Morwell frowned. “So in effect a big fat blank.”
Lal nodded. “Just so.” He tapped the screen again and the African face was replaced by that of a European in his twenties. “This is Markus Dortmund, 28, from Germany. An artist. His girlfriend is a Free Earth Confederation member and contacted me via the website. We put someone on his trail…”
“And?”
Lal shrugged his slim shoulders. “The jury is still out. He travels a hell of a lot, but then his line of work calls for it. That’s the difficulty we face, sir — we just cannot be sure with any of them when they’re doing their own legitimate work, and when they might be working for the Serene.”
Morwell said, “But surely…”
“It’s impossible to be with the subjects twenty-four seven, sir, impossible to attend all their meetings. It’s quite possible that when they’re conducting seemingly casual meetings with other individuals, work for the Serene is taking place.”
Morwell nodded his understanding, impatient though he was.
“Very well. Keep tabs on this individual, Dortmund, and for chrissake don’t get too close. We don’t want to spook the Serene and lose him.”
“Understood.”
“And anything further on the idea that the Serene have been amongst us for longer than the ten years since their obvious arrival?”
It was a schizoid French philosopher who’d first posited this theory, and Morwell still didn’t know how seriously to take it.
The philosopher argued that for the Serene to institute the changes in the infrastructure of the economy of the planet in such an apparently short time, thousands of ‘operatives’ must have been in place pulling various strings and laying the ground-work for the revolution. Businesses had gone under overnight, only to be resurrected days later; banks had been run dry and then re-capitalised… And then there had been the logistical, organisational changes that had taken place: entire industries had vanished — meat farming among others — and yet within days all workers had been allocated other jobs. Such a smooth and painless transition pointed, so the philosopher argued, to careful planning and the placement of experts in a hundred different specialisms.
Now the Indian stroked the line of his jaw. “I’ve had investigators checking the backgrounds of more than a hundred individuals, and they have unearthed certain anomalies. People whose life histories seem to have started from nowhere in their mid-twenties or -thirties; people without family or friends whose background has proven impossible to trace, as if they just popped out of nowhere ten, twenty, thirty years ago.” Lal shrugged again. “But the exasperating thing is, sir, that these anomalies might be caused by nothing more than incomplete or inefficient records. I’ll keep my team investigating and report when we come up with anything more conclusive.”
They chatted about other matters for a while, then Morwell dismissed Lal and returned his attention to the view of sprawling Manhattan.
He spent hours like this, he realised, staring out at the city but in reality thinking back to a time very different from this one. A time when he worked an eighteen-hour day and made a dozen vital decisions every hour; a time when he courted politicians and had them know that a vote the right way, or a bill passed in favour of a certain policy, could mean the difference between their party gaining millions in funding and getting nothing. Nowadays the world seemed to be run by a bunch of liberal bureaucrats whose favour could not be bought for love nor money. All the more ammunition for the mad Frenchman’s idea that they had been amongst us for centuries, Morwell thought.
His softscreen chimed again and the beautiful young face of his latest escort, as he liked to call these women, smiled out at him. What was her name? Suzi, Kiki? She was new — had been recommended to him just last week — and knew how to satisfy his needs.
“James… I’m here.” She blew him a kiss.
He smiled. “I’ll have security send you up to the penthouse. And you’ll find five bottles of Perrier in the cooler.”
She pulled a pretty moue. “Five?”
“Just drink them and I’ll be up in an hour, okay?”
She pulled a face, hit the deactivate key with ill-grace, and vanished from the screen.
HE WAS ABOUT to leave the office and indulge himself in one of the few activities he enjoyed these days — even though his sex-life, since the coming of the Serene, had been diminished — when he noticed something in the corner of the room.
He turned quickly in his swivel chair and stared.
Something was flickering in the angle created by the two plate-glass windows, and at first he thought it an effect of the light on the glass. As he watched, however, the flickering light intensified and resolved itself into a standing blue figure.
“What the fuck–” Morwell kicked off and launched his chair across the room away from the figure. He fetched up against the wall and exclaimed again.
The figure was tall, well over two metres high, and composed of a swirling blue light. It seemed to contain azure spiral galaxies that rotated and shifted as he stared.
It stood with its arms at its side, totally silent, and gazed directly at him — though its face was the same swirling blue as the rest of its body, and featureless.
He managed, “What do you want?”
Some envoy of the Serene, come to end his opposition? His heart began to beat faster and he realised he was sweating.
The figure spoke — or rather its words sounded in his head. “Do not be afraid.”
“Wh-what are you?”
“We are the Obterek,” said the figure, still unmoving, “and my time here is limited.”
Morwell eyed the door, four metres away. He wondered if he could reach it before the figure moved to stop him.
“What do you want?”
A beat, then the figure said, “We desire the same outcome as you, James Morwell.”
His heart skipped. “You… you’re nothing to do with the Serene?”
“We oppose the Serene; we oppose everything the Serene are doing to your planet and to your people. The Obterek are ancient enemies of the Serene.”
Morwell nodded slowly, taking all this in. “And you are here because…?”
“Because we believe you can help us in our opposition of the Serene.”
He stared at the figure, smiling to himself. “You appear here out of nowhere, a figure of pulsing light. You’ve obviously travelled light years to reach Earth and possess technologies we have yet to dream of… And you think I can help you?”
“We do not have the time to explain fully, James Morwell. Also, your understanding of the terms we use would be insufficient. Suffice to say, we the Obterek can insert ourselves into the reality of your solar system for brief periods only, for scant minutes every month. The Serene are vigilant, and watch for us, and we can compromise their surveillance only temporarily; likewise, we can breach their charea only briefly.”
He pounced on this. “You can breach the charea?”
“With extreme care and a great expenditure of energy, yes,” said the figure. “But to answer your question: you can help the Obterek undermine the Serene, and return the planet and its people to the Natural Way, because you inhabit this reality in a way that we do not. Together we can bring an end to the regime of the Serene on Earth.”