He considered his own life over the past ten years, and smiled to himself as he realised that perhaps the greater difference made to it had not been the coming of the Serene, but the arrival of Sally Walsh and his daughter, Hannah.
He often experienced a retrospective shiver of dread at the thought that he might never have met Sally Walsh. He had been in the right place at the right time: a photo-shoot in the drought-stricken region of Karamoja where, just an hour before he was due to pack up and leave, Sally had arrived in a battered Land Rover to treat seriously malnourished tribespeople.
He’d liked the look of the thin, washed-out doctor instantly, and had made an excuse to extend his photographic session.
Their life together in England since then had been little short of idyllic.
He missed Sally and Hannah on his days away, and when he worked in locations around Britain between missions for the Serene, but he counted himself fortunate that he had the majority of every month — perhaps twenty days — to get under their feet while he ostensibly did the housework.
Thoughts of Sally made him reach for his softscreen. It would be the middle of the night in England, but she might have left a message.
He smiled as he saw her name at the top of the list, and accessed her call. A second later he sat up with alarm as his wife’s distraught face filled the screen. “Geoff. Something awful…”
His heart jumped sickeningly, but her next words reassured him on that score: “Hannah’s fine and so am I. It’s Kath. There was an accident. I saw it.” Her face crumpled, and Allen wanted nothing more than to hold her. “Oh, Geoff, it was awful, awful… Please ring me back as soon as you can. I love you.”
He checked the time of the message: she had left it over three hours ago.
He called back immediately, realising that Sally was likely to be sound asleep. There was no reply, so he left a message, whispering urgently into the screen, “Sally… I got your call. I’ll be home in around ten, twelve hours. I don’t know what to say. I’m so sorry. I’m thinking of you. I love you.”
He signed off, aware of the inadequacy of his words, and stared unseeingly across the plaza.
A TALL, TANNED, dark-haired woman in a short yellow sun dress had turned on her seat a couple of tables away and was watching him. She was perhaps in her mid-thirties, with the poised elegance of a film star or ballerina. Her face was hauntingly familiar, and he wondered if that was where he’d seen her at some point, on screen or stage.
Her gaze persisted and she smiled, and Allen, being English and unused to the attention of glamorous women, looked away and felt himself colour maddeningly.
He was aware, peripherally, of her uncrossing her long legs, standing and striding across the plaza towards his table.
Only when her shadow fell across him did he look up. His smile faltered.
She said, in Mediterranean-accented English, “I never forget a face.”
“Then you have the advantage of me,” he said, “because I do. Forgive me, but have we met?”
She touched the back of an empty chair with long fingers. “Would you mind…?”
“No, please.”
She sat down, signalled to a waiter with the air of one accustomed to attracting instant attention, and ordered an espresso.
She offered her hand. “Nina Ricci, and we have not met. But, ten years ago, we did attend the same gathering, and I have seen you once or twice since.”
“I’m Geoff,” he said, and only then did the belated penny drop. “Ah,” he said, relieved. “The Serene starships…” The tall, Italian-sounding woman who had been the first person to ask the Serene a question.
“That’s right. We were among the few who asked questions back then. I think most people were petrified by fear, but not we…”
He wondered why she had come to speak to him. He said, “For the ten years I’ve been a representative, I’ve never met another one.”
She sipped her coffee and smiled dazzlingly. “Ah, but I think that is because you have not been looking, Geoff.”
“And you have?”
“I am by nature a curious person. I want always to know how, what, why, when, who…”
“You’d make a fine journalist.”
“That is what I am, Geoff. A feature writer for the Corriere della Sera, Roma. I’m here to cover the opening of the arboreal city in Fujiyama.”
“Snap. That’s where I’m going.” He patted his bag hanging from the back of his chair. “Photographer.”
“But of course” — she pierced him with her olive-dark eyes — “that was not the principal reason we were brought here.”
He smiled. “Of course not. And your journalist’s curiosity would like to know why?”
In reply, she turned in her seat — the graceful torque of her back suggestive again of a ballerina — and pointed a long finger at the sable obelisk towering over the plaza.
She said, “Have you made the connection, Geoff?”
“That for the past few years we always wake up close to an obelisk? Yes, it had occurred to me.”
“And do you wonder what we do in there?”
“So… you think that we actually enter the obelisks?”
“I do, and so do the other three or four representatives I’ve met over the years.”
He shook his head. “Anyway, as to your question: pass. I’ve no idea.”
She pulled a mock-shocked expression. “No? Surely you must have? An intelligent Englishman like yourself?” She was baiting him.
“My wife would disagree about the intelligent bit,” he said, pleased for some reason that he’d mentioned Sally. He shrugged. “I don’t know… We’re conducting Serene business. So… I assumed in the early days we were meeting business people, heads of state, the powerful movers and shakers of the world. I see no reason why we’re not still doing that. Maybe… maybe we’re passing down the wisdom of the Serene.”
She was looking at him askance. She had a repertory of practised facial expressions, like an actress forever anticipating the close-up shot. “Do you really think this, when the Serene have in their service a legion of the so-called ‘golden figures’?”
He thought about it. “I might be wrong, but I always thought the self-aware entities manifested themselves only to us, the representatives — and in the early days stationed themselves on high rooftops and mountain summits, of course.”
She considered him for a few seconds, then said, “Reality check, Geoff. The golden figures are amongst us.”
He stared at her. “They are?” He made a show of looking around the plaza and finding none. “Strange, but I don’t see a single one.”
She leaned forward, elbows on table, pointed chin lodged in her cupped palm. “That is because, unobservant Englishman, they are in disguise.”
“Ah…” he said, and pointed at her. “But if they are disguised, then how could I be observant enough to spot them?”
She nodded. “Point taken. Perhaps I am lucky, because once I observed an accident.”
He finished his coffee. “I’m afraid you’ve lost me.” He smiled, intrigued by this beautiful, inquisitive Italian.
“I one day was walking down the avenue in Barcelona when I saw a man run over by an automobile. Splat! Dead and no doubting the fact. Only, a day later I saw the same man walking as large as life down the street a mile or so away… I never forget a face, as I said. So, being the curious type of girl, I accosted the man and asked him how, since I saw him die pretty messily the other day, he was now as fit as fit can be and showing no signs of his injuries.”