The Serene Invasion (22 page)

“So you told him all about me, and he gave you sweetmeats and barfi in payment for your treachery...”

Kallif began blubbering. “But we did share them, Ana.”

“Can we come with you?” Rajeev begged. “Please don’t leave us behind!”

How could she, in all fairness, leave them here to suffer at the hands of fat Sanjeev?

At last she nodded. “But from now on, no spying, ah-cha?”

They beamed at her. “Thank you, Ana! Thank you!”

T
HEY MADE THEIR
way to platform six, where the Cochin Express was steadily filling with passengers for the long cross-country journey.

She found carriage C, the rag-tag gaggle of street kids on her heels. A liveried attendant barred her way. “The train is full!” he snapped. “Everyone is heading south to see the alien starships. Go back and watch the show on television.
Chalo!
”

Smiling, Ana withdrew the tickets from her pocket and waved them at the man. “I have tickets for my twenty-three friends and myself, with six to spare.”

He took the tickets, examined them with incredulity, and shook his head. “Where did you steal these from, girl?”

At the end of the platform, a whistle sounded and the guard shouted, “All aboard!”

“Allow us to board the train like all the other passengers with valid tickets,” Ana demanded.

“You are thieves and dogs–” the attendant began.

Ana squirmed past him, pulling Prakesh after her. The others followed quickly. The attendant cried out and tried to stop the snaking street kids. They evaded his grasp with practised ease, and he stepped forward and raised a hand to lash out at them.

Ana turned to see the mortified attendant spasming, and her friends filing past him with verbal taunts and their own mimicry of the man’s galvanic, puppet-like spasms.

She led the kids to their seats and eased Prakesh down beside her. The other passengers were staring at Ana and her friends, some with distaste and others with tolerant amusement. Ana smiled back at them, defiantly. Minutes later the train pulled slowly from the platform.

She stared through the window at the decrepit station sliding past. She saw the buildings and advertising hoardings that she had known for years, the familiar faces of the station workers. She looked up, at the footbridge high above, and saw a grey-furred monkey staring down at her. The odd thing was, she thought, that she felt not the slightest regret at her departure.

His head on Ana’s shoulder, Prakesh murmured, “Where are we going, Ana?”

As the train slid from the station, she told him.

G
OPAL WAS THE
first to see the Serene starships.

They had been travelling for hours when Ana fell asleep, tired from staring out of the window at the passing countryside, the farmers toiling in the fields, identical stretches of dun-coloured land passing by without variation.

Gopal’s cry woke her in an instant. She sat up quickly, then worked to control her panic. She no longer had to fear being awoken in the dead of night by someone’s alarmed cries, ready to run from whoever had a grievance against her and her friends.

“There!” Gopal pointed, pressing his face against the window. Ana peered and made out, high in the distance, the ellipse of the eight conjoined starships. At this distance and angle they presented a discus-shape hovering over a green blur of land on the horizon.

“What did the Serene look like?” Danta asked.

“Were they green?”

“Did they have big eyes and claws?”

“Were they monsters?”

Ana smiled and said that she had not seen the Serene aboard the starships. The golden figure had explained that they were few and far between, and were not monstrous but humanoid.

“But who are the golden figures?” Gopal wanted to know.

“They work for the Serene,” she replied.

“Like slaves?”

Ana laughed. “No, more like... like servants.”

Of course, she thought, the golden figures might not have been telling the truth: what if the Serene looked like monsters, like big hairy spiders which human beings would find horrible to look at; what if the golden figures were just human-shaped in order to set human minds at rest?

She realised that, even if this were so, it did not really matter. The Serene had brought peace to the Earth for the first time in living memory.

Two hours later the train drew to a halt at the town of Fandrabad and Ana led her little tribe out into the sweltering midday heat.

They left the station, along with a thousand other pilgrims, all chattering excitedly at what lay ahead. Ana came to a sudden halt on the steps of the station and stared in amazement at the sight that greeted her.

On the edge of the small town, a great shimmering wall of white light stretched away on either side for kilometres. If she stared hard she could see through the veil of light. She made out a stretch of green land, dotted with domes and other buildings, but faint as if seen through gauze.

It seemed as if every TV and satellite station in India, and beyond, was gathered at the foot of the shimmering light, along with crowds of curious Indians and even a few Westerners. In many places the crowd stood five deep, attempting to see what lay beyond the veil.

“What now?” Prakesh asked.

She looked around at her group. “Now we go to the light,” she said. “Follow me closely.”

She gripped Prakesh’s hand and led her band towards the noisy crowd. The hubbub of chatter increased as they drew nearer. Food vendors had set up stalls around the light’s perimeter, and big pantechnicons belonging to the satellite companies blocked the road. Ana led the way around the truck, and past reporters holding microphones and talking about the wondrous extraterrestrial visitation.

The crowd was thick before them, eager pilgrims pressing up to the white light and peering through. Ana watched as the occasional daring individual reached out and touched the light, then turned and excitedly reported that it felt
solid
...

Ana recalled what the golden figure aboard the starships had told her.

She looked back at her gaggle of rag-tag street kids, clad in torn shirts and shorts, most barefoot, some with flip-flops. “Now everyone hold hands so that we’re all linked together,” she instructed.

Like this they moved around the circumference of the light, Ana attempting to find an area where the crowd was not so thick. Their passage aroused much comment and the occasional insult. “What are these little animals doing here?” one fat Brahmin called out. “Cannot the police do their job for once?”

“Get back to the slums, harijans. There is nothing out here for you.”

Ana ignored the shouts, heartened that the name-callers were often shouted down by their fellows: “Show the children some respect, ah-cha? We are living in a time of peace.”

At last the crowd thinned before the wall of light, and Ana led her children towards an area where a line of citizens only three deep stood gazing through the light.

She stopped, turned and addressed her friends. “Make sure that we are all together and holding hands. Follow me, and do not stop walking as we approach the light...”

Prakesh stared at her. “We’re going
through
the light, Ana?”

She grinned. “Wait and see.”

“But someone said that the light was
solid
!”

“Just trust me, ah-cha?”

She stepped forward and tried to ease her way past the cordon of curious individuals. “Excuse me, please. Can we come through...?”

The crowd parted with reluctance, one or two people muttering at the kids.

Ana paused before the wall of light and looked up. It rose high into the sky, and to the left and right. She stared through the light and made out a rising stretch of green, like the brightest lawn she had seen on the softscreens in the restaurants along Station Road.

She turned to her children and said. “Remember, hold hands, and do not let go. Now follow me!”

People laughed. “And where do you think you’re going, slum-girl? Do you think you and your kind will be allowed into paradise?”

Hardly daring to hope that the next few seconds might make these people eat their words, she closed her eyes and stepped forward, into the light.

She heard gasps from behind her, then startled cries. She walked through the light and felt the ground beneath her feet change from sandy soil to soft, springy grass.

She opened her eyes and stared around her. The rest of the children had passed through the light with her, hand in hand, and stood about in mute startlement. Ana looked back through the light and made out faces pressed up against the barrier, staring at the street kids with envy and incredulity.

Before them, a great town spread out to the horizon, bright green grass and silver domes, tubular silver towers and other, similar-shaped buildings, but these ones laid out flat along the land.

She looked up and gasped. High above was the great conjoined disc, like a shield in the sky, of the Serene starships.

Ana led her children up the gentle incline towards the nearest dome.

T
HEY WERE MET
by a tall Westerner who called himself Greg and led them further into the town to a building which, he said, they could call home. The low, brick-built dwelling was divided into several rooms, with a communal dining room, a lounge overlooking a vast garden, and bedrooms to the rear.

Greg introduced Ana and the children to an Indian woman called Varma, who called herself a supervisor and said that over the next few days she would instruct the children on life in the new town. First, they were to rest in their rooms, and in three hours meet in the dining room for a communal meal.

Ana selected a room, between Gopal’s and Prakesh’s, stepped over the threshold and moved to close the door behind her. She found that she was unable to complete the action, and something caught in her throat. She had lived for years with no idea of privacy, had slept every night packed tight with the other street kids – and now she could not bring herself to shut out her friends and family.

There was a narrow bed in the room, and a bedside table and a chair, and a window that looked out over the rolling green land.

She moved to the bed and sat down, bouncing a little to test its springiness.

She had shared a bed with her brother many years ago, at the age of five, when she had lived with her aunt and uncle, but she had forgotten quite how soft they were.

For the first time in sixteen years she had a room and a bed of her own.

The comfort would take some getting used to.

She lay down on the bed, rested her head on the pillow, and tried to relax. She opened her eyes and sat up. There was something wrong. She felt alone. She moved to the open door, stepped out and almost collided with Prakesh, who laughed and jumped back.

They grinned at each other.

“What do you think, Ana?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I don’t know.” She took his hand on impulse and drew him into the room.

Lying on the bed, side by side, they began giggling uncontrollably and suddenly she no longer felt alone.

They ate at a big communal table at five o’clock, a simple meal of dal and chapatis, followed by bananas.

It was the best meal Ana had eaten in years.

Later, as the sun went down, Varma took the children on a tour of the garden, and explained, “We are self sufficient here at Fandrabad, or soon will be. You will be given a plot of land on which to grow the food you will consume, and every morning you will attend school classes.”

A buzz passed around the group.

Varma said, “How many of you can read?”

Of the twenty-four children, only Ana and Gopal raised their hands.

Varma smiled. “In a year from now, all of you will be able to read and write.”

Later the children sat around a patio area before the garden, staring up at the starships directly overhead. A circle of blue light marked the centre of the eightfold arrangement where the starship’s nose-cones came together. From the centre of the light, a broad, blue beam fell to Earth, connecting the land on the horizon with the joined starships.

Ana saw Varma in the garden, picking beans, and stepped from the patio to join her.

She gestured to the starships and they both stared upwards. “The light,” Ana asked. “What is it?”

Varma smiled. “Energy,” she said. “The concentrated energy from other stars. It is being beamed to Earth to supply the planet’s needs in the years to come.”

Ana smiled, not sure that she fully understood Varma’s words.

She reached out and found herself hugging the woman. She pulled away, hesitated, then looked into Varma’s deep brown eyes. “Are you human,” she murmured at last, “or are you really a golden figure?”

The women smiled, then reached out to stroke Ana’s hair. “What makes you think that, little wise one?” she said, but would say no more.