The Serene Invasion

by Eric Brown

  The laser beam lanced out and cut Nina down. He saw a wound bloom in her torso and heard her startled cry as she fell.

  The figure turned and marched away. Raising his head from the ground, Allen looked around for Ana. He saw her seconds later, cowering in the ruins of the hut, her slim body covered with what remained of the poly-carbon door. It had effectively saved her life, shielding her from the attention of the blue figure which had accounted for Nina.

  Their eyes met, and Allen raised a hand in a gesture for her to stay where she was.

  He knew that, lying on his back in the open field, he was terribly exposed. Should one of the figures — what did Nina call them, the Obterek? — return this way, or simply look back the way they had come, then he was dead.

  Without conscious thought he rolled onto his belly and scrambled back towards the ruined hut. There were sufficient scraps and shards of poly-carbon remaining to afford him minimal cover.

  He reached the hut and put the ruin between himself and the line of blue figures. Ana grasped his hand and he held onto her warm fingers as if for dear life.

  He thought of Sally and Hannah, and felt a flash of terrible dread at the possibility that he might not survive what was happening here.

  Ana’s grip tightened on his hand. “Look, Mr Allen…”

  She was staring, open-mouthed, across the ground to where Nina’s body lay, bloodily butchered by the laser fire.

  Beyond the body, emerging from the shattered foliage, was a golden self-aware entity. Allen watched it as it approached Nina’s corpse and, in a bizarre act at once intimate and brutal, fell on top of it.

  Ana gasped. Allen stared, disbelieving. Where Nina’s body had lain, there was now only the golden self-aware entity, its pulsing outline mimicking the posture the Italian women had assumed in death. For a few seconds the golden figure remained perfectly still, face down, and then it slowly rose into a crouched position, like a sprinter, and took off at speed towards an advancing phalanx of blue figures.

  And where Nina had sprawled, she was no more.

  “What… happened?” Ana managed at last.

  Allen shook his head, lost for words.

  “Look,” Ana said, pointing.

  More golden figures had appeared as if from nowhere and confronted the Obterek, whose lasers seemed ineffective. Each blast directed at the golden figures’ torsos merely halted them in their tracks, briefly, before they surged on as if having absorbed the energy and gained extra momentum from it.

  The self-aware entities gained on the blue figures. Just as Allen was wondering how they might conduct the imminent fight, instead of slowing down to confront the killers the golden figures ran into the blue men and absorbed them. The golden entities pulsed brightly for a brief second, halted and stood foursquare, rocking slightly, as if the absorption of their enemies was taking its toll.

  From the direction of the now vanished tower, more blue figures were striding forth, lasers poised but inactive as the human populace had either fled the scene or been killed.

  From behind where Allen and Ana cowered, a second phalanx of golden figures passed and strode forward in line to confront the advancing Obterek.

  The blue men raised their weapons and fired, their barrage doing nothing to halt the golden figures’ advance.

  Allen was dazzled as something coruscated to his right. Belatedly he realised that it had been a laser beam, and only when Ana gasped his name did he turn to see her slump back, a bloody hole opened in her chest.

  He cried aloud and reached out for her hand. Before he could complete the action, he felt a lancing pain in his lower back. He yelled and turned in time to see his attacker, a blue figure not five metres away, swing its weapon towards an advancing golden figure. The Obterek fired, to no avail, and seconds later was taken into the corporality of the self-aware entity.

  Allen lay on his back, gasping. The beam had skewered his flank, slicing through his torso, and the pain was indescribable.

  He turned his head. Ana was propped beside him, eyes open in death, blood leaking from between her small breasts. He wanted to cry out at the injustice of what had happened, protest at his approaching end.

  He felt something slam into him. It was like a jolt of energy, a blast of pure force that seemed to lift him off the ground with its momentum. He realised that he was on his feet, surrounded by what felt like a cocooning flow of energy. He felt at once petrified and exhilarated, and heard a familiar voice in his head. “Do not be afraid…”

  Then he was moving. Or, rather, he was moving not under his own impetus but under that of his saviour. He was aware of his legs working, describing the motion of running, though he felt neither the impact of the ground nor the exertion of the act of sprinting. He was being carried through the air, he realised, inside the body of a self-aware entity.

  They were leaving the Fujiyama arboreal city at great speed, outpacing his fellow humans who were still running from the scene of carnage. He was aware of the cessation of pain in his flank, and a consequent dulling of his senses. Seconds later he passed out.

  He came to his senses an unknown time later, and he was still running, or rather the self-aware entity was running, tearing like an express train through hilly terrain. Trees flashed by, then buildings; the sense of speed, of forward motion, was incredible, and yet Allen felt nothing, no rush of air, no jarring impact with the ground. He was anaesthetised to all sensation and travelling like the wind.

  He passed out again, and when he came to he saw that he was no longer in the countryside. He had no notion of how long he had been travelling, or how far he had covered. City blocks flashed by in a blur, and citizens around him appeared to be frozen, motionless.

  Ahead, he saw a familiar sight, and could not bring himself to believe what it meant.

  He was in Tokyo — but how could that be?

  Directly before him was the rearing sable façade of the Tokyo obelisk.

  They were heading towards it, accelerating, and Allen willed the golden figure to slow down before they impacted.

  But the golden figure did not slow down — if anything it gained speed. The looming face of the obelisk rushed forwards to meet them.

  Allen blacked out.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ANA FINISHED HER shift in the administration dome early and, on her way back to her rooms, dropped in to see how Prakesh was getting on in the labs.

  Prakesh was supervising his team of biologists who were researching the genetics of a form of wheat seed donated by the Serene. The idea was that the extraterrestrial wheat might, when crossed with a Terran variety, produce a hybrid with a higher yield than anything grown on Earth to date.

  She passed through the airlock and peered through the window at the clean area. Half a dozen white-suited scientists worked at long benches, while to the right Prakesh was bent over a softscreen.

  He saw her and waved, then crossed to the window and switched on the intercom.

  “Any progress?” she asked.

  He lowered his face-mask and smiled. “It’s slow. We’re only just putting the markers down. It might be another day or two yet before we have results.”

  She nodded. “Fine. Keep me posted, would you?”

  She made to leave.

  Prakesh said, “Ana, would you be free later? Since getting back from Japan, you’ve been…” He hesitated. “I was wondering if everything’s okay?” He looked, in his concern, like the young boy she’d known all those years ago.

  She smiled. “I’m fine. Just very, very tired. I’m having an early night. And then… Look, I’ll be away for a few days, taking a break. But I promise we’ll have time to catch up when I get back, ah-cha?”

  He nodded, but looked unconvinced. “Have a pleasant break, Ana.”

  “I’ll be in touch.” She switched off the intercom and stepped from the dome.

  The sun was going down slowly, but in the east, dropping like an accelerated sun, was the golden glow of the evening energy beam fall
ing towards the distribution station a hundred kilometres north of Madras.

  The sight of it never failed to fill Ana with reassurance.

  She made her way to the residential block where she had a comfortable second floor apartment overlooking the fields which stretched, without interruption, to the horizon.

  She sat on her bed, activated her softscreen, and summoned the library of images.

  She scrolled through various media shots of her brother, Lal Devi as he was known now, which she had downloaded and stored over the course of the past few days since arriving back from Japan.

  What had happened at Fujiyama had changed things.

  She unbuttoned the front of her blouse and stared down at the smooth coffee-coloured skin of her chest. She touched the place where the laser had impacted and tried to recall the intense, shocking pain. She relived the mental anguish of knowing that she was about to die, and recalled her exact thoughts: Twenty-six years, and this is how it ends…

  And then the breathtaking impact of something vital and strong slamming into her body and taking her over, raising her to her feet and carrying her at speed from the carnage…

  And then she had awoken to find herself on the train heading south to the Andhra Pradesh wilderness city.

  Not long after arriving home her thoughts had turned to her brother, and what she had told Kapil about not wanting to find him.

  Well, the events at Fujiyama had changed her mind on that score.

  She had been so close to death — had perhaps even died for a second — and the thought that she was mortal had hit her, later, along with the thought that had she died at Fujiyama then she would have left so much undone.

  Earlier in Kolkata, before taking the Serene jet to Japan, she had faced her fears and approached both Station Master Jangar and Sanjeev Varnaputtram. She had confronted both men and in doing so had realised that the reality had not been as terrible as she had expected it to be.

  She had learned a lesson from that and, with the knowledge that she was mortal and must do now what she would not always be around to do, had resolved to track down her brother and, eventually, confront him too.

  In her free time over the past few days she had googled the company he worked for and the address of their head office in Manhattan. Yesterday she had booked a berth aboard the sub-orbital leaving Delhi for New York and arranged to meet Kapil on the evening of her arrival.

  She slept badly that night, her dreams full of rampaging blue figures lasering down innocent humans; she relived her own death, and woke suddenly in the early hours drenched in sweat.

  She rose, showered, then packed her holdall and took an electric cab to the train station.

  The journey north to Delhi, through the flatlands of the Deccan changed now out of all recognition from the parched farmland of just ten years ago, gave her time to look ahead to her meeting with Bilal. He would be shocked, of course, when she turned up — a ghost from a past he thought he had left behind. But she would not accuse him, would not ask why he did not contact her — or at least say goodbye. To accuse him would be to risk alienating and angering him, and she feared that, after having waited for so long to be reunited, he would walk out on her and refuse to see her again.

  They would talk, catch up on the lost years. She would tell him about growing up without him — though without censure — and recount what had happened to her since the coming of the Serene. Only if he was willing to talk about his past would she probe and ask what had happened to make him leave her without saying goodbye.

  As field after field of alternating rice and corn sped past, she stared through the window and smiled to herself.

  She caught the midnight sub-orbital shuttle from New Delhi airport and slept peacefully, untroubled by nightmares. She awoke to dazzling daylight outside the circular window, with a startling view of the New York coastline and the glittering length of Manhattan far below. Minutes later they were decelerating towards the airport on Staten Island, and thirty minutes later she passed through customs and was riding the monotrain across the bay to Manhattan.

  Kapil met her at TriBeCa station and whisked her back to his apartment in Little Italy, where she showered, changed, and enjoyed a long, leisurely meal of strong coffee and croissants.

  At one point Kapil asked, “But what made you change your mind?”

  She had refrained from telling him about the events of Fujiyama. When she’d spoken to him briefly the other day, she had still not come to terms with what had happened there. She had trawled the newsfeeds for mention of the attack, but found nothing. Obviously the Serene were imposing a news blackout on the event.

  Now, little by little, she described the afternoon, the wonder of the arboreal city, the other representatives she had met… and then the attack. As she spoke, she recalled new details she had either forgotten or repressed: seeing Nina Ricci lasered almost in half before her very eyes; a mother and child mown down mercilessly by a dispassionate blue figure… And then her salvation thanks to a Serene self-aware entity.

  They held hands across the table, Kapil too shocked to speak for long minutes, until, “Well, all I have to complain about is a razor cut yesterday morning…”

  She laughed and swiped his head.

  “And after that…” She frowned. “I knew I had to contact Bilal.” She smiled at him. “None of us live for ever, Kapil, and I knew I had to act sooner rather than later. Did you…?”

  He nodded. “I contacted his PA and explained that we had business interests in common, and my recent links with China which might prove beneficial to the Morwell Corporation.”

  Ana bit her lip. “And?”

  “Your brother is a very busy man, but I arranged an appointment for eleven this morning, but I could only get fifteen minutes.”

  “That will be fine, to start with.”

  “Then, as you instructed, at nine this morning I had my secretary contact his PA and tell her that, due to illness, I wouldn’t be able to make the meeting but would be deputised by my assistant. You’re going under the name of Sara Ashok, so remember that.”

  She leaned across the table and kissed him. “Thank you so much, Kapil. This means a lot to me.”

  “I’ll come with you as far as Morwell Towers. After that you’ll be on your own.” He gave her one of his lovely smiles. “I’ll wait for you, then we’ll go for a coffee and you can tell me all about it.”

  She looked at her watch. Ten-thirty. “We’d better be setting off.”

  As they left the apartment, Ana tried to quash her sudden apprehension at the thought of meeting her brother. She told herself not to be so stupid. She had faced down Sanjeev Varnaputtram after all, so what did she have to fear from Bilal?

  SHE RODE THE elevator to the fortieth floor of Morwell Towers, her anxieties mounting in proportion to the rate of her ascent. Kapil had left her outside the building with a kiss and the assurance that he would be waiting for her — and that she had nothing to fear. Nevertheless she did feel fear: fear of an outright rejection from her brother, or an inadequate reason for his not saying goodbye all those years ago.

  The lift doors swished open and she found herself in a plush carpeted corridor with a pulsing softscreen on the opposite wall. A name appeared on the screen, Lal Devi, underlined by a flashing arrow indicating that she should turn right. Hesitantly she stepped out and walked down the corridor, reading the nameplates on the doors to right and left as she went.

  She came to the door bearing the name Lal Devi and stopped, her breath coming in ragged gasps. She took a deep breath and checked her watch. She was a couple of minutes late.

  She knocked, and when she heard a voice call, “Enter,” opened the door and stepped inside.

  The first thing she noticed was the opulence of the office. It occupied a corner site, with two great plate-glass windows looking down the length of Manhattan. Behind a big silver desk, shaped like an arrow-head with its point directed at the door, was a slim man with a thin, handsome face. He wor
e his hair long in a ponytail and sported an amethyst stud in his right ear.

  She stared, comparing this slick, besuited businessman with the malnourished urchin she had last seen twenty years ago.

  He hardly glanced away from his softscreen as he gestured her to take a seat at the point of his desk. “Ah, Miss… Ashok. I’m sorry I couldn’t meet your superior, Kapil Gavaskar, but illness knows no social boundaries.”

  She forced herself not to dislike her brother for his opening words, as he rose and took her hand in a limp, perfunctory shake.

  “I’m Lal Devi, James Morwell’s right hand man, as you no doubt know.” He gestured to the screen. “And we’re interested in what you have to offer as regards your Chinese links.”

  She said, “Bilal…”

  He looked up and frowned. “Now, no one has called me that for a long time.”

  She stared at him, this slick, fast-talking, high-flying aide to a one-time billionaire tycoon. How did you come to this, she thought?

  She found her voice and said, “Do you know who I am?”

  He glanced at his screen, his face quirking with a quick frown. “Miss… Ashok. I don’t believe we’ve met before.”

  “You don’t recognise me?”

  He looked mystified, then a little annoyed. But was it any wonder that he didn’t recognise her? She had changed so much in appearance from the ragged street kid she had been.

  Her heart laboured as if pumping treacle. She felt a hot flush rise up her face as she said, “We last saw each other, Bilal, many years ago. On Howrah station, the day before you disappeared.”

  He stared at her and shook his head, and Ana wasn’t sure if he was totally confused or had realised who she was and was denying the fact.

  Then he whispered, “Ana?”

  She held his startled gaze. Despite her earlier resolutions not to intimidate him with accusations, she found herself saying, “Bilal, why didn’t you say goodbye? Why did you just leave like that? There one day, gone the next…”