Eric Brown - The Serene Invasion

Sally sank into a deep sofa, Geoff beside her. Mama Oola eased herself into her own sofa, almost filling it. Jenny squatted before the TV, staring up at it with a houseboy and the girl who cleaned the rooms.

The TV was tuned to BBC World and a desk-bound reporter was saying, “…hope to be bringing you pictures and reports just as soon as they’re available. To repeat, reports are coming in from around the world confirming what our reporter in London was just saying… In Laos, where the war with Thailand is in its third year, people are speaking of mass desertions from the armies on both sides of the conflict. In Botswana, our reporter on the ground has an eye-witness account of front-line troops being unable to operate their weapons… Now, this tallies with domestic news coming in from London and elsewhere.”

Sally gripped Geoff’s hand, tightened.

The reporter said, “One moment…” He touched his ear-piece, nodded and went on, “I’m told we can now join Rob Hudson in Alice Springs, Australia, where footage of a… vessel has just come through.”

Sally sat forward, battling to free herself from the depths of the sofa. The scene switched to a reporter standing in the desert, staring up in wonder at the sky. The camera swung, showing a dizzy flash of bright blue sky and then, filling the entirety of the screen, a vast convex expanse of silver-blue metal, like a close-up shot of a mystery object the identity of which the audience had to guess.

The shot pulled out, steadied, and established itself.

On the sofa, Mama Oola rocked back and forth, clasping be-ringed hands to her ample bosom, her tearful eyes wide.

Beside Sally, Geoff swore under his breath.

An airborne vessel was moving slowly through the cloudless Australian sky. It was the only thing in the frame, so that its true dimensions were impossible to determine. Bull-nosed, splayed like a manta ray but much thicker, and silver-blue, it resembled some futuristic starship beloved of science fiction book covers.

Geoff whispered, “Foss…”

“What?” Sally asked, glancing at him.

“A cover artist, Chris Foss. It’s just like one of his illustrations.”

She said, half to herself, “But this is real, Geoff.”

Then, sliding into view beneath the vessel, Sally made out the unmistakable shape of Ayers Rock — and the airborne vessel, as it moved over the sacred aboriginal landmark, was fully ten times the size.

“I don’t believe it,” she murmured.

Mama Oola was clapping her hands in delight, or in fright.

An awed voiceover was saying, “It appeared in the skies of Southern Australia just twenty minutes ago, heading north-west at approximately fifty miles an hour. It moved in absolute and eerie silence. I can confirm that jets from the Australia Air Force were scrambled to intercept, but that for some reason they were unable to leave the ground.”

“It’s beautiful,” Sally said, “truly beautiful…”

She had never, she thought, seen anything quite as vast or magnificent in her life.

“And terrifying,” Geoff said.

She looked at him.

He said, “Think about it, Sally. What happened yesterday. The domes, our inability to…”

She shook her head, slowly.

“It makes sense. What would an invading army do, if they had the capability? Somehow inhibit our ability to… to fight back.”

She gestured at the slow, beautiful vessel. “This is a… an invasion?”

Geoff was silent, staring at the screen.

The scene shifted, returned to the studio. “Sorry to cut Rob off there… but we’re getting reports, several reports from around the world. Okay, let’s go over to Amelia Thirkell in Paris…”

“Thank you, Dan.” A trim blonde woman in a stylish raincoat was standing before the Eiffel Tower, clutching a microphone to her chest and staring wide-eyed into the sky. “Just twenty minutes ago, twelve-thirty-one European time, a vessel identical to the ones that have been reported appearing in Australia, China, Argentina and elsewhere, manifested itself in the sky just north of Paris. Eye-witnesses, I’m told, say that it simply appeared as if from thin air. And then moved south slowly, as you see now…” The camera swung, and it was as if they were watching a re-run of the Australian ship’s progress, only this time the backdrop was grey with rainclouds.

The beautiful, colossal ship was identical in every respect.

Jenny and the houseboy were shrieking with delight before the TV.

“I can confirm that, as in Australia, the air force scrambled jets to intercept, but that those jets could not, I repeat, could not , take off.”

The shot lingered on the slowly moving vessel, occasionally swooping in for close-ups as if attempting to establish fine detail, decals or some other feature on the silver-blue tegument of the craft.

The superstructure, however, appeared featureless, as seamless as the surface of an egg.

It hovered over the Eiffel Tower, reducing the landmark to the size of a needle.

“…the strange thing is,” Amelia Thirkell was reporting, “that the crowds massed here and on the banks of the Seine don’t seem in the least phased by… by what we have here. And I can report myself that there is no sense of… of threat emanating from the ship.”

“Angela,” the anchorman back in London said, “sorry to have to interrupt there. We’ll be back, but we have interesting developments here in London. With me in the studio are the physicists Dr Ed Danbridge and Dr James Chamberlain. Gentlemen, many thanks for coming here at such short notice. Now, you’ve both been doing calculations based on the vessels’ trajectories…”

“That’s right, Rob,” Chamberlain said. “To remind viewers, the starships –”

The anchorman interrupted. “Now that’s the first time we’ve used the s-word, but you think…?”

“The assumption is, Rob, that only an extraterrestrial intelligence could be behind the various odd phenomena reported over the past twenty-four hours. Anyway, the vessels appeared in the skies of Earth at precisely the same time all around the world, 11.31 Greenwich mean time. Interestingly, each ship is heading on a trajectory that we’ve plotted, Jim and myself, which will meet at some time in the near future, at a point a hundred kilometres north-west of the Malian city of Timbuktu in the Saharan Desert.”

“Can anything be made of that, at this early stage?” the anchorman asked.

“I think it’s too early to say yet. All we can do is watch and wait…”

“And speaking of watching, we can switch to David Runciman in Tanzania with reports of another starship…”

“Thanks, Rob. David Runciman here, in the Serengeti National Park, Tanzania, where as your studio guests reported, at 11.31 Greenwich mean time a vessel appeared in the sky above the park, heading slowly north-west…”

Geoff unrolled his softscreen from his arm, spread it on his lap and tapped the control bar.

Sally tore her gaze from the TV screen. “Geoff?”

“Just checking something…”

He brought up a map of Africa on the softscreen, zoomed in on Namibia, pushed the map north-west through Tanzania and Uganda, until arriving at the city of Timbuktu.

He said, “The ships are pretty amazing even on TV, Sally. Imagine seeing them in the flesh.”

Her heart did a quick somersault. “You mean…?”

“If we get to the park before six,” he said, “we’ll be able to witness the ship’s fly-by.”

“Even if it is an invading ship?”

He squeezed her hand. “I can’t miss an opportunity like this, Sal.”

ALLEN SLAPPED HIS softscreen to the dashboard and kept half an eye on events unfolding around the world.