by Eric Brown
Nina Ricci sat up and said, “I think this is Kathryn, if I’m not mistaken.”
Allen turned and watched Kath Kemp approach from the obelisk across the plaza.
Nina was in the process of pulling up a chair for her, but Kath said, “That won’t be necessary, but thank you. We won’t be stopping here. I have a more… secure venue for our meeting. Please, if you would care to follow me.”
Exchanging glances, they rose and trooped from the café area.
KATH LED THEM across the plaza to a section of the flooring marked with black and white squares like a chess board. When they were all standing upon the ‘board’, Allen felt the ground give beneath his feet.
Ana let out a small gasp of surprise and reached out for Kapil. Kath smiled and said, “An elevator. We will be travelling only a short way.”
“Where to?” Nina Ricci asked.
“Beneath the surface of the moon,” Kath replied, “and then out again.”
Her answer provoked a murmur of surprise amongst the group, and Sally caught Allen’s eye and smiled tentatively. He slipped an arm around her shoulders as they dropped.
Seconds later the elevator halted, and Kath Kemp stepped from it and led the way along a lighted corridor. They arrived at a black door, not dissimilar to the surface of the obelisk. For a second Allen thought that it might indeed be a subterranean extension of the obelisk, then had second thoughts: if his orientation was correct, then when they stepped off the elevator they had been heading away from the obelisk, towards the face of the cliff overlooking the plain. This was confirmed a second later as Kath palmed a sensor and the black door slid aside to reveal the frozen methane plain stretching ahead to the horizon.
For a shocking second Allen thought that they were stepping onto the very surface of the moon. Then he made out, perhaps thirty metres away, an arrangement of loungers and foam-forms, surrounded by what looked like the inner membrane of a dome. Clutching Sally’s hand, he followed Kath through the entrance and found himself in a long bolus of what appeared to be glass extruded from the wall of the cliff.
They came to the loungers and Kath invited them to be seated.
Allen sat down and looked up through the ceiling at the stars twinkling high overhead. If he looked back, he could see the domed city arcing above the lip of the cliff-face, and the summit of the obelisk. Ahead, high above the horizon, Saturn cast its light across the methane ice plain.
“Very spectacular,” Ricci commented, “but I’d like to know just why we have been brought down here?”
Kath Kemp stood before them, silhouetted against Saturn’s light. She inclined her head. “Despite its appearance of insubstantiality, this is a secure area. We cannot be overheard or observed.”
“This gets better and better,” Ricci smiled. “So you’re really going to divulge…”
Kath held up a hand. “It has never been the policy to keep from you the information you needed to know. We had, and have, and will continue to have, the best interests of the human race at heart.”
Ricci interrupted. “But it is you, or rather the Serene, who decide what we ‘need’ to know — which begs the question…”
It was Kath’s turn to interject. “We told you everything which was necessary for your understanding relevant to an ongoing and unfolding situation.”
Allen smiled to himself at Kath’s convoluted politician’s spiel. She went on, “However, due to recent developments in the Serene’s management of the situation, it has been deemed necessary to inform, little by little, the human representatives, and their loved ones, of their larger role in the scheme of things.”
She fell silent and looked around the group, and Allen was aware of the increasing tension in the room. Sally squeezed his hand as she stared at her friend.
Ana said quietly, “Does this have something to do with what happened to Bilal?”
Kath shook her head. “Not directly, no. But indirectly, yes, everything is linked.”
“Would you mind explaining what you mean by that?” Ricci asked.
Kath paused, staring down at her feet, then raised her head and looked around the group. She said, “Twenty years ago the Serene came to Earth and changed everything. The Serene stopped you harming each other — in effect, we saved you from inevitable self-destruction, just as we’d saved many other races across the millennia. In order to do this, and to facilitate the changes that would inevitably eventuate, we required the help of the human race itself to work as our representatives, on Earth to begin with, and then across the solar system.”
“Yes,” Ricci said, “but what actually did we do — or rather, what did you do to us? Just what went on — goes on — in the obelisks?”
Kath paused, looking from one to the other of the six humans seated before her, then said, “You must consider that the Serene’s concern is the long-term welfare of the human race. Not only did we wish to save you from yourself, but from the attention of our opponents, the Obterek. To this end we deemed it necessary to take a sample of the finest human beings your race had to offer and… study you.”
Natascha sat forward. “Study us?”
“It was a long and laborious process. Within the obelisks, every month, we…” She paused, then said, “I will resort here to brutal terminology, but there is no other way of explaining what we did. Very well, in order to study you we had to take you apart, strip you down, and then build you back up. But in doing so we… we incorporated several fundamental changes in your molecular and genetic make-up.”
Allen sat back, heart racing. He said, “Changes…?”
“We made alterations in order to improve you, to give you capabilities that will serve you, the human race, in the decades and centuries to come.”
Ricci sprang to her feet and paced to the curving glass wall and back. She stopped and looked at Kath Kemp, and Allen was unable to work out if her expression was one of anger, resentment, or excitement. It seemed that all three reactions passed across her face in the seconds that followed, before she said, “You’ve changed us? Changed me? But into what?”
“To someone who will be better able to serve your race in the years to come,” Kath said.
Kapil glanced at Ana, then said, “And how will that be?”
Kath Kemp smiled. “To answer that, I must first answer a question that Nina asked me a month ago, about the diminution in the stars.”
Sally laughed. “But how can that be related…?”
“Please believe me, Sal — it is,” Kath said. “You see, it is all tied in to the need to protect you from the Obterek, and to do that we need to protect your habitat — the solar system.”
Nina Ricci cried, “You’re talking in riddles!”
Kath stared around the group, and seemed to be considering what she said next. “Very well, I think a practical demonstration is required. What we are about to do you might find shocking, unbelievable, but let me reassure you that you are at no risk whatsoever during the process.”
Several of them began to speak at once, but Kath held up a hand and said, “Please follow my instructions. Now, Ana, Nina and Geoff… If you would kindly stand and move into the centre of the room.”
Allen glanced at Sally, shrugged, and did as instructed, curiosity intermingled with a slight sense of foolishness; he was a schoolboy again, manipulated by the teacher in order to demonstrate some scientific principle.
He stood between Ana and Nina, and looked to Kath for further instructions.
She said, “Stand a little further apart, so that you are separated by about one metre.”
Ricci protested, “Just what is all this about?”
Kath ignored her. “Now, Sally, Kapil and Natascha, please join your partners and hold hands.”
Sally climbed from the lounger and joined him. Her hand found his and squeezed.
“Ana, Nina and Geoff, your softscreens are activated. I have initiated a program that will allow you to hear my instructions mentally.”
“But how the
hell did you do that?” Nina murmured.
Kath said, “In five seconds, you will hear me ‘think’ a set of co-ordinates. You will repeat them to yourself, mentally. And that will initiate the procedure…”
Allen watched as Kath stepped forward and took Nina Ricci’s hand.
Before he could even begin to wonder what was going on, he heard Kath’s voice in his head. “75-438-779… Now repeat.”
Allen did so. He felt a split-second of disorientation, and then something flashed in his vision and he was forced to close his eyes.
He staggered, as if the ground beneath his feet had shifted, and then opened his eyes.
And he saw that he was no longer on Titan.
HE WAS STANDING in a sunlit vale or meadow, a warm breeze lapping over him. He was still gripping Sally’s hand, and turned to her.
Her face wore an expression of enraptured wonder that was beautiful to behold.
Then he saw that the others were alongside Sally and himself. All of them were staring around in awe, open-mouthed; they looked at each other and could not help but laugh.
Allen turned to Kath, who was watching them with amusement
“What the hell,” Nina Ricci said, “is going on?”
“Where are we?” asked Ana.
“This simple demonstration,” Kath Kemp said, “should answer your first and fundamental question: what was it that the Serene were doing with you representatives for twenty years, every month initially, and then every two weeks. We were, little by little, installing you with the ability to shift, as we call it — or perhaps you would prefer the term teleport.”
Allen felt dizzy and sat down on the grass. Sally flopped beside him and found his hand. Ana and Kapil were embracing. Nina and Natascha stared at each other and laughed.
“You’re kidding, right?” Nina said.
“I think,” Allen said, “that what we just did proves to us that this is no joke.”
“Let me explain,” said Kath. “We have invested in over ten thousand individuals — you human representatives — the ability to shift to any point within your solar system instantaneously. The science, the mechanics, of this we need not go into now; suffice to say that we have employed the same laws of quantum mechanics to effect this ability as we did to enable the charea edict. Programmed into your softscreens is an almost limitless cache of co-ordinates that will enable you, at the speed of thought, to select a destination and shift yourselves there. To access this cache you merely have to ‘think’ of your destination; for example a certain street in a certain city. Instantly the program will decode your thought and supply a destination code, which you will repeat. A nano-second later, you will find yourself there.”
Sally was shaking her head. “But how did I… and Kapil and Natascha…?”
“The shifter will have the ability to take with them a maximum of three other people, and will do so by the simple expedient of ensuring that all three are physically connected.”
“Right,” said Nina with determination. She was staring ahead, at a stand of trees some five hundred metres away.
Allen then had the disconcerting experience of seeing a human being vanish from before his eyes. Nina appeared, instantly, beside the trees half a kilometre away. She lifted a hand and waved.
A second later she was back beside Natascha, shaking her head in wonder at what she had just done.
Allen heard his heartbeat hammer out his shock and elation. He closed his eyes, and into his head came a vision of a pub garden, millions of miles away; the Three Horseshoes in Wem, Shropshire, where many years ago he and Sally had spent many a pleasant evening.
A string of co-ordinates entered his head. 32-779-043…
He opened his eyes and stared at Sally. “Hold my hand,” he said.
Tentatively, she reached out and took his hand, and Allen repeated the co-ordinates.
He heard Sally gasp, and then he was in the garden of the Three Horseshoes, seated beside the fishpond. It was early morning in England, and the sun was rising over the elms which bordered the garden.
“I’m dreaming this,” Sally said, “Please, Geoff, tell me I’m dreaming…”
“Then so am I,” he said, and reached out and hugged his wife.
“The thing is,” she said, “do you know your way back to the others?”
That was a point. He closed his eyes and recalled the grassy vale, and immediately the program responded with a string of co-ordinates.
Sally said, “Do you realise what this means, Geoff? In the wrong hands…”
“Shall we go back?” he said.
“The silly thing is that I’d like to stay a while, have a stroll around, explore again… But there will be plenty of time for that in future, won’t there?”
He smiled. “We can explore everywhere you’ve ever wanted to explore,” he said, and squeezed her hand.
He repeated the co-ordinates mentally, and a split-second later they were seated on the breast of the meadowed vale, Nina and Natascha staring at them in amazement.
Seconds later Ana and Kapil popped into existence before them, and Ana gasped, “We were in India, revisiting the farm where we first met. Oh, it was…” She turned to her husband and wept on his shoulder.
Nina said to Kath Kemp, “You do realise that if the wrong kind of people…?” she began.
Kath looked at the Italian with all the forbearance of a wise school-teacher. “Nina, we have invested the ability only in you representatives. We know you, on the most fundamental level. You are not the kind of people to abuse the gift bequeathed to you. Look into your hearts, each of you, and ask yourselves if that is not true.”
Allen smiled to himself, overcome by the weight of trust the Serene had granted him. Then again, he asked himself, how could it be trust when the Serene knew him, and the other representatives, intimately? He felt not so much trusted, then, as blessed.
Nina Ricci stared across the greensward at the diminutive Kath, and said, “You have graced us with a power beyond our expectations, an ability none of us could have dreamed of… But — and far be it for me to sound suspicious, or ungrateful — but why have the Serene done this? What exactly do you want from us?”
Kath gestured, raising both her hands candidly. “As I told you, our desires are the continuance of the human race, the protection of your species, initially from yourselves, and then from the threat of the Obterek. With your ability, you can assist the Serene in this.”
Ana said, “In what way? I don’t understand how our ability to… shift… can help protect us.”
“Your ability will not protect you, but it will help towards setting up a system, an environment, in which the human race will be safe.”
“Again,” asked Nina Ricci, “how?”
“To answer that,” Kath said, “I need you to ask a question. And the question is this: where are we now?”
All six humans looked around them. Natascha said, “It looks like a meadow in Georgia where I went on holiday as a child.”
“The hills of Tuscany,” Ricci laughed.
Ana said, “Or the vale of Kashmir.”
“It could easily be somewhere in Shropshire,” Sally said.
Kath smiled. “You are all wrong, but right in that it is a place of surpassing beauty. We are not on Earth; nor are we on any planet or moon in the solar system.”
More to himself, Geoff said, “The dimming of the stars…” And aloud, “Then where?”
“Look into the sky,” Kath said, “and tell me what you see.”
Allen looked up. The sky was cloudless. “The sun,” he said.
“How many?” Kath asked.
Allen laughed. “One…”
“No!” Nina Ricci said. “Two…”
“Three… four!” Kapil exclaimed.
Allen saw that they were right; high above, a series of small, bright yellow suns marched across the heavens.
He shook his head. “But that’s impossible, isn’t it? Where are we?” He had a sudden, exp
losive thought, and said, “On the home planet of the Serene?”
Kath shook her head. “We are still within the confines of your solar system, but only just.”
Nina Ricci pointed to the sky. “But the suns?”
“The dimming of the stars,” Allen said, but aloud this time. He had the inkling of an idea. “On the edge of our system, Kath? On some kind of… of artificial platform?”
She smiled. “Almost. We are on the edge of the solar system, but the structure is somewhat more impressive than a mere platform. Imagine the skin of an orange, or rather a more oblate satsuma, cut into sections. Imagine the sections reformed into an oblate whole.”
The idea was dizzying. Allen laughed. “And this… this is one of those sections?”
Kath Kemp nodded. “It is. From point to point it measures one astronomical unit, and the same across at its widest point.”
Nina Ricci was shaking her head. “But it’s… vast.”
Kapil said, “That’s the distance from the sun to the Earth!”
“In surface area,” Kath said, “it equates to forty million Earths.”
“And you say that this is just one section?” Kapil asked.
“The first,” Kath said. “Soon, others will join it, and in five of your years, the entire solar system will be enclosed.”
Kapil was shaking his head in wonder. “And the number of sections it will take to do this?” he asked.
“The Serene estimate approximately two million,” Kath said.
Allen laughed. “My maths isn’t up to it…”
Kapil said in awed tones, “So there will be the equivalent of eighty trillion planet Earths on the inner surface of the shell, give or take a handful.”
“How?” Sally asked. “The energy required, the material…”
Kath said, “We beam the energy from the far stars of the core, and utilise takrea technology to transport the rock and iron of distant planets. Surrounding the solar system are thousands of vast quantum engines, fabricators, which take the energy and reconstruct it.” She gestured about her. “Forming the shell, which is in the region of fifteen thousand kilometres thick.”
Natascha asked, “But why, Kath? Why are the Serene doing this?”
