The Serene Invasion (14 page)

She told him that she worked for the Red Cross in Kallani.

“So you are based there?”

Sally nodded. “That’s right. Yes.”

“And why are you here?”

“Accompanying Mr Allen. I’m on holiday.”

The sergeant looked from Allen to Sally, his gaze unreadable. “There is a state of emergency in the country now. My government has ordered that all foreign nationals must report to the Ugandan embassy for registration.”

Sally made a sound of disgust. “But that’s back in Kampala!”

“Nevertheless, you must report to the embassy, or you will be in breach of regulations.”

Before Sally could argue, Allen said, “That’s fine. We’ll do that. We’re due in Rangay before sunset, so if you would kindly let us past.”

The sergeant stared at him, unmoving. “I must request that you turn back now, go back to the highway and head south.”

Allen smiled and said patiently, “I have work to do in Rangay, a story to cover. We will head to Kampala first thing in the morning.”

The sergeant stared him down. “Mr Allen, you will turn around now, head back to the highway and continue south. The country is under a state of emergency.”

Allen nodded. “Very well.”

The sergeant passed Allen his softscreen and he climbed back into the car. Sally slipped in beside him and slammed the door.

Allen started the engine. “So... what do we do?” He watched the troops mosey back to their truck.

The sergeant turned and stood watching him.

“What do you mean? I thought you’d agreed to the...”

“I mean, do we drive on, through the tape, ignoring the kind sergeant?”

Sally considered, smiling at him like a kid considering a dare. “Do you think they’d
try
to shoot if we did disobey them?”

“I very much doubt they’d risk shooting two foreign nationals...”

She nodded. “You’ve stirred the troublemaker in me, Mr Allen. Let’s go.”

He revved the engine and rolled the car forward through the tape. As it snapped and fluttered around the windscreen, he accelerated. He heard cries from the soldiers, saw them dash into the middle of the road behind the car. Sally swivelled in her seat. Allen kept his eyes on the road ahead.

“What are they doing?”

“The sergeant’s pointing, giving orders. One of them is raising his rifle...”

Allen hunched in his seat, expecting the sound of gunshots at any second.

“And now?”

She laughed. “Nothing. The soldier’s just standing there, aiming... The sergeant’s yelling something. Right, he’s aiming his own rifle...”

“If he aims at our tyres,” Allen said, “does that constitute violence?”

“If he thinks of that, we might find out,” she said.

It came to him, then, that the sociologists and philosophers would have a fine time trying to work out the parameters of intent, and how they pertained to the blanket proscription on violence.

“They’re just standing there, Geoff. Not even coming after us...”

Allen relaxed, let out a long breath and finally laughed. “I don’t think I’ve truly realised, until now, quite what this means.”

Sally picked up his softscreen from where he’d tossed it between the seats, fastened it to the dash and accessed the memory cache. “Listen,” she said.

She found the broadcast of an hour ago. The neuroscientist and the sociologist were debating the embargo on violence.

Chen Li said, “What is even more fascinating is how the embargo – which we will call it until a better term presents itself – is facilitated. It appears, from reports, that individuals intent on committing acts of violence are
prevented
from doing so despite their desires. They are paralysed, frozen on the spot. They report a mechanical, a physical, inability to carry through the action their brain intends. This suggests that whatever agency is responsible for the... embargo... can effect change on some fundamental neurological level. This is both tremendously exciting, but also terrifying in its indication of the power of... of these visitors.”

“What interests me,” Professor Walken the sociologist said, “is the consequences of this intervention on both the individual and societal level. One thing is certain, if the embargo continues, then nothing,
nothing
, will ever be the same again on planet Earth. Violence will be a thing of the past... But, and it’s a fascinating ‘but’, will our inability to commit violence, and our resulting repression of the act, have unforeseen psychological consequences on us as a race? Or will the fact that we cannot commit violence in time mean that we lose the desire, that the desire will be, as it were, bred out of us? That’s the interesting question.”

“And that, gentlemen, is where we must leave it, I’m afraid,” said the anchorman. “The debate will run and run, I’m sure.”

One hour later they arrived at the national park.

T
HERE WAS NO
one in the log cabin that served as the gatehouse to the park, other than a houseboy who told Allen that everyone was up at the ‘hill’ to watch the passing of the starship.

He showed Allen and Sally to their cabin, a small but comfortable three room dwelling on the edge of the lake. Sally found the refrigerator stocked with food, as per her instructions, and opened a couple of beers. Allen unfastened the French windows that gave onto a veranda overlooking the lake and stepped out, admiring the view. The sun was low in the west, smearing a gorgeous tangerine and cerise light over the bush. He looked south, but there was no sign of the approaching starship.

“I don’t know about you,” he said, “but I’d rather set up my stuff here than join the others on the hill.”

“Me too. I don’t particularly feel like company at the moment.” She leaned against him, sipping her beer.

He set up his camera and checked his softscreen. He had one email from Wolfgang back at the London agency. He laughed and showed it to Sally. She read it out, smiling, “
Forget the bloody elephants and concentrate on the aliens!
”

“Will do, Wolfgang,” he said.

He stuck his softscreen to the outside wall of the hut and set it running. The BBC was shuttling between their correspondents who were following the progress of the starships around the world.

According to their man in Africa, that continent’s ship was passing over southern Uganda.

They stood on the veranda, arms around each other and gazing south. According to Allen’s calculations the starship was three or four minutes away.

When it came, three and a half minutes later, he was surprised by his response.

He knew he would be awed, the visual artist in him impressed by the aesthetics of the experience, the brilliance of the silver-blue extraterrestrial vessel as it traversed the beautiful African sky, but he had never expected to be so
moved
by the event.

“But it’s... massive,” Sally gasped.

The ship slid over the southern horizon in absolute silence. Like all the others it was snub-nosed, splayed, a wedge that most resembled a manta ray. The dying sun caught its silvery tegument, giving it the lustre of a genie’s lamp. Allen smiled at the not inappropriate metaphor: but what kind of genie, he wondered, might emerge?

It would not fly directly overhead, he saw, but between where they stood and the horizon. He raised his camera and took a continuous series of shots, pausing now and then to lower his camera and watch the ship’s silent passage.

He calculated that the behemoth was perhaps five kilometres long, two wide from wing-tip – if they were indeed wings – to wing-tip.

To the west, silhouetted on the hilltop against the dying light, he made out a celebrating crowd, tourists and Africans alike. Their cries of delight and surprise drifted across the water. It was as if they were toasting the alien ship, welcoming it to planet Earth.

“Geoff, look...” She pointed to the softscreen on the wall. Evidently someone on the hill had a feed to the BBC, as the image of the starship above the lake was being beamed live online.

The announcer was saying, “And just in from Murchison Falls, Uganda, these images of the African starship.”

It was at its closest now, directly opposite them across the lake. He tried to make out any sign of sigils or decals on its sleek flank, or seams and viewports. Even its bullish snout, where in a Terran vessel one would expect some kind of flight-deck or bridge to be positioned, was smooth and featureless. A technology beyond our ability to comprehend, he thought.

He marvelled at the privilege of being able to watch the arrival of the ship as it happened; it would be something he could tell his grandchildren.

“I remember the day the extraterrestrials arrived on Earth...”

He considered what had happened aboard the plane, the spider drilling into his head, and again he knew that, rationally perhaps, he should be apprehensive. Was it worrying, he wondered, that he was not?

He laughed aloud and pulled Sally to him, planting a big good-natured kiss on her temple.

“We’re living in interesting times, girl,” he said.

She looked up at him. “Isn’t that a Chinese curse?”

The light diminished and slowly the starship slipped away to the north. When the vessel vanished from sight, Allen busied himself beaming his pictures back to London, then fixed a meal of salad, rice and chicken.

They ate on the veranda and then sat looking out over the lake with their beers, the softscreen playing at their side – a constant accompaniment.

At last Sally said, “I’ve been giving it a lot of thought, Geoff. Since yesterday, and what happened. I know I told Krasnic that I’d be leaving in May...”

He looked at her, recalling when she’d told him, last November, that she’d had enough of work in Africa and was coming home to London in May. His joy had been overwhelming.

Had she decided to stay, he wondered? Had the events of yesterday made her feel beholden to the medical centre, its staff and patients?

She turned to him. “But why wait until May, Geoff? I want out now. When we get back, I’ll tell Krasnic I’ll work till the end of the month, so he can find a replacement.”

He reached out and took her hand. “I’m delighted, but you’re absolutely sure?”

“I’ve never been surer of anything in my life, Geoff,” she said. “I want to be with you in London.”

He fetched two more beers from the cooler, and they toasted each other as the sun went down.

Beside them, ten minutes later, the tone of the announcer’s voice made Sally sit up and pull the softscreen across the table.

“And there have been developments on the starship front. First, Bob Hudson in southern Spain...”

“Thank you, Sue. Yes. Just minutes ago as I speak the ship I’ve been tracking south across Europe suddenly disappeared, along with the seven other ships converging on the Saharan desert. We have footage here of the second it happened...” The softscreen showed the European starship moving slowly over Gibraltar when, in a flash, it was gone. “It just... winked out of existence...” the reporter concluded breathlessly.

“We must interrupt you there, Bob. We cross now, live, to Amelia Thirkell who has just arrived in the press encampment a hundred kilometres north-west of Timbuktu. Amelia, there have been developments...”

“There certainly have, Sue. If I can just set the scene here. We are – that is, the world’s media – are encamped in a vast arc around what some of my colleagues have termed ‘ground zero’ – the locus where the starships will meet. The first people to arrive here reported that they could get no nearer than ten kilometres to ground zero, and seemed to be prevented by a... a force-field or barrier...” She pointed across the desert. “It’s just a hundred metres in that direction, and surrounds ground zero in a vast circle.”

Thirkell looked into the sky, an expression of wonder on her face.

“And then, literally minutes ago, just after the starships vanished, they appeared again over the darkening sands of the Sahara.”

The image panned away from the reporter and lifted into the sky, where a strange and beautiful choreography of interstellar vessels was playing itself out.

Allen found himself gripping Sally’s hand as they stared at the screen. Against the darkening skies, the eight identical starships approached a central locus, slowing as they came together. They hovered, silently, nose to nose, for all the world like the silver-blue petals of some vast intergalactic flower.

“Their nose-cones seem to be actually
touching
,” Thirkell reported. “It’s as if they’re fitting together to form a vast pattern. Because of each ship’s identical delta shape... they can join to form what looks like a great... snowflake.”

The BBC camera looked up at the configuration at an angle of perhaps forty-five degrees, and from this viewpoint the eight starships no longer resembled so many individual vessels but one vast, interlocked shape, a great interstellar cartwheel lambent in the light of the setting sun.

Seconds later, a bright flash emanated from the hub of the configuration, a pulse of white light that spread in a concentric circle from the conjoined nose-cones to the outer edge of the ships. It did not stop there but fell, like a vast halo, towards the desert far below.