Zeb Hawkins sneezed for what seemed like the twentieth time that day. He remonstrated with the stewardess: how many times had he told her company he was allergic to milk? They must have put some butter in his sandwich or some cheese or something. Apologising the air stewardess leant over and gave Zeb some fruit.

"Pineapple?" he complained. "I thought I explained to your superiors before we set out that I'm allergic to them too. Just take it all away."

He sat there wiping his sweating head, nervously polishing his spectacles and generally fidgeting - anything to avoid looking out of the window. He'd never liked travelling outside the States and Africa was about the last place he'd wanted to go. He'd thought when the war had ended that he'd been released from having to leave Uncle Sam but no, here he was, doing his bit for the country he loved.

The 'plane began to descend. He gripped on tightly to the seat. He hated flying.

Two hours later the young man was walking along a road leading out of Conakry, trying to ignore the stares that his suitcases, tweed suit and straw hat were causing. He consulted his map again. Yes this was the place. When he got near it was just as opulent as the CIA had said. Those Ruskies had funded a mansion - so much for Communism!

He approached the tall metal security gates and struck the gong next to them four times as he'd been bidden. The gates swung open and a servant ushered him along the path, past the fountain to the front door, rang it and waited for another servant to let them both in. As the servant politely instructed Zeb waited. Presently a young stunningly beautiful woman came down the immaculate staircase wearing a long dark blue silk garment with bits of gold around the head scarf.

"I am Fanta," she said. "I'm so very pleased to meet you Mr. Hawkins. Please come through. My husband is waiting to meet you."

A greying man in traditional Guinean dress came bounding out to meet Zeb and give him a really warm handshake. Zeb didn't like to say that he wasn't very tactile and hoped Malik didn't notice him wipe his hand down the side of his pants.

Malik guided his American guest to a table where a feast was prepared. As instructed they avoided all the foods to which Mr. Hawkins was allergic. That didn't really matter because the main dish was chopped-up bits of baguette soaked in peanut sauce with fish heads strewn liberally across them, none of which were on the list of proscribed ingredients.

Zeb hardly touched it, not liking the look of it. This offended his host, who tried not to show it. Malik clapped his hands and a flunky brought along a massive bowl of rice and peanut sauce with bits of baguette strewn liberally across it. Zeb managed a couple of mouthfuls but gave up as it was too salty and he was worried it'd dry his mouth out.

Malik was eating heartily, which proably explained his great big belly, thought Zeb. He then clapped his hands and the final course arrived: a great big metal dish full to the brim with sweet potato leaves filled with chopped-up bits of baguette and bits of rice strewn liberally across them, plus, for extra taste, the occasional fish head secreted here and there. This time Zeb ate none of it.

When Malik had finished both his bowl and Zeb's he clapped his hands again and the alcohol arrived - all of it from the US. Zeb's face finally cracked into a smile.

"Jack Daniels? Now you're talking my language," he said.

They drank into the small hours talking of Malik's former work for the Soviet government, of Zeb's work for the American government and of how great it was that they'd defeated the Germans. Actually they each revealed almost nothing about their own work for their chosen side - they simply revealed that they had been helping the war effort and what a great thing it was that they'd defeated the Germans.

"Malik, I'm going to cut to the chase here," said Zeb, his inhibitions lessening, "I want to talk with you about Ilya Ivanov."

Malik went silent. He nearly threw his guest out of the house.

"Look, hear me out - I know you worked for him, OK, I know he fell out with Uncle Joe, OK. Malik - I know about the experiments he was carrying out. My question to you is what happened to the creatures?"

Malik pretended, not very convincingly, to be amazed and confused.

"Malik, you got a great house here - sure. You got a great young wife - she's awful pretty. You got running water. Hell, you even got yourself a fountain - way I understand it most folks around these parts don't even got running water. But wouldn't you like somewhere even better? Where the girls are even prettier? You could bring her and your kids from your other marriage. You could bring anyone you wanted. How d'you like to live somewhere like this?" and he pointed to a photo of a truly massive American house.

Malik was easily bribable just as the CIA had said he would be. Once he admitted that the creatures still existed and were in his care and that he'd found a way of breeding them he could not stop talking. It was clearly a relief to be able to get all of this off his chest at last.

Malik took Zeb down into a smelly dungeon. Zeb pretended he didn't have the urge to retch when he saw the Humanzees. They had odd-shaped heads, hair all over their bodies and made grunting sounds, sometimes even producing what sounded horrifyingly like a word. There were more of them than the Agency had realised. They were each chained to a wall and sitting in piles of their own excrement.

"You'd have a limousine. Imagine that!" said Zeb, leading the way away from the creatures' enclosure. "You wouldn't have to walk down these dirt tracks. You could eat what you wanted. I mean no offence but that meal you served up there was pretty lousy. But come with us to New Mexico and all this could change."

They were both now drunk enough that they could laugh about the dinner they'd just had and how much nicer turkey, roast potatoes  and squash would have tasted washed down by a big old cup of American coffee and an even wider range of liquor.

So it was that Malik found himself once again working for a superpower, just as he had two decades ago. This time, though, he actually lived in that superpower.

On the morning of 7th July that year Zeb buzzed the security gate at Malik's mansion in White Sands. He knew that Malik could see him on the colour 3-D screen inside. He was told always to press the buzzer and monitor the 3-D screen before letting anyone in. (The screen, like everything else in the compound in which Malik lived, was highly classified - even Malik himself didn't officially exist.)

Malik had long since realised that there was a price for working for all these white guys. He had been up for two days without sleep training his creatures with rewards and punishments.

"Oh, hello, it's me," he said as if that needed explaining. "Have you prepared them?" he asked.

Like Malik would say "no" even if he hadn't!

"Come!" shouted Malik, prodding the creatures with sticks. Just for good measure he put a metal lead around two of their necks. They followed him and Zeb lugubriously to the research station. There Malik couldn't believe what he was looking at: a great round disk with flashing lights round the side.

"Stop!" he shouted at the Humanzees, who obeyed.

"What is it?" he asked Malik. "It's the NZZ-C03," he said, as if that explained everything.

"What is it?" asked Malik again.

"All I can say is it's the NZZ-C03. Get them in."

"In!" shouted Malik, undoing the Humanzees' leads. He and Zeb the spent ten minutes taking the creatures onto the craft, getting them to strap themselves in, showing them how to unstrap themselves and so on.

"Fear!" said the male Humanzee as the two humans left.

"Did he just say 'fear'? Son of a gun! They can speak!" laughed Zeb.

Once outside Zeb pointed his remote control at the NZZ-C03 and it lifted off the ground.

He checked his controls. "It's got a good level of oxygen in there. Hold it: I'm picking up fluctuations in her heartbeat."

The craft shot off into the skies more quickly than anything Malik had ever seen before.

"Speed: good. Very good."

Zeb sneezed. Some idiot must have put butter in his sandwich again this morning. How inconsiderate!

Yes, they were clearly surviving the G-Force in there... suddenly he noticed that the controls had stopped responding. He switched to video-monitoring. The female was removing a panel while the male was smashing two circuits behind him.

"Sons of...!" said Zeb. "They're out of control. They're flying over Chaves County. WHAT HAVE YOUR MONKEYS DONE!" and he nearly throttled Malik.

"Free!" said the voice of the male. The humans turned back to look at the screen. "Free! Free!" the male kept saying as he looked right at the camera. Then the sound and vision were cut.

Zeb was experienced at cover-ups and damage limitation but this was a big one: how could he explain to the outside world what had happened just outside Roswell on 7th July 1947?

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He smoothed his own white T, identical in size and style to John's, as were the jeans.

excerpt from Einstein's Clones   by Tasha_Noble