The Serene Invasion (30 page)

She stared at him with large eyes as much to say, “So, what do you think of that?”

“Amazing,” he responded on cue. “What else did he say?” He thought of the self-aware entities going among the human race for decades, doing their good work...

“Not a lot, other than if I were to try to broadcast what he had told me, or write about it for publication, I would find myself unable to do so. I would... what is the English word...? spasm.”

“But I take it it’s okay to tell an audience of just one?”

She shrugged her bare shoulders. “Evidently. Anyway, do you see me spasming?”

He recalled her original question. “So... because there are a legion of golden figures working amongst us, you think that the reason we... we gather in the obelisks is not merely to hand down the wisdom of the Serene, liaise with the powerful and such?”

She pointed a pistol finger at him. “Exactly so, Geoff.”

He nodded. “Intriguing. So... what do you think we do in there?”

She pulled a glum face. “Ah, now – I was hoping that you might be able to shed some illumination on that.”

“Sorry to disappoint, Nina. I’ve no idea. But what about the other representatives you’ve met?”

She made a carefree gesture. “Oh, they too do not know.”

“But do you have a theory? Come on, an intelligent journalist like you...” he said mockingly.

She smiled. “Of course. I think they are studying us.”

“Studying us?”

“I think, like in a horror movie, once we are inside the obelisks they take us apart atom by atom and see how we work.”

He tried not to laugh. “Funny, when I leave the obelisks – always assuming, of course, that I enter them in the first place – I feel pretty well for a man who’s been deconstructed atom by atom. I don’t suppose you have any valid reason to think this?”

She shrugged her tanned shoulders again. “Just, as you say, a hunch.”

He shook his head. “A wild hunch, if you don’t mind me saying. The Serene have had plenty of time to study us, take us apart, before they came here – if what you say about the SAEs being here for ages is correct. At this stage I’d say it was pretty late to be studying us.”

“Well, what is
your
hunch?”

“I don’t have one. Sorry, but in this instance I think speculation is useless. We couldn’t have guessed at the capabilities of the Serene before they came here, so trying to second guess their methods now is futile.”

“So you’re happy to be their tool, and ask no questions?”

He thought about it. “Yes, I am. The Serene have rendered the human race incapable of committing acts of violence. That’s a pretty magnanimous gift. I’m happy to do their bidding in return.” He looked at her. “What about you?”

She nodded. “I think what the Serene have done here is wonderful.”

“Did you listen to the nay-sayers in the early days? The right-wingers and libertarians who foresaw the end of the human race as we knew it?”

“I listened, and thought them wrong. You?”

“I heard what they said and hoped they were wrong, but feared they might be right.”

The newsfeeds and internet had been rife with doom-mongers in the first couple of years after the Serene intervention in human affairs. They forecast that such a radical alteration in the mechanism of the human psyche – the total abnegation of an individual’s ability to carry through acts of violence – would have dire psychological consequences. So-called experts stated that violence was a safety-valve which, if not allowed to blow from time to time, would store up untold mental pressure which would in time burst with catastrophic results.

Now Nina said, “I always thought they were wrong, Geoff. Okay, so if everyone on the planet committed acts of violence every day, day in day out, then they might have had a case. But think about it – how many acts of violence did you perpetrate before the coming of the Serene?”

He shrugged. “Not many. In fact... I can remember defending myself against a bully when I was twelve, and once or twice
wanting
to hit someone, but never carrying out the urge.”

“There you are then. I am the same, along with the majority of the people in this square, I think. The nay-sayers, as you call, them were wrong. Violence is not a pre-requisite of being human, just a nasty side-effect of social conditions. And violence is certainly not a
right
, as some would claim it is.”

He smiled. “I think you’re correct there. Nina.”

She pointed to his empty cup. “Would you care for another coffee?”

“I’ve had two already. Another one and I’d be hyper.” He looked at his watch. “Our train is in forty minutes. Tell you what, a beer would go down nicely. For you?”

“Do you think they have Peroni, Geoff?”

He asked the waiter, but the only foreign lagers available were Leffe and Red Star. She said she would prefer Leffe, and he ordered two glasses. “My wife’s favourite,” he said.

“And what does she make of being married to a representative of the Serene?”

The beers arrived and Allen took a refreshing mouthful. “I think she’s... proud, and intrigued.”

She cocked an eyebrow. “Proud to be married to you, because the Serene picked only the best?”

He looked at her. “Did they? I never claim that.”

“When I was chosen, Geoff, I asked the golden figure who was shepherding me: why me? It replied that I was selected because of my humanity.”

He nodded. “I recall being told something similar. But there are millions of others out there with just such qualities who weren’t selected.” He shrugged. “Sally, my wife, was a doctor in Africa before the Serene arrived. She had a... a deep-seated need to help others, which I suppose came from being the daughter of dyed-in-the-wool socialists. I don’t know. My wife is just as good a person as I am, if not better.”

Nina nodded without replying and watched him as she sipped her drink. “Can you think of any negatives to the coming of the Serene?” she asked at last.

He had to think about that. “Personally, no. I know that some evolutionary biologists have argued that the Serene intervention has steered our race away from the course on which it was set...” He shrugged. “But then who’s to say that that course was in anyway sacrosanct, or the right one, so to speak? It’s an argument that has raged in politics since the days of colonialism – should ‘super-powers’ dabble in the affairs of so-called lesser or undeveloped nations, even if for their good? The Serene are here. That’s a fact, and in my opinion the world is a better place because of it.” He sipped his beer and added, “Of course, some religious fundamentalists still claim the Serene are in league with Satan.”

She waved that away as if swatting a fly. “Nut cases and cranks.”

He smiled. “The world’s religions have taken something of a battering, thanks to our alien friends,” he said.

“The
traditional
religions. Do you know how many religions have sprung up over the past few years,
inspired
by the Serene?”

He’d heard of the phenomenon, and said, “Half a dozen, or even fewer?”

She shook her head, smiling. “Would you believe over five thousand?”

“No. Five thousand? Where did you read that?”

“I actually wrote a feature for my paper on the new religions. For some deep-seated reason, the human race needs to believe in a god-like figure, a deity, and in the eyes of many the Serene amply fill that god-shaped hole.”

“But five thousand?”

She shrugged. “And these new religions span the globe, from east to west, north to south, supplanting the old religions and gaining strength.”

“I wonder how the Serene regard them?”

She made a rosebud of her lips, then said, “My guess is that they despair.” She smiled. “The Serene strike me as supremely rationalist.”

“Another of your hunches?” he asked.

She laughed. “Maybe so.”

“Well, I suppose if the Serene come here and perform miracles, they can’t be surprised at the reaction of some of our more credulous cousins.” He tipped his head back and forth. “They certainly fit the bill. Our saviours, who set us on a new moral course...”

She squinted at him. “I never had you down as a religious type, Geoff Allen.”

He smiled at her. Her familiarity, her assumed knowledge of him, he might have found discomfiting in one less affable than Nina Ricci, but she made her personal pronouncements with an easy, almost mocking candour that he found at once charming and disarming.

Only then did he wonder how she knew his surname, for he was sure he had introduced himself only as ‘Geoff’.

He asked, “What other Serene-related stories have you worked on recently?”

“The big one was an investigation into how the Serene have been ‘assisting’ some of our biggest drugs companies.”

He smiled. “Before their coming, I would have said that the drugs companies certainly needed ‘assisting’,” he said with sarcasm.

“Of course, the Serene have changed everything to do with the business model of the pharmaceuticals,” she said. “Now instead of working for their share-holders, like every other company before them, they are working for the people. My investigations uncovered the fact that many of the newly released drugs of recent years have their origins off-planet. I spoke to experts who assured me that they were derived from chemical bases that did not exist on Earth.” She shrugged. “Which would go to support the fact that in the last decade human life-expectancy, worldwide, has increased by an average of a little over twelve years.”

He thought about it. “I suppose the resulting increase in population will be sustained by the limitless supply of energy and the vast new cities... But even so, the planet is finite.”

She was smiling at him.

“What?” he asked.

“Would you like to hear another of my hunches?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“No,” she said. “My hunch is this: I think soon the Serene will take us off-planet, away from Earth, to colonies in the solar system...”

“Nice idea,” he said. “Imagine living on a moon beneath the rings of Saturn...”

“You mock me, but I am deadly serious. As you say, the planet is a finite system, and the population is increasing dramatically. So where will we go, but off-planet?”

He shrugged. “You might be right,” he said. “If the Serene can bring other forms of life here, then I see no reason why they can’t take us... elsewhere.”

“‘Other forms of life’? Oh, you mean the arboreal cities?”

He nodded. “I’m looking forward to seeing them. I’m told they’re the eighth wonder of the world.”

“But shouldn’t that be eleventh, coming after the eight joined starships, the greening cities, and...” – she pointed a crimson lacquered nail at the towers across the plaza – “the obelisks?”

He laughed. “I don’t know. I’ve lost count.”

He’d read online accounts of the arboreal cities, and the mammoth trees from Antares II which made terrestrial giant redwoods seem like saplings in comparison, and when his editor had suggested he do a photo-shoot of the Fujiyama arboreal city – as he would be visiting Japan anyway – he had jumped at the chance.

He checked his watch. “But speaking of arboreal cities... our train leaves in ten minutes.”

They finished their drinks and crossed the plaza to the station, had their softscreen reservations scanned, and strolled the length of the platform to the second carriage. Allen relaxed in a luxurious window seat and minutes later the torpedo-train slipped from the station.

Nina Ricci sat opposite him, silent as she regarded the reforestation projects north of Tokyo.

Allen stared through the window, noting the new sea defences that had been erected along the coast after the tsunami of 2018. They slid past a vast energy distribution station just as a beam of concentrated light fell to Earth like a meteor, dazzling him and the hundred other passengers who ‘oohed’ and ‘aahed’ like school children.

As the train sped around the bend of a bay he closed his eyes, feigning sleep, and considered Sally and her distraught message.

CHAPTER FIVE

S
ALLY FOUND A
post-it note and wrote:
I’m in the back garden. Take the side path to the left and I’ll see you there.
She tore off the yellow rectangle, stuck the note to the front door beside the big brass knocker and retreated to the back garden.

For some reason she didn’t want to open the front door and confront Kath – or whatever it was that Kath had become. She did not, she thought, want to be confined in the house with her. It was not a thought she could rationalise, and part of her felt guilty for having it. But it came to her that she needed to meet this new, resurrected Kath in the open, in the sunlight, so that she could run if she needed to.

She was still in a state of shock. She recalled the dazed disbelief she had experienced just after the coming of the Serene. This was similar, only intensified a hundredfold. She felt abstracted from reality, as if she were moving in a bubble secluded from everything, her every sense retarded.