That's an observation which has more than a grain of truth in it."

She joked: "One man's poison is another man's wine."

He looked relieved: "I wouldn't quite put it like that. If you wanted I could give you some medication to calm your nerves rather than the placebos you're currently taking."

"No thanks Doc, I'll stick to the placebos. Anyway I need to keep a clear head. For as long as I'm here I might as well use the time productively. All I really need is pencil and paper together with a quiet corner."

He looked and sounded relieved: "That's a very positive attitude to take. What do you propose to do?"

"Carry on with my research. There's an area of theoretical physics which I've been meaning to investigate for sometime but I'm always too busy what with teaching and the research lines which are the university's main interests. It's about the relationship between quantum mechanics and classical physics. What's commonly known as Schrödinger's Cat."

"I'm afraid all that is beyond me. Do you need any books?"

She laughed: "In my little World I don't read books, I write them."

Binns soon became oblivious to her surroundings and absorbed into rehashing established understanding using insights gleaned from the application of the alien computer. Not that she could have programmed it as she would a digital computer. Not that she could have envisaged how to manufacture a functioning one, which was capable of being programmed. But the number base of its operation rather than being two seemed infinite and infinity excited her ... for mankind to leave the safehaven of Earth would require unimaginable leaps in understanding of science and technology. And, somehow, there seemed to be a relationship between Schrödinger's Cat and the alien computer, her understanding of both deepening in parallel.

As would sometimes happen a thought of a lateral nature entered her mind linking quantum mechanics with molecular biology. She stared blankly into the middle distance but her concentration was broken when she realised that Carter, in his disguise as a janitor, was coming in her direction as he busied himself around the ward. She pretended not to notice him, watching out of the corners of her eyes as he grew nearer and pretending to be busy with pen and paper. He passed a few feet from her, dropping a rolled up piece of paper, which he kicked in her direction.

She spoke at him in a low voice: "I realise you must think of yourself as a cross between Bruce Willis and Mel Gibson but if you think I'm going to pick up that piece of paper then you're wasting your time. I trusted you once and look what happened to me, I ended up here. But if you want to talk then take a seat, otherwise just disappear."

He picked up the piece of paper then sat opposite her, across the low table on which lay her assorted manuscripts and scribblings. "It's an escape plan," he whispered and held his hand towards her with the ball of paper hidden in the palm of his hand.

"Well, well, my, my, an escape plan, how original. I suppose I just jump on the back of your motorcycle and we head off into the Sunset and we live happy ever after. But running off with you doesn't interest me in the slightest. What interests me is my work and in order to continue with it I need my integrity to be re-established. So, thank you all the same, but I'll make my own arrangements, thank you. Get the message?"

"There isn't time."

"Isn't time, there's all the time in the World here. No one's going nowhere."

"You don't understand. Look I'm sorry I tricked you but I was just doing my job. I thought I did a good job because no one got hurt."

"No one got hurt! What about me, what about my hair?"

"That's why we've got to get you out of here."

She felt a shiver in her spine and asked cautiously: "Why?"

"Before they operate."

"Operate?"

"They can't kill you so they'll immobilise you, your mental attributes will be permanently impaired. Instead of being a genius you'll be an idiot."

"But they didn't just shave my head."

He shrugged: "Both your mental and biological attributes will be permanently, irreparably, impaired. You'll be sterilised."

"I don't believe you, you're just trying to scare me so I'll go along with you and get shot trying to escape or something equally stupid."

"Whatever happens they won't kill you. You're too famous, too well known, with too many influential acquaintances to ask awkward questions. So instead they'll neutralise you. And no one, not even you, will be aware of what's happened to you. You'll just be a has-been with a glittering past and a dead end future."

"Why should you care?"

"When I brought you here I'd read an article in the Wales on Sunday and to me it seemed you'd gone beyond, miles beyond, what was permissible in terms of national security. I didn't like you anyway, you always came across to me as a very pompous, arrogant, type of person. Sort of person who didn't give a damn about anyone but herself."

"So what made you change your mind?"

"The next morning I heard on the radio that you'd voluntarily entered this mental institution. I knew that wasn't true so everything else wasn't so believable either. What I remembered was the first impression I had of you when you first became a national figure."

"But if you help me, what happens to you?"

"I'm accountable to the People of the Republic of the United States of America. I've been used and I know it. I don't know who is behind it all. But since you're black it's got to be political. Somewhere along the line a white supremacist nut or nuts has infiltrated our system of government and needs to be weeded out."

"But you're white."

"I can't force you to trust me but if you let me help you I will."

"Where would we go?"

"Deep into the mountains and lie low. There's a place I know where no one would ever find us and we could stay there for months if need be."

"Would you die or me?"

"I've got a gun and I wouldn't hesitate to use it."

To Binns the idea of disappearing into the Sunset with Carter had a certain basic appeal: "You mean you'd be my bodyguard?"

"You could say that."

"So you'd be Kevin Costner and I'd be Whitney Houston?"

"In real life people get hurt."

"I guess you and me must watch the same films but in Alien Three Sigourney Weaver had her hair shaved just like mine but it wasn't for operations but for lice! Before you interrupted me a crazy idea entered my head. Ever heard of quantum mechanics?"

"No."

"Imagine the Earth orbiting around the Sun. What do you visualise?"

"A picture of the Sun and Earth ... and I can see the Moon too, and stars in the background. The Earth's like a ... like a photograph, lots of clouds and blue colours. But the Sun's too bright too stare at, just a ... how am I doing?"

"My we do have a vivid imagination, don't we? Now you've visualised the Earth as a discrete entity, as an object; on the cosmic scale of things, a mere particle, and that representation is along the lines of classical mechanics. Now a representation in the quantum mechanics way of thinking would be ... let's let you do the thinking. What do you see now?"

"Still the same ... but there's this spaceship."

"Aliens?"

"No, it's one of ours. It's the space shuttle on its way to rendezvous with the Russian's Mir space station."

"Okay then, now what do you know about the orbit of the Earth around the Sun?"

"It takes three hundred and sixty-five days, three hundred and sixty-six days if it's a leap year ... but that it's not exact, there are slight discrepancies."

"Well we won't worry about them. Let's just say that the Earth orbits the Sun in a fixed period of time; three hundred and sixty-five days. Now what do you see?"

"I don't see anything."

"Do you see the Sun?"

"Yes ... it's coming to me now. But it's not like a photograph, it's not like it's real. It's like a drawing with the Sun as a small circle, just a dot really, and the Earth's orbit marked as a larger circle around it."

"So where's the Earth?"

"I don't know."

"But you said you could see its orbit?"

"But that's just its path around the Sun."

"We agreed it takes three hundred and sixty-five days so let's say that we can divide its orbit into three hundred and sixty-five segments or parts, where's the Earth now?"

"I ... I can see it, it's moving from segment to segment. The Sun's got bigger too and on the Earth I can make out the shapes of the continents as it rotates. But there aren't any clouds."

"So where's the Earth at any particular time?"

"At a ... in one of the segments."

"And what do you visualise now?"

"What I did at the beginning."

"Have the shuttle and Mir docked yet?"

"Yes and there are two astronauts making a spacewalk!"

"How do you know they're astronauts?"

"Well ... well they're not aliens, what else could they be?"

"Cosmonauts?"

"Oh yes, that's right, one's an astronaut and the other's a cosmonaut. I can tell from the badges on their spacesuits."

"Right so you've visualised two pictures. One's like a photograph and the other's like an illustration, a drawing. If we dated your drawing-style illustration and then said in which one of the three hundred and sixty-five segments of the Earth's orbit that the Earth lay, what would that enable us to do?"

"Work out where it would be on any other day?"

"Precisely, so what concept have we introduced into the second visualisation that was absent in the first?"

"I don't know."

"But you just said it. You implied that the second illustration was a calendar, okay?"

"Yes."

"Now what concept does a calendar encapsulate?"

"The Concept of Time, like a watch ... only slower. No not slower, but on a larger scale. A watch measures time in seconds, minutes, hours. A calendar measures time in days, weeks, months, years even."

"My we are clever, aren't we, do I detect a brain? So you have discovered, between your ears, the Concept of Time. And who said there's only one thing men think about? Anyway, we could write a formula expressing in statistical terms the probability of where the Earth would be at any particular position, or segment, of its orbit. What would that probability be?"

"One over three hundred and sixty-five."

"Correct. So we have described the Earth's orbit in statistical terms, the probability of it being at a particular place at a particular time which is known in quantum mechanics as a wave function. To this end: you have visualised a classical mechanical interpretation as a photograph and a quantum mechanical interpretation as a diagram. Correct?"

"If you say so, I'm not really certain about any of this."

"Excellent, I am impressed, according to quantum theory you shouldn't be. You shouldn't be able to simultaneously quantify temporally and spatially. Which you've proved because when you observed the Earth in your photographic interpretation there was no information about the Concept of Time. But when you visualised your diagram of the Earth's orbit you incorporated the Concept of Time into it but there was no real-life-like photographic interpretation for you to tell me about. Incidentally, that's what we refer to as Heisenberg's uncertainty principle!

"Now you are made of cells, your body in its entirety, each cell has a nucleus and in each nucleus is your personalised DNA - that which makes you an unique human being in individualistic terms."

"Yours must be very special."

"That's besides the point. Now in your visualisation of the Earth in its orbit, where you visualised it as a tiny globe on which you could make out the continents and there were no clouds, remember?"

"Yes."

"Do you see anyone?"

"Yes."

"Now imagine that that person isn't flesh and blood but a formula describing the expression of that person's DNA."

"Expression?"

"The DNA remains constant, or at least we think it does, throughout your lifetime; from the moment you are conceived until the moment you die. Then during that time the individual genes which make up the genetic code of the DNA are what we term: expressed. So the term expression, used in this context, implies a concept which we are familiar with."

"Time?"

"Excellent. I'll make a mathematical physicist out of you yet! Perhaps even a molecular biologist. So if you think of that person you've visualised, on the surface of the Earth orbiting the Sun, as a formula expressing that person's DNA riding piggy-back, as it were, on the back of the wave function describing the Earth's orbit then can you combine the two formulae?"

"I'm still thinking of the person I've visualised as flesh and blood but she's riding on something. Something like a musical roundabout ride at the funfair ... and she seems to be enjoying it!"

"Yes, but what happens to her each time the Earth moves forward a segment - each time the Earth complete an orbit?"

"She has a birthday?"

"Remember the Concept of Time?"

"She gets older?"

"Excellent. So as the Earth orbits the Sun so not only does the Earth get older but she does too. Raising the possibility of a relationship between the quantum mechanical formula describing the Earth's orbit and a formula, at present hypothetical, which expresses her genes."

"So if the Earth went backwards she'd get younger?"

"No, I'm afraid it doesn't work like that. If the Earth changed its direction and went round the wrong way she'd still get older. To get younger she'd have to violate entropy, the direction of the Arrow of Time; Faraday's second law of thermodynamics: a natural or manmade system can only degenerate over time, it can't regenerate."

"But say if the rate of expression slowed down - wouldn't she, you know, stay younger longer, not age so quick?"

"I'm impressed, you're not just a pretty face then."

"Neither are you."

"I must look awful, I was so proud of my hair, when I saw myself in the mirror I nearly died."

"I prefer the way you look now. I found the way you had your hair before intimidating."

"But I haven't got any hair now and since your mind is obviously wandering let's get back to expression rather than impression. If we were able to slow the rate of expression down ... something we are unable to do at present ... that would mean tampering with her DNA. Even if such a thing were possible to this extent, such tampering with her DNA would be horrendously dangerous and, somehow, you'd have to change the DNA in every cell of her body."

"Not if you started at the time of conception."

"If such a thing could be done then all she'd be is a guinea pig. What if parts of her foetus developed at different rates? Assuming if the foetus was able to develop at all then we're talking about non-viable babies with severe birth deformities. So since your attempts at being a molecular biologist have taken a Frankenstein-like direction let's go back to you being a theoretical physicist. Okay?"

"Fine by me."

"So we've established a relationship between the Earth orbiting the Sun and the rate of expression, or ageing, of her genes. But what we've also said is that the Earth ages. So we could incorporate into our wave function for the Earth orbiting around the Sun an ageing factor and what concept does that express?"

"Time ... the words time and expression mean the same thing, don't they?"

"Possibly, it certainly is an interesting idea. You know, it can be quite informative talking to someone who doesn't know anything."

"Thanks a lot."

"That man over there, looking out of the window ... see there are tears running down his face and he's staring at the Moon. Well he thinks his name is JJ the Astronaut and that it was him, and not Neil Armstrong, who was the first man to walk on the Moon."

"Yes I see him."

"Well he told me his life story. Totally crazy, but then I suppose he wouldn't be here if he wasn't, a mishmash of personality imbalances so he thinks of himself as machoman, irresistibly attractive to women and a hero, intelligent too even; and through his imagination he exercises his suppressed sexuality, his male fantasies. Bit like you really, thinks he's some sort of real life filmstar."

"That hurt."

"Men's egos are much more fragile than women's, don't you think?"

"But what has this got to do with mathematical physics or whatever it is we're talking about?"

"So you're not interested in his erotic fantasies about black women?"

"Are you saying that there is a relationship between erotic fantasies and the Concept of Time?"

"Very good ... well there has to be, doesn't there. After all the life experience of a middle-aged man is much greater than that of a young man."

"Does the same logic apply to women?"

"Anyway, he came up with this idea that the mythical man in the Moon wasn't a man but a woman. An alien woman with whom, of course, he mates with. But that's besides the point. He claims, as part of his story, that the aliens and us human beings both had a common ancestor, meaning that mankind may not be of this Earth."

"So we're not descended from monkeys? So he's a creationist rather than an evolutionist?"

"Very good ... although creation would have applied to Earth, the evolution would have occurred elsewhere, on another planet somewhere in the Universe. For instance, the discovery in Antarctica of a Martian meteorite which contains evidence of primitive Life on Mars raises the intriguing, if remote, possibility that Life on Earth was seeded from Mars."

"So we're really Martians rather than Earthlings!"

"In your case something really weird like deep space or the Moon even, but the point is that such a discovery expands the realms of possibilities that we are able to consider: now we can even think of a meteorite from Earth seeding Mars, so that once Life develops somewhere within the Solar System we have a mechanism which enables it to colonise throughout the Solar System. And also, of course, does such a mechanism enable Life to travel between solar systems?"

"Okay, but we weren't really considering microbes we were thinking about people."

"True, point taken. But we've determined a relationship between the Earth ageing and the expression of our genes. So does that mean we have to originate on Earth or could we be originally from somewhere else?"

"I suppose ... perhaps both possibilities could be feasible. After all one day we're supposed to colonise space which presumably means we'll inhabit other planets besides our own."

"But what about the relationship between a woman's menstrual cycle and the duration of the Moon's orbit around the Earth?"

"I don't know. Either it means we're from Earth or could it be a coincidence?"

"Is it a coincidence that both the Sun and the Moon have more or less the same apparent physical size when viewed from Earth? The thing is, what this makes possible is a total eclipse of the Sun. If the Moon were too small at best we'd see an annular eclipse with the Sun's perimeter visible, if the Moon were too big we wouldn't be able to view the Sun's corona. It certainly is a remarkable coincidence."

"Too remarkable?"

"Well, who knows, we certainly don't. It was nice talking to you but now if you don't mind I'd like to take a nap. These drugs they give us make me sleepy;" she exaggeratedly yawned.

"So you won't let me help you?"

"I didn't say that. One way of looking at my job is that it's all about communicating with other people, sharing ideas, using each other to sound out ideas, so that we can increase the sum total of human knowledge. You say you have a gun well, I was thinking, if you can smuggle a gun in here then how about a mobile phone?"

Carter felt bemused: he'd thought that she'd be over the Moon, grateful to him, in accepting his offer to help her escape. Yet now she wasn't contemplating escape she just wanted to keep in touch with the scientific community via a mobile phone. Or at least that's what he found himself thinking but he wasn't fooled for a moment though; and since he found himself trusting her it was him who felt grateful to her for this opportunity to ennoble himself: "I'll see what I can do, but it might take a few days."

"Don't worry I'll still be here ... see you Carter."

When Carter had disappeared out of sight JJ the Astronaut sneaked over and sat down in his place: "She's really down tonight," he sniffed.

"How do you know that this isn't just one of your dream sequences, that tomorrow you'll wake up and it will all be a bad dream?"

"You don't believe me do you?"

"Well how do you know that I'm not just a figment of your imagination, just a character in one of your dreams?"

"You're interfering."

"With what?"

"With my dream ..." He stood up and slowly walked away adding: "I don't think it was really like I remembered it." Then he turned and shouted at her: "It was the accountants' fault! They said we couldn't delay the launching or we'd go over budget." Then he put his hand over his mouth and ran off.

Meanwhile back at the Pentagon a meeting took place later that night. General Baker was edgy: "She asked for what?"

"A mobile phone," repeated Carter.

"The bitch ... why is it that she always does the unexpected?"

"Because she's more intelligent than you?" Ventured the Consultant.

"She is, I've no doubt of that. I don't like this game. I thought we could just dump her and be in the clear. But the shit is about to hit the fan, I can feel it, I can smell it and by God I can taste it too!"

"And I don't like being used," murmured Carter. "You can't just dump people in mental institutions because you don't like the colour of their skin!"

Baker seemed to jump in his chair and his face looked panicky as he realised what the accusations of his conduct towards Binns could lead to: "It wasn't like that guys. We had to know ... I can't tell you, it's top secret"

"Top secret my arse, you've screwed up and now you're going to get screwed!" Sneered Carter.

That Carter wasn't afraid of belittling him doubly brought home the serious nature of his exposed position: "Okay, the woman's a genius and we've handled this badly but we can't let her be in charge of a project of this potential magnitude."

"Why not?" Asked Carter not that he knew what Baker was rambling on about.

"Because ... because we don't know what she knows, all we really know is that she knows something we don't know but that we'd like to know, that we want to know, that we got to know, that to maintain the New World Order we have to in order to keep our technological edge."

"Is it to do with quantum mechanics?" Asked Carter.

"No, computers."

"A calendar is a kind of computer so there does exist a relationship between computers and quantum mechanics due to the Concept of Time."

"Sort of that's it, analog computers, not digital computers ... Who the hell have you been talking to?"

"You know."

"Her?"

"Well the obvious solution," urged the Consultant, "is to set up a project funded by the Pentagon and put her in charge of it. That way she'll report directly to you."

Baker who'd stared at the Consultant with his face a fixed grimace suddenly exploded into a smile: "Guys, I detect a conspiracy here, a conspiracy against this country's foremost intellect whose continued existence is essential for us to maintain the New World Order by maintaining the United States' technological lead. Gentlemen, we've been led astray here. We all know where our true loyalties lie and they lie with the People of the Republic of the United States of America, and not in petty power struggles in one of our institutions; not even one as revered as Harvard University.

"In short, Harvard had no right to suspend Professor Binns without giving her a fair hearing first. As it is Professor Binns is victim of a kangaroo court, a lynch mob as vicious as any that was known in the dark days of legalised racism. There are malevolent influences at Harvard which need to be weeded out ... am I going too far, or is that more or less it?"

"I think we're on the right track," confirmed the Consultant.

"But wasn't it the Pentagon that sold all that nonsense about aliens to the Wales on Sunday?" Intervened Carter.

"Trouble is guys, strictly off the record, it's not nonsense. And that's why we need Binns, she's the only one of us smart enough to figure them out."

The three of them were deep in silence when the Consultant came up with an idea: "What we need is a scapegoat, pin it all down on one individual."

"Yes!" Hissed Baker. "We'll use the same trick on them that we used on Binns, another World exclusive for the Wales on Sunday. But, wait a minute, who tells Binns? That's not a job I'd particularly relish, and that's putting it mildly."

"There's the letter she gave me for the First Lady?"

"Yes! The First Lady can be the hero, Binns the victim and the Wales on Sunday has its World exclusive."

"All we need now is an individual at Harvard to be the scapegoat," ventured the Consultant.

"Yes! We'll make Deakin, the principal of Harvard, the scapegoat on the grounds that she victimised Binns on racial grounds by not giving her a fair hearing and, yes, by giving way to petty prejudices put national security at risk. Excellent, gentlemen, and with the First Lady a national hero, Harvard riddled with racism and national security on the line, the President will be grateful to the Pentagon and buy our nomination for the new principal of Harvard: Professor Binns!"

The meeting to consider the findings of the Trecwn investigation duly took place in the Oval Office of the White House with only three people present: the President, General Baker and Professor Binns.

"So we've drawn a blank," said the President.

"I'm afraid the Pentagon has to agree," added Baker.

"The reason I asked for this meeting to be deferred is because we at Harvard haven't. The survey of radioactive isotopes revealed some intriguing data which I must say I am surprised that the Pentagon didn't pick up on." Baker made a face. "Especially since it provides significant evidence that Trecwn could be interpreted as an enrichment facility for nuclear weapons grade fissile material."

"Mister President ..." blurted a shocked Baker.

"But hang on the levels are too low, just barely detectable with our current technology, and if the British had such a facility at this location then the levels would be far higher, in line with previously established data."

"So?" Chirped Baker.

"Do I have to spell it out to you?" Smirked Binns.

Baker looked confused and the President interjected: "What you're saying is that the radiation detected is not naturally occurring and couldn't have been human in origin?"

"Aliens!" Blurted Baker.

"Perhaps. The reason we took so long is because we had to rewrite the software to perform a sufficiently detailed computerised analysis of the radioactive survey of Trecwn. Now if we look at the plan of the facility," a map lay on the President's desk and Binns pointed with her finger at one of the subterranean tunnels. "This is where we believe the alien spaceship was stored."

"So where is it now?" Sighed the President. "Either the British are telling the truth or they are lying."

"Bets on the last one!" Sneered Baker.

"Perhaps someone stole it, I mean they could have tunnelled their way in and out," suggested the President.

"No evidence" said Baker, "according to the Brits it just disappeared."

"Or was it spirited away?" Both men looked incredulously at Binns. "If you recall I told you where the spaceship was stored, in which tunnel, you never told me."

The President and Baker looked at each other, the President asking: "How did you work that out?"

"From the radioactive isotope survey and our computerised analysis of the data. We found a hotspot which suggested where it had been stored. But not just one hotspot, two. The term hotspot is an exaggeration but I have a theory as to what happened to the alien spacecraft and that it was ... well, was simply that, spirited away."

"By aliens." Sneered Baker.

"Yes," said Binns. "You have to remember that the term spaceship is rather an exaggeration, we're only talking about something the size of a large family car. Obviously, a vehicle to be used for journeys of a finite duration to and fro from a base or mothership. But with some sort of extremely sophisticated nuclear engine which we have detected with our radioactive survey."

"But you said two hotspots?" Interjected the President.

"One hotspot would account for where the spaceship was stored, the other isn't as strong and it's a lot weaker in fact, and we have reached a point where conjecture is fact or mere speculation. The question is: Are the Brits lying or telling the truth? Now if they are lying then the spaceship is still in their hands and it's a job for Baker. But if they're telling the truth then it's a job for me."

"Okay, General Baker will look after his end so let's give the Brits the benefit of the doubt and assume they're telling the truth"

"It's simple really. Our consciousness enables us to think in terms of past, present and future. Only a short while ago we based our plans for the future on a condition: the condition being that the alien spacecraft was still in Trecwn. So perhaps it still is."

"So I was right all along," sneered Baker, "the Brits are lying."

Binns sighed and the President gave her an encouraging smile murmuring: "Go on." Binns closed her eyelids and slightly bowed her head then eyeballed him; then verbally expressed the thought which had crossed both their minds: "If Baker wasn't here no one would know anything at all about what had passed between us once this meeting was over. For instance, we could invent a story which was very far removed from the truth and the possibility has occurred to me that that is what the aliens are doing right now.

"We're basing our thoughts, our strategy for the future, on the thoughts which are being placed in our minds by the concrete facts. But what if the facts are more abstract: more related to their understanding of reality than ours?"

"You mean we're being fed disinformation?" Blurted Baker eagerly.

"Mmmm ... I suppose that's something that you in the Pentagon are very good at?"

"Well anything that saves the lives of even one of our people is a strategy worth employing."

"But the question is: Who told the aliens?"

The President butted in: "Who told the aliens? I don't get your meaning."

"If the aliens are supplying us with disinformation then they must be aware of our plans."

The President suggested: "Coincidence? "

"Hell no," blurted Baker, "there's been a breach of national security and it must be ..." He stared at the President and Binns then at the table.

Binns completed his sentence: "In the Pentagon. If it were the President then he wouldn't have pursued this matter with the British Primeminister. It can't be me because I wouldn't be helping you. So it has to be you!"

"Or you, perhaps you're a double agent?" Snapped Baker half-heartedly.

Binns' face expanded into a broad smile: "I can prove it's not you if you let me."

Baker felt uneasy: "How?"

"Ever seen Basic Instinct starring Sharon Stone?" Binns slowly flicked in turn each of her left hand's sharpened finger nails with her thumb nail, then drew fingers and thumb back like a talon: "Well we're the female and male of the same species so we are able to breed. In which case if I fondled your parts there should be an easily observable reaction." Baker winced as the talon instantly closed.

"Mister President I strongly object to this line of inquiry ... after all I am a happily married man with five grown up children, twelve grandchildren and three great-grandchildren."

The President leaned back in his chair and loosened his tie: "Professor Binns I feel I must side with General Baker in this matter simply if for the sake of decorum and out of respect for the high office he holds but, and purely in the interests of the national security you understand, if you wish to clear me then I'll acquiesce to your scrutiny."

Baker ejaculated: "Me too! Strictly to the strict understanding that the Pentagon is supporting the Presidency in this matter."

"Too late, you can't have a second bite at the cherry."

"But I didn't get a first bite," pleaded the President.

"Your reputation as a ladies man is well known Mister President so I'm certain you'd pass with flying colours. As for General Baker, well ... well if his wife is human then he obviously is too,"

The president gave a wry smile: "Too bad." Then seriously: "But there still remains the possibility of a grave security problem."

"I know," blurted Baker, "let's test Agent Carter! He led the team at Trecwn and is the CIA case officer for this project."

Binns changed the subject: "Anyway it doesn't really matter, what's important is to find the alien spacecraft. If we were to upgrade our level of consciousness then we could have multiple pasts and futures.

"For instance, if the aliens got wind that the Pentagon were to visit Trecwn in order to remove their spaceship then they might be able to remove it to a position of safety in the future."

"So could the Brits," said the President.

"No, you misunderstand my meaning. If they were capable of time travel they could transmit the spacecraft from the past to the future leaving out the present."

"Leaving out the present ... you mean it's as if it is at this moment in transit?"

"Yes. What I'm proposing is that they somehow gained entry into the tunnels with another vehicle which enabled them to transmit the crippled vehicle to a safe location in the future, so accounting for the two hotspots located by our radioactive survey."

"Mister President, the strategic importance of this new technology for the battlefield of tomorrow ..."

"Presumably the reason why they are trying to hide it from us! For instance if they, on learning our plans, went into the future where Trecwn was decommissioned and so no longer a defence establishment they may have been able to enter the tunnels and set up their time machine apparatus near to the location of the spacecraft. Then gone back in time and brought it back into the future to be physically relocated elsewhere."

The President asked: "But why were they content to let the Brits have it?"

"Who said they were? But the spacecraft came into the Brits' possession during the Second World War in an active theatre of war. Pembrokeshire with its port of Milford Haven and airfields was an important base in fighting the Battle of the Atlantic. What seems to have happened is that it was initially catalogued as one of Hitler's secret weapons and put into safe storage at Trecwn then forgotten by the military establishment."

"What a waste, if only we'd had this technology for Vietnam." Groaned Baker.

Binns was patronising: "It wouldn't have been much use to you, I was only a kid then."

The President was incredulous: "Forgotten!!?"

"Apparently so," shrugged Binns. "But perhaps we shouldn't be too surprised when you consider that a certain William Frost of Saundersfoot, in Pembrokeshire, filed a patent for the aeroplane with the British government in 1894. And actually made the first powered flight eight years before the Wright brothers in 1895." The others expressed their astonishment and Binns condescendingly explained: "The problem with the Brits is their anachronistic class system, it emasculates their communal intelligence and creates a hierarchical based mentality where commonsense becomes subservient to dogma, such as at the time of the American War of Independence in 1776. A bit like the Pentagon really, the higher rank one has then the more the ability of one to bend the truth resulting in what I suppose one could describe as rule by ranker!"

Binns paused and smiled nicely at Baker then continued: "Anyway we're digressing, but back to business ... If we're on the right track then we're thinking about time travel encompassing a few years or even months. We know absolutely nothing about time travel but a safe assumption might be that there is a relationship between energy expended and elapsed time; in the same way that the distance that a vehicle can travel depends on its energy source. Also, larger scale time travel might be non-viable over thousands of years given that the geography of a terrain could change and rematerialisation could be terminal, along the lines of reappearing in solid rock."

"So does that explain fossils!" Joked Baker.

Binns and the President ignored him; she continued: "So the question we need to ask is: Do they know something we don't know? Now Trecwn is to be sold to a private developer which means it could exist to all intents and purposes indefinitely. But what if we were to play the same trick on them that they are playing on us? Okay, Trecwn gets sold off but what if we announce in the local press that the tunnels are to be demolished first?"

"That's right," urged Baker: "So when they rematerialised they'll be ... I can't think of the right word."

"I believe murdered would probably fit but your plan would mean the spacecraft would be lost too and, obviously, we don't want that. No, they believe our story that the tunnels are to be demolished. So they go into the future and rescue their spacecraft."

"But that would mean they don't know yet, that they haven't deduced their plan of action yet," wondered the President.

"So there's no security breach," hissed Baker. "Because they'll read about it in the Western Telegraph newspaper like everybody else."

"Which means they're living in the community," sneered Binns. "And if I'd told you that at the beginning would you have believed me?"

"So let's get this right," observed the President: "If the Brits are telling the truth then there are aliens living in Britain at Pembrokeshire in West Wales."

The trap was laid and a news report appeared in the local press that the tunnels at Trecwn were to be demolished within the next twelve months. The decommissioned site appeared to be deserted but in reality was the subject of a blanket covert intelligence operation, the plan being to let the aliens in and then apprehend them on the way out together with their spacecraft and the added bonus of a time machine. But this, of course, was all speculation on primarily Binns' part and although the President was able to take a matter-of-fact casual attitude to it Baker was deeply troubled. Deeply troubled since although Binns was the brains behind the scheme the Pentagon was in charge of what, after all, could be merely a hare-brained wild-goose chase with the idiot in charge being Baker. So Baker hedged his bets and to counter the worry of a breach of security no one involved previously with Trecwn was now involved, or even knew, of the continuing operation which left Carter free to be used as a weapon in his continuing war with Binns. So once a few months had passed and everything had settled down he sent Carter to Binns for his alien test. Carter made contact by attending a public lecture on analog computing that she was giving (the President having invited Binns to design the United States' exhibit for Britain's new Millennium Dome).

"We tend to think of computers as either mainframes or networked desktop computers. But these are all digital computers and we tend to ignore the fact that there is another class of computer known as analog computers. Since the 1960s research and development work has concentrated on digital computers and analog computers have been practically neglected. Until now and this paper is designed to give you a start at being on the leading edge of the future of computing.

"To begin we have to start at the beginning, literally we have to go back to the future, to Stonehenge which is nowadays generally considered to have been built as an astronomical observatory, or to our new way of thinking as an analog computer. A computer which has lasted for thousands of years and built from stone with the software imbedded into its design. So there are no moving parts, no power supply and the programming has been running non-stop, continuously, without crashing.

"The essential point to grasp being that what has been incorporated, imbedded, into the design are the Laws of Nature; of physics and mathematics. Hence, the grandiose claim that you are in a position to be the future of computing since digital computers use the laws of logic; of ones and zeros. You have access to the modern understanding of mathematics and physics, you can design your analog computers to work to principles infinitely more powerful than that on which the digital computer is based.

"But wait a minute, aren't we in a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation here? With the modern understanding of physics and mathematics it is theoretically possible that you could design Stonehenge from scratch. But what if you didn't have that knowledge? Which is the situation in which the builders of Stonehenge were presumably in. So they build a computer which enables them to predict astronomical events but which in its very design incorporates the Laws of Nature which are known to you but not to them.

"So how was it built? And what we're really asking is: How was it designed? Perhaps not just Stonehenge but the school of thought to which the builders of Stonehenge belonged. What was their starting-point? Astronomical observations. Purpose of Stonehenge? Prediction of astronomical events. Method? Replication by Stonehenge of the inner workings of the Universe.

"So Stonehenge (or the school of thought that Stonehenge represents) wasn't built from scratch but grew as their knowledge grew and just as we build bigger and better computers (not just mainframes, think of all the desktops interconnected via the Internet) so did they. Did they build bigger to test out new theories? To further their research? Meaning: did they gain an understanding similar to our own of the laws of the Universe through their computer technology? Well, perhaps you ought to build Stonehenge and find out.

"Build Stonehenge you say, you must be joking. Okay, we'll try something less grandiose, simpler perhaps or is it? Your task is to build an analog computer which will automatically compute the shortest path which connects a set of points. How many points? Entirely up to you. But to set you off let's say ten. So what you're going to need is a flat piece of wood, ten nails and a length of string. Do you call that construction kit a computer? But build it first before you judge it. So hammer your nails into the board as a random pattern. Visualise it, try and visualise Binns' Analog Computer as you study this and I'll tell you why later.

"Next tie a loop in one end of the length of string and place it over a nail which has no other nail between it and the edge of the wooden board closest to it. Now run the string around all the nails and back to our start-point tightening it so that all the nails are encompassed. Then pull the string inward so that it is tensioned by each and every nail. And then you have the shortest path length it takes to connect all twenty nails. Twenty? No ten, but no matter how many nails you want to try our analog computer will still do the business. Its program will never crash. It doesn't need a power supply and its components ... well, if it got inadvertently destroyed you could easily build a new one and perhaps improve it from other materials.

"If you want to be fancy about it place a map over the wood and hammer the nails into selected place names. It will still work, but as the crow flies, of course! And now we're in a position to challenge Bill Gates of Microsoft to a duel! We'll up the stakes to a hundred cities and with our analog computer we'll challenge his fastest digital computer. Draw! Too late Bill, for although it's only taken us a matter of seconds to solve what is known in the business as the Travelling Salesman problem it's going to take Bill, believe it or not, billions of years.

"Now if you wanted to you could use this strategy to write a program for a digital computer using the strategy built into our little analog computer and the essential sequence of steps are as follows:

"Step one: Consider your set of nails to be a field of points and then place them within the positive x and y quadrant of Cartesian axes to define a frame of reference.

"Step two: Each point will have both an x and y coordinate so find the limit points of the field and there are four defined by: the smallest value of x, the smallest value of y, the largest value of x and the largest value of y.

"Step three: Now what our limit points tell us are the coordinates of four points which define the corners of a rectangle which will encompass our field of points. Defined by: smallest x and smallest y, smallest x and largest y, largest x and smallest y, largest x and largest y.

"Step four: You now automatically have the coordinates of the centre of the rectangle: midway between smallest and largest x, and smallest and largest y.

"Step five: Find which one of your field of points is closest to the centre of the rectangle. This we shall define as our start-point.

"Step six: Change the coordinates of each point from Cartesian to Polar so that each point is now defined by its distance from the origin of the Cartesian axes and by the angle that a vector of the distance, the line joining the origin to the point, makes with the x axis.

"Step seven: Decide on a clockwise or anti-clockwise pathfinding direction.

"Step eight: Beginning at the start-point select the next point, in terms of the value of its angle.

"Step nine: Continue until all points are charted remembering that all angle values have been defined in terms of a single quadrant of a Cartesian frame of reference and two or more points could have the same value so you'll have to put your thinking cap on!

"Step ten: Join the last point charted, the end-point, to the start-point.

"But what is the strategy we're using? And this is where our analog computer is starting to score over its silicon cousin. It's using trigonometry: built into it are the laws of trigonometry. Analog computing technology can incorporate any mathematical system, any of the Laws of Nature. The whole World's like an analog computer and even manmade things like an economy. The essential law of economics is a free market: if things are in short supply they're expensive, if they're in abundance then cheap.

"So how do we build an analog computer that incorporates other systems than trigonometry? That's for you to find out and so surf on the leading edge of computing's future. But our little analog computer operates in two dimensions, can you make one for three dimensions and if you could make one for four dimensions would you have a time machine?

"Was Stonehenge built to be a time machine? A computer whose program never crashes certainly has a timeless quality but perhaps you'll be the one to figure all that out, the job of this paper being to point you on your way.

"Now it's interesting but when we used our analog computer we started with a nail, a point, on the periphery of our wooden board. Yet when we transferred the methodology to a digital computer we began at the centre. Why?

"Perhaps there's an analogy here between the way in which Stonehenge is constructed, circular shapes of standing stones, and networking desktop digitals. What would happen if you put a length of string around your model of Stonehenge and operated it as you did previously with our little analog computer? If networking desktop digitals then, even if it's only an illusion, it's like you are at the Centre of the Universe. And what if Stonehenge is really like an ultra- small-scale model of the Cosmos?

"Are we with digital computers on the inside looking out and with an analog computer on the outside looking in? Because what's in-built is the philosophy which we are imbedding in the design of our computer.

"Enough of speculation, by all means you carry on and surf the leading edge, but what are we going to do with our analog computer? We've already hit on one application: as a means, a methodology, for programming a digital computer. But if we remember our history then digital computers are used for games so can we use our analog computer likewise?

"I've thought of a game using our analog computing techniques and it's called European Union Air Navigator. To play it you'll need a map of the European Union, a ruler, a protractor, two dice and a pack of playing cards. And a set of rules which go like this - but, remember, you can make up your own game with your own set of rules if you so wish.

"Choose thirteen major European cities with airports. Why thirteen? Well there are thirteen playing cards belonging to each of the four suits in a pack of playing cards. So the game is for up to four players and you can assign one of the thirteen cards to each city. Take it in turns to throw the dice: the one with the highest (or lowest if you like) score starts and you go around clockwise (or anti-clockwise if you like).

"So it's your turn and you throw the dice. There are two dice, with two different colours. One dice decides how far you are able to travel, so you'll need to determine a scale for your map with six as the maximum distance between any two airports and one as the minimum. The other dice determines direction, say: one - north, two - south, three - east, four - west, five - any direction, six - fogbound so miss a turn.

"Now with the navigational information from the two dice we use the protractor and ruler to determine which airports are in range and select one to land on. Everytime you land on a city you pick up a card which is unique to that city and the one who gets a complete set first wins. You'll have to sort out what to do about your start-point airport, perhaps if you land on an airport someone is already at then they miss a go ... what the heck, just make it up as you go along!"

Binns had noticed Carter in the audience and had drawn the lecture to a premature close anxious to hear if there had been any developments at Trecwn. When she managed to break away from the post lecture formalities she drove straight back to her apartment in her car followed by Carter in his; explaining that they'd talk at her place. In the apartment they sat in the lounge opposite each other in easy chairs with a coffee table in between; over the open hearth fireplace was hung a large framed photograph of Binns with Nelson Mandela and his estranged wife Winnie - the Statue of Liberty dominating the background.

"Were you expecting me?" Asked Carter.

"Perhaps, but then it didn't have to be you."

"I'm not certain how to put this."

"Just stick to the facts."

"General Baker sent me."

"I know."

"What are you going to do to me?"

"Do to you?"

"When you test me."

"Test you for what?"

"For being an alien."

Such was the look of concern and anxiousness on Carter's face that Binns burst into laughter. When she eventually regained control she realised that Carter was standing over her with his gun, held in two hands, pointed at her.

"How did you know?" He demanded.

"Know what? Look Carter there's been a mistake here, I thought you'd been sent to tell me some information not for ... not for an alien test!"

She again burst into uncontrollable laughter and when she regained control this time Carter had resumed his seat and reholstered his gun.

"You are touchy, aren't you!" Laughed Binns.

"I don't ..."

"You don't like people laughing at you. Well never mind, neither do I. Anyway, well you're here for an alien test and I thought you'd come here to tell me something. Did General Baker tell you to tell me something or is this some sort of game you're playing?"

"What did you think I'd come to tell you?"

There was a sinister tone in his voice which made Binns feel uneasy but she knew the rules: "That's for me to know and for you to find out."

"So the case wasn't closed after all?"

"Careful Carter, that's a dangerous line of thought you're following."

"But that's what it's all about, isn't it? You've caught some of them and you know how to differentiate between them and humans?"

"Well it's not difficult, is it? After all they're short, green and with an antenna sticking out of their head!"

"They told me the case was closed."

"You told me that you were escorting me to a top secret airforce control centre."

"I'm sorry about that and if I was able to I'd like to make it up to you. How about dinner?"

Binns was angry: "After what was done to me because of you! Look at my hair, I'll never be able to grow it back the way it was. And according to you dinner makes it all okay."

"I prefer the way your hair is now. It makes you look more homely."

"It makes me look older."

"It makes you look your age."

"You realise that you were going to shoot me because you thought that I thought you were an alien."

"I was afraid you may have made allegations against me to get even. Since Trecwn I've been stuck behind a desk."

"So you admit it was your fault?"

"Yes, of course."

"To be quite frank with you Carter I don't really want to get involved. Nothing personal but I'm always so busy and I doubt if we've got much in common anyway."

"I liked your lecture, perhaps we could play one of those games you talked about?"

"You're good at games, so why should I interest you?"

"I like you."

"Lots of men like me. When you're rich, famous, and ... well, what the heck, it makes up for other more obvious deficiencies."

"You're perfect."

"Oh Carter you're so corny, if only you could hear yourself. Anyway, a handsome guy like you shouldn't find it too difficult to get fixed up."

"I'm ... I'm not like that. I need someone I can relate to."

"And you can relate to me?"

"Yes, I think I can."

"Yeah well as I said, I'm much too busy for a serious relationship."

"Perhaps we could just be friends then."

"Carter I don't think you understand. You and I live in different Worlds. And I'm simply not in the slightest bit interested in you or the strange little World that you live in."

"Nor am I, I want to live in your World with you."

Binns was shocked and taken aback by his admission: "What are you saying?"

"That I love you, will you marry me?"

"I think it's time you left. I find it hard to believe that General Baker sent you here so that you could ask me to marry you."

"He didn't."

"In that case it's better you leave. You know lots of guys ask me to marry them, they do it by post, I get mail from all over the World. Mail from guys like you I call my sex mail and my office bins it, then there's my hate mail from people who don't like me and would like to get rid of me and that gets binned too. Then there's what I call my love mail, from kids all over the World and they get sent an information pack. Right now we're making up an information pack about analog computers so that kids all over the World, even if they're living in a famine stricken African village, can have their very own computer. But that's besides the point and, don't worry, I won't mention what you said to anyone."

"So I take it you're saying no?"

"I've forgotten you ever asked me." A thought suddenly clicked in Binns' mind: that General Baker hadn't sent Carter, he was here of his own volition. She suddenly felt a shiver down her spine as she realised that she was absolutely alone with an armed man who seemed to have a fixation, an obsession, about her. She asked softly: "Perhaps I remind you of someone?" And smiled encouragingly.

"She was Vietnamese, I met her in the war."

"In Vietnam?"

"I was in the Green Berets and I'd promised her I'd take her back with me to America as my wife. Then I got captured on a mission behind enemy lines and spent six months as a prisoner of war before I could escape. She was all that kept me going, the thought of getting back to her. Then I escaped and somehow made it back; don't know how, it was like I didn't need nothing but her."

"Did you find her?"

"We returned to the states as man and wife and had a couple of kids. One morning she was driving the kids to school, they were quarrelling in the back of the car, she was late, always late, in too much of a hurry, took her attention off the road, took her attention away and ... well they were all killed instantly by a lorry."

"I'm sorry."

"Must be a long time ago now, all of ten years."

A long uneasy silence commenced with Binns being in no doubt that she was alone in the company of some sort of psychopath who seemed to have entered some sort of psychotic trance. It was eventually broken by the phone ringing; as she chatted Carter seemed to wake up, stood up, they waved and he let himself out.

Carter sat in his car watching the entrance way to Binns' apartment. A taxi pulled up, a young woman got out and rang the bell, Binns appeared at the door and Carter followed the taxi which now contained them both. It stopped outside a nightclub, Binns chatted with the doormen whom she obviously knew and entered with her friend. When she left it was with a man, Carter trailed their taxi back to her apartment; they went inside.

Linguistically Pembrokeshire's people are either polyglot or monoglot: the polyglots speak Welsh and English whilst the monoglots speak only English. This is often represented as a north-south divide but in reality was, historically, dictated by the zone of economic affluence around the Milford Haven Waterway.

Welsh is a Celtic language and was the indigenous language of what is now known as England and Wales at the time of the incorporation of Britain into the Roman Empire. Subsequent to the collapse of the Roman Empire then, out of the chaos of the Dark Ages, England was invaded by the Norsemen in the north and the Germanic tribes of the north-eastern seaboard of Continental Europe in the south. The ethnic population retaining autonomy in Wales and the western regions of England. This was the World at the time of the Norman Conquest. Referred to as a conquest rather than an invasion since the actual numbers of Normans were insignificant compared to the existing population.

But the Normans were extremely well organised with a well established class system and were able to establish a society based on Christian values which survives even to this day; and possesses a quality of inclusiveness which enables it to absorb people much in the way that a sponge absorbs water.

One of the essential strengths of the Norman system being the concept of Head of State who would either be a king or a queen. So that the inclusive society would always be one country or state with infighting and civil war being to determine the identity of the individual who held the office of Head of State. Whereas the pre-Roman Celtic society although held together by the Celtic religion of Druidism was divided into a number of kingdoms, much in the way that Pembrokeshire is nowadays a county or region of Wales and Britain, a weakness which laid it open to the effect of divide and rule and absorption by first the Romans and then the Normans.

Sir Benfro is the Welsh equivalent of the English word Pembrokeshire. The p changing to b since Welsh words have changes, mutations, at their beginnings whereas English words have changes at their endings. So that Pembrokeshire becomes Sir Benfro rather than Sir Penfro and the visitor to Tenby is welcomed with Croeso i Ddinbych y Pysgod rather than Croeso i Dinbych y Pysgod.

Literacy came late to both English and Welsh with the written word being confined to the classical languages of Greek and Latin. The languages being eventually written down for religious reasons so that the Bible could be understood by the masses who with little or no access to education were ignorant of Greek and Latin. The Welsh alphabet was based on the English alphabet so that some Welsh letters of the alphabet consist of two letters symbolising one. The other essential difference is that English operates to a system of subject, verb, object, whereas Welsh to a system of verb, subject, object.

English and Welsh are the two official languages of Wales ... the other parts of Britain only have one.

The surveillance of Trecwn continued with the twelve month deadline rapidly approaching then, just when time seemed to have run out, the aliens made their move. Baker was elated for the operation was a complete success and besides the hardware, which was believed to consist of a spaceship and a time machine, four people, three men and a woman, had been captured. This led to a problem because they could not be held in custody indefinitely without being charged and it was not a criminal offence to be an alien; that is, of course, whether or not they were aliens - a fact which was yet to be established and open to considerable and realistic doubt.

"I don't believe they are aliens," sneered Baker.

"Well who are they then?" Quizzed Carter.

"The medical tests that we've performed indicate that they are perfectly normal human beings," admitted the Consultant.

"Who happen to have in their possession a technology light years in advance of our own," added Binns.

"In our possession," boasted Baker.

"What about the Brits?" Asked Carter.

"Screw the Brits," said Baker. "For the time being we'll tell them we're all in this together then when they get trustful and complacent we'll have everything transferred back to the States on research and development grounds."

"They'll fall for that?" Asked Binns.

"Always have done in the past," chuckled Baker, "so I don't see why they shouldn't in the future. Hell ... I know, let's waste them, we'll dump their bodies on a remote stretch of the long distance coastal footpath of the Pembrokeshire Coastal National Park and blame IRA gunrunners or drug smugglers. Perhaps even aliens, a lot of the UFO activity in Pembrokeshire has been around the Dale peninsula."

"If you murder them then how on Earth are we going to find out what they know and I don't think the President and People of the United States of America would understand since, after all, this is the greatest moment in human history. We have made contact with intelligent beings who are not indigenous to Earth. There is more to all this than the New World Order."

"Professor Binns is right," agreed Carter, "we're in deep water here. We may have made contact with them but they've also made contact with us. In showing us that they can travel in space and time they've demonstrated a technology which Professor Binns, who is after all our foremost authority on these matters, has said is light years ahead of our own. Then there is the little matter of if their technology is so far advanced then we can confidently assume that their weaponry is too."

"We've stumbled across these people by accident," observed the Consultant, "but it has to be remembered that they've come to us."

"Sort of like Christopher Columbus and the New World?" Ventured Baker.

"A good analogy," agreed the Consultant. "Columbus knew nothing about the people he encountered, he didn't even know where he was. And they knew nothing about him except one thing. The same we know about them: the possession of a superior technology."

"Which proved decisive," observed Binns.

"Firepower," snorted Baker, "they've got it and we haven't and," he looked upwards: "Out there?"

"This could be anything from the advance party of an invasion to a scientific expedition."

"So they're the tip of an iceberg?" Queried Baker and the others acquiesced. "So what do we do with them?"

"From what we can gather they seem to have integrated well into the community and have jobs, families and homes," ventured Carter.

"What sort of work do they do?" Asked Binns.

"The woman is a chambermaid in a hotel, one of the men is a kitchen porter in a restaurant, another is a street cleaner and the third is unemployed," supplied Carter.

"Harvard could enter into a relationship with the local university and that way we could provide them with jobs which would act as a cover for conducting our future dealings with them."

"Great thinking Binns," chortled Baker, "the Pentagon will be willing to finance ..."

"There's only one problem," interrupted Carter, "there isn't a local university."

Binns: "Well since the Pentagon are in such a generous mood Harvard will be happy to found one. The first thing I want to find out is: Why Pembrokeshire? After all, they either came here by accident or design."

A gene can be a short length of genetic material which encodes the formula for a particular protein which can give an individual a particular characteristic and so we are all different but all the same.

A computer can be a machine which encodes in its design the formula for a particular mathematical or physical system and so can subject an individual problem with a particular class of solution and so all machines are different but all the same.

A verbal human language is a mechanism by which individual humans communicate to a formula based on verb, subject and object. With these three parameters all communication can be encoded into thoughts and so all communications are different but all the same.

A human, whether it be a man or a woman, has the same basic biological, physical and emotional make up which is translated in its brain to thoughts and so all humans are different but all the same.

A thought is an expression of the human consciousness, the colour of someone's eyes is an expression of the human genome, a machine or computer is an expression of the brain's life experience, and so consciousness, genome, life experience, can be expressed as subject, verb, object.

Consciousness is our place in the Universe, genome is our physical being and interacts with time and so evolution, life experience is our understanding of the Universe.

Our life experience increases with time, not just our own but the human race's, our genome is expressed over time, not just our own but the human race's, our consciousness becomes more focused with time, not just our own but the human race's.

And as consciousness, genome and experience are interchangeable then so are verb, subject and object; the order is immaterial.

Binns and the Consultant left their sea front hotel and went for an after dinner walk around the peninsula of Tenby's Castle Hill. They stood at a plaque defining landmarks visible from the vantage-point of the Castle Hill with respect to the coastline.

Binns: "Opposite us is Saint Catherine's Island with its Napoleonic fortress. Over there Caldey Island with its lighthouse and monastery. Further to the west Giltar Point and behind it Saint Margaret's Island which is a seabird and seal sanctuary. Then to the eastern horizon the Gower Peninsula and behind us Monkstone Point. Behind that is Amroth where you can see the remains of a sunken forest which dates back to the rise in sea levels of the early Stone Age. Then further along, that huge stretch of sand, that's Pendine where between the First and Second World Wars they used to make attempts on the World land speed record ... I had a really strange dream last night."

"That's not surprising with all that's been happening, you've got so much on your mind."

"No it was like I'd been here before."

"Déjà vu?"

"When I say before I mean before ... before all this, the pier, the town and its town walls, before the Norman castle on top of this promontory, before the monastery on Caldey Island, before the spire of Saint Mary's Church. And do you know what? I wasn't alone, I was with Carter."

"What were you doing?"

"I'd rather not say ... sometimes he gives me the creeps but I can't help feeling sorry for him. I guess it must be the effect of Vietnam ..."

"He told you he'd been to Vietnam?"

"He was in the Green Berets."

"And the story about his family?"

"What do you mean - story?"

"Carter's CIA, he's probably cleared to atomic level and beyond. He's like a chameleon constantly inventing identities and life histories, like you'd change the colour of your nail varnish or lipstick."

"Who is he then?"

"Just some rich kid from the south who joined the National Guard to escape being drafted to Vietnam."

"So he's not a hero then?"

"Far from it. I heard a particularly nasty story about him. While in the National Guard he was involved in a lynching during which a preacher was castrated and his wife gang raped. To escape justice he was secreted away to Washington and the CIA."

"You mean he's Klu Klux Klan?"

"Probably was but that was when he was just a kid so he's probably changed now. I can't imagine he'd have got as far as he has if he hadn't."

"I can. Remember how they persecuted Paul Robeson? And talking of déjà vu, he spent some time in Wales too."

"Look, you're in a very high profile and therefore dangerous position. There's something I know which I feel you ought to know. But if I tell you and they find out that I told you I'd be in a very difficult position indeed if you know what I mean."

"I get your meaning. Are you able to give me any clues?"

"I think it would be better if you asked Carter to tell you. Ask him about the Silver Spoon."

"The Silver Spoon?"

"That's all I'm prepared to say and I'll tell you why. Several years ago I became professionally involved, as I was with you, with an eminent psychologist who, as in your case, was said to be suffering from hallucinations about aliens. She, as did you, realised the situation she was in and, as did you, decided to cooperate as a strategy for escape. Being in my line of work, as it were, she soon became a valued colleague and confident which is how I know about the Silver Spoon. But I never told anyone and from what I'll tell you, and from what you know already, you'll understand why.

"A situation developed where she seemed to be taking over, a scenario which could well be said to be the story of your life. But that's besides the point. My job was simply to assess my patients in the short and medium term but she was prying. Because of the Silver Spoon she wanted to know if they knew anything connected with what she knew.

"This was beginning to have a detrimental and destabilising effect since she was creating anxieties in the other patients since in probing their minds she was probing their identities.

"I reported this and made a recommendation that she was released as sane, which to my professional opinion she was, as in your case, or moved on for reassessment elsewhere. I believed they would adopt the second option since what I had deduced as to the reason for her emplacement in the beginning was that she wanted to go public with the Silver Spoon and they didn't. You may be able to understand her a little better if I tell you that she believed that publication would have obtained her a Nobel Prize and, as she put it, immortality.

"But she obtained immortality all right. They moved her on within the system to an institution which specialised in experimental psychological therapies involving surgery. She believed that she was in the process of being rehabilitated, that her career aims were the same as theirs, that they wanted a coordinated approach to publication which for political reasons would be in the run up to the presidential elections.

"But she entered the institution not as a member of staff but as a patient, just as you did, and died shortly after of a brain haemorrhage during experimental surgery to her brain. So you see sister I can worry for you and sometimes I get scared too."

"Thanks for your concern but why should I ask Carter about it all, about what you call the Silver Spoon?"

"Because he was the middleman, he was involved in the negotiations with her. To put it bluntly she trusted him, she trusted him and she died."

They were now standing on top of the Castle Hill. Binns rubbed the palm of her hand against the grey limestone of the twelfth century Norman keep: "I love history and as soon as we arrived here I somehow felt as if I'd come home. It's all here, the history of mankind from the beginning of the Stone Age right through to the Alien Age of the twenty-first century. That white marble statue is of Prince Albert who was Queen Victoria's husband and there's always a seagull standing on his head! It's said that some nights on a full Moon when Saint Mary's Church clock strikes midnight in the dead of winter he climbs down and walks around the mediaeval streets inside t