The Serene Invasion

Chapter EIGHT





ALLEN CAME AWAKE instantly. He knew exactly where he was and experienced no sense of dislocation. He looked across the aisle at the two facing seats, and then at the one beside him. They were empty. He wondered if the others had been awoken one by one so that, for whatever reasons, they could not confer.

A golden strip pulsed on the floor before him, the only light in the darkness. He stood and followed it, stepped from the plane and found himself in an identical darkness, illuminated only by the golden strip that extended for perhaps five metres before him. He followed it, walking steadily. The odd thing was that, as he went, the length of the strip remained the same; he had the peculiar sensation of walking on a treadmill.

Another odd thing was that he was not in the slightest apprehensive or even overawed. He was aboard an alien starship, he told himself, experiencing that which no human being, other than those who had accompanied him aboard the plane from Uganda, had experienced before. Yet he felt only an intense curiosity. He wondered if the Serene were responsible for this state of mind, too; they had the capability of inhibiting the act of violence in human beings, after all. Perhaps they were dictating his feelings now... and what about his thoughts?

That way, he realised with a smile, lay madness.

He must have been walking for five minutes. He stared into the darkness but could make out nothing, and the glow in the floor revealed nothing of his surroundings either. He realised, then, that although he had carried his holdall aboard the alien plane, he had left without it.

A minute later the glow stretching out before him became shorter, then vanished. He came to a halt in the absolute darkness and waited. Again he felt no fear.

Seconds later he felt something touch the back of his legs; some slight force applied pressure behind his knees; quickly, and involuntarily, he fell into a sitting position. He was caught by something soft and accommodating, like the world’s most comfortable armchair. He sat back, his head against softness, his arms outstretched on some kind of rest.

Then the darkness lifted slowly.

He was seated in what might have been some kind of vast amphitheatre created from the soft, black substance which cradled him – cradled him, he saw, and thousands of others. To either side, and above and below, he made out men and women of all races. Like him, they were staring around in awe. His nearest neighbour, a young Indian woman, was perhaps three metres away, a distance sufficient to make casual conversation difficult. She caught his eye and smiled briefly, and Allen smiled and shook his head in complicit wonder.

The amphitheatre swept around in a vast ellipse, dotted with representatives of humanity ensconced in the sable padding.

He felt an immense emotion – joy and privilege – swell in his chest.

Only then did he turn his attention to the well of the amphitheatre. A glow resided there, like a pool of molten gold, and he knew where he had seen it before: emanating from the nose-cones of the conjoined starships. He guessed, then, where he was; the amphitheatre was somehow formed from the front sections of each of the eight Serene starships.

The Nexus?

As he stared down, the glow swelled from a flattened disc to a pulsing globe, and from it strode a number of golden figures identical to the one which had presented itself to Allen back at Murchison Falls.

He counted a dozen figures ranged in a semi-circle and facing the massed representatives of humanity, and he knew that they continued all around the amphitheatre, hidden by the spherical golden glow. The one before Allen’s section seemed to hover in mid-air, staring directly at him.

Behind the figures, the golden glow diminished, sank, became again a disc. Then that too vanished, to be replaced by an aerial view of the verdant paradise created in the Saharan desert. As he watched, the oases appeared to be increasing in size, growing ever outwards.

A voice, issuing from the golden humanoid before him, said, “The new city continues to grow, and will soon cover the entirety of what was once the Saharan Desert.”

Allen heard a collective gasp from those around him.

“The city is the first of many we will grow around the globe,” the figure – or rather all the figures around the amphitheatre – went on. “In two days we will move on, first to central China, then India and Siberia, followed by Alaska, Brazil, Australia and Borneo.”

Further around the amphitheatre, someone stood up, a tall, southern European woman, who said, “If I may ask: why are you doing this?”

“We are creating the cities as the second phase of the programme to assist humanity in its growth towards stability and continuance. An immediate need for much of humanity is a number of sustainable mass living areas, integrated urban units where millions can live and work without fear of poverty, starvation, violence, political subordination or intimidation.”

“And who will govern these cities?” the same woman enquired.

“They will be self-ruled by elected representatives of each city’s population.”

“And the governments in whose countries these cities are situated?”

“In time,” came the reply, “the function of national governments will be a thing of the past. Nationalism will fade, along with concepts such as national borders and boundaries.”

A murmur of comment swept around the amphitheatre.

A human voice, belonging to someone on the far side of the vast chamber, said, “You’ve created this... this city in the Sahara, one of the most desolate, inimical regions on Earth... but how will it be sustained? What about things like energy, water...?”

“We are in the process of creating desalination plants to convert sea water,” came the reply, “and as for energy... The Serene possess the technological wherewithal to beam limitless energy to the surface of your planet. We have solar converters, machines which transfer the energy of your sun – and others – to wherever in the galaxy we require it.”

Allen smiled at the very idea, then laughed aloud.

The woman who asked the original question stood again. “If I may say this – my original question has not been answered. Why are you doing this?”

There was a pause, then the figure spoke. “We are intervening here on Earth because your race has, in the past few hundred years since what you term your industrial revolution, grown exponentially, a growth fuelled by a fatal combination of political greed and lack of foresight. What is even more tragic in your situation is that many of you – both on an individual level and on that of institutions – know very well what needs to be done in order to prevent a global catastrophe, but cannot enact change for the better because power and vested interest rest in the hands of the few.”

Allen sat back and closed his eyes, and wished that Sally was here to hear what the Serene were saying; she would be unable to restrain her tears of joy.

The voice went on, “No shame should accrue in light of these facts; no individual is really at fault. The process was vastly complex and incremental, a slow-motion, snowballing suicide impossible to stop. A hundred, a thousand races across the face of the galaxy have perished in this way, before we had the wherewithal to step in and correct the aberrant ways of emerging races.”

A ringing silence greeted the words, before someone asked, “And how many races have you saved from themselves?”

“Approaching one hundred.”

“And did they ask for your intervention?” It was a rhetorical question.

“That was impossible, as you well know, for they did not know of our presence until our arrival, just as you did not know of the Serene until recently.”

“And they welcomed your actions to save them?”

“There are always, among the races we assist, those individuals and organisations who oppose our intervention, for they have much to lose: namely, power and wealth. However, these people in time come to realise the rightness of what we are doing.”

Someone nearby stood up, a small Oriental man who asked, “And what say will the human race have in how these changes will be instituted?”

“That depends on the nature of the changes in question: some, like the creation of the green cities, the institution of solar energy – and the concomitant cessation of the production and use of current, polluting forms of energy – are non-negotiable, for they are fundamentally necessary for the safe continuance of the human race. Other changes, political changes, will be in your hands, though guided by our suggestions and expertise.”

An African woman stood and said tremulously, “You... you have banished violence from the planet. I... I would like to know how long will this last? Did you do it so that we could not oppose you with our armies, or...?”

The golden figure spoke. “We have assisted you to achieve the state of non-violence – which several of your philosophies have been advocating for centuries – not so that you would be unable to oppose us, which would have been impossible, but so that you can live now without fear of violence, either individual or state. This is not a temporary measure, but ever-lasting.”

A gasp raced around the amphitheatre. Someone said, “But... violence is something inherent in the psyche of the human race, an action and reaction hardwired into us on some fundamental, chromosomal level, surely...”

“Violence has been inherent in the evolution of the human race, just as it has been and is in the animal kingdom. But there comes a time when the urge to violence needs to be outgrown, when the consequences of violence threaten the very chances of racial, global survival.”

“But surely there will be... psychological, not to say societal, consequences of our inability to commit violence?”

The golden figure pulsed. It spread its arms in an all-encompassing gesture. Allen saw the other golden figures, arced around the amphitheatre, do likewise. “You are correct, there will be consequences, and some of them will be adverse... But none will be as destructive or damaging as the continuance of your ability to conduct violence upon each other would have been. We will ease you through the transition, be assured of that.”

Someone said, “You said you have intervened with other races? And these have managed to overcome their species’ violence?”

“All races are different, as you might imagine. Some fare better than others in their periods of... readjustment. We know that the human race will thrive and prosper.”

A silence grew, before the next question. The small Indian girl next to Allen stood up and said, “This must have taken a... a long time to set up. How long have you been... watching us?”

Allen had the impression then that the golden figures around the chamber were smiling. “We have been aware of the human race for centuries,” they said. “When the time was right, we applied ourselves to the study of your particular problem. We have been closely monitoring developments for the past two hundred years, and working to intervene for the past one hundred.”

“You saw us develop nuclear weapons,” someone said, “and use them... and yet you did not see fit to step in then?”

“But when,” said the figures reasonably, “would have been the right time to step in? Appalling though nuclear weapons are, they are responsible for fewer deaths than the invention of the simple sword. Should we have intervened then? No, the time was right when two factors concurred: when you became technologically capable of wiping yourselves out, and when you had the intellectual capability to understand your place in the universe and the rightness of our need to intervene.”

A silence lengthened, and Allen found himself standing. “Why,” he asked, “are we here? Why have you chosen us to tell all this to?”

He sat back down, frustrated that he had not asked more – like, what had happened aboard the plane, with the silver dancing spider; just what had the Serene done to him and, presumably, to everyone else in the amphitheatre?

“You were chosen,” said the golden figure before Allen, “because the Serene need human representatives to assist with the many changes that will affect Earth over the coming decades. You were chosen, all ten thousand of you, because you were assessed and found to possess the attributes required by the Serene.”

Someone asked, “Which are?”

Again Allen gained the impression that the figure before him was smiling. It gestured with an outstretched hand and said simply, “Chief of all, you posses humanity, an empathy with your fellow humans, a common decency. You are, if you like, representatives of your race.”

Allen stood again. “But what exactly do you want with us?”

The figure inclined its head, a gesture he recalled from the figure which had visited him back in Uganda. “One day a month, maybe two, you will be required to work for the Serene, to travel the world and, in time – when we have established settlements on other planets of the solar system – to those too. You will liaise with people working in various positions on the many projects we are establishing to bring change to the world, whether these projects are political, technological, scientific, social... For the duration you are working for the Serene, you will be unaware of what you are doing. Those days will be, as it were, blank; you will have no memories of what you did, who you met, or what you talked about.”

Someone objected, “But that’s wholly unreasonable!”

“But necessary,” said the golden figure. “There will be those amongst your kind who are opposed to the Serene and the changes we are instigating. If you retained awareness of the work you do, you could be compromised, endangered. It will be safer, for yourselves and for the success of the various projects undertaken, for you to work in ignorance. However,” the figure went on, “those amongst you who do not wish to lend themselves to our ends, who feel they cannot work within this remit, are free to absent themselves from proceedings.”

Seconds elapsed. Allen considered what they had been told, thought through what he was allowing himself to do, and did not demur. He swept his gaze around the auditorium. Here and there he saw figures disappear, absorbed back into the padding which cradled them. Someone nearby was thus retracted, his place taken by a seamless black void.

The golden figure went on, “Very well. Thirty of you from a total of ten thousand have decided not to take part in what lies ahead. They will be returned to their lives without prejudice, but without any knowledge of what occurred here today.”

“And the rest of us?” someone asked.

“Shortly, you too will be returned. You will retain memories of what happened here, and in a little under a month you will be contacted.”

“And will we be... compensated for the work we do for the Serene? Many of us have jobs which...”

The golden figure interrupted. “You will not be paid, as such, to work as representatives of the Serene; however, nor will your work situations be prejudiced.” The figure spread its arms. “In time, the nature of work as you know it will change, as your society changes. With limitless energy, with advanced computer systems, with much production automated, you will find that you have increased leisure time... which in turn will bring its own demands.”

A silence developed, and then someone asked, “Why should we trust you? Why should we take on trust everything you have said? For all we know, you might be the front for some hostile alien invasion.”

“I assure you that that is not the case, as you know...” And, again, the intimation that the figure was smiling. And the representative of the Serene was right: Allen knew, somehow without knowing quite how, that the invasion was wholly peaceable.

The African woman stood up again. “You said that there are other races that you’ve helped, out there in the universe... But when will we meet them? When will the human race be allowed out of the solar system to mix with these other races?”

He looked across at the woman, admiring her foresight.

“It will happen in time,” the golden figure said. “You are not prepared, quite yet, but that will change. One day you will meet beings similar to yourselves, and many wholly dissimilar, which inhabit the breadth of the galaxy.”

Allen looked at the African. Her mouth was open in wonder.

The golden figure finished, “Shortly you will meet individually with us, and any last questions will be answered.”

Seconds later the golden figures fade from sight. The panoramic view of the Saharan city vanished, to be replaced with the golden glowing disc, and suddenly it felt as if he was being absorbed into the very fabric of the padding around him.

He was back in darkness, with a golden strip glowing on the floor before him.

He was eased into a standing position, and stepped towards the lighted strip. He followed the light, but this time walked only a few paces before he found himself once again taken up by the padding. He sat, waiting, and a second later a golden figure manifested itself before him.

As earlier, in the lounge back at the national park, Allen made out flashes and pulses of light within the body of the figure, and again he wondered at the nature of this ‘self-aware entity’...

The figure reached out towards Allen’s right hand. It held something – a band of gold the identical colouration of itself – and slipped it over his hand. Allen looked down. A slim bangle sat on his wrist, warm to the touch. As he stared, it seemed that the band was absorbed into his flesh. Seconds later it had vanished.

The figure spoke. “Mere monitoring devices. Do not be alarmed. They also allow us to communicate with you.”

Allen said, “You said that you’d answer any final questions?”

The figure inclined its head. “That is so.”

“In that case, what happened to me, and presumably to the others out there, when time seemed to stop and I saw a silver...?”

The figure raised a hand. “It was not as you assumed. You saw what you thought was a spider, felt it invade you... This was your mind, making sense, as it were, of sensual inputs which were beyond its comprehension. It merely substituted images, sensations, that you could readily comprehend.”

“Then what did happen to me?”

“Your mind was audited,” the golden figure told him. “Your identity was accessed, recorded, and found suitable. The exact process of what we did would be beyond your scientific comprehension.”

“And... and how you managed to stop the entire human race from committing violence? Presumably that, too, would be beyond my puny intelligence to comprehend?”

“Intelligence does not come into the equation,” it said. “Rather, you – and I speak here of ‘you’ as the human race – you do not have the required scientific knowledge to understand the process whereby the Serene facilitated charea, as we term it, a word allied to the Hindu concept of ahimsa. Suffice to say that on a level of reality beyond the sub-atomic, there are fundamental particles – which you call strings – which are accessible and are... the only word I can find that remotely suggests the term we use, is ‘programmable.’ Through this readjustment of fundamental reality, the Serene brought about charea.”

“The domes...?” Allen began.

“The placement of the domes was necessary in order for the Serene to bring about the successful implementation of the charea.”

“And the Serene?” Allen asked. “You are their... their acceptable face, perhaps? What are they like in reality? Why don’t they show themselves?”

“They are humanoid in appearance... not dissimilar to yourselves.”

“And not monsters, repellent to our senses?”

“By no means.”

“Then why don’t they show themselves to us? I take it they are somewhere aboard these ships? Would it be possible to meet one...?” The very idea of it, he thought; to meet the aliens responsible for the salvation of the human race...

The figure hesitated. “There are no Serene aboard the kavala, the eight ships. They are few in number, and spread wide throughout the galaxy. We do their bidding, in their absence.”

Allen wondered whether he should be put out, on behalf of the human race, that the Serene did not see fit to be present during the momentous changes taking place on his planet. He said, “The golden figure I met earlier, in Uganda... it said that it, you, were ‘self-aware entities’... But what does that mean? Are you... robots, androids, or something my puny intellect cannot comprehend?”

“We are living, biological beings, self-aware, individual, conscious – but grown, as it were, and programmed with the... desires, is the right term... of our mentors, the Serene.”

“And have you yourself ever met a member of the Serene?”

The figure gazed at him. “That honour has never befallen me, but several of my contemporaries have had the privilege.”

“And what are the chances that I might one day meet a Serene?”

He sensed the being smile. “As a selected representative of an uplifted race,” it said, “the chances I would assess as... good.”

Allen smiled, then laughed. “If I’d been told about any of this a few days ago...” he began.

The golden figure said, “And now, if you have no more questions...”

“I have about a million, but it’d take a year to think of how to phrase them.”

“There will be time enough in the years ahead, my friend. Now, you wish to be transported to London?”

He stared. “How could you possibly know that?”

The figure inclined its domed and pulsing head. “The Serene know so much,” it said, and faded from view.

The padding around Allen flowed, returned him to an upright position. He followed the golden strip-light on the ground, and minutes later found himself aboard the alien plane. He was the first human of four to take his seat, and the second he did so he slipped into unconsciousness.





SPRING HAD COME to London, sunlight replacing the grey drizzle he had left just days before – but that was not the only change. The ad-screens plastered across the walls of buildings as he came into Victoria monorail station no longer flashed with tawdry advertisements. Every one of them showed the eightfold coming together of the alien starships over rural China, and the growth, on the parched land far below, of a second green city.

He noticed a change among his fellow Londoners, too. There was a collective air of excitement about the place, a buzz he had experienced only in times of momentous events – the outbreak of war, or Great Britain’s victory in the 2022 World Cup. Everyone was discussing the arrival of the aliens – the fact that they were called the ‘Serene’ was not public knowledge yet – and it appeared that even now, in the early days of the charea, some subtle change had come over the citizens of the capital. Was he imagining it, or were people more polite to each other, more respectful? As if, concomitant to the blanket ban on violence, individuals were wary of showing even such nascent signs of violence as bad temper or irritability with their fellow man.

He wondered how long it might be before a more unconscious psychological response manifested itself? Denied the cathartic release of violence might some individuals, the psychotic and unstable, suffer increased mental conflict? And what about citizens who never thought of resorting to violence? Would the very fact of violence being denied have some effect on society as a whole? No doubt, over the days and weeks ahead, the newsfeeds and TV channels would be bursting with pundits expounding their views at length.

On the way from Heathrow he read on his softscreen that the very first official communiqué from the alien ships had been received at the UN headquarters. The Visitors – as the news media had dubbed them – had announced that they would broadcast their intentions to the world at three that afternoon, Greenwich mean time.

Just as he was about to alight at Victoria, and take the underground to Notting Hill – where Sally would be awaiting him – he heard a couple of businessmen discussing in anxious tones what the aliens might have planned. One invoked the old film Independence Day, another The War of the Worlds, and both agreed that the end was nigh... Nursing his knowledge like a privilege, Allen felt like telling them that they were foolish and that there was nothing to worry about.

He left the carriage and took the packed escalator down to the Tube, and as he made his rattling journey west to his apartment and Sally, he saw his first case of ‘spasming,’ as it came to be known.

A dozen school kids were arguing in the aisle. In the general verbal to and fro, one particular insult was taken badly and a youth moved towards another, anger on his thin face. He pulled a knife, drawing gasps from nearby passengers, then stopped suddenly, his face twitching, his entire body convulsing as if in the grip of some autonomic malaise.

“He’s spasming! Spasming!” the others taunted, dancing around the stricken youth.

Allen stepped from the train at Notting Hill, thinking that the display of spasming and the resulting taunts were eminently preferable to the violence that had been circumvented.





HE UNLOCKED THE door to his flat and stepped into the hall, the pleasurably tight pressure of anticipation within his chest. He heard a sound from the lounge, dropped his holdall and waited for Sally to emerge. She appeared in the doorway in faded blue jeans and a white cheese-cloth blouse. She stopped there, her breath caught, then rushed at him. He lifted her off the floor and it came to him that the heft of her in his arms, her reality, was far more meaningful, far more emotionally resonant, than his recent encounter with the extraterrestrials.

He carried her into the lounge and collapsed on the settee; they kissed and hugged, pulling away frequently to look at each other.

She appeared far more beautiful than he recalled her ever being in Africa; her face was fuller now, no longer taut and stressed, and she’d had her hair cut and styled, shortened to shoulder-length.

“You look... incredible.”

She laughed. “It’s great to be back. I can’t believe the range of food. I forgot what London was like... I’m eating well. I’ve put on pounds!” She patted her perfectly flat stomach and laughed.

“All the more to love,” he said.

She tugged at his shirt, and they undressed and moved to the bedroom.

Later, lying face to face in the sun that slanted in through the bay window, she stroked his arm and murmured, “Tell me all about what happened on the alien ship.”

“The Serene,” he said, “hail from a star twenty-odd light years from Earth, a star we call Delta Pavonis.”

He told her about his experience aboard the nexus of alien ships, the amphitheatre containing ten thousand fellow human representatives, and what the ‘self-aware entities’ had said.

He seemed to talk for a long time, recounting his impressions, his feelings.

“And they chose you,” she said, as if in awe.

He laughed. “For my humanity, my empathy.”

She whispered, “Which is the reason I fell in love with you, Geoff Allen.”

“Thank you. But enough of me. What have you been up to?”

“Well...” she began, then told him about the encounter with her kidnapper in the village of Benali.

“And... how did he react?”

“With anger, especially when I offered him antiseptic for his face... He came for me and...”

He said, “There’s already a term for it.” He described the youths he’d seen on the Tube earlier. “It’s called spasming.”

“That’s exactly what happened when he tried to attack me. He stopped dead, taut, and... spasmed.”

She was silent for a while, thinking back. He said, “It must have been... satisfying.”

She nodded. “Yes. Yes, it was. But then... then something happened, and I don’t know whether I did the right thing, or...”

“What?”

She sighed. “Ali had a wife, Zara. It was obvious from how he spoke to her that... that he treated her like an animal, to be blunt. When I was about to leave, she ran from their hut and asked to come with me. I... I don’t know whether what I did then was a sadistic impulse, done to get another one over on my enemy... or done out of altruism. I said she could come with me, and we made for the car, Ali following in distress and anger, and spasming as he tried to prevent Zara from leaving him.”

She fell silent, shaking her head.

She murmured, “She told me about her life as I drove down to Kampala. You wouldn’t believe it, in the twenty-first century. She was little more than a slave. Ali wanted a son, but Zara fell pregnant twice and both times with a girl, so he forced her to terminate the pregnancies. And he beat her, abused her. She’s an educated woman, not that that makes the slightest bit of difference to the reprehensibility of his attacks. But she was clever enough to know that she deserved more. And then with the coming of the Serene... this gave her the courage to act.”

He thumbed a tear from her cheek. “Sally, you did the right thing. Don’t browbeat yourself trying to scrutinise your motivations.”

“But one’s motivations are important, Geoff. They’re who we are, after all.”

He smiled and shrugged and wondered why some people tortured themselves like this, needlessly examining their actions and reactions and the reasons for them.

“You’re a good person, Sally.”

She looked momentarily unhappy, then said, “Don’t you question yourself, Geoff? Analyse your motivations?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes, maybe...”

She smiled, reached out and stroked his cheek. “That’s one of the things I love about you, you know, you’re so...”

“Go on, say it. ‘Simple’.”

She laughed. “Uncomplicated.”

He remembered something, looked across the room at the wall clock and said, “It’s a quarter to three. The Serene are broadcasting an announcement on the hour. We could go down to the King George and watch it there?”

“Let’s do that,” she said, jumping out of bed and dressing hurriedly. “I could kill a G&T.”

On their way to the pub, arm in arm, they discussed the ramifications of the Serene’s charea.

“So much will change, Geoff. It’ll take us a long time, and much soul-searching, to adjust ourselves, our psyches, to the consequences. I was reading yesterday about suicides, or potential suicides. They can’t kill themselves, though dozens have blogged about trying to find inventive, non-violent ways to do so... Intentional ‘accidents’, by whatever means – but they all fail.”

“Which will have its own psychological fall-out,” he said. “The shrinks will have a field day.”

“Have you seen the coverage from America? The Republicans are up in arms – well, they would be, if...” She laughed. “They’re demanding action from their government – as if the government could act! It’s nice to see the all-powerful demon rendered impotent for once.” She smiled. “The gun lobby refuse to believe it’s not some temporary thing that will go away so they can go back to the good old days of being able to shoot each other with the slightest provocation.”

“Well, they can still bear arms, as per the Second Amendment... They thankfully just can’t use them.”

“You obviously haven’t heard the latest. I don’t know if it’s any more than a rumour – but I wouldn’t put it past them. Apparently some arms manufacturer is looking into developing something called Random Factor Weaponry. It’s based on the theory of intended or unintended consequences. If you pull a trigger, they say, and the obvious consequence is that it will result in the death or injury of someone, then the act is rendered impossible thanks to charea. But if there were some randomised factor built into the pulling of the trigger, or the pressing of the button... so that the action might not result in death or injury, then, according to the theorist, this could be a way of getting around the Serene’s proscription on violence.”

Allen shook his head. “I sometimes despair...”

“The delights of capitalism for you.”

For a Saturday afternoon, the streets of London were preternaturally quiet; he put it down to the imminent announcement from the Serene. Everyone was at home in front of their televisions, awaiting the most momentous broadcast in history.

Sally said, “And your golden men, the ‘self aware entities’, have been seen all over the place.”

“They have?”

“Reports have come in from around the world. Citizens have seen them standing on rooftops, on mountainsides, just standing there, absolutely motionless and silent, just watching...”

They pushed through the entrance of the King George, and Allen was surprised to see that the main bar was only half full. A flatscreen TV played in the far corner. He ordered a pint of Fuller’s best bitter and a gin and tonic, and carried them to a table before the flatscreen.

They clinked glasses. “Here’s to the Serene.”

“To the Serene.”

They stared up at the screen, which showed an aerial shot of the eightfold arrangement of starships over China, and the expanding green city far beneath. Seconds later the image switched; the murmuring of fellow drinkers ceased and a sudden silence fell across the bar.

A golden figure, swirling with interior light, stared out of the screen.

It spoke – its tone, Allen realised for the first time, neither male nor female.

Beside him, Sally reached out and gripped his hand.

“We are the Serene,” said the figure, “and we have come to aid the people of planet Earth.”