The Serene Invasion

Chapter EIGHT





JAMES MORWELL LOOKED at his reflection in the mirror of his hotel bedroom and liked what he saw.

It was entirely appropriate, he thought, that as in a matter of hours he was due to annihilate himself he should take on a new visual identity. Gone was the Morwell of old, the pale, weak-chinned failure, to be replaced with this young, tall, blond vision.

It is necessary, said the voice in his head, to disguise you...

“I understand,” he said aloud, then laughed at himself.

In one hour you will leave your planet forever. Are you ready?

“I am ready... though I can hardly bring myself to believe that soon I’ll be...” He did not say the word, as if by doing so he might curse himself. He had tried for so long now, for so many years, to end his life that the idea that soon he might achieve his goal – with some help, admittedly – seemed impossible to imagine.

A blessed cessation of the anger that haunted him; oblivion. Nothingness.

And in bringing about his own end, he would be helping to end the tyranny of the Serene in the solar system. The old ways would be restored. Humanity would be handed back its true destiny, no longer yoked to the pacifist ideals of a faceless alien race.

Thanks to me, he thought, the human race will be free.

He wondered if his sacrifice would be remembered, and exalted.

We will ensure that your name lives on, said the voice in his head.

In time he would be even more famous than his father had been. He laughed at the idea. His father was little remembered now, the long-dead tycoon of long-dead business concerns. He closed his eyes and saw his father advancing on him with a baseball bat, and cursed his memory.

Look at me now, you bastard...

Are you ready? said the voice.

“I’m ready,” he replied.

He left the hotel and took a taxi to the Kolkata obelisk, where he had transit booked for Titan.

He sat back and stared out at the crowded streets as the taxi carried him towards his destiny. They passed within half a mile of the state orphanage where, three days ago, he had taken the life of Lal Devi.

The killing had not proved as satisfactory as he had hoped. He had imagined that Lal would grovel, would plead for his life, would apologise for betraying Morwell all those years ago. But when Morwell had walked in on Lal in his crude timber shack, he found a man changed from the slick businessman he had been. Lal seemed calmer, more reflective, centred.

He had smiled up at Morwell from where he sat cross-legged on his bunk, and said, “I did wonder if I would see you again, one day.”

Even the sight of the automatic pistol in Morwell’s right hand had failed to faze him.

“I want an apology,” Morwell had said.

Lal had merely smiled and said, “Go to hell, Morwell...”

“You’ll regret that, Lal.”

“I regret nothing, least of all leaving you, the Organisation. It was the finest thing I ever did.”

Morwell shook with suppressed rage. “I gave you everything, Lal. I saved you from a life of squalor. I educated you, gave you opportunities beyond your wildest dreams.”

“You inculcated me with the same corrupt ethos that you yourself had been infected with from your father.”

“No!”

“You filled my head with greed and gain, with concepts of power at the expense of others. Your ideals were against everything that is good and right, Morwell. But then how could they be anything else, handed down as they were from a father as monstrous as yours...?”

“Take that back!” Morwell cried.

“I take nothing back,” Lal said gently. “I pity you, I really do.”

And Lal was still smiling when Morwell pulled the trigger and shot him in the chest.

He pushed the incident to the back of his mind as the taxi pulled up in the shadow of the obelisk. He climbed out and paid the driver, then approached the sable, unreflective surface. He paused and looked around him at the teeming streets of Earth.

Proceed, said the voice in his head.

He stepped into the obelisk.





AND STEPPED OUT onto the plaza beneath the sloping rings of Saturn.

Cross the plaza and take a seat in the café bar by the edge, said the voice. There you will see a group of seven people, among whom is your target, Kat Kemp.

Heart thumping, Morwell stepped from the shadow of the obelisk and moved to the café bar. He sat down a few metres from the group, ordered a beer from the waiter, and stared across at Kat Kemp.

The years had been kind to her, he thought. She must be in her sixties now, but she had changed little from the woman he’d known nine years ago. A few fleeting memories of their time together came to him, but they were few, and they provoked no sadness or regret.

The only emotion the sight of her did provoke was the bitterness of betrayal. She was a self-aware entity, who had targeted him on behalf of the Serene. She was not a human, who had felt affection for the person he had been, but a mere robot fulfilling its programming.

He smiled to himself at the thought of the delicious revenge he was about to take, and he wondered if Kat Kemp would have time, before she died, to realise fully what was happening to her.

The group appeared to be celebrating something. They raised champagne glasses and laughed like fools.

To the Obterek in his head, he thought, “And nothing can go wrong, now?”

Nothing. We have everything planned, down to the finest detail.

“And I will die?” The very idea quickened his pulse.

You will die.

“And the destruction of the obelisk, the takrea...?”

The annihilation of the takrea will be a blow from which the Serene will not recover, said the voice. The quantum engine at its core, which maintains the functioning of charea, will be annihilated. The human race will be freed from the shackles of the Unnatural Way.

“And the Serene will be unable to re-establish control?”

Without the quantum engine to maintain charea, the Serene will be unable to defend themselves. We will invade, establish outposts across the solar system. We will re-establish the Natural Way of the universe. Your name, James Morwell, will go down in history.

He sat and drank his beer and smiled at the thought. He stared out through the wall of the dome at the massive beauty of the ringed planet above the horizon. Such magnificence, and his ability to perceive it, to perceive anything, would soon be no more... Soon his singular viewpoint on this universe would cease to be, and he felt nothing but satisfaction at the idea.

Very soon now the seven will leave the café bar and make their way to the obelisk. When they move, you will follow them. I will give the word for you to approach Kat Kemp. You will briefly inhabit her, through my agency, and we will be in control of her. Then we will step into the obelisk.

And then, Morwell thought, oblivion...

He stared across the café at the group, at Kat Kemp who was laughing and smiling at something a tall, grey-haired man was saying... Morwell recalled making love to her, all those years ago, and he felt absolutely nothing at the recollection. You are the enemy, he thought, and felt anger welling at her betrayal. No, not her – he reminded himself – but its.

Five minutes later they made their move. The grey-haired man took the hand of a tall, thin old woman and led the way from the café bar, followed by a younger Indian couple, and then Kat Kemp, a handsome dark woman and a tiny blonde.

Go, said the voice in his head.

Smiling to himself, heart thudding at the thought that everything in his life had led up to this moment, James Morwell stood and followed them from the café.