She nodded. “You’ve stirred the troublemaker in me, Mr Allen. Let’s go.”
He revved the engine and rolled the car forward through the tape. As it snapped and fluttered around the windscreen, he accelerated. He heard cries from the soldiers, saw them dash into the middle of the road behind the car. Sally swivelled in her seat. Allen kept his eyes on the road ahead.
“What are they doing?”
“The sergeant’s pointing, giving orders. One of them is raising his rifle…”
Allen hunched in his seat, expecting the sound of gunshots at any second.
“And now?”
She laughed. “Nothing. The soldier’s just standing there, aiming… The sergeant’s yelling something. Right, he’s aiming his own rifle…”
“If he aims at our tyres,” Allen said, “does that constitute violence?”
“If he thinks of that, we might find out,” she said.
It came to him, then, that the sociologists and philosophers would have a fine time trying to work out the parameters of intent, and how they pertained to the blanket proscription on violence.
“They’re just standing there, Geoff. Not even coming after us…”
Allen relaxed, let out a long breath and finally laughed. “I don’t think I’ve truly realised, until now, quite what this means.”
Sally picked up his softscreen from where he’d tossed it between the seats, fastened it to the dash and accessed the memory cache. “Listen,” she said.
She found the broadcast of an hour ago. The neuroscientist and the sociologist were debating the embargo on violence.
Chen Li said, “What is even more fascinating is how the embargo — which we will call it until a better term presents itself — is facilitated. It appears, from reports, that individuals intent on committing acts of violence are prevented from doing so despite their desires. They are paralysed, frozen on the spot. They report a mechanical, a physical, inability to carry through the action their brain intends. This suggests that whatever agency is responsible for the… embargo… can effect change on some fundamental neurological level. This is both tremendously exciting, but also terrifying in its indication of the power of… of these visitors.”
“What interests me,” Professor Walken the sociologist said, “is the consequences of this intervention on both the individual and societal level. One thing is certain, if the embargo continues, then nothing, nothing, will ever be the same again on planet Earth. Violence will be a thing of the past… But, and it’s a fascinating ‘but’, will our inability to commit violence, and our resulting repression of the act, have unforeseen psychological consequences on us as a race? Or will the fact that we cannot commit violence in time mean that we lose the desire, that the desire will be, as it were, bred out of us? That’s the interesting question.”
“And that, gentlemen, is where we must leave it, I’m afraid,” said the anchorman. “The debate will run and run, I’m sure.”
One hour later they arrived at the national park.
THERE WAS NO one in the log cabin that served as the gatehouse to the park, other than a houseboy who told Allen that everyone was up at the ‘hill’ to watch the passing of the starship.
He showed Allen and Sally to their cabin, a small but comfortable three room dwelling on the edge of the lake. Sally found the refrigerator stocked with food, as per her instructions, and opened a couple of beers. Allen unfastened the French windows that gave onto a veranda overlooking the lake and stepped out, admiring the view. The sun was low in the west, smearing a gorgeous tangerine and cerise light over the bush. He looked south, but there was no sign of the approaching starship.
“I don’t know about you,” he said, “but I’d rather set up my stuff here than join the others on the hill.”
“Me too. I don’t particularly feel like company at the moment.” She leaned against him, sipping her beer.
He set up his camera and checked his softscreen. He had one email from Wolfgang back at the London agency. He laughed and showed it to Sally. She read it out, smiling, “Forget the bloody elephants and concentrate on the aliens!”
“Will do, Wolfgang,” he said.
He stuck his softscreen to the outside wall of the hut and set it running. The BBC was shuttling between their correspondents who were following the progress of the starships around the world.
According to their man in Africa, that continent’s ship was passing over southern Uganda.
They stood on the veranda, arms around each other and gazing south. According to Allen’s calculations the starship was three or four minutes away.
When it came, three and a half minutes later, he was surprised by his response.
He knew he would be awed, the visual artist in him impressed by the aesthetics of the experience, the brilliance of the silver-blue extraterrestrial vessel as it traversed the beautiful African sky, but he had never expected to be so moved by the event.
“But it’s… massive,” Sally gasped.
The ship slid over the southern horizon in absolute silence. Like all the others it was snub-nosed, splayed, a wedge that most resembled a manta ray. The dying sun caught its silvery tegument, giving it the lustre of a genie’s lamp. Allen smiled at the not inappropriate metaphor: but what kind of genie, he wondered, might emerge?
It would not fly directly overhead, he saw, but between where they stood and the horizon. He raised his camera and took a continuous series of shots, pausing now and then to lower his camera and watch the ship’s silent passage.
He calculated that the behemoth was perhaps five kilometres long, two wide from wing-tip — if they were indeed wings — to wing-tip.
To the west, silhouetted on the hilltop against the dying light, he made out a celebrating crowd, tourists and Africans alike. Their cries of delight and surprise drifted across the water. It was as if they were toasting the alien ship, welcoming it to planet Earth.
“Geoff, look…” She pointed to the softscreen on the wall. Evidently someone on the hill had a feed to the BBC, as the image of the starship above the lake was being beamed live online.
The announcer was saying, “And just in from Murchison Falls, Uganda, these images of the African starship.”
It was at its closest now, directly opposite them across the lake. He tried to make out any sign of sigils or decals on its sleek flank, or seams and viewports. Even its bullish snout, where in a Terran vessel one would expect some kind of flight-deck or bridge to be positioned, was smooth and featureless. A technology beyond our ability to comprehend, he thought.
He marvelled at the privilege of being able to watch the arrival of the ship as it happened; it would be something he could tell his grandchildren.
“I remember the day the extraterrestrials arrived on Earth…”
He considered what had happened aboard the plane, the spider drilling into his head, and again he knew that, rationally perhaps, he should be apprehensive. Was it worrying, he wondered, that he was not?
He laughed aloud and pulled Sally to him, planting a big good-natured kiss on her temple.
“We’re living in interesting times, girl,” he said.
She looked up at him. “Isn’t that a Chinese curse?”
The light diminished and slowly the starship slipped away to the north. When the vessel vanished from sight, Allen busied himself beaming his pictures back to London, then fixed a meal of salad, rice and chicken.
They ate on the veranda and then sat looking out over the lake with their beers, the softscreen playing at their side — a constant accompaniment.
At last Sally said, “I’ve been giving it a lot of thought, Geoff. Since yesterday, and what happened. I know I told Krasnic that I’d be leaving in May…”