The Serene Invasion

Chapter ELEVEN





ANA ARRIVED AT the coffee shop on 34th Street fifteen minutes early.

She ordered a mocha and sat in the window seat, staring out at the passing pedestrians. She had the feeling that she had closed a door on the old part of her life, and a new door was opening. She had found Bilal at last, and in that she felt a sense of accomplishment. She believed what he’d told her about not wanting to hurt the little girl she had been, and accepted that he’d had to take the opportunity of an education when it had been offered to him. What still rankled a little was that in the intervening years he had never really attempted to seek her out. She understood that, in a way; he had his new, exciting life, and as the years passed he must have looked back on his old life, and his sister, and thought them perhaps too painful to resurrect.

Whatever, now she had found him.

A big disappointment to her was finding what kind of person he had become. While most of the human race saw the great benefits of the Serene, a tiny minority still held out. And it was just her luck that her brother belonged to this defiant minority.

It was an aspect of his character she was determined to come to understand; only when she fully comprehended his mindset, and how it had got that way, could she even begin to work out how to show him that he was wrong. He would need educating, and Ana had resolved that her long-term project would be to show her brother how right the Serene were. She would invite him to India; they would revisit their childhood haunts together, and she would show him the wonders of the wilderness city.

It would take time, but she had plenty of that.

“Ana...” Bilal smiled down at her.

She stood and they kissed cheeks a little awkwardly, like strangers. While he was at the counter, she took in his sharp black suit, his white shirt and long ponytail. She knew she shouldn’t criticise his style of dress – especially as she was wearing Western jeans and a blouse – but in these less formal times she saw his business attire as a uniform harking back to former, pre-Serene days.

He sat at her table and smiled at her. He appeared today, unlike at their first couple of meetings, a little nervous. He gestured to his coffee. “Old habits die hard. I always liked my coffee milky and sweet in India.”

“You had coffee in India?” It was a luxury she had never tasted until ten years ago.

He shrugged. “In college,” he said.

“They must have looked after you well. Quite apart from giving you a good education.”

He shrugged again. She noticed that his hands, as he stirred his coffee, were shaking. He saw that she was looking at his hand, and self-consciously slipped it into his jacket pocket.

She smiled. “I was thinking... it would be lovely if you could come to visit me in India soon.”

He nodded but did not look her in the eye. “I’d like that.”

“You haven’t been back for fifteen years?”

“I don’t cover India now, just the US. I’ve had no reason to go back.”

She sipped her coffee and asked, “So... what’s it like working for the Morwell Organisation?”

“It pays well, and sometimes the work is interesting.”

“And your boss... What’s his name, James Morwell?”

“I think we understand each other. We share the same views, the same philosophy...”

She winced inwardly, and said, “He indoctrinated you, Bilal?”

“Now, isn’t that a big word, sister?”

“Don’t patronise me.”

“And don’t call me Bilal, please. I left that name behind when I got away from Kolkata. I’m Lal now.”

She stared at him. The café was filling up, people queuing at the counter, others standing and eyeing their table as if suggesting they drink up and leave.

Ana felt an uneasy tension in the air, but knew it was all in her head. This meeting with her brother wasn’t going well.

He said, “I prefer to think that I was ‘educated’, Ana. The Serene are... wrong. I was educated –”

“Please, let’s not argue...”

“Just,” he said, taking his hand from his pocket, “as you one day will be educated.”

For some reason his fingers were glowing blue. She looked up, into his eyes, and tried to fathom what she saw in them.

Someone was moving towards her table, and a light had been switched on nearby, a dazzling golden light which intensified...

Bilal reached out for her hand, but before he made contact the golden light resolved itself into the shape of a self-aware entity and slammed into her brother. He vanished, absorbed into the form of the golden figure, which rolled with the impact of slamming into Bilal, stood and moved from the café in a blur of light.

Ana screamed.

She looked up at another approaching light and, for the second time that week, felt the life-force of a self-aware entity hit her.





SHE CAME TO her senses and found that she was surrounded by darkness. She felt the energy of the self-aware entity cocooning her.

“What happened?” she asked.

A voice sounded in her head, telling her everything.

She sobbed as she recalled the look in Bilal’s eyes as he reached out to her, the light of the betrayal he knew he was committing.

“What happened to him?” she asked – but the voice in her head chose not to reply.

Ana stepped forward, from darkness into dazzling light.

She was standing before her apartment in India... but something was wrong with the light. She looked up, into a bright blue sky streaked with impossibly high clouds. And overhead, tumbling end over end, was what looked like a huge, yam-shaped moon.

She turned suddenly and gasped at what she saw.

Her apartment was on the edge of a long ridge which overlooked a rolling green plane, at once exotic and idyllic. Other dwellings occupied the margin of the ridge; next to her apartment was an A-frame, and beyond that an ivy-covered, typically English house.

A small group of people were gathered before the English house, two of whom Ana recognised.

A golden figure stood before her, and Ana asked, “Where am I?”

“For your own safety, you are on Mars. Do not worry. We have contacted Kapil Gavaskar and he will soon be joining you.”

Before the English house, Nina Ricci said something to the Englishman, Geoff Allen, and a tall woman Ana did not know. Nina looked across at Ana and waved.

Smiling to herself, pushing the thought of Bilal’s betrayal to the back of her mind, Ana stepped from the shadow of her apartment and joined them.