The Serene Invasion

by Eric Brown

  Kath nodded, as if the question were entirely reasonable. “Think about it,” she said. “Think about what is happening to the human race. There are no more wars, no more crimes of violence, no more murders. Also, with the coming of the Serene and the advance of pharmaceutical sciences, many deadly diseases are no more. The human race is expanding, hence the outward push from Earth, the establishment of colonies on Venus, Mars, and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn.”

  Kapil finished for her. “And we need space into which to expand,” he said.

  Kath looked around the astonished faces of the humans before her. “This is not the first time the Serene have built a habitat shell around a solar system,” she said. “It is one of the corollaries of saving a race from itself.”

  “But will there come a time, in the far, far future,” Nina Ricci wanted to know, “when the human race will expand to fill all the available land within the shell?”

  “That is very doubtful,” Kath said. “It has not happened so far with any of the other races the Serene have assisted; they have instituted measures to curb their populations.”

  Beside Allen, Sally opened her mouth with an exclamation of understanding. “Ah, I see now…” she said.

  The others looked at her.

  “I understand why the representatives have been granted the ability to… shift,” she said.

  Kath Kemp was nodding. “When the shell is complete, the distances between areas of population across the inner surface will be so vast that we will need people, individuals, to travel back and forth, as envoys, messengers — couriers, if you like. To create and sustain a system of obelisks to perform this function would be an energy drain beyond even the resources of the Serene, hence the creation of a cadre of shifters, as you will come to be known.”

  Allen slipped an arm around his wife’s shoulder and smiled at her.

  “Of course,” Kath went on, “as twenty years ago when the Serene recruited the representatives, we gave you the option of withdrawing, without fear of prejudice. We offer you the same option now; if any of you do not wish to enjoy the facility of shifting, or do not wish to carry through the work of the Serene, please say so and you will be returned to Mars with no memory of what has taken place here.”

  Allen laughed. “You are,” he said, “joking, right? As if I could turn my back on the ability to…” He shook his head, suddenly speechless at the thought of what the Serene had granted him.

  Kath turned to Ana Devi. “Ana?”

  She smiled and clutched Kapil’s hand. “I agree with Geoff,” she said.

  “And you, Nina?” Kath asked.

  “I would not turn my back on the ability to shift for all the world,” she said.

  Kath Kemp smiled. “Thank you all,” she said. “You have made me very happy.”

  Allen asked, “And the other representatives? Have the Serene told all ten thousand of us?”

  She smiled. “We are in the process of doing so,” she said. She gestured around her at the meadow. “As we speak there are groups of representatives, with their attendant self-aware entities, being told just what I have just told you.”

  She paused, then went on, “In celebration, I suggest we return to the plaza at Titan. I’ve had the presumption to order a magnum of champagne in readiness for our return.”

  Nina Ricci said, “But won’t our sudden arrival, out of the blue, cause a little consternation?”

  “Until a formal announcement is made regarding the shifters,” Kath said, “the Serene have ensured that your arrival, anywhere, will go unnoticed by those in the vicinity.”

  Allen smiled to himself; the Serene had thought of everything.

  She stepped forward and held out her hand to Allen, and he understood then why she had taken Nina Ricci’s hand on Titan.

  “You can’t shift?” he said.

  She smiled. “We can do many things, Geoff, but the Serene have not endowed us with that ability.”

  She looked around the group as the representatives linked hands with their partners. “If you visualise the plaza…”

  Allen did so, and the co-ordinates entered his consciousness.

  Gripping Sally’s hand, he closed his eyes and repeated them.

  And when he opened his eyes again he was on the plaza beneath the dome on Titan, and the others were already making their way to the café bar.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  JAMES MORWELL LOOKED at his reflection in the mirror of his hotel bedroom and liked what he saw.

  It was entirely appropriate, he thought, that as in a matter of hours he was due to annihilate himself he should take on a new visual identity. Gone was the Morwell of old, the pale, weak-chinned failure, to be replaced with this young, tall, blond vision.

  It is necessary, said the voice in his head, to disguise you…

  “I understand,” he said aloud, then laughed at himself.

  In one hour you will leave your planet forever. Are you ready?

  “I am ready… though I can hardly bring myself to believe that soon I’ll be…” He did not say the word, as if by doing so he might curse himself. He had tried for so long now, for so many years, to end his life that the idea that soon he might achieve his goal — with some help, admittedly — seemed impossible to imagine.

  A blessed cessation of the anger that haunted him; oblivion. Nothingness.

  And in bringing about his own end, he would be helping to end the tyranny of the Serene in the solar system. The old ways would be restored. Humanity would be handed back its true destiny, no longer yoked to the pacifist ideals of a faceless alien race.

  Thanks to me, he thought, the human race will be free.

  He wondered if his sacrifice would be remembered, and exalted.

  We will ensure that your name lives on, said the voice in his head.

  In time he would be even more famous than his father had been. He laughed at the idea. His father was little remembered now, the long-dead tycoon of long-dead business concerns. He closed his eyes and saw his father advancing on him with a baseball bat, and cursed his memory.

  Look at me now, you bastard…

  Are you ready? said the voice.

  “I’m ready,” he replied.

  He left the hotel and took a taxi to the Kolkata obelisk, where he had transit booked for Titan.

  He sat back and stared out at the crowded streets as the taxi carried him towards his destiny. They passed within half a mile of the state orphanage where, three days ago, he had taken the life of Lal Devi.

  The killing had not proved as satisfactory as he had hoped. He had imagined that Lal would grovel, would plead for his life, would apologise for betraying Morwell all those years ago. But when Morwell had walked in on Lal in his crude timber shack, he found a man changed from the slick businessman he had been. Lal seemed calmer, more reflective, centred.

  He had smiled up at Morwell from where he sat cross-legged on his bunk, and said, “I did wonder if I would see you again, one day.”

  Even the sight of the automatic pistol in Morwell’s right hand had failed to faze him.

  “I want an apology,” Morwell had said.

  Lal had merely smiled and said, “Go to hell, Morwell…”

  “You’ll regret that, Lal.”

  “I regret nothing, least of all leaving you, the Organisation. It was the finest thing I ever did.”

  Morwell shook with suppressed rage. “I gave you everything, Lal. I saved you from a life of squalor. I educated you, gave you opportunities beyond your wildest dreams.”

  “You inculcated me with the same corrupt ethos that you yourself had been infected with from your father.”

  “No!”

  “You filled my head with greed and gain, with concepts of power at the expense of others. Your ideals were against everything that is good and right, Morwell. But then how could they be anything else, handed down as they were from a father as monstrous as yours…?”

  “Take that back!” Morwell cried.

 
“I take nothing back,” Lal said gently. “I pity you, I really do.”

  And Lal was still smiling when Morwell pulled the trigger and shot him in the chest.

  He pushed the incident to the back of his mind as the taxi pulled up in the shadow of the obelisk. He climbed out and paid the driver, then approached the sable, unreflective surface. He paused and looked around him at the teeming streets of Earth.

  Proceed, said the voice in his head.

  He stepped into the obelisk.

  AND STEPPED OUT onto the plaza beneath the sloping rings of Saturn.

  Cross the plaza and take a seat in the café bar by the edge, said the voice. There you will see a group of seven people, among whom is your target, Kat Kemp.

  Heart thumping, Morwell stepped from the shadow of the obelisk and moved to the café bar. He sat down a few metres from the group, ordered a beer from the waiter, and stared across at Kat Kemp.

  The years had been kind to her, he thought. She must be in her sixties now, but she had changed little from the woman he’d known nine years ago. A few fleeting memories of their time together came to him, but they were few, and they provoked no sadness or regret.

  The only emotion the sight of her did provoke was the bitterness of betrayal. She was a self-aware entity, who had targeted him on behalf of the Serene. She was not a human, who had felt affection for the person he had been, but a mere robot fulfilling its programming.

  He smiled to himself at the thought of the delicious revenge he was about to take, and he wondered if Kat Kemp would have time, before she died, to realise fully what was happening to her.

  The group appeared to be celebrating something. They raised champagne glasses and laughed like fools.

  To the Obterek in his head, he thought, “And nothing can go wrong, now?”

  Nothing. We have everything planned, down to the finest detail.

  “And I will die?” The very idea quickened his pulse.

  You will die.

  “And the destruction of the obelisk, the takrea…?”

  The annihilation of the takrea will be a blow from which the Serene will not recover, said the voice. The quantum engine at its core, which maintains the functioning of charea, will be annihilated. The human race will be freed from the shackles of the Unnatural Way.

  “And the Serene will be unable to re-establish control?”

  Without the quantum engine to maintain charea, the Serene will be unable to defend themselves. We will invade, establish outposts across the solar system. We will re-establish the Natural Way of the universe. Your name, James Morwell, will go down in history.

  He sat and drank his beer and smiled at the thought. He stared out through the wall of the dome at the massive beauty of the ringed planet above the horizon. Such magnificence, and his ability to perceive it, to perceive anything, would soon be no more… Soon his singular viewpoint on this universe would cease to be, and he felt nothing but satisfaction at the idea.

  Very soon now the seven will leave the café bar and make their way to the obelisk. When they move, you will follow them. I will give the word for you to approach Kat Kemp. You will briefly inhabit her, through my agency, and we will be in control of her. Then we will step into the obelisk.

  And then, Morwell thought, oblivion…

  He stared across the café at the group, at Kat Kemp who was laughing and smiling at something a tall, grey-haired man was saying… Morwell recalled making love to her, all those years ago, and he felt absolutely nothing at the recollection. You are the enemy, he thought, and felt anger welling at her betrayal. No, not her — he reminded himself — but its.

  Five minutes later they made their move. The grey-haired man took the hand of a tall, thin old woman and led the way from the café bar, followed by a younger Indian couple, and then Kat Kemp, a handsome dark woman and a tiny blonde.

  Go, said the voice in his head.

  Smiling to himself, heart thudding at the thought that everything in his life had led up to this moment, James Morwell stood and followed them from the café.

  CHAPTER NINE

  GEOFF ALLEN PAUSED in the shadow of the obelisk and turned to Sally. He stroked her cheek. “Strange to think that we’ve no longer any need to be using the obelisks.”

  Sally shook her head. “It’s impossible to imagine, Geoff. I still can’t take it all in.”

  “To go anywhere, anywhere at all… No, I still can’t get my head around the idea. It’ll certainly make holidays that much easier!”

  “Where should we go first?”

  “Oh… How about back to the Three Horseshoes at opening time, to celebrate with a bottle of Leffe?”

  She made to punch his ribs. “Where’s your sense of adventure, Geoff!”

  Kath called to them. “It’s all very well for you people…” she indicated the obelisk, “but I’ve still got to use this old, outmoded form of transportation.”

  Nina Ricci asked, “Where are you going?”

  Kath looked at her softscreen. “I have a meeting on Venus this afternoon.”

  “Give me the co-ordinates,” Nina said, “and I’ll whisk you there.”

  Kath smiled. “Very kind of you, Nina. But my transit is already booked, and I have things to do within the takrea. I’d better be getting on my way.”

  Things to do… Allen thought in wonder.

  He said, “How about a party at our place next week, to celebrate?” He looked around the group. “Everyone can make it?”

  Ana and Kapil consulted and nodded; Nina and Natascha too.

  Kath Kemp smiled across at him, and he was struck by the sudden fact of how lovely she was. “Try keeping me away,” she said.

  Sally said, “That’s a date then. Bye, Kath.”

  Kath Kemp waved, then turned and strode towards the sable face of the obelisk.

  ALLEN WAS ABOUT to ask Sally where in the solar system she would like to go now when a sudden movement beyond Kath caught his eye. A tall, fair-haired young man was approaching the obelisk as if to pass through its surface, but at the very last second his course veered and he moved towards Kath Kemp.

  She stepped backwards, exclaiming in surprise at his proximity, and the smiling young man kept on walking as if intent on knocking Kath from her feet.

  Then, in the blink of an eye, the man vanished and in his place was a blue figure — an Obterek — and a split-second after that the Obterek slammed into and merged with Kath Kemp.

  Geoff stared at the grotesque amalgam that the blue man and Kath Kemp had become; they flickered — like the visually fleeting images on a spinning coin — as one attempted to gain mastery of the other.

  Allen looked around him at his friends, a frozen tableau of shock as they watched the conflict taking place before their eyes.

  Then Kath Kemp/Obterek moved like a jerking marionette, step by painful step, towards the surface of the obelisk.

  And in his head Allen heard Kath’s tiny, desperate voice, “Help me…”

  Sally cried, “What’s happening, Geoff?”

  “It’s taking me over…” Kath’s words were desperate within his head. “I… I cannot let it enter the takrea!”

  Kath was putting up a terrible fight. The amalgamated figure before them fluctuated between Kath and the Obterek, its forward progress impeded when it became Kath; when the Obterek gained mastery, however, it staggered forward as if leaning into a headwind.

  Allen heard screams in his head, a tortured moan from Kath and an even more horrific, bestial cry from the alien creature. He held his head in his hands, mentally deafened by the psychic fallout of the fight talking place before him.

  As he watched, horrified, Kath seemed to gain the upper hand. She managed to turn away from the takrea and take laboured steps back towards the café, stopped each time the Obterek gained control of her body but progressing when she gained ascendance.

  “What can we do?” Ana yelled at him.

  “Just…” he began, not really knowing what he was about to say.
Then it came to him. “Ana, Nina… all we can do is put ourselves between… between it and the takrea.”

  Nina stared at him. “And then?”

  “Then we do our best to stop the Obterek.”

  The hybrid figure was perhaps ten metres from the takrea now, a visually discordant, ever-shifting optical illusion — one second the bent, tortured image of Kath Kemp, and the next the straining, far larger figure of the Obterek.

  Allen stepped forward. He felt a restraining hand on his arm. “Geoff.”

  He turned. Sally stared at him, her features contorted with fright, eyes pleading. “Geoff, please…”

  “Sal, I’ve got to…” he began, choking on a sob.

  He pulled away, moved hesitantly towards the Kath/Obterek figure. Ana was to his right, perhaps three metres away, Nina to his left.

  “It’s… winning,” Kath called out mentally. “It’s much stronger… There’s little I can do, the pain…”

  As he watched, the figure flickered and the instances of its appearing as Kath Kemp became less and less frequent. The Obterek was gaining mastery.

  He glanced at Ana, reassured by her expression of determination.

  “Kath!” he called out the thought, “how can we stop it?”

  The Obterek remained for long seconds. Then briefly Kath appeared, and a fraction of a second later vanished. The Obterek seemed to expand, to become visually larger as it dominated, sensing victory.

  Slowly, step by step, Allen approached the terrible figure. Beside him, Ana and Nina kept pace.

  The Obterek faced them, something almost arrogant in its stance. It was without facial features, so Allen was unable to apprehend the victorious expression he was sure it would have worn. But its body language, its swagger as it drew itself to its full height, convinced him that it was relishing the end game of its conflict with the self-aware entity.

  For a fraction of a section a bowed, shrunken Kath Kemp appeared, and in that instant her small voice uttered a string of numbers. Beside him, Nina Ricci repeated them as if in triumph.

  “What?” Ana Devi asked.