The Serene Invasion (25 page)

Memories flashed through her head, images of her time with Kath. They went back so far, had shared so much. It seemed so cruel to the girl and young woman Kath had been that, all along, her arbitrary end had awaited her like this in a future country lane.

What seemed like only minutes later an ambulance pulled up and two paramedics leapt from the cab and hunkered over Kath’s body. A police car pulled in behind Kath’s rented car and a tall officer climbed out, took Sally firmly by the shoulders and led her away from Kath.

Stricken, Sally watched the paramedics lift her friend’s body onto a stretcher, cover her face with a blue blanket with a finality she found heart-wrenching, and slide her into the back of the ambulance.

T
HE POLICE OFFICER
was young, and seemed even younger in his summer uniform of light blue shirt and navy shorts. He indicated the pub garden and said, “You need a stiff drink, and I’ll take a statement. Did you see the vehicle that...?”

Sally shook her head. “Just a flash, then it was away.”

He nodded and moved to the bar. Sally chose a table well away from the fishpond. She slumped, dazed, still not wholly believing what had happened. She thought of the dinner they would have prepared together...

She gulped the brandy the officer provided, then almost choked as the liquid burned down her throat. She took a deep breath. The young man was speaking, asking her questions. She apologised and asked him to repeat himself.

She told him Kath’s name, her occupation. No, Kathryn Kemp had no living relatives, no next of kin. The only people to contact would be her employers... and at the thought of this Sally broke down.

The officer offered to drive her home, but Sally said she lived just around the corner and that the walk would help to clear her head.

She sat for a while when the officer departed, staring across the lawn at the fishpond.

She gazed at the bulbous koi, breaking the surface for food. She recalled something Kath had said, when they had met in London not long after the arrival of the Serene. They had strolled to a newly opened gallery, toured the exhibition, and later sat at an outdoor café beside a well-stocked fishpond. They had discussed the changes wrought by the aliens, and Sally had wondered about the changes that would affect the world’s economy.

Kath had indicated the fish cruising the pond and said, “A crude analogy, Sally. The Earth is a fishpond, with finite resources. The fish would survive for a while without intervention, eating pond life, but eventually their food resources, their economy if you like, would break down. But humans kindly feed them a few crumbs, sustain them...”

“So you’re comparing the human race to fish?” Sally had laughed.

“I said the analogy was crude.” Kath shrugged. “The Serene come along, save an ailing world, pump energy into the system. Our economies will collapse, but they were corrupt anyway, and will be replaced by something much better. We were in desperate need of the crumbs the Serene are throwing us.”

Sally recalled Kath’s smile on the sunny London day nine years ago, and all of a sudden she felt very alone. She wanted to go back to the house and have Geoff hold her, comfort her.

She left the beer garden. Instead of going by the road, which would have been the quickest route, she took the canal path behind the pub and cut across the fields on the edge of town. As she walked, she was aware of a sudden brightening in the air above her head, and looked up.

An energy pulse lit the heavens, dazzling. She looked away as the entire sky brightened and the pulse fell towards the energy distribution station to the south. A few crumbs... She laughed to herself, then wept.

She approached the house through the gate in the back garden, then stopped and stared across the lawn. The house was a rambling Victorian rectory, cloaked in wisteria, a little shabby but in a comfortable, homely way. The garden was typical ‘English cottage’, loaded with abundant borders and strategically placed fruit trees, pear, apple and cherry. At the far end of the lawn Hannah played on a swing, pushed by Tamsin, her child-minder. Sally leaned against the yew tree beside the gate and watched for a minute, preparing herself like an actor about to step on to the stage.

She fixed a smile in place and breezed into the garden. Hannah saw her, launched herself from the swing, and ran across the lawn. Sally picked her up and smiled at Tamsin.

The young woman stared at her. “Sal,” she murmured. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Sally lowered Hannah to the grass and she ran off. “I... I’ve just heard that a good friend has died.” She could not, for some reason, tell Tamsin that she had witnessed the accident. “It... it’s a hell of a shock.”

“I’ll stay, Sal. I’ll put Hannah to bed. It’s fine, I’ve got nothing on tonight.”

“No you won’t, Tamsin. But thanks anyway. I’ll be okay, honestly. Get your bag and go home.”

“Hannah’s eaten.” Tamsin looked at her, concerned. “Look, it would be no trouble for me to stay.”

Tamsin took some persuading, but Sally was adamant. She wanted to be alone with Hannah tonight, read her a story before bedtime. Geoff might be away, but normality would be achieved with the daily routine of putting her daughter to bed.

When Tamsin had reluctantly departed, Sally started the familiar bedtime process. Pyjamas, brushed teeth and washed face, toilet and snuggle down in bed. She asked Hannah about her day at school, an enquiry which as usual was stonewalled with a child’s innate reluctance to vouchsafe any information she regarded as solely her own.

She read a few pages of Hannah’s current school-book, kissed her and said goodnight, feeling guilty for the perfunctory performance as she turned off the light and left the room.

She stood in the middle of the lounge, crammed with bookcases, old chairs and sofas, the walls hung with pictures and prints. Kath had never seen the house, and Sally would have enjoyed giving her a guided tour. On top of one bookcase was an old photo of Sally and Kath in their college days, picnicking beside the Thames. Sally picked it up and stared at the twenty-two year-old Kath laughing at something she, Sally, had said or done.

She ran to her study, activated her softscreen and tapped in Geoff’s code. The time here was eight, which meant that it would be five in the morning in Japan – but would Geoff have finished his work for the Serene yet? Even though Geoff had told her what time he was due to complete what he called his ‘shift,’ for the life of her she could not remember what he’d said.

The screen remained blank and a neutral female voice said, “Geoff Allen is unable to take your call at the moment. If you would like to leave a message after the tone...”

She held back a sob and said, “Geoff. Something awful... Hannah’s fine and so am I. It’s Kath. There was an accident. I saw it.” She wept, despite her best intentions not to. “Oh, Geoff, it was awful, awful... Please ring me back as soon as you can. I love you.”

She cut the connection and sat staring at the blank screen.

She emailed her manager at the practice, told him that she wouldn’t be in tomorrow due to the sudden death of a very close friend, then moved to the kitchen and made herself a big pot of green tea. She thought about eating and vetoed the idea. Food, at the moment, was the last thing she wanted.

She curled up in her chair by the picture window, as the sun lowered itself towards the hazy Shropshire hills, and sipped the tea. Somehow the picture of herself and Kath was in her lap, though she had no recollection of carrying it into the study.

A thought flashed across her mind and would not go away. What a stupid, stupid death... A death that someone like Kath did not deserve. She was exactly Sally’s age, fifty-three, far too young to die when she had so much life ahead of her, so much important work to do, so much to see... She thought of Mars, and how wonderful it would have been to walk together across the meadows – or whatever! – in the shadow of Olympus Mons.

Always assuming, of course, she and Geoff had agreed to the move.

And what of the job offer now? Should she relocate to the red planet, leave behind all that was familiar, merely because the Serene had suggested it? Without Kath there to shepherd her through, it seemed unlikely.

Lord, but she missed Geoff on his days away. It was only for two or three days a month, but it always seemed much longer to her. In between his work for the Serene, he worked from home editing the photos taken on his previous trip, and was away for two days or so on commissions for the agency, which somehow never seemed as long as his Serene work.

They had discussed this, and wondered if it was something to do with the fact that there was an unknown element about the Serene commissions. For half of the time he was away he was unconscious, his body a puppet of the Serene, to do with as they wished. Perhaps, she thought, it wouldn’t be so bad if she knew exactly what kind of work he was doing.

She finished her tea and made her way to the bedroom in the eaves of the house.

She lay awake for a couple of hours, her head full of Kath – flashing alternative images of her friend in her college days, and the smile she had given Sally across the top of the car as she’d quoted Housman just seconds before...

She slept badly and awoke, with a start, at seven when Hannah – a ball of oblivious energy – sprinted into the bedroom and launched herself onto the bed.

They had breakfast together and Tamsin arrived at eight-thirty to tidy up and take Hannah to school. Sally told Tamsin to take the day off – normally on Thursdays she came back and did the cleaning and washing, but today Sally wanted to lose herself in the routine of housework.

“If you’re sure...”

“I’m not going into work, Tamsin. I need to fill the time with something.”

At ten to nine she accompanied Hannah and Tamsin outside and waved them off as Tamsin pulled her electric car from the drive. She sighed, standing alone and hugging herself in the bright summer sunlight, then returned inside.

A strong coffee, housework...

An insistent pinging issued from her study, and her heart kicked. Geoff, getting back to her.

She hurried through the house and accepted the call.

The screen was briefly blank, then flared. The image showed a woman in her early fifties, smiling out at her apprehensively.

Kath...

Sally sat back in her chair as if something had slammed into her chest.

Then she knew what had happened. Kath had called the previous afternoon, and the message had been delayed.

“Sally, I know this will be something of a shock.”

Blood thundered through her head, slowing her thinking.

“Sally, it’s me, Kath. I’m sorry for doing this. Perhaps I should have come round to the house in person, in the flesh...”

Her voice croaked, “Kath?”

Her friend’s expression was filled with compassion, understanding. She said, “Sally, what happened yesterday... I’d like to come around, see you and explain.”

Sally managed to say, “But you were dead. I saw it happen. I saw it...
You were dead
!”

“I’ll be around to see you in a few minutes, Sally.” Kath smiled one last time and cut the connection.

Sally sat very still, hugged herself and repeated incredulously, “But you were
dead
...”

CHAPTER TWO

A
S THE TRAIN
pulled into Howrah station, Ana Devi had no sense at all of coming home.

She had assumed, on the long journey north across the Deccan plain, that she would feel a certain identification with the place where, from the age of six to sixteen, she had spent all her life. She had a store of memories both good and bad – with the good, oddly enough, outweighing the bad. She supposed that that was because she had not been alone here, a street kid scraping a living on an inimical city station, but had been surrounded by a makeshift family which had shared her experiences. She had transplanted her family to central India, and the fact that they had taken on good jobs and prospered meant that, despite their harsh upbringing, they had prevailed.

The station was a strange mixture of the old and the new. Much of it she recognised with a throbbing jolt of nostalgia, and then her recollections would be confused by the position of a new poly-carbon building or footbridge. As the train slid into the station, they passed the goods yard and the rickety van where she and twenty other kids had slept at night. The yard was surrounded by containers and new buildings, and she hardly recognised the place. The train eased to a halt on the platform, and Ana smiled as she stared across at the Station Master’s office. She wondered if Mr Jangar still ruled Howrah with a rod of iron.

She stepped from the train and allowed the crowds to drain away around her until the platform was almost deserted. She glanced up at the footbridge, where she had spent many an hour as a child watching the trains come and go, and caught a fleeting glimpse of a darting figure up there on the criss-crossed girders. She caught her breath, at once dismayed that children still haunted the station and alarmed at this individual’s daring. The girder was almost twenty metres high, and one wrong step would send the kid tumbling to the tracks below. Then the figure halted suddenly, squatted and stared down at her – and Ana laughed aloud. It was not a street kid but a slim grey monkey.