by Eric Brown
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 w
ait 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 w
ith 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?”