The Serene Invasion (23 page)

Ana had one more surprise in store for her that evening.

There was a wall-mounted softscreen in the lounge, which the children could watch if they wished. When she stepped inside on her way to bed, she saw that Gopal and Prakesh were watching a news programme.

She stopped and stared at the bright images. The screen showed crowds in America and Europe, protesting against the arrival of the Serene. Ana listened to the voiceover in English, but did not understand much of what was said.

Then the scene changed and a reporter said, “And from New York a spokesman for Morwell Enterprises had this to say...”

A handsome Indian man with a thin face, a ponytail and trendy ear-stud faced the camera. “That is correct. I can confirm that James Morwell is in negotiations with other businessmen and heads of state around the world in an attempt to formulate a united opposition to the regime imposed upon us, without our consent I might add, by the Serene...”

The scene switched, showing a meeting of politicians in Europe. Gopal called out to her to join them, but Ana just shook her head and hurried to her bedroom, stunned.

She lay down in the semi-darkness and stared at the ceiling, unable to believe what she had seen.

She was in no doubt. Ten years might have passed, and he had changed a lot, but she recognised the young Indian man on the softscreen, the spokesman for Morwell Enterprises.

It was her brother, Bilal.

TWO

2035

CHAPTER ONE

S
ALLY SAW HER
last patient of the day, finished writing up her notes, then turned off the softscreen and pushed her chair away from the desk. She turned to face the picture window and stared out on a scene that never failed to fill her with delight.

The mellow Shropshire countryside rolled away to the south in a series of hills and vales, softened by the late afternoon sunlight. Here and there she made out villages and small towns – revitalised since the coming of the Serene – and the manufactories that were run almost exclusively by robots, the factories’ aesthetically pleasing silver domes concealing the ugly subterranean industry which plumbed the countryside in places to the depth of a kilometre. To the south was the Malvern Energy Distribution Station, an array of silver panels as wide as a couple of football pitches. Twice a day a great pulse of energy was beamed to the EDS from an orbital relay station, the last leg of a journey that had seen the energy transmitted light years through space from stellar supergiants around the galaxy. On grey winter days the bright golden pulses lit the land like falling suns in a display that always cheered Sally.

Between the EDS and the small town of Wem where Sally lived and worked was a network of farms producing the food which fed the nation. She had read somewhere that since the changes wrought by the Serene, forty per cent of Britain’s landmass was given over to food production – which was low in comparison to some countries. Uganda, for instance, was almost seventy per cent cultivated, and many other African countries even more so.

Frequently over the past few days – the tenth anniversary of the Serene’s arrival – she had thought back to her time in Uganda, contrasting her life then to what she had now. It was only in retrospect that she realised that, for much of her time while in Africa, she had been desperately unhappy. She would never have admitted as much at the time, convincing herself that in working in a country sorely deprived of medical aid she was not only helping others but fulfilling some deep-seated psychological need of her own, but now she could see that she had been sublimating her own desires and needs by losing herself in good deeds. It was a time in her life she was pleased to have experienced, perhaps had
had
to go through in order to grow, but she was glad that it was over.

First Geoff Allen had come into her life, and then the Serene... She often wondered if she would have turned her back on Uganda if the aliens had not arrived and promised to make things better – and was honest with herself and realised that she would have done. She had planned to get out before the coming of the Serene, anyway – and her kidnap at the hands of terrorists had been the final straw. Strung-out, a nervous wreck and jaded with the stultifying routine of treating preventable diseases month after month, she had had to leave for the sake of her sanity. She sometimes felt pangs of guilt – which Geoff, with his easy-going approach to life, often jibed her about – when she realised that the Serene had made her decision that much easier.

She had so much to thank the extraterrestrials for.

She activated her softscreen on impulse, tapped into her favourites, and seconds later routed the image to the wallscreen.

She sat back, smiling, and stared at the scene showing the main street in Kallani – though a street vastly changed since Sally had last been there. Then it had been an unmade, dusty road flanked by crumbling concrete buildings and stunted trees, thronged by impoverished locals on the verge of malnutrition.

Now the road was metalled and the buildings largely replaced by poly-carbon or synthetic timber structures, and the people walking down the street appeared well-fed. North and south of Kallani, all across the Karamoja region which a decade ago had been a drought-stricken wilderness, the land had been revitalised and given over to farms run by locals. This was the pattern that existed across all Africa, in fact across much of the world – deserts reclaimed, wildernesses turned into either sources of food production or sanctuaries for native wildlife. The industries that had threatened vast areas of the world, principally mining and logging, had been wound down, redundant now that abundant stellar energy was online and synthi-timber was such an easily manufactured commodity. The Serene had given humanity the technological wherewithal to venture out into the solar system and mine the asteroids for metals, both relieving a tired Earth from the need to give up these resources and eliminating the resultant pollution.

She instructed the image to pan down the main street and turn left. She swung the view to focus on the building that nestled between two carbon fibre A-frames. Mama Oola’s was one of the few old concrete buildings remaining in the street – Sally could well imagine Mama’s objections to having new premises foisted on her – and little seemed to have changed over the years. The façade was still crumbling and distressed and adorned with bountiful bougainvillea, and occasionally Mama Oola herself could be glimpsed bustling to and from the local market. She’d appeared, the last time Sally had seen her, as ageless as ever.

Now Sally moved the focus along the street and across town to the new medical centre – no longer a tumbledown compound of aging prefabs and corrugated huts. A white carbon fibre complex, all arcs and stylish domes, occupied the old site. And Sally knew that the treatment that went on there was very different to that of her time; gone the cases of malnutrition, preventable maladies and the victims of violence both domestic and political. She suspected that the day to day cases that presented in Kallani would be little different to those she treated here in Wem.

Dr Krasnic, whom she emailed from time to time, had decided to stay on at the centre in Kallani, but Ben Odinga had moved to a practice in Kampala. She smiled to herself, killed the image and not for the first time thought how good it would be, one day, to return.

She was about to leave the office and walk home when her softscreen chimed.

She was tempted to ignore the summons and sneak off, suspecting that her manager wanted to see her before she left. Guilt got the better of her and she accepted the call. The image of a woman in her mid-fifties expanded into the ’screen and it was a few seconds before Sally recognised her.

“Kath?” she said, surprised and delighted. “My word, where are you?”

“Would you believe here in Wem? In fact, about half a kay from where you’re sitting.” Kathryn Kemp raised a glass and Sally saw that she was beside the canal in the garden of the Three Horseshoes.

“Wonderful. Look, I’ve just finished work. I have a couple of hours before I’m due home. I’ll be with you in a few minutes.”

Kathryn laughed. “I’ll get you as a drink. Leffe?”

“As ever.”

“I’ll get them in,” Kath said and cut the connection.

Sally locked the office, took the open staircase to the sun-filled atrium, and stepped out into the warm summer afternoon. She hurried through the surgery’s garden and took the path along the canal.

Kath Kemp was her oldest friend. They’d met nearly thirty years ago as medical students in London, hit it off immediately and stayed close ever since. Kath was grounded and serious, a private person who let very few people into her life; she had never married, never – as far as Sally was aware – had a boyfriend or girlfriend, and as Kath seemed reluctant to broach the matter of intimate relations, Sally never pressed her on the subject.

Despite their closeness, she had to admit that Kath was something of an enigma. They spoke at length, and at great depth, about their work, the world, politics – and Kath was happy to listen as Sally opened her heart and poured out her troubles, or her joys. But Kath never reciprocated; Sally had been piqued in the early days of their relationship, and then come to accept this as merely a facet of Kath. Sally loved the woman for her warmth, her empathy; she trusted Kath more than anyone else in the world, except perhaps Geoff, and enjoyed basking in her sheer... there was no other term for it...
humanity
.

It had been to Sally’s great joy that Geoff, when he’d first met Kath nine years ago, had formed an immediate rapport. “She’s a remarkable person, Sal. She exudes empathy.”

Their careers had diverged after graduation. While Sally had specialised in tropical medicine, Kath had practised psychiatry. She’d worked first in London, and then five years ago moved to New York, specialising in the treatment of recovering drug addicts and alcoholics.

They kept in contact with regular emails and online chats, and caught up in the flesh perhaps once every couple of years when Kath returned to London on business.

The Three Horseshoes dated from the sixteenth century, a former coaching inn with bulging walls, a twee bonnet of thatch, and a magnificent beer garden. She and Geoff had spent many a quiet early evening here in the summers, before their daughter Hannah’s arrival on the scene; Sally liked to watch the seven o’clock pulse of energy drop from the troposphere and plummet beyond the inn’s thatch, marvelling at the contrast of ancient and ultra-modern.

She stepped off the canal path and ducked beneath a strand of wisteria, knocking a bloom and inhaling the wonderful scent.

There were few people in the garden; Kath sat beside the well-stocked fishpond, facing Sally with a welcoming smile on her broad, homely face.

She stood and held out her arm. “And look at you!” Kath said. “Motherhood obviously becomes you.”

They embraced, and as always Sally had the odd sensation of hugging her own mother, dead these past thirty years.

They sat down, toasted each other, and Sally took a long drink of sharp, ice cold Leffe.

Kath Kemp was short, a little stout now in her early fifties, with a cheerful face that exuded good will. Sally had no doubt that she was loved and trusted by her patients.

“What a lovely surprise. But you said nothing about coming over! How long are you here for?”

“A last minute decision to attend a conference in Birmingham. I arrived in London this morning, but the conference doesn’t start for a couple of days.”

Sally reached out and gripped her friend’s hand. “You’re staying with us, and no arguments. You’ve not booked in anywhere?”

“I was about to try here.” She indicated the inn at her back.

“Don’t be silly. I want you to see Hannah.”

Kath beamed. “Can’t wait. She’s five now? She must have grown in the past two years...”

“It’s really that long?” Sally shook her head.

“And Geoff?” Kath took a sip of her orange juice.

“He’s very well. You know him – Mr Imperturbable. He never changes. He’s in Tokyo at the moment, covering the opening of a big art gallery, then moving north to shoot the opening ceremony of the latest arboreal city.”

“He certainly gets about.”

Sally smiled. She had told no one about the fact that Geoff liaised for the Serene; she suspected that Kath knew but was too diplomatic to mention the fact.

“I’ll cook you something tonight and I’ll take tomorrow off. Let’s go for a long walk.”

“Just like old times.”

In their student days they’d gone on jaunts along the Thames to Richmond, and spent hiking holidays in Wales and Scotland. Sally squeezed Kath’s hand. “It’s great to see you again.”

“It’s nice to come home,” Kath said, smiling around at the idyllic setting.

“You still think of England as ‘home’?”

“For all the greening of New York and Long Island, it will never be my ‘green and pleasant land’.” She smiled. “Anyway, how’s work?”

“I’m still enjoying it.”