The Serene Invasion

by Eric Brown

  He stared at her. “Small, dumpy, mousey, homely Kath Kemp? A self-aware entity?”

  “I know, I know… But somehow, it made sense. And, you know what? I see her still as the same person. Still a friend… My friend, the alien entity.”

  “And did she tell you what she was doing here?”

  “Not everything. A little. I think the best description would be that she’s a facilitator.”

  He interrupted. “Don’t tell me. That accident… it wasn’t an accident, right?”

  She was watching him closely. “No. No, it wasn’t, but how…?”

  He told her about Fujiyama, the dissolution of the tower and his hairs-breadth escape, then the attack of the blue figures.

  “They’re called the Obterek,” he said, “according to a journalist I met. Aliens who oppose the Serene. They… I can’t recall exactly the phrase she used, but the Obterek somehow reconfigured the reality of the arboreal city area and undermined the Serene’s charea injunction. Then they set about killing as many humans as possible.”

  Sally said, “But there was nothing on any of the news channels…”

  “I suspect the Serene imposed a blackout.” He paused. “I said the blue figures began killing humans… and they succeeded, but… I don’t really know how to explain this — but the golden figures, the self-aware entities, brought them back to life. I saw the journalist die. Then she was absorbed by a SAE…” He stopped, pulled the flap of his shirt from his trousers, and twisted to peer down at his midriff.

  Sally slipped from the table and knelt beside him. “You? You were hit?”

  His fingers traced where the laser had impacted. The skin was smooth, unblemished.

  “It hit me here, and the pain…” He shook his head in wonder.

  She took his hand and kissed his knuckles. “What happened?”

  “I felt the impact, the pain…” As he spoke, tears came to his eyes. He dashed them away and went on, “And I thought I was dead. I… do you know something, I thought of you and Hannah, your grief…”

  She sat on his lap and they hugged. “It’s fine now, everything’s okay.”

  “Then something else hit me, a physical force, and I was… somehow inside… a self-aware entity. It left the area at speed. I passed out, and the last I recall was heading towards the obelisk in Tokyo, and I felt panic at the imminent impact. And then I woke up on the train ten miles south of Wem.” He looked up at her. “What’s happening, Sally? Fujiyama? Here? The Obterek? Did Kath say anything?”

  She frowned. “A little, but not much more than I’ve told you. But she’s calling in tomorrow on the way back from Birmingham. She has something she needs to discuss with us.”

  “I’m not sure I like the way you said ‘something,’ Sal.”

  She looked up at the wall clock. “Three fifteen. Tell you what, let’s take the canal path to the school and pick up Trouble. I have something to tell you on the way.”

  She stood up and fetched her handbag.

  “That ‘something’ again.” He smiled. “Don’t you think you’ve told me enough already?”

  They left the house and Sally locked the back door.

  As they strolled hand in hand along the canal path, with insects buzzing in the hedges and water-boatmen skimming the still surface of the water, she said, “How would you like to live on Mars?”

  He peered at her. He went for levity. “Well, all things considered, I’m pretty settled in Shropshire, and I’ve heard property prices there are astronomical.”

  She feigned pushing him into the canal. “I’m serious.”

  “Kath, right? That’s what she wants to talk to us about tomorrow?”

  “She told me a little about it. They, the Serene and the SAEs, have terraformed Mars, and they won’t stop there. They’re pushing outwards, through the solar system… and they need colonists.”

  “Us? Me and you and Hannah?”

  She nodded. “I’m a medic, and in demand. You’re a representative –”

  “Whatever that means.”

  “Kath was serious. They want colonists to settle Mars first, and after that…”

  He thought about it, about a terraformed Mars; it was the stuff of boyhood dreams. He considered strolling in the foothills of Olympus Mons and laughed aloud.

  Sally nudged him. “What?”

  He told her. “Hannah would miss her friends. But I suppose kids are adaptable…”

  “You’re already considering it?”

  “No, not really. Let’s wait to see what Kath has to say, okay?”

  They collected Hannah from school, tired and rosy-cheeked from a long day. She ran on ahead, skipping and shouting with a couple of friends. On the way back, Geoff suggested they pop into the Three Horseshoes. “I could kill a pint.”

  They sat at the table by the fishpond while Hannah lay on her belly and poked a finger into the water. The fish broke the surface, staring up at her. On his way to the bar, Geoff wondered what the koi made of the giant being whose pink finger promised, but did not deliver, food.

  He carried two pints of Leffe and a fresh orange juice from the bar, and they sat in the westering sun and watched their daughter play with the fish. Sally said, “Mars…”

  He smiled at her, and it struck him anew that his wife was quite beautiful.

  He laughed. “Mars indeed!” he said.

  HE SPENT A troubled night, his dreams plagued by images of Obterek blue men lasering down defenceless humans.

  He woke around five, the room light despite the drawn curtains, and listened to the sound of Sally’s breathing. He reached out and slipped a hand across the small of her back, reassured by her warmth.

  Hannah, their alarm clock, burst into the room at seven-thirty and woke Allen from a light slumber. She chattered constantly until breakfast, where a bowl of Weetabix shut her up. They walked her to school along the canal path and returned silently, each lost in their own thoughts.

  “Tea?” Sally asked when they got back.

  Allen nodded. “What time’s Kath due?”

  “She said around ten.”

  He looked at the clock. Nine-twenty. “Not long then.”

  He was feeling curiously apprehensive, and he could not really say why — whether it was due to the idea of Mars, or of meeting, face to face, a self-aware entity in human form.

  They sat on either side of the kitchen table and sipped their tea. At last Allen said, “How would you feel about moving to Mars, if it’s really on?”

  She pursed her lips and rocked her head, considering. “I honestly don’t know. I suppose it would depend on the job, and the type of people we’d be with. I know, I know, we wouldn’t know about the latter until we got there. But I suppose I could adapt to living almost anywhere, so long as I had you and Hannah, a decent job, and we were surrounded by good people.”

  “We have all that here, Sally.”

  She nodded. “But even so, the idea of Mars. The experience. A part of me feels we’d be foolish to pass it up, while another…”

  “And you accuse me of being a stick-in-the-mud.”

  She smiled. “Well, I’m very happy with what I have here, thank you very much.”

  “And so am I, but I know what you mean. The thought of Mars…” He slapped his leg with the flat of his hand. “But let’s wait until we hear what your self-aware entity friend has to say, hm?”

  “All those years, the times we spent together…”

  “How does it make you feel, the knowledge of who — what — she is?”

  “I’ve thought about that a lot over the past couple of days. At first, I don’t know… but I felt as if our friendship had been somehow… devalued. As if for all those years Kath had been living a lie. But then I realised that was stupid. She wasn’t out to get anything from me — other than what every human being wants from someone, friendship, loyalty, understanding, being there when it matters… We shared all those things. So the fact that she’s also an alien, a self-aware entity… In a way
, it doesn’t really alter anything.”

  “And yet.”

  She laughed. “And yet it does alter everything. I think now I can never be as… as open with her, I suppose. I’ll always be wondering about her motivations in being here, always wondering if she really understands me, or if it’s just simulating a response.” She waved. “I’m sorry, I’m expressing it badly.”

  “I think I understand,” he said. “One of your best friends has turned out to be something other than what she purported to be, so of course you have every right to reassess your relationship with her.”

  “And forge a new relationship with her, built on that new knowledge,” she said. She cocked her head, listening. “That’s the side gate. It must be her.”

  Seconds later Kath’s head and shoulders passed the kitchen window and she knocked on the slightly open door.

  From where he sat at the table, Allen watched the two women come together on the threshold and embrace. He had always been struck by the differences between these two good friends: whereas Sally was tall, elegant and — though he admitted bias in this — beautiful, Kath was small, thick-set and plain. She exuded a matronly bonhomie that he found endearing, and which people warmed to. And it was all, he reminded himself, a construct, a fabrication to humanise what was in fact an alien being.

  He rose and crossed the kitchen towards Kath. He always found greeting women a little awkward — a handshake or a chaste peck on the cheek: one too formal and the other too intimate — and he ended up stooping a little to give her a hug.

  “Geoff,” she said. “It’s lovely to see you. It’s been more than two years.”

  “How about we sit in the garden?” he suggested. “Tea all round?”

  While Sally ushered Kath into the garden and arranged a table and a spare chair beneath the cherry tree, Allen made three cups of Earl Grey, opened a packet of locally made shortbread, and carried them outside.

  They sipped tea, nibbled biscuits, and traded the usual pleasantries for a few minutes — commenting on the weather, the fine state of the garden — though Allen was aware of the incongruity of the charade.

  At last Kath paused and looked up from her tea. “I take it Sally told you all about what happened the night before last?”

  “In detail,” he said, “and I filled Sal in on the events at Fujiyama.”

  Kath pulled a quick frown at this, murmuring, “Ah, yes…” She looked from Sally to Allen, and said, “That was a breach we could have done without, but you’ll be pleased to know that no lasting damage was done, despite the appearance of initial conditions. Everyone ‘killed’ at Fujiyama was saved by the SAEs.”

  “I was shot in the torso,” he began, shaking his head.

  “My… colleagues melded with the dead and dying, imbued them with our life-force, and affected such repairs as were needed. On a quantum level, it was a simple procedure.”

  “But the other evening? Couldn’t you have saved yourself, then?” Sally asked.

  “It was a very different form of attack, Sally. Far more… lethal. I needed help, from my colleagues, in order to effect recovery.”

  Allen said, “And the Obterek? Who are they? Why are they attacking you?”

  Kath nodded, balancing her tea cup on her knee. “They are our opponents, or enemy, from the sector of the galaxy from where we hail. We are ideologically opposed, I suppose you could say. The history between us is long and complex. Anyway, they compromised the charea program we had in place — only locally, I’m glad to say, and staged a minor offensive.”

  “Minor?” Allen queried. “It appeared rather major to me. The destruction of a couple of towers, the slaughtering of dozens, hundreds, of humans…”

  “Believe me, Geoff, it was a minor incident. As the Obterek meant it to be — not so much the first stage of a concerted offensive, but a warning shot. It was a breach which told us that they were capable, given the opportunity, of much greater damage. Their attacks have been increasing of late, and although we are confident that we can counter everything they have to throw at us, the incidence of their attacks is nevertheless worrying.”

  Sally leaned forward. “But what do the Obterek object to, Kath? Who can possibly oppose what the Serene are doing here?”

  “The Obterek can. They are a military race, evolved in conditions far different from any you might be able to imagine. Their rise to eminence in their solar system, and the neighbouring ones, is a bloody catalogue of conflicts won and lost, the brutality and barbarity of which is hard to envisage, or believe. They are responsible for the annihilation of more than a dozen innocent races, and they see what we are doing as against the natural law. That is their great phrase — translated into English, of course — Natural Law, the edict of the universe which no race should contravene.”

  “But surely,” Sally said, “a purely subjective idea?”

  “Of course,” Kath said, “but try telling the Obterek that.”

  “How long have the Serene and the Obterek been at loggerheads?” Allen asked.

  “Would you believe over two hundred thousand Terran years?”

  He shook his head at the very idea.

  Kath went on, “The conflict exemplifies a typical pacifist-aggressor paradigm: what does a peaceful people, who live by rules of non-violence and respect for all life, do when attacked by a force who does not hold to such ideals? In the early years our people were split. There were those who said we should counter like with like, and defend ourselves by attacking. There were others, whose view thankfully prevailed, who maintained that we should abide by the ideals that had made our race what it was: humane, tolerant, compassionate. We inhabited many worlds by this time, and on one we set about working on a means of peaceable defence.”

  Sally opened her mouth in a silent, “Ah…” She said, “Charea?”

  Kath nodded. “And for forty thousand years, with frequent interruptions, charea has worked.”

  A silence developed, each contemplating their own thoughts, until Sally asked, “You said that the incidence of Obterek attacks are increasing, but does this mean that one day they will prevail?”

  “We certainly hope not. You must understand that to subvert, or compromise, the quantum structure of the charea requires such energies as you would find hard to conceive. And the Obterek simply do not have the resources to reconfigure more than a fragment of the basal structure of reality at any one time. Granted, they may attempt to take the life of a self-aware entity from time to time, or even stage a more daring attack like that at Fujiyama, but as I stated earlier these are, we think, merely warning shots. We live in preparation of the Obterek upping the stakes, of developing ways of countering the charea that we cannot foresee.”

  “And if one day the Obterek prevailed, destroyed the charea? What then?” Sally asked.

  “Their stated aim is to reinstate the Natural Law, but this is disingenuous. In the past they have promised certain races a return to the old, violent ways — but they lie. And the same would be true here, too.”

  “So… what would they want?” Allen asked.

  “What all aggressive, warlike races want — domination, complete and utter subjugation of your race. And they would be ruthless to their subjects if they ever succeeded in permanently subverting the charea and defeating us.” She paused, her gaze distant, then went on, “Five millennia ago there was a race which the Serene failed. I was not there to witness what happened, of course, but the story stands to serve as a warning should ever we become complacent.”

  Sally said, “What happened?”

  “The Serene brought the charea to this race, the Grayll; like your race, they were a technological, civilised people — but given to destructive internecine wars which, unchecked, would have resulted in their self-annihilation. The Serene intervened, bringing peace to their small world, and then made the fatal mistake, a hundred years later, of dropping our guard. We became complacent, left only a token force of self-aware entities in the Grayll’s system — and the
Obterek struck massively, breaching the basal reality paradigm, destroying our means of maintaining the charea and driving our forces from the system. For the next fifty years the Obterek used the Grayll as little more than slave labour in order to mine the solar system of precious metals and resources. They were ruthless, thinking nothing of working to death thousands of innocent Grayll at a time, of summarily executing those they deemed to be subverting their cause. After half a century the Obterek withdrew to the fastness of their own system, leaving… leaving behind not a single living creature. Those Grayll still living at the end of the period of enslavement they put to death in the most horrific fashion. And what made the slaughter all the worse was that the Obterek had promised these deluded people ultimate freedom when they, the Obterek, had finished raping the star system. The remaining Grayll were gathered together at the site of a Grayll holy temple and… and firebombed.

  “When the Obterek left, and the Serene returned… they found the incinerated corpses of ten thousand men, women and children, a terrible testament to our complacency. The Serene vowed, then, that slaughter should never happen again.”

  After a short silence, Allen said, “And they would do the same to the human race?”

  “Without question,” Kath replied.

  Allen considered everything Kath had said. “Might the Obterek threat have some bearing on your decision to terraform the outer planets of the solar system, to promote our migration outwards? This way, spread across the system, we present a target difficult to locate and destroy?”

  Kath smiled. “That is certainly one way of looking at the problem, yes. The other reason is simply that the natural evolution of a race is ever outwards, pushing into space and exploring new habitats, spreading the gene pool in a diaspora that will thus engender a greater chance of species survival.”

  They were silent for a time. “It’s a big commitment you’re asking of us,” he said at last. “I mean, it’s difficult enough to think about emigrating to Australia, say, not to mention Mars.”