Morwell gained confidence. He moved his chair closer to the figure and said, “And how might I accomplish this? And why me, of all…”
The blue figure interrupted. “You maintain an opposition, feeble though it is, to the Serene. You have contacts, a network of agents working to your ends. One of these: to locate the Serene’s human representatives.”
Morwell nodded. “That is so, yes.”
“We, too, are interested in these people. We, the Obterek, believe they hold the key to what the Serene are planning in this system. The Serene are using them in ways we cannot quite fathom. To capture a representative, to find out from these people how they are being used, will mark a step change in our opposition to the Serene.”
Morwell nodded. “We have been attempting to trace these people, which is easier said than done. We have leads, suspects. But when we get close…” He snapped his thumb and forefinger, “they go to ground.”
“In that, James Morwell, we can assist.”
For the first time the figure moved. It took a step forward, and then another, and there was something startling about the strength of purpose it exhibited, as if battling against a gravity greater than that to which it was accustomed.
It stood before his desk, pulsing, and from just a couple of metres away Morwell could feel the heat radiating from its body.
The figure reached out a hand, and opened it.
A shower of what looked like sparkling blue coins — the same shade and make-up as the body of the Obterek — spilled across the desk.
Morwell stared at the dozen discs as they glowed on the desk-top.
He looked up at the figure. “And these are?”
“What they are called does not matter, nor how they work. I could not explain their mechanics in any way that you would understand. Put simply, though erroneously, they transmit the content of a sentient’s mind to us through a breach in the space-time continuum. This explanation is imprecise, but will suffice.”
“And you would like my agents to…?”
“When you apprehend a suspect, one of these attached to that person will be enough to begin the transmission process.”
He stared at the discs. “And just how do we attach them?”
“By simply placing a disc against the skin of a suspect. The disc will do the rest, will insert itself instantly under the skin of the suspect, who will feel nothing. One hour later, however, the subject will die — an unavoidable consequence of the transmission.”
“Die…” Morwell said to himself. He gestured towards the discs. “But I can handle them with… impunity?”
“You will not be harmed.”
He was silent for a time. At last he asked, “And how do I know I can trust you? How do I know that these… these discs will do what you say they will?”
He had a dozen more questions, but these would do to start with.
The figure said, “The fact is that you do not know, for certain. You must merely trust. And hope, James Morwell. And hope is a commodity of which you have had little over the course of the past ten years.” The figure paused, pulsing beautifully, and went on, “We have read your manifesto. We have studied your online pronouncements. The Serene, too, are aware of you, but in their complacency they allow you to conduct your opposition, such as it is. But that is the difference between the Obterek and the Serene: if you were opposed to the Obterek, we would have no compunction in carrying out your summary extermination.”
Morwell almost smiled with the thrill of hearing such threats. He was thirteen again, and his father was approaching him with a baseball bat…
He leaned forward and said, “And after the Serene have been vanquished, and the Obterek rule, what then?”
The figure standing before his desk began to fade. Its last words sounded in his head: “Then you, the human race, will be alone again, such is the Natural Law…”
“But –” he began, meaning to ask what the Obterek would gain from a return to the old ways.
A second later the blue figure vanished.
Morwell leaned forward and touched the closest disc. It was warm, and pulsed against his fingertips. Smiling, he reached out and trawled the rest towards him like a gambler scooping his winnings.
CHAPTER FOUR
ALLEN HAD TWO hours to wait before the monotrain was due to leave Tokyo and head north to the Fujiyama arboreal city, so he sat in the plaza outside the station and sipped a coffee.
The city skyline was dominated by a thousand-metre-tall obelisk, jet black and slightly tapering towards its summit. It was one of a dozen identical buildings gifted by the Serene, along with the eight ‘wilderness towns’, the hundred-plus littoral domed cities, and the arboreal cities, numbering in their thousands, that were springing up all around the world. The difference with the black obelisks was that they were the only Serene buildings placed within already existing cities, and they were the only constructions not purposefully created for human habitation. In fact, no one knew why the obelisks had appeared simultaneously five years ago in the centres of twelve of the largest cities on Earth.
Since their arrival Allen’s monthly missions, as he thought of them, were always to the cities occupied by the obelisks. The routine was always the same. He would be alerted by a golden figure’s calm voice in his head telling him to make his way to London Airport, where he would board a Serene plane and instantly lose consciousness.
The next thing he knew it would be one or two days later and he’d be sitting on a bench near one of the obelisks. In the early days the same routine would transpire, and he would come to his senses in various far-flung cities around the world. He would check his softscreen and more often than not find he had a photo-shoot appointment the very same day somewhere not far away. For the past five years, however, every time he regained consciousness he was close to an obelisk — leading him to assume that his ‘missions’ and the obelisks were in some way linked.
A few months ago he’d taken the monorail into London with Sally, and after a morning spent in the National Gallery Allen had suggested a stroll to Marble Arch. There they, along with thousands of other curious sightseers, walked around the base of the obelisk, marvelling at its seamlessness, its lack of features, the faint pulsing warmth it gave off.
The media had not been slow in suggesting what the towers might be: they were, opined a respected international newsfeed, where the Serene themselves dwelled, looking out with sophisticated surveillance apparatus at the doings of the human race. More bizarre suggestions included the idea that they were the very engines that maintained the Serene’s regime of non-violence across the face of the Earth, that they were the physical essence of the extraterrestrials themselves, or that they were alien prisons where malcontents from across the galaxy were suspended and stored.
Allen subscribed to none of these theories. The obelisks were, he surmised, meeting places where summits between fellow representatives like himself gathered to conduct Serene business — fulfilling much the same role as did the amphitheatre in the conjoined starships a decade ago.
Of course, quite what business he and the other representatives were conducting was another mystery.
He sat back and watched the crowds of Japanese workers and shoppers pass back and forth across the plaza. Visually not much had changed in the populated centres of the world. The scene here ten years ago, before the coming of the Serene, would be much the same as this one, other than the minor changes of fashion, advertisements and some architecture. The changes were on a more substantial, psychological level, he thought — which had an effect on the people of the plaza. There seemed to be a more carefree atmosphere wherever crowds gathered now, a realisation that the threat of violence, however remote, was no more, so that individuals were no longer burdened with the subconscious fear of their fellow man. It was the same wherever he went, a joyful absence of fear which promoted, in turn, a definite altruism: he was sure he’d seen, over the course of the last few years, acts of kindness, generosity and selflessness in a larger measure than before the arrival of the aliens.