Eric Brown - The Serene Invasion

They left Kallani and headed west, in a couple of hours leaving the drought-stricken area of Karamajo far behind them. The terrain changed, became rolling and relatively green — not as sodden and fecund as the English countryside he’d left, but nothing like the dead, parched land of Karamoja.

“…and the outbreak of non-violence continues,” said the London-based BBC anchorman. “LA is reporting its first day in living memory when there have been no reports of murders or muggings. The same is true around the world. Some governments have welcomed the phenomenon, while others have counselled caution. Meanwhile, world religions…”

He glanced across at Sally. She had drawn her hair back and tied it in a ponytail. She turned her head on the head-rest and smiled at him.

“Can you tell me, Geoff, why I don’t feel… threatened?”

He’d been thinking the very same thing. Since his earlier suggestion that the ‘outbreak of non-violence,’ as the BBC had it, might be a prelude to alien invasion, he’d had time to reconsider.

“What happened to me aboard the plane,” he said. “I know I wasn’t hallucinating. It happened . It was real. And I know it was linked…” He gestured to the softscreen. “There was something I forgot to tell you earlier — about the experience. While I was flat out in the grey fog… before and after the silver spider did whatever it did to me… I saw a figure, a shape. Just the head and shoulders of someone. And I felt… I don’t really know how to explain it… I felt reassurance in my head, and the words, Do not be afraid .” He shook his head. “And I wasn’t. I was suffused by peace.”

“I thought you said, earlier, that the non-violence suggested invasion?”

“I know I did. And it does. Rationally, what has happened — our inability to fight, the arrival of the ships… it all points to an invasion. And yet the overwhelming sensation I received while they were doing whatever they were doing to me was one of peace.”

She reached out and stroked his thigh. “Don’t. That frightens me, the thought of their doing something to you.”

He shook his head. “The odd thing is, Sally, that it doesn’t frighten me in the slightest.”

He felt her gaze on him, and when he looked at her she was frowning. “You said it was a human head and shoulders..?” she said.

“That’s how it appeared to me, and yet at the same time it felt… alien.” He stopped himself there. “Or did it? I don’t know. Maybe it’s only in retrospect, after the arrival of the ships, that it occurred to me that the figure was alien.”

They fell silent. On the softscreen, studio guests were debating the starships’ arrival.

“Of course,” a uniformed General was saying, “everything suggests that we should proceed with utmost suspicion. The fact that our military capability, worldwide, seems to have been compromised is an indication that the vessels’ arrival is hostile in intent–”

“On the other hand,” a scientist interrupted, “their preventing our ability to commit violence might be seen as a blessing, an endowment, and not necessarily as a precursor to hostilities.”

“I am merely stating the need for caution,” the General said.

The anchorman stepped in, “That’s an interesting point Jim Broadbent makes there, General; we’ve been assessing what has happened in terms of potential threat. Perhaps we should take time to look at other possibilities…”

“Of course,” Broadstairs said. “As a scientist I like to run a number of thought experiments, initially giving equal validity to all possibilities before dismissing them. One thing that has occurred to me is the nature of the starships’ arrival here. They in no way seem to me the harbingers of invasion. Look at the facts. They appeared simultaneously at eight locations around the world, and they seem to be making their way — if our calculations prove correct — to one of the most uninhabited regions on the planet. This, to me, is not the manoeuvring of an invading army.”

The General said, “I merely counsel caution. If we are dealing here with… with extraterrestrials… then it would be dangerous indeed to attempt to second-guess their motivations.”

The scientist was about to step in with a rejoinder to that when the anchorman said, “Gentlemen, I’m afraid we must leave it there for the time being, though undoubtedly we’ll return to the debate as events unfold worldwide. In our Cambridge studio we have Xian Chen Li and Peter Walken, professors respectively in neuroscience and sociology… If I might begin with you, Professor Walken, and ask you what the long term consequences of this so-called outbreak of non-violence might be?”

“ If , that is, the outbreak is indeed long term,” Walken stipulated, “and not a temporary effect…”

Allen was listening to the broadcast while concentrating on the track ahead. They had left the metalled highway an hour ago and proceeded along a sandy track winding through hilly terrain. He calculated they were an hour from the park, with another couple of hours to go before sunset. The starship, if it kept to its current speed, was due to overfly the park at approximately six o’clock.

A while later, Sally said, “Geoff… You okay?”

He smiled reassuringly. “Fine.”

“It’s just…” She gestured at the screen, where the professors had given way to a reporter already in the Saharan desert north-west of Timbuktu. “What they were saying about our inability to commit violence…”

He knew what she was driving at, and he nodded. “Of course it… hurts,” he admitted.

“I’m sorry.”

“I mean, it’s so bloody arbitrary.” He glanced at her. “Take what happened yesterday, at the medical centre. The terrorists attacked, killed half a dozen soldiers, and took you and Ben…” He stopped, gripping the wheel at its apex. “It frightens me to think that if the attack had happened an hour earlier…”

He stared out at the rolling bush. Ahead and to their right a vortex of vultures swirled on a thermal. He went on, “And if the ships had arrived a couple of days ago, then the soldiers guarding the centre would still be alive. Like I said, so arbitrary.”

She murmured, “And if they had arrived here three years ago…”

He smiled at her. “You’re probably thinking me selfish that I’m viewing this, probably the most momentous event in human history, so personally.”

“Of course not! It’s entirely understandable, Geoff. I’d be looking at it in the same way.”

He’d never spoken to anyone other than Sally and his sister about what had happened to his parents. He’d given her a sketched outline of the incident, and left it at that, not caring to describe his feelings at the time.

For some reason, now, he felt the need to unburden himself.

“The thing is that I almost understood why they did what they did. They were old and very, very ill. My father was eighty-nine, my mother a couple of years younger. My father’s heart was rapidly failing, and my mother had terminal leukaemia. Their quality of life…”

“I understand. There were other ways of going about… ending it.”

“The odd thing is that both my parents for all their lives had campaigned and fought — what a word to use! — for non-violence. So to end it like that was… shocking, somehow not right. What hurt me, and hurts me still, is that they didn’t tell me or my sister about how they were feeling. I understand why — they didn’t want to upset us. But they could have said something; we could have talked about euthanasia. It was a measure of their desperation, their extreme unhappiness, that they were driven to end it as they did. It was obviously a sudden thing, done on the spur of absolute despair. And thinking about their last few hours… that’s what hurts so much.”