'So, what's the plan?' asked Bowden as we drove towards the Welsh border town of Hay-on-Wye. It was about ten in the morning, and we were travelling in Bowden's Welsh-built Griffin Sportina with Millon de Floss and Stig in the back seat. Behind us was a convoy of ten lorries, all loaded with banned Danish books.

'Well,' I said, 'ever thought it odd that Parliament just roll over and do anything that Kaine asks?'

'I've given up even trying to understand Parliament,' said Bowden.

'They're all snivelling toadies,' put in Millon.

'If you even need a government,' added Stig, 'you are a life form flawed beyond redemption.'

'I was confused, too,' I continued. 'A government wholly agreeable to the worst excesses of Kaine could mean only one thing: some form of short-range mind control wielded by unscrupulous power brokers."

'Now that's my kind of theory!' exclaimed Millon excitedly.

'I couldn't figure it out at first, but then when I was up at Goliathopolis I felt it myself. A sort of mind-numbing go-with-the-flow feeling when I just wanted to follow the path of least resistance, no matter how pointless, or wrong. I had seen its effect at the Evade the Question Time TV show, too — the front row were eating out of Kaine's hand, no matter what he said.'

'So what's the connection?'

'I felt it again in Mycroft's lab. It was only when Landen made a sarcastic comment that I twigged. The ovinator. We all thought the "ovine" part of it was to do with eggs, but it's not. It's to do with sheep. The ovinator transmits sub-alpha brain waves that inhibit free will and instil sheep-like tendencies into the minds of anyone close by. It can be tuned to the user so they are unaffected; it's possible that Goliath may have developed a long-range version called the Ovitron and an anti-serum. Mycroft thinks he probably invented it to transmit public health messages, but he can't remember. Goliath get hold of it, Stricknene gives it to Kaine -bingo. Parliament do everything Kaine asks. The only reason Formby is still anti-Yorrick is because he refuses to go anywhere near him.'

There was silence in the car.

'What can we do about it?'

'Mycroft's working on an ovi-negator that should cancel it out, but we carry on with our plans as before. The Elan — and win the Superhoop.'

'Even I'm finding this hard to believe,' murmured Millon, 'and that's a first for me.'

'How does it get us out of England?' asked Bowden.

I patted the briefcase that was sitting on my lap.

'With the ovinator on our side, no one will want to oppose.us.'

'I'm not sure that's morally acceptable,' said Bowden. 'I mean, doesn't that make us as bad as Kaine?'

'I think we should stop and talk this through,' added Millon.

'It's one thing making up stories about mind control experiments, but quite another actually using them.'

I opened the briefcase and switched the ovinator on.

'Who's with me to go to the Elan, guys?'

'Well, all right, then,' conceded Bowden, 'I guess I'm with you on this.'

'Millon?'

'I'll do whatever Bowden does.'

'It really does work, doesn't it?' observed Stig, giving a short snorty cough. I chuckled slightly myself, too.

Getting through the English checkpoint at Clifford was even easier than I had imagined. I went ahead with the ovinator in the briefcase and stood for some time at the border station, chatting to the duty guard and giving him and the small garrison a good soaking for half an hour before Bowden drove up with the ten trucks behind him.

'What are in those trucks?' asked the guard with a certain degree of torpidity in his voice.

'You don't need to look in the trucks,' I told him.

'We don't need to look in the trucks,' echoed the border guard.

'We can go through unimpeded.'

'You can go through unimpeded.'

'You're going to be nicer to your girlfriend.'

'I'm definitely going to be nicer to my girlfriend . . . Move along.'

He waved us through and we drove across the demilitarised zone to the Welsh border guards, who called their colonel as soon as we explained that we had ten truckloads of Danish books that required safe-keeping. There was a long and convoluted phone call with someone from the Danish consulate, and after about an hour we and the trucks were escorted to a disused hangar at the Llandrindod Wells airfield park. The colonel in charge offered us free passage back to the border but I switched on the ovinator again and told him that he could take the truck drivers back but to let us go on our way, a plan that he quickly decided was probably the best option.

Ten minutes later we were on the road north towards the Elan, Millon directing us all the way with a 1950s tourist map. By the time we were past Rhaydr the countryside became more rugged, the farms less and less frequent and the road more and more potholed until, as the sun reached its zenith and started its downward track, we arrived at a tall set of gates, strung liberally with rusty barbed wire. There was an old stone-built guardhouse with two very bored guards, who only needed a short burst from the ovinator to isolate the electrified fence, allowing us to pass. Bowden drove the car through and stopped at another internal fence twenty yards inside the first. This was not electrified and I pushed it open to let the car pass.

The road was in worse repair on the Area 21 side of the gates. Tussocky grass was growing from the cracks in the concrete roadway, and on occasion trees that had fallen across the road impeded our progress.

'Now can you tell me what we're doing here?' asked Millon, staring intently out of the window and taking frequent photographs.

'Two reasons,' I said, looking at the map that Millon had obtained from his conspiracy buddies, 'first, because we think someone's been cloning Shakespeares and I need one as a matter of some urgency, and second, to find vital reproductive information for Stig.'

'So it's true you can't have children?'

Stig liked Millon because he asked such direct questions.

'It is true,' he replied simply, loading up his dart gun with tranqs the size of Havana cigars.

'Take a left here, Bowd.'

He changed gear, pulled the wheel around and we drove on to a stretch of road with dark woodland on either side. We proceeded up a hill, took a left turn past an outcrop of rock, then stopped. There was a rusty car upside down on the road in front of us, blocking the way.

'Stay in the car, keep it running,' I said to Bowden. 'Millon, stay put. Stig — with me.'

Stig and I climbed out of the car and cautiously approached the upturned vehicle. It was a licence-built Studebaker, probably about ten years old. I peered in. Vandals never came here. The glass in the speedometer was unbroken, the rusty keys still in the ignition, the seat leather hanging in rotten strands. There was a sun-bleached briefcase lying on the ground and it was full of water-related technical stuff, all now mushy and faded by the wind and rain. Of the occupants there was no sign. I had thought Millon was overcooking it with all his 'chimeras running wild' stuff, but all of a sudden I felt nervous.