The Serene Invasion

by Eric Brown

  “Of course not. I mean… I was thinking back to when I left the agency, and it came to me that it was a combination of factors out of my control: dissatisfaction with shooting the same old things, the opening that just happened to be there in admin.”

  “Just what are you trying to say, Geoff?”

  He shrugged, suddenly unsure of his footing. “I sometimes wonder how much we’re being… propelled — I nearly said manipulated — by the Serene.”

  Ana twisted her lips into a frown. “I think that’s something we’ll probably never know.”

  “But you admit that it’s a possibility?”

  “I… Maybe, I don’t know. But to what end?”

  He considered her question. “Not long after we joined the admin team,” he said, “our work for the Serene increased.”

  From doing the bidding of the Serene on a monthly basis, he, Ana and all the other ‘representatives’ of their acquaintance were informed that they would now be required to travel around the system for two days every fortnight — and most of their work would be centred on the giant obelisk situated on Saturn’s largest moon, Titan.

  Ana nodded. “That’s right. So…?”

  “So… it occurred to me that it was a bit of a coincidence.”

  She pointed at him. “And that’s all it was, Geoff. A coincidence. Nothing more.”

  “Maybe you’re right. But I’d still like to know what it is we actually do for the Serene in the obelisk every two weeks.”

  “I think that, Geoff, might remain a mystery for ever.”

  They sipped their drinks in companionable silence for a while, and then Ana said, “I’ve been thinking recently about the past twenty years, the arrival of the Serene and how things have changed. You?”

  “Just a bit,” he said.

  “You don’t see much spasming these days, do you?”

  “Sally said the same thing just last week, and I hadn’t realised — but you’re right. You don’t.”

  “Have you wondered why not?”

  “Sally suggested that it’s a conditional thing. Collectively, on some psychological level, we know that violence is futile so the brain is inured not to initiate the impulse.”

  She nodded. “She’s been reading the psychology reports. That’s roughly the thinking. In the early days you saw instances of spamsing all over… remember all the comedians telling jokes about politicians dancing like marionettes?” She smiled. “Then… over the years… the instances of people spamsing grew less and less.”

  He looked at her. “Did you spasm in the early days?”

  Her expression clouded as she recalled something, he guessed, from her childhood. She was sixteen when the Serene arrived, though she had not spoken much about her life as a street kid in Kolkata. Now she nodded. “Once or twice, just after they came… It was a strange sensation, a kind of powerlessness, and yet a great urge to carry out the act.”

  “Do you recall,” he went on, “how some psychologists were predicting terrible consequences of the human race being unable to fulfil what they saw as an elemental desire, the desire to commit violence? They said there would be unforeseen repercussions of the sublimation…”

  “They got it wrong, which I suppose isn’t that surprising when you think about it. I mean, the way some people were going on it was as if violence and the need to commit it was something that the majority of us felt and did on a daily basis. But how many times have you spasmed in the past twenty years?”

  He thought about it. “I think just once, a year after the Serene arrived. I was debating with a colleague about the politics of their arrival, and he was against it. For a second, the briefest second, as he goaded me…” He shrugged. “I don’t even know if I really spasmed — he certainly didn’t notice anything, thankfully. I just felt a tremor, a sense of impotence.”

  “And I think that goes for the majority of the human race,” Ana said. “So how would the inability to do violence have any long-term, or short-term, come to that, consequences for most of us?”

  “And for the tiny minority, the psychopaths amongst us?”

  “I rather think that they were… healed by the Serene self-aware entities among us,” she said.

  People like Kath Kemp, he thought; yes, that would make sense.

  She sipped her iced coffee, staring over the escarpment at the pacific vista. Phobos tumbled, end over end, across the far horizon — and its rapid transit contrasted with and pointed up the serenity of the land beneath.

  She said, “Do you know what the most shocking thing was, ten years ago?”

  “You mean, when the Serene fought off the attack and brought us here?” He shook his head. “I don’t know… The fact that the Serene were not… invincible, that they had enemies?”

  She nodded. “Yes, all that. You’re right. I was being selfish when I asked the question. That was shocking, too. But for me, on a personal level… I told you about my brother, didn’t I?”

  “Bilal?”

  “Bilal. Right.”

  “You said he worked for the Morwell Corporation, and that he was opposed to the Serene.”

  “And how,” she said, her expression hardening. “But what I’ve never told you… never told anyone other than Kapil… was that it was my brother, my big brother, who tried to attack me that day on behalf of the Obterek. He set me up, was willing to use me as a pawn to undermine the Serene.” She stopped, her lips compressed as she fought with the notion. “He felt nothing for me.”

  Allen said, “I’m sorry.”

  “At the time it hurt more than I cared to admit. You see, until the age of six he and me were…” She shrugged. “We lived rough on Howrah Station, and Bilal looked after me. Then one day he just vanished, and I thought for a long time that he’d died. Years later, after the Serene came, I found out he was still alive and I tracked him down. And I found that he’d changed. He was shallow and mercenary… someone I should have despised. But he was my brother, after all… and I wanted to get to know him again. I suppose I wanted… I know this sounds silly… but I think I wanted him to love me.”

  She fell silent again, and Allen said nothing, but let her wrestle with her emotions. At last she said, “After his betrayal, in the years that followed, I often wondered how — or even if — the Serene had punished him.”

  He said, “I don’t think that that’s their way.”

  “Nor do I. But I wondered what had become of him.”

  “You never found out?”

  She shook her head with vehemence. “No. I didn’t want to. I tracked him down once, and look what happened then. But recently…”

  “Yes?”

  She gave a long, heartfelt sigh. “You’ll think me silly, but recently I’ve been… curious. I suppose I look at Shantidev, and he so much reminds me of Bilal… and I can’t help myself thinking back to those days. Anyway, recently I’ve wanted to go back to Earth, find him, discuss what he did ten years ago… find out what I really mean to him, if anything.”

  He nodded, considering her words. “It might be… painful.”

  She held his gaze. “I know that,” she said, “but I’ve got to do it. Anyway, I’ve discussed it with Kapil, and next week I’m taking a few days off and going to Earth, to New York.”

  “I want to hear all about it when you get back.”

  “Oh you will, Geoff. I’ll bore you and Sally to tears about what I did.”

  His forearm tingled, signalling that a priority incoming call had overridden the quiescent function. He apologised and accepted the call.

  A familiar face expanded in the screen on his forearm. Nina Ricci smiled out at him. “Nina… this is a welcome surprise. It’s been months.”

  “Six,” she said with her customary precision. “I’d like to see you, Geoff.”

  “Great. When are you next over our way?”

  Nina Ricci was a high-level politico with administrative duties that extended over the entirety of Mars’s southern hemisphere. “How about the weekend
?” she said.

  “Wonderful. Stay at our place for the weekend. I’ll get a few people together and we’ll make a party of it on Saturday.”

  “That sounds like a good idea, though I would like to see you alone at some point.”

  He nodded. “Fine… But what about?”

  She pulled a face. “About many things, but principally about the Titan obelisk, our increased duties… I have an idea.”

  “What a coincidence. I was just talking about those very things.”

  “With whom?”

  Allen lifted his forearm and directed it across the table at Ana, who smiled and waved her fingers. “Hi, Nina!”

  “Ana, good to see you. I take it that you will come on Saturday too?”

  Ana nodded. “I’m sure Geoff will invite me,” she said.

  To Allen, Nina said, “Midday Saturday, then. Ciao, Geoff.”

  He cut the connection, sat back and smiled at Ana. “Now, I wonder what all that was about?”

  Ana laughed. “That,” she said, “was Nina, being all conspiratorial again. You know her!”

  “And I know that when she has ideas they can often be very interesting.”

  They ordered more drinks and chatted as the Martian afternoon mellowed towards evening.

  A COUPLE OF weeks after their arrival on Mars, as they sat in the garden with a bottle of red wine, Sally had said to him, “Do you know what’s wrong with this house, Geoff?”

  He looked at her. “Isn’t it perfect? That’s what you always said — it’s perfect.” He paused. “Okay, is it because it’s on Mars?”

  “Of course not. I like it here. And Hannah has settled in wonderfully.”

  “So what’s wrong with the house?”

  “It’s the wrong way around.”

  “Come again?”

  “The garden,” she said, indicating the lawn, “should be on the other side, overlooking the escarpment. The Serene didn’t get it right.”

  “I think, if you recall, it was rather a rushed job. They had other things to think about, after all.”

  She hit his arm. “I know that! It’s just… I wonder if we could get them to turn it around?”

  “Tell you what, next time I see Kath, I’ll mention it to her.”

  It was said in jest, of course, as it was a week later when he met with Kath Kemp and mentioned Sally’s criticism of the Serene’s architectural prowess. She had smiled and murmured an apology — but a few days later, on arriving home with Sally, he had braked their buggy before the house, stared at Sally and laughed aloud.

  The Serene had turned the cottage around so that now the back garden overlooked the escarpment and the five-hundred-metre drop to the plain below.

  It made a great venue for the parties and get-togethers that he and Sally hosted every month.

  Now thirty friends and neighbours thronged the garden, setting up a pleasant hubbub of chatter; Martian tablas played in the background, and somewhere one of Hannah’s friends was attempting — not altogether successfully — to coax a raga from a sitar.

  The majority of the guests were workmates of Allen and Sally’s, professionals in their forties and fifties and their teenage children. Ana had come early and with Sally had cooked up an Indian feast, which they were carrying with triumphal pride from the kitchen to trestle tables set up at the end of the garden. Shantidev, Ana’s six-year-old son, was dangling contentedly from the rope-swing that Allen had made, twelve years ago, for Hannah. The sight of the child penduluming back and forth beneath the sturdy branch of the ash tree brought back a slew of pleasant memories.

  He knocked back his fifth beer and listened to Kapil and a colleague at the farm talking shop.

  It was six o’clock, and the sun was setting on a short Martian day. It was warm — as it was all the year round at this equatorial latitude — and the party was set to go on quietly until midnight, when the last of the guests would wander off home until next time. As Allen sipped his beer and stared around at the happy revellers, he realised that he had not felt so contented in years.

  Nina Ricci had arrived a little after midday, tall, elegant and regal as ever; if anything, the passing years had done something to mature and deepen her Latin beauty. She was in her late forties now, with the poise and gravitas of an emeritus ballerina, and a restless, questing intelligence.

  A murmur had passed around the gathering on her arrival; she had risen from being a nondescript journalist ten years ago, to her current, elevated position as one of the leading political thinkers on Mars.

  Allen had introduced her to various friends and then, later, they had chatted about nothing in particular, catching up on each other’s recent exploits — Allen realising, as he recounted council meetings, how humdrum his life had become of late, at least relative to Ricci’s hectic lifestyle.

  He had been eager to hear her latest theories, but it was evident from the line of her conversation that that would be saved until later.

  Now he saw her in earnest conversation with a professor at the local university, a man known for his trenchant views who, on this occasion, seemed to have found his conversational match.

  Allen looked around the gathering but could not see Sally.

  He moved back into the house and found her in the kitchen. He leaned against the door-frame and watched her putting the finishing touches to three vast bowls of trifle. He was overcome with a strange sensation; it came to him from time to time, unexpectedly, surprising him with its power. It was an upwelling of love for this woman who had shared his life now for twenty years. She was sixty-two, upright and slim, her face lined, her hair grey, and he realised that he had never found her as beautiful as he did now. The emotion almost choked him.

  Sensing his presence, Sally turned quickly. With the back of her hand — her fingers sticky — she brushed away a strand of hair and smiled at him. “What?” she asked. “You’re staring at me very oddly, Geoff.”

  “I know you’re probably sick and tired of me telling you this, but you’re very beautiful.”

  “Give over, you.”

  He crossed the room and took her in his arms, thrilled by the feel of her. He pressed her to him and kissed her lips. “I came in to see if you needed any help.”

  “Typical. Just as I’ve nearly done in here.”

  “Sorry.”

  Someone ran into the kitchen with a clatter of shoes, stopping short. “Ugh! Do you have to, at your age?” Hannah stared at them. “Anyway, the beer’s running low and Professor Hendrix sent me in for more.”

  Sally said, “You’ll find it in the cooler.”

  Their daughter hauled open the door and dragged out the beer. As she left the kitchen, she called back over her shoulder, “And when you’ve quite finished in here, you should be sociable and circulate.”

  Allen said, “Maybe she’s right.”

  “Help me out with these and then get me a drink, would you?”

  They carried out the trifles to applause, and Allen opened a bottle of Sally’s favourite white wine — a locally grown Chardonnay — and later they sat under the cherry tree with Ana, Kapil and a few other friends and drank and chatted as an indigo twilight rapidly descended.

  He stared across the lawn at Nina Ricci, watching her holding forth to a group of scientists from the nearby research lab.

  Sally leaned against him and murmured, “I wonder why Nina invited herself, Geoff?”

  He smiled. “No doubt she has some wild theory to regale us with. You know Nina.”

  She looked at him. “The strange thing is, I don’t think I do. I’ve known her for… what, ten years now, and I don’t really think I know the real woman, what she feels or thinks on a personal level. Oh, I know what she thinks intellectually — she never tires of telling me that! But emotionally…” She shook her head. “She gives nothing away.”

  “That’s Nina. I’m not sure she has an emotional life.”

  “If I didn’t know better, if I didn’t know Kath — to prove to me that self-
aware entities can be imbued with just the same emotions as we humans… I would have said that Nina was an SAE.”

  He shook his head. “I know what you mean, but I think not. She’s too critical of the Serene to be of them. And I don’t mean critical in her being opposed to their regime… I mean critical of their methods, their lack of — as she sees it — openness.”

  “She still not married?”

  “No. But rumour has it that she has a long-term lover, a woman twenty years her junior.”

  “You should ask Nina to bring her along to one of our soirées.”

  Nina disengaged herself from the knot of scientists and strolled past the cherry tree. She stepped onto the terrace which the Serene, when they had thoughtfully turned around the house, had cantilevered over the drop. She walked to the far rail and leaned against it, a study in isolated elegance.

  Seconds later Allen’s forearm tingled, and he accepted the call. He glanced across at Ricci. She was staring at her own forearm.

  She looked up at him from the screen. “Geoff, why not join me? Bring Ana.”

  He said, “I’d like Sal to come too.”

  A hesitation, then Nina Ricci nodded minimally. “Very well, but bring only four chairs so that people know that we are not to be interrupted.”

  He cut the connection and said to Sally, “We have our orders.”

  Sally spoke to Ana, and between them they carried four wicker chairs across the lawn and over to the rail. Allen ventured out onto the cantilever as little as possible — he found the vertiginous drop to the plain below too reminiscent of the view from the Fujiyama city tree, all those years ago.

  He recharged their glasses and proposed a toast. “To life on Mars,” he said, “almost exactly ten years on.”

  Nina Ricci looked around the small group and said, “And have you settled down, all of you? Are you liking life on Mars?”

  They nodded, to a person. Allen said, “It couldn’t be better. We were a little homesick at first, weren’t we?” He looked across at Sally, who smiled. “But that soon passed.”

  “And you, Ana? Do you miss India?”

  “I don’t. I have… outgrown the country of my birth. I like to think of myself as a citizen of the solar system.”