by Eric Brown
She slept late, dreaming of her ordeal of the day before. The scar-faced Ali haunted her sleep. Once she awoke screaming, convinced that the man had somehow entered the room.
Late morning sunlight slipped in through the slats of the louvered window, waking her to the realisation that she was no longer imprisoned by the terrorists. She crossed from her bed and flung open the window, letting in a blast of sunlight and the scent of frangipani. Overhead, the sun created a slick highlight on the meniscus of the dome, reminding her of a more enigmatic imprisonment.
She considered what had happened in the tiny hut, and the arbitrary nature of the event that had saved her and Ben. The thought sickened her.
She washed in the refreshingly cold water at the stained sink, dressed and hurried downstairs. She would go to the medical centre, see if she could be of any help there until Geoff arrived.
Geoff… She felt at once a wave of guilt at having forgotten him in the melee of recent events, and then a buoyant joy at the thought that soon they would be together. She dug her mobile from her shoulder bag and tried to get through to him.
The line was dead, not even a dial tone.
He was due to arrive at some point this morning. After checking in at the medical centre, she would go to the wall of the dome near the road south and try to find Geoff there when he arrived.
Mama Oola bustled from the kitchen and hurried across the courtyard towards her. She was a gargantuan woman resplendent in colourful traditional costume and gold bangles. She was in her sixties, but her big, round face was as unlined as a babe’s.
“Sally! Sally!”
They hugged, and Mama’s breasts wobbled against Sally like packets of mozzarella the size of footballs.
“I heard about the attack! I wept when I thought of you, then this morning Jenny told me you were safe and sleeping upstairs. You don’t know how happy I was!”
She gripped Sally’s hands, beaming at her.
“Strange things are happening, Sally. The dome. And…” She leaned close, drenching Sally in her rosewater and patchouli scent. “And this morning, Papa couldn’t beat me…”
“Couldn’t…?” Sally echoed. It was a relationship that Sally found incomprehensible. Mama Oola and Papa had been married for almost forty years, and it seemed to Sally that their conjugal day did not start well if Papa failed to attack her and Mama Oola didn’t retaliate, giving as good as she got, with stentorian curses thrown in for good measure.
“Oh,” Mama went on, “he was angry, he said his porridge was cold, so he came for me…” She stared at Sally, wide-eyed. “And he just stood there, mouth open, shaking uncontrollably.” She laughed and slapped her ample thigh, then leaned towards Sally confidentially. “It was just like when Papa wants jiggy-tumble — he had the urge, but couldn’t do it!” Mama shook her head, ear-rings the size of ladles dancing. “And the oddest thing was, Sally, I wanted to go for Papa, too — give him a good slapping round that silly toothless face of his! But do you know something, for all I wanted to slap him, I couldn’t.”
Across the courtyard, Jenny the house-girl appeared in the door to the kitchen and called across to Mama. She squeezed Sally’s hand and shuffled away. “Come for coffee later, you hear? We have a lot to talk about!”
Sally promised she would and slipped through the flimsy metal gate that led from the courtyard.
As she made her way through the curiously deserted streets, she thought of what Mama had just told her, and considered Dr Krasnic and his abortive suicide attempts. And yesterday, the terrorists, unable to behead Ben, or pull the triggers of their weapons…
A cordon of soldiers and police stood before the fire-blackened gate of the medical centre. Dr Krasnic stood outside, in conversation with a tall Swiss woman Sally recognised as a Red Cross liaison officer.
When he saw Sally approach he excused himself and crossed to her.
“Sally, what do you think you’re doing here?”
“I thought I’d see if I were needed.”
“You booked five days leave, didn’t you, and after what happened yesterday… Look, take some time off. You deserve it. We’ve enough staff to cover you, and anyway there’s a relief team coming up from Kampala in the morning. I booked them after the raid, and before …” He gestured into the sky, at the glistening dome overhead.
“A lot of good a relief team will be if they can’t get in,” she commented.
He shrugged. “Like I said, we can cover you. If we need help, I’ll shout… I take it you’re at Mama’s?” He hesitated, then brought himself to look her in the eye. “Sally, what happened yesterday, when you found me…”
She interrupted. “That’s between you, me and Ben,” she said.
He shook his head as if in wonder. “I’d had a tough shift. After Kola’s death, and Mary taking it so badly. And then the raid, the soldiers… and Josef, what he did…”
“What happened to him?”
“He fled, but didn’t get far, of course. A unit of troops cornered him. They were seething with anger and wanting revenge. Only…”
“Let me guess. They couldn’t shoot him dead, right?”
“Couldn’t so much as lift a hand, though they tried, apparently. Lined up to shoot the traitor. They ended up escorting him to the police cells like a pickpocket.” He looked at her. “What the hell is going on, Sally? I’ve tried to reach HQ in Kampala, friends in Europe. Nothing. We’re completely cut off.”
She shook her head. “All the violence, the soldiers shot dead. And then…”
He said, “Ben thinks it’s a judgement from God.”
She snorted. “And you know my reaction to that.”
He looked up at the underside of the dome. “I don’t know. It makes you wonder, Sally.”
She made to leave. “If you’re absolutely sure you don’t need me…”
He shooed her away. “Go, go! Enjoy Mama’s curries and have a beer on me.”
She was walking down the street away from the medical centre when she looked up suddenly, alerted by what might have been a flash high above. She discerned a subtle shift in the quality of the light; the sunlight seemed suddenly brighter. She shielded her eyes and realised that the dome seemed no longer to be covering the town.
Heart thumping, she hurried to the main road heading south, along with what appeared to be the town’s entire population. There was a carnival atmosphere in the air, and the reason was obvious: half a kilometre ahead, where yesterday the sheer crystal wall of the dome had blocked the road, the barrier was no more.
The two crowds, separated until seconds ago, now merged and mingled, embracing like survivors of some terrible natural catastrophe.
Someone called her name. “Dr Walsh!”
Sergeant Mesenevi was coming towards her, fighting his way through the tide of humanity. He gripped her hand. “Dr Walsh! Good news! Mr Allen is here. He thinks you are dead!”
“What?”
“I told him about the attack on the medical centre. Of course we didn’t know if you were alive or dead.”
“Just take me to Geoff, okay?” she demanded, emotion making her voice unsteady. She just wanted to hold him.
“Sally!”
And there he was, being dragged along by a posse of grinning barefoot schoolgirls, waving at her above the heads of the milling crowd.
She struggled through the press towards him and they collided and held on. She said his name over and over, inhaling the wonderful scent of his sweat, listening to his almost incoherent litany. “…told me about the attack… didn’t know what the hell had happened to you… feared the worst. Christ, it’s good to hold you!”
She gripped his hand and, watched by the beaming schoolgirls and the police sergeant, she dragged him back to the centre of town and Mama Oola’s.
BY UNSPOKEN CONSENT they made love on the narrow, squeaking bed in the shadowy room, both of them weeping and murmuring almost incoherently. It was a more desperate and tender coming together than Sally had ever exper
ienced before — the usual animal need of sexual desire and something more, some affirmation of life after so much death.
She switched on the ceiling fan and the downdraft laved their naked bodies, cooling.
She had not meant to tell Geoff everything that had happened to her the day before; had intended to downplay the kidnapping and her subsequent escape. But in his company, when they had shared so much, it seemed pointless to hold back on the experience.
“The attack…?” he began.
“They took me and Ben,” she murmured. She pressed a finger to his lips. “I’m okay now. Don’t worry. They… they didn’t hurt me. They took us to a hut in the bush kilometres north of here.”
Geoff’s expression was set in stone.
“And when we got there…” She took a deep breath, her voice wavery. “Three things. A camera on a tripod, a chopping block, a sword…”
She wept, the tears coming in a heaving wave all of a sudden, unbidden, and she realised that she’d held in all the emotion, all the terror, until now, until she was safe with Geoff and could let it all out in a great cathartic damburst of retrospective fear.
He held her, kissing her sweat-damp hair, as she sobbed against him.
She took a deep shuddering breath, smiled up at him through her tears. “Oh, I was so frightened, Geoff. So disbelieving… that, that someone would do this to us. For ideological reasons. And film it, Geoff. I don’t know where this is rational, but that’s what horrified me more than anything else. Not the evil of their intent to kill us, but the callousness of their desire to film our deaths.”
He kissed her eyes, her mouth. “How the hell did you get away?”
She thought about it, ordering the events. The incidents had an air of unreality, like a film watched a long time ago and imperfectly recalled. All she remembered, with crystal clarity, was how she had felt at the time.
Slowly, hesitantly, she told Geoff about her kidnappers’ inability to kill her and Ben.
He said, “You were so lucky, Sally.”
She shook her head. “No. No, Geoff. It… I know this sounds ridiculous… but it wasn’t luck. Something was stopping the Somali from pulling the trigger.”
Geoff said, “His conscience.”
“No,” she said, “because when I got back to the compound, I found Dr Krasnic…”
And, despite her promise to Krasnic that morning that his secret was safe with her, she told Geoff about the doctor’s multiple suicide attempts. “And just this morning… Mama Oola told me that Papa had tried to beat her again, only he couldn’t, and when she tried to hit him… she said she was unable to do it.”
He reached from the bed, found his holdall and pulled out his softscreen. She watched him attempt to access the net, to no avail. “Still dead.”
She stroked his face with her fingertips.
“When I was on the plane,” he began, his eyes narrowing with recollection.
“Yes?”
He shook his head. “Nothing. It doesn’t matter.” He laughed. “I just recall thinking how much I love you.”
Something rose in her chest, sadness and joy combined. “Whatever the hell happens, Geoff, whatever happens, we have each other.”
They came together again and, gently this time, made love once more.
THEY TOOK A cold shower together in the communal bathroom at the end of the landing, then descended to the dappled courtyard where Mama Oola served them piled plates of vegetable pilau and ice cold lager. She winked at Sally when she presented the plates with a flourish, as if to say that after such lovemaking a hearty meal was necessary.
Geoff was quiet during the meal, which was unlike him. She had never met a more talkative person; he was usually forever telling her, during their snatched time together, about everything he had done since he’d last seen her. She sensed that his taciturnity now was due to more than just a lack of sleep.
She said, “You okay?”
He forked his pilau, looked up. “I was just thinking, we don’t have to go to the reserve, if you’re not up to it after…”
She reached out and gripped his hand. “I want to get away from here. Anyway,” she smiled, “you have work to do.”
He nodded, and returned to his food.
“Geoff,” she said a little later, “you began to tell me something earlier, about what happened on the plane.”
He stared at her, smiling like a schoolboy caught out. “I didn’t think you’d pick up on it.”
“I can read you like a book,” she said. “What happened?”
He had an expressive face, a way of pantomiming what he was thinking with exaggerated facial gestures. He frowned heavily. “I don’t know. It seemed so real at the time, but now it seems like a hallucination.”
She listened as he told her a fantastic story of reality coming to a halt, and how he had found himself floating in a grey void and being visited by a silver spider…
He stared down at his meal. “The thing was, Sally, it all seemed so damned real. And then what happened with the domes, and…” He looked up. “It occurred to me that it might in some way be connected.”
She pursed her lips, considering. “I’d say… probably not. You’ve been working hard, and it was a late flight, and you hadn’t slept.” She shrugged. “And,” she smiled, “you did once tell me that you’re afraid of spiders.”
He laughed. “Was. When I was a child.”
She tilted her head and looked at him, dubious. “Thought you said tarantulas still gave you the heebie-jeebies?”
He smiled. “Touché,” he said. “I remember when I was in Singapore –”
Jenny appeared in the doorway to the lounge, clutching the frame with both arms and hanging forward. “Sally! Come and watch! Mama! Mama! Come now!”
Mama Oola squeezed from the kitchen. “What now girl?”
Jenny was goggle-eyed. “Amazing! Come and see!”
She vanished inside, and Sally exchanged a look with Geoff and rose from the table. Geoff took his bottle of beer. Sally found his hand as they entered the shadowy lounge.
It was a long, low room, hung with drapes and furnished with multiple ancient sofas, opening onto a balcony at the far end. In the corner of the room, incongruous amid such genteel shabbiness, a vast flatscreen TV pulsed out garish images.
Sally sank into a deep sofa, Geoff beside her. Mama Oola eased herself into her own sofa, almost filling it. Jenny squatted before the TV, staring up at it with a houseboy and the girl who cleaned the rooms.
The TV was tuned to BBC World and a desk-bound reporter was saying, “…hope to be bringing you pictures and reports just as soon as they’re available. To repeat, reports are coming in from around the world confirming what our reporter in London was just saying… In Laos, where the war with Thailand is in its third year, people are speaking of mass desertions from the armies on both sides of the conflict. In Botswana, our reporter on the ground has an eye-witness account of front-line troops being unable to operate their weapons… Now, this tallies with domestic news coming in from London and elsewhere.”
Sally gripped Geoff’s hand, tightened.
The reporter said, “One moment…” He touched his ear-piece, nodded and went on, “I’m told we can now join Rob Hudson in Alice Springs, Australia, where footage of a… vessel has just come through.”
Sally sat forward, battling to free herself from the depths of the sofa. The scene switched to a reporter standing in the desert, staring up in wonder at the sky. The camera swung, showing a dizzy flash of bright blue sky and then, filling the entirety of the screen, a vast convex expanse of silver-blue metal, like a close-up shot of a mystery object the identity of which the audience had to guess.
The shot pulled out, steadied, and established itself.
On the sofa, Mama Oola rocked back and forth, clasping be-ringed hands to her ample bosom, her tearful eyes wide.
Beside Sally, Geoff swore under his breath.
An airborne vessel was moving slowly through
the cloudless Australian sky. It was the only thing in the frame, so that its true dimensions were impossible to determine. Bull-nosed, splayed like a manta ray but much thicker, and silver-blue, it resembled some futuristic starship beloved of science fiction book covers.
Geoff whispered, “Foss…”
“What?” Sally asked, glancing at him.
“A cover artist, Chris Foss. It’s just like one of his illustrations.”
She said, half to herself, “But this is real, Geoff.”
Then, sliding into view beneath the vessel, Sally made out the unmistakable shape of Ayers Rock — and the airborne vessel, as it moved over the sacred aboriginal landmark, was fully ten times the size.
“I don’t believe it,” she murmured.
Mama Oola was clapping her hands in delight, or in fright.
An awed voiceover was saying, “It appeared in the skies of Southern Australia just twenty minutes ago, heading north-west at approximately fifty miles an hour. It moved in absolute and eerie silence. I can confirm that jets from the Australia Air Force were scrambled to intercept, but that for some reason they were unable to leave the ground.”
“It’s beautiful,” Sally said, “truly beautiful…”
She had never, she thought, seen anything quite as vast or magnificent in her life.
“And terrifying,” Geoff said.
She looked at him.
He said, “Think about it, Sally. What happened yesterday. The domes, our inability to…”
She shook her head, slowly.
“It makes sense. What would an invading army do, if they had the capability? Somehow inhibit our ability to… to fight back.”
She gestured at the slow, beautiful vessel. “This is a… an invasion?”
Geoff was silent, staring at the screen.
The scene shifted, returned to the studio. “Sorry to cut Rob off there… but we’re getting reports, several reports from around the world. Okay, let’s go over to Amelia Thirkell in Paris…”
