The Serene Invasion (24 page)

“And still general practice.”

She nodded. “We got away from London over a year ago. I don’t know... perhaps I was getting old, but I couldn’t hack city life. I saw this post advertised, and the thought of rural Shropshire...”

“‘Westward on the high-hilled plains, Where for me the world began...’” Kath quoted, and Sally laughed.

“Housman, right? He always was one of your favourites.” Another odd side of Kath’s nature was her love, her adoration, for old poetry. Sally suspected that much of what she quoted were lines from obscure English poets.

“And you’re settled here?”

Sally nodded emphatically. “Very. Hannah’s taken to it like a fish to water.”

“And Geoff?”

Sally laughed. “I often think he’d be happy anywhere, just as long as he had me and Hannah and a good pub.” She looked at her friend, a suspicion forming. “Why do you ask?”

Kath considered her orange juice. “Well... I’m recruiting good people, doctors in all fields, for a new project. I’m putting out feelers, testing the water with certain people I know and trust.”

“A new project?” Sally echoed.

“Before I talk about the project, Sally, I’ll tell you about what I’ve been doing.”

Working with recovering drug addicts and alcoholics, Sally thought – and in the US at that. It was everything she considered anathema and contrary to the life she’d built for herself and her family here in Shropshire.

“About six months ago I changed jobs,” Kath said. “Nearly a decade ago a Serene-sponsored think-tank was set up to look into humanity’s response to all the changes. Recently they began recruiting for more staff. The offer was too good to refuse.”

“I thought you’d be working with your reclamation projects forever.”

“Do you know something, the incidence of alcoholism and drug dependency has decreased by something like seventy per cent over the course of the past ten years.”

Sally looked at her friend. “Since the arrival of the Serene.”

“That’s right. Drug and drink dependency was always, largely, a class and income linked phenomenon. Cure poverty, joblessness, give people a reason to live, and the
need
for an opiate is correspondingly reduced. Since the coming of the Serene, and the societal changes they’ve brought about... Well, my job became little more than a sinecure. I was bored. I didn’t feel in the least guilty for leaving the post.”

“Good for you. Wish I could say the same about Uganda.”

“Still beating yourself up over that?” Kath admonished.

Sally smiled ruefully. “Not really. I was washed up...” She waved. “Water under the bridge, Kath. I’ve bored you with all that before. Anyway, the new post...”

Kath drained her orange juice and set the empty glass down on the condensation ring it had formed on the wooden table top. “For the vast majority of the human race,” she said, “the coming of the Serene has been a beneficial thing. No one can argue against that. Look at the changes – the reduction of poverty, famine, not to mention the fact that wars and violence of all kinds have been banished to the...” She stopped and laughed, “to the ‘dustbin of history’! Listen to me, Sally. I’m sounding like a textbook!”

Sally smiled and pointed to Kath’s empty glass. “I don’t know about you, but I could kill another one.”

Kath nodded. “And while you’re at the bar I’ll try to work out what I’m going to say without recourse to tabloid platitudes... Hey, recall those?”

“Platitudes?”

“Tabloids. Another vestige of a long gone era.”

Sally picked up the empty glasses. “I’ll get those refills.”

While she was at the bar, she looked at her friend through the mullioned window and thought about relocating Geoff and Hannah to the faraway USA. No matter how good the offer, how rewarding the work, she thought, I’m not going to do it.

She returned with the drinks and took a mouthful of lager.

“Where was I?” Kath said.

“‘For the majority of the human race’...” Sally recapitulated.

“Right. Well, in the early days there was lots of opposition. And understandably, on a superficial, knee-jerk reaction level. Some people, especially those in power and the rich, had a lot to lose. Everything was changing. All the old certainties were gone. For decades, centuries, we in the West had turned a blind eye to the inherent unfairness of how the world worked. We led easy, affluent life-styles for the most part, and who cared if that meant that the good life was at the expense of millions, billions, in the so-called third world whose poverty subsidised our greed?”

Sally interrupted mildly, “Well, a few of us did object, Kath.”

Her friend nodded. “Of course we did. But we were – if you don’t mind the phrase – pissing in the wind. We had too much against us. The combined might of government with vested interest and economic institutions that feared an upsetting of the status quo. But then the Serene come along and sweep everything aside.”

“And...? Where is this leading, Kath?”

“Sorry. I’m waffling. Right, so in the early days there was opposition, and a lot of it, which died off as the years progressed and the average citizens could reap the benefit of the changes. Who cared about a few powerful politicians, generals and fat cats who were no longer powerful or rich?” She paused, then went on, “The opposition didn’t vanish entirely, though – it went underground, developed an intricate, complex nexus of secretive cadres and cells made up for the most part of politicians, former tycoons, military leaders and their ilk. They assumed new roles in the new system – their expertise in many matters was considered valuable – but they remained discontented and...”

“But surely they’re no threat to the new system?”

Kath frowned. “Not as such, but they’re still a... a worry.”

Sally regarded her friend, sure that there was something Kath was holding back. “So what has this got to do with your new post?”

“Right. Well, I was contacted by a consortium of politicians, backed by the Serene, to trace and keep tabs on these people. I know – it sounds like something from a bad espionage novel. But when you think about it, it makes sense. My specialism is in psychiatry, and my early studies were in the field of power structures in industry. Anyway, for the past year I’ve been seconded to certain enterprises headed by former tycoons who, ten years ago, were vocal in their opposition to the Serene, and who still hold these views.”

Sally regarded her drink and let the silence stretch. At last she said, “Right. I understand. What I fail to see is how I can be useful in all this.”

“I’m not trying to inveigle you into some undercover spying network, Sally. I’ve told you all this to explain that the people I work for are close to the Serene, the so-called ‘self-aware entities’ we’ve all seen around. As an aid to my current work I’ve been asked to sound out a few professionals, mainly in the area of health care, and see if I could lure them into new posts. You wouldn’t be working with the old, recalcitrant tycoons, might I add.”

Sally took a long drink, then asked, “So... what would the new post be?”

Kath shrugged. “Very much like the job you hold here, general practice in a small, rural community.”

Sally sat up. “So not in New York?”

Kath smiled “No, not in New York.”

“But in America, right?”

“Wrong, not in America.”

Sally laughed with exasperation. “Kath! Will you please tell me... where on Earth is this small rural community, then?”

Kath held her gaze, silently, across the table. “That’s just it, Sally,” she said, “it’s not on Earth. It’s on Mars.”

Sally blinked and lowered her glass. “Mars?” she said incredulously. “Did I hear you right? You said
Mars
?”

Kath nodded. “Mars.”

Sally shook her head. “Impossible. Do you know what conditions are like on Mars? An unbreathable atmosphere made up of carbon dioxide...” She tailed off as she saw Kath staring at her.

“What?”

Kath murmured, “Not anymore.”

“You mean...?”

“The Serene. They have terraformed the planet, made it habitable. It’s a new, pristine world. A garden world. It’s... dare I say it?... a paradise.”

Sally laughed. “So that’s what all the reports about ‘clandestine work’ on Mars was all about?”

Kath smiled. “That’s right. And we – they – are looking for colonists.”

“But...” Sally was aware that she was not thinking logically as she asked, “But doesn’t it take years to get there? I mean...”

“Think about it, Sally. The Serene are from Delta Pavonis. They can travel light years in weeks. The jaunt to Mars takes their ships a few hours, and that’s the slow way.”

Sally stared at her. “What do you mean, the slow way?”

Kath shrugged. “They have other technologies, apart from their starships. But I really shouldn’t be talking about that. Anyway, a decision isn’t required immediately, of course. I’ll give you a few days to think about it. When does Geoff get back?”

Sally shook her head, still dazed. “The day after tomorrow. But... but Geoff, he...” She stopped herself.

Kath was smiling. “I know what Geoff does, Sally. It’s been cleared with the SAEs who control him.”

Sally looked around her at the beer garden, the rolling hills beyond. Mars, she thought. It still sounded unrealistic, some kind of practical joke.

“If... if we did go. Then how often would we be able to return?”

Kath shrugged. “How about every couple of months?”

Sally shook her head. “But, I mean... why Mars? Why leave this planet? It’s not overcrowded, is it?”

“Planet Earth eventually will be. The Serene are looking at things long-term. And by that I don’t just means decades or centuries, but millennia. They see Mars as the first step on the long outward push from Earth, an inevitable start of the human diaspora.”

“But what will it be like? I imagine red sands, desolate, bleak...”

“Forget about everything you know, or thought you knew, about the red planet. The Serene have changed all that, as they have a habit of doing. Imagine rolling countryside not dissimilar to Shropshire, vast forests, great oceans... A temperate world that will easily accommodate two billion human beings.”

“This is... staggering.”

“I know. Hard to take in at first. That’s how I felt when I was told.”

Sally looked at her friend. “You’ll be going, too?”

She nodded. “Eventually, perhaps in a year or two, when my work finishes on the current project. Look, talk it over with Geoff when he gets back, give it some serious thought. I’ll leave you a few e-brochures, for your eyes only. I’ll call in again in a few days, on my way back from Birmingham, and we can all discuss it then.”

Sally nodded, “Yes. Yes, of course.”

Kath smiled. “Now, did you say you’re cooking dinner tonight? Mind if I give you a hand?”

Sally laughed. “I’d love it, and no doubt Hannah will join in too.”

They left the garden and Kath said that she’d hired a car in London. “I’ll drive you back.”

“It’s not far, about half a kay on the edge of town overlooking the vale.”

“Sounds idyllic.”

“It is,” she said, and thought: too idyllic to leave. But Mars... what an opportunity!

They walked from the pub garden to the quiet, tree-lined road that led into town. As they walked towards the car, parked a little way along the road, Kath asked, “Why Shropshire?”

“As ever, there was a job advertised. I grew up just a few miles south of here, so it was like coming home.”

Kath stepped into the road and moved towards the driver’s door. She looked at Sally over the curving, electric-blue roof, and smiled. “‘That is the land of lost content, I see it shining plain’...”

“Meaning?”

“One can never go back, Sally. Only onwards...” She smiled again.

Sally would recall that smile for a long time to come.

The truck seemed to appear from nowhere. Sally saw a flash of movement in the corner of her eye as it swept past from the right. She heard a short scream and screamed herself as Kath was dashed away, rolled between her car and the flank of the speeding truck and deposited ten metres further along the road.

Sally ran to her friend and dropped to her knees, taking Kath’s limp hand to feel for a pulse but knowing what she would find.

Kath lay on her back, wide open eyes staring at the sky. She seemed physically uninjured, at first inspection; at least there were no wounds, no blood...

But the oval of her skull was misaligned, her jaw set at an odd angle, and the lack of pulse at her wrist confirmed everything Sally had feared.

She screamed, then scooped Kath into her arms and rocked back and forth, sobbing.

She looked down the road for the truck, but it had sped away as fast as it had appeared.

She fumbled with her phone, rang the emergency services and then just sat at the side of the road, holding Kath’s dead hand. There was no one else about, for which she was thankful. She did not want her grief intruded upon. It would be bad enough when the police and ambulance arrived, without the spurious sympathy of bystanders.