The Serene Invasion

by Eric Brown

  He sat back and watched the crowds of Japanese workers and shoppers pass back and forth across the plaza. Visually not much had changed in the populated centres of the world. The scene here ten years ago, before the coming of the Serene, would be much the same as this one, other than the minor changes of fashion, advertisements and some architecture. The changes were on a more substantial, psychological level, he thought — which had an effect on the people of the plaza. There seemed to be a more carefree atmosphere wherever crowds gathered now, a realisation that the threat of violence, however remote, was no more, so that individuals were no longer burdened with the subconscious fear of their fellow man. It was the same wherever he went, a joyful absence of fear which promoted, in turn, a definite altruism: he was sure he’d seen, over the course of the last few years, acts of kindness, generosity and selflessness in a larger measure than before the arrival of the aliens.

  He considered his own life over the past ten years, and smiled to himself as he realised that perhaps the greater difference made to it had not been the coming of the Serene, but the arrival of Sally Walsh and his daughter, Hannah.

  He often experienced a retrospective shiver of dread at the thought that he might never have met Sally Walsh. He had been in the right place at the right time: a photo-shoot in the drought-stricken region of Karamoja where, just an hour before he was due to pack up and leave, Sally had arrived in a battered Land Rover to treat seriously malnourished tribespeople.

  He’d liked the look of the thin, washed-out doctor instantly, and had made an excuse to extend his photographic session.

  Their life together in England since then had been little short of idyllic.

  He missed Sally and Hannah on his days away, and when he worked in locations around Britain between missions for the Serene, but he counted himself fortunate that he had the majority of every month — perhaps twenty days — to get under their feet while he ostensibly did the housework.

  Thoughts of Sally made him reach for his softscreen. It would be the middle of the night in England, but she might have left a message.

  He smiled as he saw her name at the top of the list, and accessed her call. A second later he sat up with alarm as his wife’s distraught face filled the screen. “Geoff. Something awful…”

  His heart jumped sickeningly, but her next words reassured him on that score: “Hannah’s fine and so am I. It’s Kath. There was an accident. I saw it.” Her face crumpled, and Allen wanted nothing more than to hold her. “Oh, Geoff, it was awful, awful… Please ring me back as soon as you can. I love you.”

  He checked the time of the message: she had left it over three hours ago.

  He called back immediately, realising that Sally was likely to be sound asleep. There was no reply, so he left a message, whispering urgently into the screen, “Sally… I got your call. I’ll be home in around ten, twelve hours. I don’t know what to say. I’m so sorry. I’m thinking of you. I love you.”

  He signed off, aware of the inadequacy of his words, and stared unseeingly across the plaza.

  A TALL, TANNED, dark-haired woman in a short yellow sun dress had turned on her seat a couple of tables away and was watching him. She was perhaps in her mid-thirties, with the poised elegance of a film star or ballerina. Her face was hauntingly familiar, and he wondered if that was where he’d seen her at some point, on screen or stage.

  Her gaze persisted and she smiled, and Allen, being English and unused to the attention of glamorous women, looked away and felt himself colour maddeningly.

  He was aware, peripherally, of her uncrossing her long legs, standing and striding across the plaza towards his table.

  Only when her shadow fell across him did he look up. His smile faltered.

  She said, in Mediterranean-accented English, “I never forget a face.”

  “Then you have the advantage of me,” he said, “because I do. Forgive me, but have we met?”

  She touched the back of an empty chair with long fingers. “Would you mind…?”

  “No, please.”

  She sat down, signalled to a waiter with the air of one accustomed to attracting instant attention, and ordered an espresso.

  She offered her hand. “Nina Ricci, and we have not met. But, ten years ago, we did attend the same gathering, and I have seen you once or twice since.”

  “I’m Geoff,” he said, and only then did the belated penny drop. “Ah,” he said, relieved. “The Serene starships…” The tall, Italian-sounding woman who had been the first person to ask the Serene a question.

  “That’s right. We were among the few who asked questions back then. I think most people were petrified by fear, but not we…”

  He wondered why she had come to speak to him. He said, “For the ten years I’ve been a representative, I’ve never met another one.”

  She sipped her coffee and smiled dazzlingly. “Ah, but I think that is because you have not been looking, Geoff.”

  “And you have?”

  “I am by nature a curious person. I want always to know how, what, why, when, who…”

  “You’d make a fine journalist.”

  “That is what I am, Geoff. A feature writer for the Corriere della Sera, Roma. I’m here to cover the opening of the arboreal city in Fujiyama.”

  “Snap. That’s where I’m going.” He patted his bag hanging from the back of his chair. “Photographer.”

  “But of course” — she pierced him with her olive-dark eyes — “that was not the principal reason we were brought here.”

  He smiled. “Of course not. And your journalist’s curiosity would like to know why?”

  In reply, she turned in her seat — the graceful torque of her back suggestive again of a ballerina — and pointed a long finger at the sable obelisk towering over the plaza.

  She said, “Have you made the connection, Geoff?”

  “That for the past few years we always wake up close to an obelisk? Yes, it had occurred to me.”

  “And do you wonder what we do in there?”

  “So… you think that we actually enter the obelisks?”

  “I do, and so do the other three or four representatives I’ve met over the years.”

  He shook his head. “Anyway, as to your question: pass. I’ve no idea.”

  She pulled a mock-shocked expression. “No? Surely you must have? An intelligent Englishman like yourself?” She was baiting him.

  “My wife would disagree about the intelligent bit,” he said, pleased for some reason that he’d mentioned Sally. He shrugged. “I don’t know… We’re conducting Serene business. So… I assumed in the early days we were meeting business people, heads of state, the powerful movers and shakers of the world. I see no reason why we’re not still doing that. Maybe… maybe we’re passing down the wisdom of the Serene.”

  She was looking at him askance. She had a repertory of practised facial expressions, like an actress forever anticipating the close-up shot. “Do you really think this, when the Serene have in their service a legion of the so-called ‘golden figures’?”

  He thought about it. “I might be wrong, but I always thought the self-aware entities manifested themselves only to us, the representatives — and in the early days stationed themselves on high rooftops and mountain summits, of course.”

  She considered him for a few seconds, then said, “Reality check, Geoff. The golden figures are amongst us.”

  He stared at her. “They are?” He made a show of looking around the plaza and finding none. “Strange, but I don’t see a single one.”

  She leaned forward, elbows on table, pointed chin lodged in her cupped palm. “That is because, unobservant Englishman, they are in disguise.”

  “Ah…” he said, and pointed at her. “But if they are disguised, then how could I be observant enough to spot them?”

  She nodded. “Point taken. Perhaps I am lucky, because once I observed an accident.”

  He finished his coffee. “I’m afraid you’ve lost me.” He smiled, intr
igued by this beautiful, inquisitive Italian.

  “I one day was walking down the avenue in Barcelona when I saw a man run over by an automobile. Splat! Dead and no doubting the fact. Only, a day later I saw the same man walking as large as life down the street a mile or so away… I never forget a face, as I said. So, being the curious type of girl, I accosted the man and asked him how, since I saw him die pretty messily the other day, he was now as fit as fit can be and showing no signs of his injuries.”

  “And he told you?”

  “He smiled and said my name, and took me to a quiet park nearby–”

  “You should be wary of men who suggest quiet parks.”

  She smiled. “But you see, I knew then that he was not a man, I mean a real man.” She waved a hand. “And then, when we are quite alone in the park, he becomes a golden figure and tells me that there are hundreds of thousands of his kind passing as human — and, moreover, have been for many, many decades.”

  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, insp
ired 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.”