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.”
CHAPTER NINE
JAMES MORWELL COWERED in the corner of the bathroom, naked, as the woman — also naked — advanced on him.
Every Friday morning at nine o’clock Cheryl, a statuesque mulatto hired from a very discreet escort agency, visited him at his penthouse suite for a little recreational rough and tumble. Today they had started in bed, where Cheryl usually warmed up with a few well aimed slaps preparatory to a barrage of fists. This morning, however, she could not even manage the slaps. She straddled him, lifted a hand, and spasmed.