Eric Brown - The Serene Invasion

“I suppose I must get back to work,” he laughed. “There’s a story to finish…”

They made their way back to the compound, and Ana remembered to convey Mr Singh-Gupta’s best wishes.

They said goodbye outside his cubicle, and when he passed inside she lingered within earshot and smiled as she heard him say, “Ah-cha. Now, where did we get to…?”

She passed into the orphanage and crossed the foyer, emerging with a light step and an even lighter heart into the afternoon sunlight. She recalled the words of the old monk she had met in the alleyway earlier, and she felt like finding him and telling him all about her meeting with Bilal.

As she was crossing the car park a young man in a sharp blue suit passed her, heading for the entrance of the orphanage. For as second she thought that the man was familiar, but she could not place the face.

She made her way to Maidan Park, sat in the shade with a sweet lassi and contemplated her good fortune.

THAT EVENING, A little before eight, Ana caught a taxi from her hotel to the orphanage. As the car carried her through the crowded streets of the city, she sat back and contemplated the meeting with her brother and how their relationship might develop. One thing was certain from that afternoon’s meeting: Bilal had changed, become a better person, and Ana looked forward to getting to know this new, reborn Bilal. They had a lot to catch up on, a lot of memories to share, and many years ahead of them in which to do so.

The taxi pulled up outside the orphanage and Ana climbed out as the sun was setting over the Hoogli.

A police car was drawn up ahead of the taxi in the parking lot, and before it an ambulance.

Ana crossed to the sliding doors and passed inside, to find the foyer a mayhem of activity. Police officers, paramedics and suited officials milled back and forth, and through the rear door Ana made out a crowd of children assembled in the courtyard.

She pushed her way to the reception desk and smiled at the same young man she had spoken to earlier. His expression, on seeing her, was odd: he appeared at first shocked, and then uncertain, and he turned quickly and spoke to a woman in a smart navy blue suit.

The woman looked up, at Ana, and it was then that she knew that whatever was going on here concerned her: the woman’s expression slipped into a mask of compassion.

“Ms Devi, if you would care to accompany me…”

She ushered Ana around the desk and into a small side room, an office equipped with a single desk and two chairs.

The woman sat down behind the desk and Ana remained standing, facing the woman. “What is happening here?” Ana asked.

“I understand that earlier today you saw your brother, Bilal Devi?”

Ana found herself slumping into the chair opposite the woman. “What is happening? Is Bilal…?”

“Can I ask you why you were visiting your brother, Ms Devi?”

Ana laughed, despite the fear building within her. “Why do you think? He was my brother, and we hadn’t seen each other for a long time.”

“And how did your brother seem when you met him?”

“Seem? Look, just what is going on here? Will you please tell me?”

The woman said, “I am Director Zara Mohammed. I run the orphanage. Your brother worked here for nine years, and we became very close…”

Panic seized Ana; she was having difficulty getting her breath. “It’s Bilal, isn’t it?” she almost shouted. “What’s happened to Bilal?”

The woman surprised her by standing and coming around the desk, kneeling before Ana and taking her hand.

“I’m sorry, Ms Devi. Your brother, my respected colleague Bilal Devi, passed away earlier today.”

Even though she knew it was coming, the fact rocked her. Her heart thumped and she felt its pulse in her ears, deafening, drowning out whatever the woman was saying. Director Mohammed’s lips moved, but Ana heard nothing.

“How?” she heard herself asking.

The Director squeezed her hand, her eyes slipping away from Ana’s.

“I want to see him!” Ana cried. “I want to see my brother!”

Then she was on her feet and rushing out of the office. She crossed the foyer to the rear door and burst through into the courtyard. She was aware of the faces of surprised policemen, and the tear-stained faces of a hundred boys and girls, as she pushed through the crowd and made her way towards Bilal’s timber shack.

Three policemen, as many paramedics, and half a dozen men and women in suits crowded the entrance to the rude dwelling. They turned, startled, as Ana attempted to push through them to the door.

Director Mohammed had caught up with her. “Ms Devi! Please, I would not advise…”

“I am Bilal Devi’s sister!” she cried into the face of a policeman who barred her way, “and I want to see my brother!”

Shocked, the man stepped aside and before anyone could move to prevent her she pushed open the flimsy wooden door and crossed the threshold.

She stopped dead in her tracks, a cry stilled on her lips.

The sight of her brother hit her like a physical blow to the sternum. She gasped for breath, mouthing, “No, no…” over and over again.

Bilal sat on the narrow bunk where, earlier that day, he had told a story to the orphans in his charge. He had been thrown back against the wall, his head hanging forward, the very book he had been reading that afternoon cradled in his lap.

It was open to a photograph of Mahatma Gandhi, and Bilal’s fingers lay upon the great man’s face as if in benediction.

Ana stared at her brother, at the massive gunshot wound in the centre of his chest, and cried in disbelief.

“No!” she cried, and Director Mohammed slipped into the room and held Ana as she wept.

IT SEEMED TO Sally that, in her sixties, her life had entered a period of calm and quiescence that had its analogue in the collective demeanour of the human race in the middle period of the twenty-first century.

She was no longer ambitious as she had been when young; she was no longer as concerned about what people thought of her. She was happier in herself and in her dealings with others, had fewer worries, and if she thought of the future at all it was with positivity and confidence.

It seemed, likewise, that humankind since spreading from Earth and inhabiting the solar system had entered a period of maturity, of co-operation and tolerance. The human race teemed across terraformed planets and moons, inhabited vast spaceborn dwellings hollowed from asteroids. They worked together increasingly without the boundaries of nations to impede progress with concerns of petty national interest, freed from the malign influence of multinational business corporations. Religions had mellowed, even the more radical sects of Christianity and Islam which in the past had threatened head-to-head conflict; millions still believed, but without the self-righteous fervour of old. New cults had sprung up, many with the Serene at their core. Of the old faiths, Buddhism was increasing in popularity, as citizens drew parallels between the ways of the Serene and the philosophy of Siddhartha Gautama.

All in all, Sally reflected as she stared out through the dome of her surgery across the Mare Erythraeum, it was a good time to be alive.

She had seen her last patient of the day and had the afternoon to herself. Geoff, on some administrative tour of a farm in the south, wouldn’t be back until later that evening; she’d dine that night with Hannah and her new boyfriend. Before that, she had a lunch date with Kath Kemp.

Her old friend was a frequent visitor to Mars, and particularly to Escarpment City. The obelisks made interplanetary travel no more difficult than stepping from one room to the next — once the traveller had reached the embarkation obelisk, of course, which often took hours by conventional transport. Sally saw Kath perhaps once a month, when they caught up with each other’s work and reminisced about old times. She had gone through a period — on learning what Kath Kemp was, ten years ago — of not exactly mistrusting Kath but questioning everything about their relationship. She had wondered if she had been manipulated, if Kath had had ulterior motives for fostering their friendship — but for the life of her Sally could discern no such motivation on the part of the Serene self-aware entity. They were, she genuinely felt, two like-minded woman with a shared past in common, and even similar temperaments — even if one of them just happened to be an alien construct.