Out of Nowhere (9 page)

The lights came up in the conference room, and the big screen went blank. The men – they were all men – sat with strained faces and looked at the podium beside the screen where the Minister for Defence stood leafing through a sheaf of papers in a file. They’d seen how close he’d come to losing control, but none of them thought any the worse of him for it. They imagined how they’d feel if this had happened in their own countries; then they imagined how much worse they’d feel if they were the person supposed to make sure that things like this didn’t happen.

‘We’ve been studying Reputation One almost since it first appeared,’ the Minister said. ‘A team of government scientists and engineers was sent to the area as soon as we realised the extent of the problem.’

The scientists hadn’t, he admitted, discovered much by way of useful information. They could see from both air and ground observation that the Phenomenon – visually at least – resembled nothing so much as a gigantic soap-bubble composed of a sort of purple mist. Tests made from helicopters suggested that its notable characteristics aloft were exactly the same as at ground level. As above, so below. Exploratory tunnelling at several sites seemed to confirm that
these characteristics continued underground. The Phenomenon might very well be spherical, with only half of it visible above ground. And even that half was extremely impressive, effectively barring humanity from some three hundred square kilometres of the island of Ireland. As to what it was
made
of, nobody could determine. The haze might or might not be made of a material unknown to science, but the scientists couldn’t analyse it because they couldn’t obtain a sample.

‘You’ve tried using lasers?’ someone asked.

‘Of course we have! The beam simply bounced off – and came close to slicing our top scientist in half. Naturally he was in no hurry to repeat the experiment. We’ve also tried to penetrate the barrier using artillery.’

‘And?’

‘And it doesn’t work.
Nothing
works. The odd thing is that the haze is in no way hard or shell-like to the touch – I’ve touched it myself. It feel at first rather like dipping your hand into tepid water. But after that resistance grows very quickly. The deepest we’ve managed to penetrate so far is six centimetres. It should be noted too that only living or once-living organic material will penetrate the haze at all.’

They all looked queries at him.

‘A piece of dead wood, or a human limb, or even a bit of grass,’ the Minister said, ‘will penetrate further and more easily than a blade or a bullet – or an artillery shell.’

There was general muttering from his audience.

‘Our people have tried various on-site tests on the substance,’ the Minister went on. He sounded vaguely bitter.
‘Tests for chemical reactions and so on. Results ranged from the completely useless to the worse-than-useless. In fact, several reliable chemical tests strongly suggest that the Phenomenon isn’t actually there at all.’

Eyes strayed to the now-blank screen. None of them could forget the impact of that first real sight of the Bubble. It was there all right.

Generally speaking, the Minister went on, scientific investigation told them only three things, none very helpful. First, no one could say what Reputation One was made of. Second, they didn’t know who, or what, had put it there. Third, they didn’t know
why
they’d put it there. Which basically meant they were no better off than they’d been two days ago when the thing first appeared. In short, the Irish government’s best scientific brains were baffled. Meanwhile, in the space of those two days the thing had become the biggest tourist attraction on the face of the planet. It had become a site of pilgrimage for half the religions in the world, and for all anyone knew it could at any moment grow, shrink, explode, or open up to release who knew what mayhem on the surrounding crowds, not to mention the rest of humankind.

The Minister’s voice had been growing shakier again as he spoke. By now he sounded almost tearful. He stopped and took control of himself again. He cleared his throat and fiddled with his tie. Then he filled a glass of water from a carafe beside him on the podium and drank it.

‘Yesterday,’ he said, ‘we sent out a call to all friendly governments. Your presence here is the result of that appeal. This problem is located in Ireland, but it’s not simply an Irish
problem. This thing may be the first of many, or it may contain something that will prove in time to be a danger to us all. The Phenomenon may represent a threat to all of humanity.’

He filled and gulped down another glass of water.

‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘I come here today with a very simple but extremely heartfelt message from the Irish government and the Irish people, and the gist of that message is this:
Help
!’

The conference was being held in a network of underground rooms and bunkers lying below Government Buildings in Dublin. It was being held in secret, and was perhaps the only place in the whole country not overrun by film-crews. There were plenty of reporters and cameramen outside Government Buildings, of course, waiting to ask emerging politicians for the latest news. But the real news was happening, as it so often does, in quiet air-conditioned rooms underground, where middle-aged well-groomed men in expensive suits (guarded by squads of cold-eyed, younger, well-groomed men wearing ear-pieces, shiny shoes and a variety of government-issue sidearms) discussed the appropriate
response
to the Big Bubble.

The conference continued in non-stop session. Various delegates, exhausted, would go for a rest in the small but comfortable bedrooms provided. Often they’d sleep, and when they slept they often dreamed of Reputation One. Some even had nightmares about it. Later, rested, they’d return. Food would be brought in at regular intervals by some of the cold-eyed young men. The talk never stopped. They talked hot air, but then politicians are used to that. They even find a kind of comfort in it: it makes them feel they’re doing something.
The number of people arriving into the country grew, and the army and police at the site of the Bubble lost even more control. But at the conference, attended by experts on everything, who’d come from everywhere, nothing changed. Until around midday on Saturday. When everything did.

By Saturday morning the scenes around the perimeter of The Phenomenon had gone well beyond the point where they could be described as chaotic. The word ‘chaos’ no longer did them justice. By now almost three million people surrounded the baseof the Big Bubble. The police and army had abandoned all serious efforts at crowd-control. They’d been reduced to firing volleys in the air over people’s heads, and even these were gradually growing less effective as a deterrent.

The camp at Doulapown had by now grown into a shanty-city with an estimated eighty-five thousand residents. The number of churches and temples had grown to twenty-eight, the number of illegal bars to a hundred and seventy-five. The Big Bubble frenzy had not died – it had intensified intensely.

Just before midday the main conference room under Government Buildings in Dublin was completely silent. It was the first time it had been so quiet since the initial meeting on Tuesday. The silence, brief but deep, had been caused by the senior United States security representative, General Tubb. The general, frustrated by four days of failure to penetrate the barrier at all, had made what he considered a very practical suggestion. From the silence, the white faces and the way
everyone else stared goggle-eyed at him, he suspected that not everyone shared his opinion.

‘I didn’t mean a
big
nuclear bomb,’ he hastened to reassure them. ‘I only meant a teensie one. We drop it right on top of that old bubble’ – he demonstrated with his cigar – ‘and BOOM! – no more bubble. It might just work, and I happened to bring one over on the plane with me that would be
just
the right size. I never go anywhere without one – you never know when it might come in handy.’

The explanation didn’t seem to please anyone at all. Finally the Irish Minister for Defence, who looked more than drained after four days of intense pressure, dragged himself to his feet.

‘General, we’ve proven,’ he said, speaking quite slowly, as one might to a small child, ‘that things bounce
off
The Phenomenon. Throw something at the haze, it rebounds at almost exactly twice the speed. That’s one of the few definite facts about it that we’ve managed to establish.’

‘So?’

‘So, General, what if your bomb doesn’t explode? What if it rebounds and lands on Belfast or Galway?’ He pointed directly overhead. ‘General, what if it drops right here on Dublin?’

General Tubb looked puzzled. He glanced narrowly at the ceiling. ‘You mean this place isn’t nuke-proof?’ he asked suspiciously.

There was a knock at the door. There was something odd about the knock. The cold-eyed young men always knocked before entering, but even their knocks were cold-eyed: a steely, professional
R
at-Tat
that they all seemed to use, as though
they’d all learned it at the same school. This knock was different. It consisted of five raps in a rhythm some of the room’s occupants would have called
shave-and-a-haircut
. It sounded almost cheerful.

The conference delegates looked at each other.

‘Come in,’ called the Minister for Defence.

The door swung open and an unlikely figure peered in at them apologetically. It was a fat little old woman with blue-rinsed hair. A pale pink cardigan hung around her shoulders. Horn-rimmed glasses hung on a chain around her neck. Her hands were empty, held out palms upwards.

‘I’m sorry to bother you,’ she said. ‘But I thought you’d like to know that you can stop worrying now. We’ve almost finished what we came to do, and our exclusion zone will be removed before midnight.’

At first no one heard what she said. Seeing her there was so unlikely that the delegates hardly even noticed her. Instead they all looked past her, to where a pile of cold-eyed well-groomed young men wearing ear-pieces and shiny shoes lay, neatly and rigidly, stacked like so much firewood against the corridor wall behind her. They all looked very dead. 

The little fat woman smiled at the conference delegates. Then she noticed where their attention was directed. She glanced back at the neat stack of cold-eyed young men.

‘Oh, your guards!’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. But they didn’t want me to come in. They’ll be fine later, and they’ll remember none of this.’

Now the delegates’ eyes did swivel in her direction. They stared at her blankly. There had been twenty highly-trained security men in the corridor. This little woman looked incapable of disabling anything more fearsome than a reasonably well-built plastic bag. Still, the security men lay there, and the little fat woman said she’d done it, and she wasn’t even out of breath.

The little fat woman seemed to read their minds. She smiled cheerfully.

‘You mustn’t be taken in by my appearance,’ she said. ‘I’m what you might call a master of disguise.’

And she gave a little giggle, as though at some private joke.

The delegates’ eyes followed the little fat woman as she walked up the room to the podium, where the Irish Minister for Defence stood with his mouth slightly open. As the woman reached the top of the room, General Tubb suddenly
rose and blocked her way. He stood glaring down at the little fat woman.

‘Say,’ he said, ‘what’s the meaning of this?’

The little woman looked directly up into the General’s blue eyes. She seemed to read some message there.

‘Dearie me,’ she said. ‘I can see there’ll be no use in talking to
you
.’

She made a delicate little gesture with one hand. General Tubb sat down hard on the floor and stayed there, perfectly still. The little fat woman stepped around him. The delegates closest to the general stared at his sitting form. One of them waved a hand close to the General’s face. He didn’t blink. Another reached out a nervous hand and prodded at the General with his finger. The General tottered, overbalanced and fell on his back. His body didn’t bend. His legs stuck straight up in the air. The delegates stared in disbelief.

The little fat woman reached the podium.

‘You may as well sit down,’ she said kindly to the Minister for Defence.

The Minister for Defence nodded.

‘I suppose I may as well,’ he said. He sounded dazed.

The little fat woman looked around the room. Every eye was fixed on her. She nodded.

‘Gentlemen,’ she said, ‘my business here is simple. I’ve already told you what I came to say. Your worries are over. We will be removing our barrier – what you call The Phenomenon – very shortly. We would like to apologise for the inconvenience. Believe me, we’d much rather none of this had happened. If we had any other way of dealing with the
situation then I assure you we would have done so.’

Someone among the delegates found their voice. It was a fairly strangled voice, but it was clear enough.

‘Wh-what situation?’ it asked.

‘I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to say.’

Encouraged, someone else piped up.

‘You say “we”. Who are “we”? Who
are
you?’

A frosty little smile touched the woman’s lips.

‘Me? Why, I’m no one in particular. As regards “we”, well …’

She hesitated.

‘Don’t tell me,’ said the Minister for Defence, ‘you’re not at liberty to say, right?’

‘It would take a long time,’ said the little fat woman. ‘A very long time. And you might be happier not knowing.’

‘But I
want
to know!’ the Minister said, his voice rising a few octaves. ‘Whoever you are, you can’t just hive off part of my country, cause an international panic, then simply turn up and say it’s all over and you’re sorry for the inconvenience!’

The little fat woman smiled at him coyly. Her eyes positively twinkled.

‘I can, you know,’ she said.

She turned and, selecting a spot on the wall right behind her, walked right through it and was gone. In her wake the conference room degenerated into bedlam. Which, admittedly, it had never been very far from anyway.