Eric Brown - The Serene Invasion

She recalled Geoff telling her last week that Ana was going to New York to try to find her brother, Bilal.

“Ana, what happened?”

The Indian woman stared at her, stricken. “Someone murdered my brother,” she said.

Sally wanted to say that that was impossible, that people were not murdered anymore. The coming of the Serene had seen to that…

“But who…?”

“I know who, Sally. I saw him. You see, when I was leaving the orphanage that afternoon, I saw someone. I didn’t know who it was at the time, only later… It was Bilal’s old boss, the businessman James Morwell. Only… only this was a different, younger version of James Morwell.”

“But why would he want to murder Bilal?”

Ana shook her head. “I don’t know. I can’t imagine. But… later I was questioned by a Serene self-aware entity. It… it entered me, just as ten years ago it saved me from the Obterek at Fujiyama, and when it came out it told me that I had been correct. I had seen James Morwell, and he was working for the Obterek.” She looked up, into the sky, and said, “And the self-aware entity told me, Sally, that they feared this was merely the start of a new, concerted Obterek onslaught.”

Sally held her friend as the day darkened towards evening and a chill crept over the garden.

TO ALLEN, THE process of stepping into the obelisk on Mars and stepping out again on Titan seemed instantaneous.

He knew intellectually that a day, perhaps two, had elapsed, but always as he completed his stride through the black wall and stepped out on the other side, he found it hard to believe. He always had to check the calendar on his softscreen to confirm how much time had passed, and always he felt renewed respect for Serene science. This time, thanks to Nina Ricci, he also experienced curiosity at what the Serene might be doing with the human representatives in the Titan obelisk.

The sight that confronted him on emerging from the obelisk never failed to halt him in his tracks. He had seen many an artist’s representation of the rings of Saturn as seen from the moon of Titan, spectacular landscapes of methane plains with the mighty ringed planet canted at varying angles above the horizon, but the reality stunned him. It was the colours, he thought. Saturn itself was a vast pastel swirl and the rings, tipped so that they presented a great multi-stranded girdle encompassing the planet, ranged the spectrum. In the foreground the moon’s electric-blue plains provided a vivid contrast.

The city itself was situated on a plateau on the moon’s southern pole, a collection of what looked like blown-glass habitats occupied by scientific teams huddled around the rearing tower of the obelisk, and all protected from the moon’s hostile hydrocarbon atmosphere by a bell-jar dome.

For the past five years or so the routine had always been the same. Allen, Ana Devi and Nina Ricci, sometimes accompanied by other representatives, would meet at a café bar across the plaza from the obelisk. There, while admiring the views across the plain far below, they would chat for an hour or two before entering the obelisk again and finding themselves back on Mars. It was a time to catch up — if they hadn’t seen each other on Mars for a while — though oddly they never speculated about what they might have undergone in the day or two that had elapsed within the obelisk.

Allen crossed the plaza and made his way to the table beside the far rail, where Sally, Ana and Kapil were seated. Ana was subdued, far from her usual voluble, talkative self. Kapil was gripping her hand beneath the table, murmuring something to her. Ana stared out across the jagged, frozen plain, but looked up and smiled briefly as Allen sat down next to Sally.

He ordered coffee and, to break the ice, commented that the sight of the southern polar plain never failed to excite him.

Sally said, “I didn’t think it would be so… vivid. The pictures I’ve seen failed to do it justice.”

“Vivid and inimical,” Kapil put in, ever the scientist. “It might look beautiful, but it’s one of the most hostile environments known to man.”

Ana said in a small voice, “I wonder why the obelisk is this far out — I mean this obelisk, the biggest in the system, the one every representative now goes to? Why couldn’t it be situated on Earth?”

Kapil shrugged. “Security?”

Sally said, “But secure from whom? The Obterek, presumably? Surely they can access anywhere in the system, always assuming they can breach Serene defences in the first place?”

“Perhaps the defences are harder to breach this far out?” Ana suggested.

“Or maybe,” Allen said lightly, “the Serene just like the view.”

Sally looked up and said. “Here are Nina and Natascha.”

They rearranged themselves around the table and pulled up a couple of chairs. Natascha was tiny, blonde, quiet and undemonstrative — a complete contrast in every respect to her Italian lover. She worked as an engineer on the Martian atmosphere plants, and had been a regular at the Allens’ monthly soirées, gracing the gatherings with her quiet, deadpan wit. She and Nina had been together for almost ten years, as unlikely a pairing intellectually as they were physically.

They sat and ordered white wine and Allen said, “We were just wondering why the obelisk was situated this far out from Earth, Nina. I was about to say that no doubt you’d have a theory.”

Natascha smiled into her glass. “Nina has a theory for everything , believe me.”

Nina listened to what Kapil had suggested about security, then dismissed the idea with a wave. “The entire question as to why the obelisk is here is redundant, my friends. It could be here or anywhere — it would be equally as vulnerable on Earth as it would be here, or on Mars or Venus. The concept of distance, to Serene minds habituated to the idea of teleportation, is irrelevant. More important,” she went on, “is its function. It’s in some way more important to the Serene, because of its size and the fact that the human representatives come here now solely and far more often than we ever visited the other obelisks.”

Natascha said, “But do you have a theory for that, my darling?”

“For once, you’ll be surprised to learn, I do not. That’s what I hope we’ll find out from Kathryn, when she deigns to turn up.”

Nina turned to Ana and murmured her condolences, touching the Indian woman’s hand.

Ana smiled and said, “I have had time to think about it, Nina, and perhaps it was meant to be. Bilal had come to a peaceful period in his life, a period of contentment, I think. He had left behind the person he was, and was helping others. It was better that he die now than before, when he had not realised his… his potential.”

Allen looked at her, wondering how much this was Ana rationalising the tragedy for the sake of her grief — or perhaps, in some way known only to the Hindu mind, she really believed this. To Allen, Bilal’s death was an unmitigated tragedy, a murder made all the more horrible because of the fact that no one, these days, met intentionally violent ends.

Ana went on, “What frightens me is that it might be the start of more violence from the Obterek. It’s bad enough that Bilal is dead, but let it be the last.”

Natascha said, “And you are certain that you saw Bilal’s old boss, Morwell, enter the orphanage as you left?”

Ana smiled. “His old boss, yes — but he was in some way younger. As if the Obterek had made him so.”

“You said that a self-aware entity told you that Morwell was working for the Obterek?”

“That’s what I was told.”

“But it didn’t say why Morwell was doing this?” Nina Ricci asked. “Why, in other words, the Obterek might want your brother dead?”