The Serene Invasion (44 page)

She had been working as a psychologist for a government run scheme helping recovering drug addicts – this was before his attempts at pharmaceutical oblivion – and he had met her at an uptown party which, he recalled, he had been loath to attend. It was only on the insistence of Lal – that greasy, betraying bastard – that he had shrugged off his apathy and gone along.

Kat had homed in on him, talked to him with warmth and understanding, and a day later they had met for dinner and something within him had succumbed and allowed this dumpy, homely woman – ten years his senior and with a penchant to mother him – into his life.

For a year he had enjoyed an easy, affectionate relationship with this calm, meditative English woman; he would never have admitted that he loved her, and she never vouchsafed the same to him, but they were close, and she helped him confront his past, his relationship with his abusive father, and helped him overcome his desire to be dominated and demeaned... But he had never, for all their intimacy, both physical and psychological, told her of his deep-seated distrust of the Serene, nor of his occasional desire to kill himself. For all he held her in respect intellectually, he could not reconcile this with her avowal that the coming of the Serene had been beneficial for the human species. He had ventured once, when drunk, that perhaps their
charea
edict had robbed humankind of its primal urge, its genetic manifest destiny to conquer and rule – but playfully she had laughed and called him a caveman... and had never mentioned his outburst again.

They had drifted apart after a year, seen each other less and less. They remained friends for a time, and then lost contact altogether. Kat had called James her ‘reclamation project’, helping him to find his feet so that, from then on, he could make his own way in the world... Or perhaps he was being unfair.

Now she came to him in his fever dreams, bending over him and saying, “Let me help you, James.”

He awoke with a start and stared about him. The sun was coming up, sending slatted glints of gold through the jungle foliage. He wondered how long he had been here, propped against the tree, and wondered how long it might be before he died.

He saw a snake slither by a foot away, and lashed out with his foot to kick it, provoke it into striking him. But the snake ignored his boot and slithered on, vanishing into the undergrowth.

Next to visit him in the cinematic, hallucinogenic rerun of his life, was Lal Devi, and the sight of the slimy Indian bastard brought him upright and lashing out at the slim, sneering figure.

They had been so close, for so long – over a dozen years – that Lal’s betrayal was all the more devastating. It was after he had drifted away from Kat, and the desire to kill himself had returned. He had tried a couple of times to throw himself, spontaneously, through the window of his office on the hundredth floor, only to go into a ridiculous fit of spasms on every occasion. Then he had climbed onto the roof, and up the Morwell logo, with a bottle of Jack Daniels and the intention of drinking himself into oblivion.

That time loyal Lal had talked him down, carried him back to his suite and put him to bed.

It had been the very last thing Lal had done for him, before his betrayal.

Lal had found a woman, the whore responsible for changing the puppyish, subservient yes-man into an opponent.

A few months after the logo incident, Lal had strode into his office and handed in his resignation. He told James that he no longer wished to work as his PA, that he found James’s opinions, indeed everything he stood for in his opposition to the Serene, odious in the extreme. James had tried to argue his corner, question this sudden
volte face
from the man he considered an ally, a loyal servant whose opinions regarding the aliens mirrored his own exactly... But Lal was adamant. He had met someone, he said, who had made him face his past, his present, and look forward to a future filled with hope rather than a corrosive, stultifying resentment of the Serene.

James had exploded, and the ensuing argument had been bitter in the extreme, with both men at one point spasming in their thwarted desire to do the other physical injury. In the end Lal had turned and strode from the room, with James yelling curses in his wake – and in retrospect James cited the confrontation as the beginning of what he hoped would be the end.

A week later he had given himself wholly to finding a way to end his life.

Now he came awake again. Thirst was an acid pain in his throat and hunger clawed at his innards like cancer. He laughed, then wept, and wished for a swift end rather than this eternal, drawn-out suffering.

He saw something move on the periphery of his vision and swivelled his head painfully.

A scorpion...

It regarded him from the vantage point of a tree root beside his head, the question mark of its tail pulsing with intent.

He smiled and reached towards it, then lashed out – aiming not to kill the creature but to provoke it into attack.

He should have known... The scorpion danced forward, hesitated, then began to...
vibrate
... It was, he realised with incredulity, spasming.

Laughing in despair, Morwell sank back against the tree and closed his eyes.

H
E CAME AWAKE
suddenly, knowing that he was still in the jungle, sitting against the tree, and that the scorpion had been no more than another hallucination.

He stared about him in disbelief.

He was in a hospital bed in a bright, shining room, and through the window he could see the skyscrapers of lower Manhattan.

A nurse was leaning over him, and she smiled brightly when he turned to her.

“Ah, Mr Morwell... You’re back with us at last.”

He wondered, then, if he had truly taken himself to Venezuela – or had that too been no more than an illusion?

“How...?” he croaked.

“You were found by natives and brought down-river to a port. The Morwell Organisation arranged for you to be airlifted back to New York. The odd thing is, Mr Morwell, you were found by a tribe who, but for the coming of the Serene, wouldn’t have had second thoughts about killing you there and then. Now aren’t you,” she went on, rearranging the pillow beneath his head, “a lucky man?”

Morwell laughed at the very idea and then, as the nurse left from the room, his laughter turned to tears.

CHAPTER THREE

I
T WAS NOON
when Ana arrived in New York.

She stepped from the obelisk into bright summer sunlight, hotter and brighter than the light back on Mars. She should have remembered and brought her sunglasses, but it was almost eight years since she’d last been on Earth in summer.

She crossed Times Square and made her way to the café where, almost a decade ago to the day, Bilal had attempted to infect her with the Obterek device. She had a ghost to lay: when the idea of coming to New York to track down her brother had first occurred to her, a month ago, she had known that she must return to the coffee house.

It was still there, a narrow premises with chrome chairs and tables set outside on the sidewalk. She entered the café and saw that the table in the window, where she had sat ten years ago, was vacant. She ordered a mocha and was immediately flooded with a slew of memories. She found herself fighting back the tears at Bilal’s betrayal. She stared through the window at the crowds passing by oblivious outside and wondered what Bilal was doing now.

She had adapted quickly to life on Mars. Of course she had had Kapil with her, which made all the difference. They had married within a year of settling in the city of Escarpment, and had soon found themselves with a network of friends, the core of which was Geoff and Sally Allen. She had always been a survivor, but had always needed to have the safety net of friends – in the early days the children who lived with her at Howrah Station and later on at the wilderness city. The first few years on Mars had been eased by Geoff and Sally’s warmth, which had gone a long way towards banishing the pain she felt at what her brother had tried to do to her.

At first it was as if she had excised the incident from her memory; she had not allowed her thoughts to dwell on New York and Bilal, had not even discussed the incident with Kapil.

Then, shortly after the birth of her son, all that had changed; it was as if she had reached a place of safety from which she could look back with impunity and consider what had happened all those years ago.

And, surprising herself, she found that she did not hate Bilal for what he had tried to do. Despite the hurt that she still felt, she pitied him. He had been driven by motives unknown to her, motives imparted no doubt by the organisation for which he worked. Slowly the idea of tracking him down and confronting him had taken root and grown, to be dismissed at first and then, latterly, to be considered as a very real option if she wished to move on. She wanted to put the incident behind her, find out just why he had done what he had done, and perhaps learn if he’d had time to regret his actions. She thought that that would be unlikely, but she was curious to find out nevertheless.

She was curious, too, about how the Serene might have censored, or even punished, her brother. He had committed a crime directly opposed to the Serene’s regime on Earth, had sided with the Obterek, and she wondered what punishment, if any, the Serene might have seen fit to mete out to Bilal.

She finished her mocha and realised that the anguish she thought she might experience here, a recapitulation of the confusion and fear she had gone through ten years ago, had failed to transpire. Smiling to herself, she left the café and walked south towards the rearing skyscraper where the Morwell organisation had its headquarters.

She strolled in the sunlight with crowds of smiling New Yorkers. There was a carnival atmosphere in the air, and she might have been forgiven for thinking that there was some special event towards which the citizens were heading, a concert or arts festival.

She stared around her at the smiling faces. Many people here were so young that they had never known a world without the influence of the Serene; others were old enough to recall the old times, and to cherish the new.

As she turned along the street on which the Morwell tower stood, she thought back to what Nina Ricci had told them at the Allen’s party. It was odd, but she had never really questioned the motives of the Serene; she had seen the beneficial effect of their intervention in the affairs of humankind, and felt disinclined to ascribe any motive other than altruism. So she had no idea exactly what she and thousands of other human representatives did in the obelisks, but so what? And as for what the Serene were doing on the outer edges of the solar system...? Again, she felt disinclined to enquire; she trusted the Serene, and left it at that.

But, she wondered now, shouldn’t she feel just the slightest curiosity?

She recalled an argument she’d had with the prickly Nina Ricci. Ricci had just been elected to the legislative assembly of Mars and was understandably full of herself. They had been at one of the Allens’ monthly parties, and Ana had said something about the effect of the Serene being wholly good. Nina, whose clinical intelligence and thick skin inured her to the criticism of her peers, had turned on Ana and snapped, “What an ill-considered statement, Ana. How can you say that when you are not in full command of all the facts?”

Ana had blinked, surprised at the vitriol in the Italian’s tone. “But I’m basing the statement on what I have experienced of society and how it’s been affected by the arrival of the Serene. Anyway, what facts might I possess that would make me think otherwise?”

Nina had smiled her insufferably self-satisfied smile and said, “Until we understand the motivations of the Serene, we can only make partial and ill-formed judgements. Stating that the effect of the Serene has been wholly good is dangerous.”

Others at this point had entered the argument, and Ana had taken the opportunity to slip away from the group.

Since then, she had wondered increasingly at the motives of the Serene – but for the life of her could only discern the benefits of their intervention.

She stopped on the sidewalk and craned her head to take in the enormity of the tower before her. It rose dizzyingly, and she experienced a kind of vertigo as she strained to see to the very summit of the glass-enclosed needle. At the top, tiny at this distance, was the rotating Morwell Organisation symbol, an entwined MO surrounded by laurel leaves – a touch which Ana thought either crass or ironic.

She wondered if she would find her brother unchanged in ten years; would he still be the same brash, materialistic, Serene-hating businessman she had encountered last time? Or might the intervening years and his experience of the Serene have worked to mellow him?

She stepped through the sliding glass doors and crossed an atrium the size of an arboretum – which it resembled, with its overabundance of potted palms and leafy ferns.

She found the reception desk and approached a smiling, uniformed woman in her twenties with the beauty and hauteur of a catwalk model.

“I wonder if you might be able to help me? I’d like to make an appointment to meet Bilal Devi, Mr James Morwell’s –”