The Serene Invasion

Chapter SIX





ALLEN SLAPPED HIS softscreen to the dashboard and kept half an eye on events unfolding around the world.

They left Kallani and headed west, in a couple of hours leaving the drought-stricken area of Karamajo far behind them. The terrain changed, became rolling and relatively green – not as sodden and fecund as the English countryside he’d left, but nothing like the dead, parched land of Karamoja.

“...and the outbreak of non-violence continues,” said the London-based BBC anchorman. “LA is reporting its first day in living memory when there have been no reports of murders or muggings. The same is true around the world. Some governments have welcomed the phenomenon, while others have counselled caution. Meanwhile, world religions...”

He glanced across at Sally. She had drawn her hair back and tied it in a ponytail. She turned her head on the head-rest and smiled at him.

“Can you tell me, Geoff, why I don’t feel... threatened?”

He’d been thinking the very same thing. Since his earlier suggestion that the ‘outbreak of non-violence,’ as the BBC had it, might be a prelude to alien invasion, he’d had time to reconsider.

“What happened to me aboard the plane,” he said. “I know I wasn’t hallucinating. It happened. It was real. And I know it was linked...” He gestured to the softscreen. “There was something I forgot to tell you earlier – about the experience. While I was flat out in the grey fog... before and after the silver spider did whatever it did to me... I saw a figure, a shape. Just the head and shoulders of someone. And I felt... I don’t really know how to explain it... I felt reassurance in my head, and the words, Do not be afraid.” He shook his head. “And I wasn’t. I was suffused by peace.”

“I thought you said, earlier, that the non-violence suggested invasion?”

“I know I did. And it does. Rationally, what has happened – our inability to fight, the arrival of the ships... it all points to an invasion. And yet the overwhelming sensation I received while they were doing whatever they were doing to me was one of peace.”

She reached out and stroked his thigh. “Don’t. That frightens me, the thought of their doing something to you.”

He shook his head. “The odd thing is, Sally, that it doesn’t frighten me in the slightest.”

He felt her gaze on him, and when he looked at her she was frowning. “You said it was a human head and shoulders..?” she said.

“That’s how it appeared to me, and yet at the same time it felt... alien.” He stopped himself there. “Or did it? I don’t know. Maybe it’s only in retrospect, after the arrival of the ships, that it occurred to me that the figure was alien.”

They fell silent. On the softscreen, studio guests were debating the starships’ arrival.

“Of course,” a uniformed General was saying, “everything suggests that we should proceed with utmost suspicion. The fact that our military capability, worldwide, seems to have been compromised is an indication that the vessels’ arrival is hostile in intent–”

“On the other hand,” a scientist interrupted, “their preventing our ability to commit violence might be seen as a blessing, an endowment, and not necessarily as a precursor to hostilities.”

“I am merely stating the need for caution,” the General said.

The anchorman stepped in, “That’s an interesting point Jim Broadbent makes there, General; we’ve been assessing what has happened in terms of potential threat. Perhaps we should take time to look at other possibilities...”

“Of course,” Broadstairs said. “As a scientist I like to run a number of thought experiments, initially giving equal validity to all possibilities before dismissing them. One thing that has occurred to me is the nature of the starships’ arrival here. They in no way seem to me the harbingers of invasion. Look at the facts. They appeared simultaneously at eight locations around the world, and they seem to be making their way – if our calculations prove correct – to one of the most uninhabited regions on the planet. This, to me, is not the manoeuvring of an invading army.”

The General said, “I merely counsel caution. If we are dealing here with... with extraterrestrials... then it would be dangerous indeed to attempt to second-guess their motivations.”

The scientist was about to step in with a rejoinder to that when the anchorman said, “Gentlemen, I’m afraid we must leave it there for the time being, though undoubtedly we’ll return to the debate as events unfold worldwide. In our Cambridge studio we have Xian Chen Li and Peter Walken, professors respectively in neuroscience and sociology... If I might begin with you, Professor Walken, and ask you what the long term consequences of this so-called outbreak of non-violence might be?”

“If, that is, the outbreak is indeed long term,” Walken stipulated, “and not a temporary effect...”

Allen was listening to the broadcast while concentrating on the track ahead. They had left the metalled highway an hour ago and proceeded along a sandy track winding through hilly terrain. He calculated they were an hour from the park, with another couple of hours to go before sunset. The starship, if it kept to its current speed, was due to overfly the park at approximately six o’clock.

A while later, Sally said, “Geoff... You okay?”

He smiled reassuringly. “Fine.”

“It’s just...” She gestured at the screen, where the professors had given way to a reporter already in the Saharan desert north-west of Timbuktu. “What they were saying about our inability to commit violence...”

He knew what she was driving at, and he nodded. “Of course it... hurts,” he admitted.

“I’m sorry.”

“I mean, it’s so bloody arbitrary.” He glanced at her. “Take what happened yesterday, at the medical centre. The terrorists attacked, killed half a dozen soldiers, and took you and Ben...” He stopped, gripping the wheel at its apex. “It frightens me to think that if the attack had happened an hour earlier...”

He stared out at the rolling bush. Ahead and to their right a vortex of vultures swirled on a thermal. He went on, “And if the ships had arrived a couple of days ago, then the soldiers guarding the centre would still be alive. Like I said, so arbitrary.”

She murmured, “And if they had arrived here three years ago...”

He smiled at her. “You’re probably thinking me selfish that I’m viewing this, probably the most momentous event in human history, so personally.”

“Of course not! It’s entirely understandable, Geoff. I’d be looking at it in the same way.”

He’d never spoken to anyone other than Sally and his sister about what had happened to his parents. He’d given her a sketched outline of the incident, and left it at that, not caring to describe his feelings at the time.

For some reason, now, he felt the need to unburden himself.

“The thing is that I almost understood why they did what they did. They were old and very, very ill. My father was eighty-nine, my mother a couple of years younger. My father’s heart was rapidly failing, and my mother had terminal leukaemia. Their quality of life...”

“I understand. There were other ways of going about... ending it.”

“The odd thing is that both my parents for all their lives had campaigned and fought – what a word to use! – for non-violence. So to end it like that was... shocking, somehow not right. What hurt me, and hurts me still, is that they didn’t tell me or my sister about how they were feeling. I understand why – they didn’t want to upset us. But they could have said something; we could have talked about euthanasia. It was a measure of their desperation, their extreme unhappiness, that they were driven to end it as they did. It was obviously a sudden thing, done on the spur of absolute despair. And thinking about their last few hours... that’s what hurts so much.”

Fortunately it was he who had found their bodies, not his sister Catherine.

He had taken to crossing London every other day, from his flat in Battersea to his parents’ three story townhouse overlooking Hampstead Heath, to check on them, cook them a meal and chat about what he was working on at the moment. While they were slowly crumbling physically, mentally they were as alert as they’d ever been.

That spring morning he’d not visited his parents for a couple of days. He had phoned the night before, to apologise and say he’d be around in the morning – but had received no reply. He was not unduly worried, as both were half deaf and often missed his calls.

He let himself in with the spare key, called out that it was him, and ran up the stairs to the commodious, sunny lounge on the first floor.

They were seated together on the sofa facing the big bow window. At first he thought they’d fallen asleep while appreciating the spring morning.

His mother’s head was resting on his father’s shoulder.

He rounded the sofa and stopped dead in his tracks, shock pummelling his solar plexus.

The chest of his mother’s white blouse was soaked in a bib of startling bright blood. Similarly, his father’s waistcoat was stained. The pistol lay on his lap, his fingers loose around its butt.

Allen had staggered backwards, fallen into an armchair, and wept.

Later, when the bodies had been removed, Allen drove to Catherine’s in Belsize Park and broke the news. He recalled little of the hour they spent together, other than telling her that at least his father had not shot his mother and himself through the head. It had seemed an important distinction at the time.





SALLY WAS STILL stroking his thigh, a while later, when they came to the road-block.

It occurred to Allen that it was an odd place to mount a road-block, on a flat stretch of land a couple of kilometres before the boundary of the national park. An ugly green military truck was drawn up by the side of the road and a dozen troops had erected a makeshift barrier consisting of two trestles and a length of red and yellow crime-scene tape.

The troops stood around in postures of boredom and negligence – always, Allen thought, a dangerous combination. They had rifles and machine guns at the ready, but oddly enough he wasn’t encouraged by the thought that they wouldn’t be able to use them.

Sally sat up. “What’s happening?”

“I don’t know. There’s no reason for the road-block, as far as I can make out.”

“How far are we from the park?”

“About two kilometres.”

He slowed down as he approached the fluttering length of tape. Their arrival had galvanised the soldiers who approached the car and stood flanking it, staring in at Allen and Sally with sullen, almost petulant expressions. He glanced at their forefingers, hooked inside the trigger-guards of their respective weapons.

A sudden, alarming thought occurred to him. They were near the border with the Congo. Might these be Congolese troops, taking advantage of the arrival of the starships to cross the border to the relatively affluent Uganda in order to do a little pilfering?

He scanned the uniform of the sergeant, who had disengaged himself from his men and was striding over to the car, but he couldn’t make out the soldier’s insignia.

He murmured, “Keep your hands in sight at all times and don’t make a sudden move.” He smiled across at her. “And don’t worry. We’ll be fine.”

He unpeeled the softscreen from the dashboard, set it on his lap, and kept his hands on the apex of the steering wheel. He smiled out at the approaching officer.

The sergeant halted a metre from the car and said, “Will you please climb out, sir, and the lady also.”

He nodded at Sally, opened the door and climbed out. He felt conscious of being separated from her. The late afternoon sun beat down on his face.

The sergeant reached out. “Papers.”

Allen tried not to smile at the anachronism. No one had papers these days. He proffered his softscreen. On the other side of the car, Sally was passing her ID card to another soldier.

The sergeant jacked a monitor into Allen’s screen and, frowning, scanned the read-out on his own.

He said, “And why are you in Uganda, Mr Allen?”

“To cover a story in Murchison Falls park – the elephant breeding programme. I’m a photographer.”

The sergeant looked over the top of the car. “And you, madam, why are you in Uganda?”

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.





THERE 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.

“It’s coming down slowly, silently,” Thirkell said in a wavering voice. “I... it looks as if it will land, or hit the ground... in the exact place where the invisible barrier or force-field prevented our forward progress...”

Beside him, Sally murmured something in wonder.

The halo of white light, perhaps a hundred metres high, reached the ground and settled. Three or four reporters – and then more and more – began to walk towards the effulgent light, their shapes silhouetted against the glow.

One or two reached out, touched the wall of light; the camera zoomed in, catching their expressions of wonder as they looked back and smiled.

Suddenly, the light began to lift. The cameraman followed its ascent to the circumference of the interlocked starships.

A chorus of cries greeted the ascent. Thirkell was saying, “I... I’ve never seen anything like it. This is miraculous! I don’t know how to describe what has happened here in the middle of the Sahara, one of the driest, most inhospitable areas on the face of the Earth...”

The image on the screen showed the light settling around the rear of the ships and moving inwards, retracing its path towards the conjoined nose-cones.

The image, blurred, danced, as the cameraman panned down to show what was revealed on the ground.

Sally gasped, fingers to her lips, and Allen just stared in silent wonder.

The sands of the Sahara had been transformed. What before had been an undulating landscape of limitless sand was now a vast expanse of rolling green meadows, occasional oases, or lakes, with clusters of what appeared to be low-level domes occupying the glades and meadows.

The more audacious reporters, the same ones who had approached the white light earlier, now stepped forward and walked towards the margin of the paradise that had appeared as if by magic. Hesitantly, Thirkell followed them, tracked by her cameraman.

She approached the edge of the greening, rimmed by a circular silver collar that came to the height of her knees, and stepped over it. She climbed the gradient of a grassy knoll, staring about her in wonder, and when she came to the crest she turned and beamed at the camera.

“I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry... This is the most amazing... Excuse me, I’m overcome by the most... I can only describe it as... as a feeling of optimism. I know that must sound crazy, even in the context of what has happened here, but...” She shook her head, words at last failing her.

The cameraman joined her on the summit of the knoll and panned, then zoomed in on the nearest dome. It was surrounded by what appeared to be a ring of cultivated land, where plants and shrubs grew in profusion.

And all around, hardened reporters were coming together and hugging. The image wobbled, showed a blur of Thirkell’s blouse as she embraced her cameraman. She pulled away and looked into the sky, at the underside of the starships. “And as I stand here in this... this wonderland... I can’t help but wonder when they might communicate with us...”

“And on that note,” Sue said back in the London studio, “we’ll leave it there. Let’s stay with the images from the Sahara, the momentous images I might say, while we discuss recent events with my studio guests. Ladies, gentlemen, what is to be made of these developments...?”

Allen sat back in his seat, staring into the northern darkness where the incredible events were being played out.

Sally found his hand. “What’s happening, Geoff?” she whispered.

He shook his head. “I don’t know. But I do know that we’ll find out, in time.”

They sat side by side long into the evening, sipping their beers and watching events unfold on the softscreen.

It was after midnight when a wave of lassitude swept over him, a sudden incredible tiredness, and he tried to think back to the last time he’d slept. He’d snatched a couple of hours on the flight, and before that a few hours back in London.

He switched off the ’screen and they moved back into the hut.

They lay face to face on the bed, holding each other, and within minutes Allen was asleep.





SOMETHING WOKE HIM from a dreamless sleep.

He lay on his back, blinking up at the ceiling, and it was a few seconds before he became aware of the soft golden glow emanating from the adjacent lounge.

He sat up carefully, so as not to disturb Sally, pulled on a pair of shorts and moved to the open door. On the way he took the softscreen from where he’d left it on the bedside table, an instinctive action he was hardly aware of making.

He moved to the threshold of the lounge, and stopped.

Someone... something... was sitting on the edge of an armchair on the far side of the room.

Allen took a step forward, then another, and dropped into a chair opposite the figure.

It was humanoid and glowed with a golden lustre, its surface seamless and unmarked, but beneath its surface, within the creature, paler golden lights moved and roiled. It sat forward on the chair, its elbows on its knees, hands clasped, and seemed to be staring across at Allen. Seemed to be, for its face was without eyes or other features.

Allen thought of the head-and-shoulders shape that had stared down at him during his episode aboard the plane, and now, as then, felt an abiding sense of peace.

He surprised himself by asking, “Why don’t I feel in the least frightened?”

The figure stared at him. He had the odd, inexplicable impression that it was somehow larger than the dimensions it presented here.

It replied, but he was unable to tell if he heard the words, or if they somehow simply manifested in his head.

“Because there is nothing to be frightened about, Geoffrey Allen.”

“This... why you are here... it’s about what happened to me on the flight out?”

“This is the corollary of that experience, yes.”

“What do you mean?”

“We mean, I am here because of what we did to you then, Geoffrey Allen.”

He sat back in the chair. He needed its support. He took deep breaths and asked, “And what did you do to me?”

“We chose you,” it said.

Allen nodded, as if this were a very reasonable explanation. “And why did you choose me?”

“Because you were deemed suitable.”

“Suitable...?” he echoed. He glanced back at the bedroom door, slightly ajar, and considered Sally sleeping in there. Was this a hallucination, a hypnagogic episode brought about by lack of sleep and the excitement of recent events?

“Suitable for what?”

The figure did not answer at once, and the wait was almost unbearable.

“Suitable for what lies ahead, for the changes that will visit your race, your planet. We need people like you to present the human face of that change.”

His blood felt as if it had turned to a slurry that his heart was having difficulty pumping around his body. He said, “Who are you, and why are you here, and... and what changes are you speaking of?”

“We are in the employ of the S’rene, or the Serene, as you will come to call them.”

“But... but you’re not one of the S’rene yourself?”

The figure inclined its featureless domed head. “I am a self-aware entity in the employ of the S’rene,” it said.

“And the S’rene? Who are they? What are they?”

“The S’rene are a race that hails from a star known as Delta Pavonis. They are peaceable, and benign.”

“And the reason you, they... are here?”

A pause. Then, “To help you,” it said.

“To help us?” he echoed, with the first stirrings of excitement.

“To help you, before you destroy yourselves,” said the golden figure.

“That would be inevitable?”

The figure, the self-aware entity as it called itself, inclined its head again. “That would be inevitable. The S’rene have seen it happen before, to other races, before they were in any position to help.”

“Other races...?” Allen said, his mind spinning.

“Hundreds...” It paused, then went on, “The galaxy teems with life, with civilisations, a concordance rich beyond your imagining.”

His cheeks felt suddenly wet. He realised he was weeping.

“And how will you help us?”

“We have started already,” it said. “But that is only the start. Much work lies ahead, much change. The world, life as you know it, will alter for you out of all recognition.”

Allen nodded. “And how can I help?”

The figure stood suddenly. When seated, it had given no indication of its true dimensions. Standing, it appeared at least seven feet tall, as proportionally broad, and it reached out a hand to him now.

“Your softscreen...”

He fumbled with it, standing before this towering giant, and held out the softscreen. The golden figure touched it, then dropped its hand to its side.

“That is all?” Allen asked.

“You will go to Entebbe at eleven in the morning. Present your ’screen at the information desk in terminal two. A vessel will be waiting to take you to the Nexus.”

“The Nexus?”

The figure gestured to the screen in Allen’s hand. It flared, startling him. Upon the screen, he saw, was an image of the conjoined starships above the greened Sahara.

“The Nexus,” said the figure.

“And there?”

“There, you will learn how you and others like you will help to bring about the change.”

Allen sat back down again, or rather slumped, and when he looked up he saw that the figure that had stood before him, so imposing and dominant, had vanished.

He was aware of another figure on the edge of his vision.

Sally stood, naked, in the doorway to the bedroom.

“Geoff... I heard you talking, and when I...” She came to him. He stood quickly and hugged her to him, needing her reassurance.

“Christ, Sally...”

“What happened?”

“You didn’t see...?” He gestured to the opposite chair.

“I saw you talking to yourself. You seemed agitated, overcome with emotion. I saw you stand, and then you held out the ’screen, and moments later it suddenly flared, and you gasped.”

He stared into her eyes in the semi-darkness of the room. “Sally,” he said, “they are the Serene, and they have come to help us.”

She took his hand and led him gently back into the bedroom.

“Come to bed,” she said, “and tell me all about it.”





THEY LEFT THE park at first light and drove south-east to Entebbe.

“Apprehensive?”

He thought about it for all of three seconds. “Oddly, no. Like last night, that figure... had someone said beforehand that I’d be confronted by an extraterrestrial... self-aware entity, as it called itself, I would have thought I’d’ve been scared to death. As it was...” He shook his head. “They instil reassurance in us, Sally. We have nothing to be apprehensive about.”

“It’s a lot to take on trust.”

He agreed. “It is.” But how to explain the sensation of benignity that the representative of the Serene had emanated last night?

They arrived at Entebbe fifteen minutes before eleven and parked in the shadow of terminal two. Allen had no idea what to expect as he entered the airport and approached the information desk, Sally at his side.

A smiling Ugandan woman took his ’screen, scanned it and passed it back. “If you would like to make your way to departure lounge three, there will be a representative waiting.”

They crossed the busy concourse and hesitated before the check-in.

“So much for a week’s quiet holiday together,” she said.

They stood facing each other, Geoff began to speak, then fell silent.

“What?” Sally asked.

He laughed. “Oddly, I don’t want to go, Sal. I don’t want to leave you.”

She pushed him playfully. “Don’t be silly. You’ve got to go.”

“I know. It’s just...”

They kissed.

“I’ll be in touch just as soon as...” he shrugged, “as it’s all over.”

“I’ll go back to Kallani,” Sally said, “settle a few things there, then take the first available flight to London.”

“I’ll tell Catherine you’re on your way. She’ll give you the spare pass key to my place. And then...” He smiled and drew her to him. “Why do we always have less time together than we want? If it’s not work, it’s blessed extraterrestrials!”

They laughed, then kissed farewell.

He presented his softscreen at the check-in, turned to wave at Sally, and passed through.

He was alone in a vast lounge. A sliding door at the far end, giving onto the tarmac, opened and a figure stepped through. A tall, dark European woman, in her thirties, strode through and fixed him with a professional smile. “Mr Allen, if you would care to follow me.”

They left the lounge and stepped into the blistering sunlight, and crossed the tarmac.

“Are you...?”

“I was hired by an agency to meet you and your colleagues.”

“My colleagues...?”

If she heard him, the woman gave no sign.

They paused before a silver, corrugated hangar, and the woman indicated a sliding glass door.

Allen stepped through. When his vision adjusted to the shadows within, he saw a sleek, jet black delta-winged plane in the centre of the hangar.

He looked behind him. The woman was nowhere to be seen.

He crossed to the plane. At his approach, a ramp extruded. He hesitated at its foot, peering up into the vessel’s darkened interior.

He climbed.

Again his vision took time to adjust as he ducked through the plane’s entrance. The interior was furnished with four seats, two to a side, facing each other. Three of the seats were occupied. He made out a tall African woman, a young man of Asian origin, and a middle-aged woman who might have been Arabic.

As he stared at each of them in turn, he realised that they were unconscious.

The fourth seat was empty.

He moved forward, hesitated, then sat down.

Instantly a luxurious lassitude engulfed him. He wanted to laugh out loud at the wondrous sensation as he descended towards oblivion.

He felt a subtle vibration – the plane, moving? – and then lost consciousness.