The Serene Invasion

Chapter ONE





SALLY SAW HER last patient of the day, finished writing up her notes, then turned off the softscreen and pushed her chair away from the desk. She turned to face the picture window and stared out on a scene that never failed to fill her with delight.

The mellow Shropshire countryside rolled away to the south in a series of hills and vales, softened by the late afternoon sunlight. Here and there she made out villages and small towns – revitalised since the coming of the Serene – and the manufactories that were run almost exclusively by robots, the factories’ aesthetically pleasing silver domes concealing the ugly subterranean industry which plumbed the countryside in places to the depth of a kilometre. To the south was the Malvern Energy Distribution Station, an array of silver panels as wide as a couple of football pitches. Twice a day a great pulse of energy was beamed to the EDS from an orbital relay station, the last leg of a journey that had seen the energy transmitted light years through space from stellar supergiants around the galaxy. On grey winter days the bright golden pulses lit the land like falling suns in a display that always cheered Sally.

Between the EDS and the small town of Wem where Sally lived and worked was a network of farms producing the food which fed the nation. She had read somewhere that since the changes wrought by the Serene, forty per cent of Britain’s landmass was given over to food production – which was low in comparison to some countries. Uganda, for instance, was almost seventy per cent cultivated, and many other African countries even more so.

Frequently over the past few days – the tenth anniversary of the Serene’s arrival – she had thought back to her time in Uganda, contrasting her life then to what she had now. It was only in retrospect that she realised that, for much of her time while in Africa, she had been desperately unhappy. She would never have admitted as much at the time, convincing herself that in working in a country sorely deprived of medical aid she was not only helping others but fulfilling some deep-seated psychological need of her own, but now she could see that she had been sublimating her own desires and needs by losing herself in good deeds. It was a time in her life she was pleased to have experienced, perhaps had had to go through in order to grow, but she was glad that it was over.

First Geoff Allen had come into her life, and then the Serene... She often wondered if she would have turned her back on Uganda if the aliens had not arrived and promised to make things better – and was honest with herself and realised that she would have done. She had planned to get out before the coming of the Serene, anyway – and her kidnap at the hands of terrorists had been the final straw. Strung-out, a nervous wreck and jaded with the stultifying routine of treating preventable diseases month after month, she had had to leave for the sake of her sanity. She sometimes felt pangs of guilt – which Geoff, with his easy-going approach to life, often jibed her about – when she realised that the Serene had made her decision that much easier.

She had so much to thank the extraterrestrials for.

She activated her softscreen on impulse, tapped into her favourites, and seconds later routed the image to the wallscreen.

She sat back, smiling, and stared at the scene showing the main street in Kallani – though a street vastly changed since Sally had last been there. Then it had been an unmade, dusty road flanked by crumbling concrete buildings and stunted trees, thronged by impoverished locals on the verge of malnutrition.

Now the road was metalled and the buildings largely replaced by poly-carbon or synthetic timber structures, and the people walking down the street appeared well-fed. North and south of Kallani, all across the Karamoja region which a decade ago had been a drought-stricken wilderness, the land had been revitalised and given over to farms run by locals. This was the pattern that existed across all Africa, in fact across much of the world – deserts reclaimed, wildernesses turned into either sources of food production or sanctuaries for native wildlife. The industries that had threatened vast areas of the world, principally mining and logging, had been wound down, redundant now that abundant stellar energy was online and synthi-timber was such an easily manufactured commodity. The Serene had given humanity the technological wherewithal to venture out into the solar system and mine the asteroids for metals, both relieving a tired Earth from the need to give up these resources and eliminating the resultant pollution.

She instructed the image to pan down the main street and turn left. She swung the view to focus on the building that nestled between two carbon fibre A-frames. Mama Oola’s was one of the few old concrete buildings remaining in the street – Sally could well imagine Mama’s objections to having new premises foisted on her – and little seemed to have changed over the years. The façade was still crumbling and distressed and adorned with bountiful bougainvillea, and occasionally Mama Oola herself could be glimpsed bustling to and from the local market. She’d appeared, the last time Sally had seen her, as ageless as ever.

Now Sally moved the focus along the street and across town to the new medical centre – no longer a tumbledown compound of aging prefabs and corrugated huts. A white carbon fibre complex, all arcs and stylish domes, occupied the old site. And Sally knew that the treatment that went on there was very different to that of her time; gone the cases of malnutrition, preventable maladies and the victims of violence both domestic and political. She suspected that the day to day cases that presented in Kallani would be little different to those she treated here in Wem.

Dr Krasnic, whom she emailed from time to time, had decided to stay on at the centre in Kallani, but Ben Odinga had moved to a practice in Kampala. She smiled to herself, killed the image and not for the first time thought how good it would be, one day, to return.

She was about to leave the office and walk home when her softscreen chimed.

She was tempted to ignore the summons and sneak off, suspecting that her manager wanted to see her before she left. Guilt got the better of her and she accepted the call. The image of a woman in her mid-fifties expanded into the ’screen and it was a few seconds before Sally recognised her.

“Kath?” she said, surprised and delighted. “My word, where are you?”

“Would you believe here in Wem? In fact, about half a kay from where you’re sitting.” Kathryn Kemp raised a glass and Sally saw that she was beside the canal in the garden of the Three Horseshoes.

“Wonderful. Look, I’ve just finished work. I have a couple of hours before I’m due home. I’ll be with you in a few minutes.”

Kathryn laughed. “I’ll get you as a drink. Leffe?”

“As ever.”

“I’ll get them in,” Kath said and cut the connection.

Sally locked the office, took the open staircase to the sun-filled atrium, and stepped out into the warm summer afternoon. She hurried through the surgery’s garden and took the path along the canal.

Kath Kemp was her oldest friend. They’d met nearly thirty years ago as medical students in London, hit it off immediately and stayed close ever since. Kath was grounded and serious, a private person who let very few people into her life; she had never married, never – as far as Sally was aware – had a boyfriend or girlfriend, and as Kath seemed reluctant to broach the matter of intimate relations, Sally never pressed her on the subject.

Despite their closeness, she had to admit that Kath was something of an enigma. They spoke at length, and at great depth, about their work, the world, politics – and Kath was happy to listen as Sally opened her heart and poured out her troubles, or her joys. But Kath never reciprocated; Sally had been piqued in the early days of their relationship, and then come to accept this as merely a facet of Kath. Sally loved the woman for her warmth, her empathy; she trusted Kath more than anyone else in the world, except perhaps Geoff, and enjoyed basking in her sheer... there was no other term for it... humanity.

It had been to Sally’s great joy that Geoff, when he’d first met Kath nine years ago, had formed an immediate rapport. “She’s a remarkable person, Sal. She exudes empathy.”

Their careers had diverged after graduation. While Sally had specialised in tropical medicine, Kath had practised psychiatry. She’d worked first in London, and then five years ago moved to New York, specialising in the treatment of recovering drug addicts and alcoholics.

They kept in contact with regular emails and online chats, and caught up in the flesh perhaps once every couple of years when Kath returned to London on business.

The Three Horseshoes dated from the sixteenth century, a former coaching inn with bulging walls, a twee bonnet of thatch, and a magnificent beer garden. She and Geoff had spent many a quiet early evening here in the summers, before their daughter Hannah’s arrival on the scene; Sally liked to watch the seven o’clock pulse of energy drop from the troposphere and plummet beyond the inn’s thatch, marvelling at the contrast of ancient and ultra-modern.

She stepped off the canal path and ducked beneath a strand of wisteria, knocking a bloom and inhaling the wonderful scent.

There were few people in the garden; Kath sat beside the well-stocked fishpond, facing Sally with a welcoming smile on her broad, homely face.

She stood and held out her arm. “And look at you!” Kath said. “Motherhood obviously becomes you.”

They embraced, and as always Sally had the odd sensation of hugging her own mother, dead these past thirty years.

They sat down, toasted each other, and Sally took a long drink of sharp, ice cold Leffe.

Kath Kemp was short, a little stout now in her early fifties, with a cheerful face that exuded good will. Sally had no doubt that she was loved and trusted by her patients.

“What a lovely surprise. But you said nothing about coming over! How long are you here for?”

“A last minute decision to attend a conference in Birmingham. I arrived in London this morning, but the conference doesn’t start for a couple of days.”

Sally reached out and gripped her friend’s hand. “You’re staying with us, and no arguments. You’ve not booked in anywhere?”

“I was about to try here.” She indicated the inn at her back.

“Don’t be silly. I want you to see Hannah.”

Kath beamed. “Can’t wait. She’s five now? She must have grown in the past two years...”

“It’s really that long?” Sally shook her head.

“And Geoff?” Kath took a sip of her orange juice.

“He’s very well. You know him – Mr Imperturbable. He never changes. He’s in Tokyo at the moment, covering the opening of a big art gallery, then moving north to shoot the opening ceremony of the latest arboreal city.”

“He certainly gets about.”

Sally smiled. She had told no one about the fact that Geoff liaised for the Serene; she suspected that Kath knew but was too diplomatic to mention the fact.

“I’ll cook you something tonight and I’ll take tomorrow off. Let’s go for a long walk.”

“Just like old times.”

In their student days they’d gone on jaunts along the Thames to Richmond, and spent hiking holidays in Wales and Scotland. Sally squeezed Kath’s hand. “It’s great to see you again.”

“It’s nice to come home,” Kath said, smiling around at the idyllic setting.

“You still think of England as ‘home’?”

“For all the greening of New York and Long Island, it will never be my ‘green and pleasant land’.” She smiled. “Anyway, how’s work?”

“I’m still enjoying it.”

“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.

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.





THE 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...”