“You’re talking in riddles, Sal.”
“I’m sorry, but it’s been a strange couple of days. Look, Kath, my long-time friend Kath Kemp, is not what she seems. You might find this hard to believe, Geoff, but she’s a self-aware entity.”
He had a flash vision of Nina Ricci telling him about the man she had met in Barcelona…
He nodded. “And when you saw the accident, and you thought she’d died…?”
“Oh, it was horrible, horrible. She was dead. No pulse. You can’t imagine what…” She hugged her tea cup, then went on. “An ambulance came, whisked her away. And then… the following morning, she called me and arranged a meeting. She came over and told me she was a self-aware entity and had been here, on Earth, for a little over a hundred years.”
He stared at her. “Small, dumpy, mousey, homely Kath Kemp? A self-aware entity?”
“I know, I know… But somehow, it made sense. And, you know what? I see her still as the same person. Still a friend… My friend, the alien entity.”
“And did she tell you what she was doing here?”
“Not everything. A little. I think the best description would be that she’s a facilitator.”
He interrupted. “Don’t tell me. That accident… it wasn’t an accident, right?”
She was watching him closely. “No. No, it wasn’t, but how…?”
He told her about Fujiyama, the dissolution of the tower and his hairs-breadth escape, then the attack of the blue figures.
“They’re called the Obterek,” he said, “according to a journalist I met. Aliens who oppose the Serene. They… I can’t recall exactly the phrase she used, but the Obterek somehow reconfigured the reality of the arboreal city area and undermined the Serene’s charea injunction. Then they set about killing as many humans as possible.”
Sally said, “But there was nothing on any of the news channels…”
“I suspect the Serene imposed a blackout.” He paused. “I said the blue figures began killing humans… and they succeeded, but… I don’t really know how to explain this — but the golden figures, the self-aware entities, brought them back to life. I saw the journalist die. Then she was absorbed by a SAE…” He stopped, pulled the flap of his shirt from his trousers, and twisted to peer down at his midriff.
Sally slipped from the table and knelt beside him. “You? You were hit?”
His fingers traced where the laser had impacted. The skin was smooth, unblemished.
“It hit me here, and the pain…” He shook his head in wonder.
She took his hand and kissed his knuckles. “What happened?”
“I felt the impact, the pain…” As he spoke, tears came to his eyes. He dashed them away and went on, “And I thought I was dead. I… do you know something, I thought of you and Hannah, your grief…”
She sat on his lap and they hugged. “It’s fine now, everything’s okay.”
“Then something else hit me, a physical force, and I was… somehow inside… a self-aware entity. It left the area at speed. I passed out, and the last I recall was heading towards the obelisk in Tokyo, and I felt panic at the imminent impact. And then I woke up on the train ten miles south of Wem.” He looked up at her. “What’s happening, Sally? Fujiyama? Here? The Obterek? Did Kath say anything?”
She frowned. “A little, but not much more than I’ve told you. But she’s calling in tomorrow on the way back from Birmingham. She has something she needs to discuss with us.”
“I’m not sure I like the way you said ‘something,’ Sal.”
She looked up at the wall clock. “Three fifteen. Tell you what, let’s take the canal path to the school and pick up Trouble. I have something to tell you on the way.”
She stood up and fetched her handbag.
“That ‘something’ again.” He smiled. “Don’t you think you’ve told me enough already?”
They left the house and Sally locked the back door.
As they strolled hand in hand along the canal path, with insects buzzing in the hedges and water-boatmen skimming the still surface of the water, she said, “How would you like to live on Mars?”
He peered at her. He went for levity. “Well, all things considered, I’m pretty settled in Shropshire, and I’ve heard property prices there are astronomical.”
She feigned pushing him into the canal. “I’m serious.”
“Kath, right? That’s what she wants to talk to us about tomorrow?”
“She told me a little about it. They, the Serene and the SAEs, have terraformed Mars, and they won’t stop there. They’re pushing outwards, through the solar system… and they need colonists.”
“Us? Me and you and Hannah?”
She nodded. “I’m a medic, and in demand. You’re a representative –”
“Whatever that means.”
“Kath was serious. They want colonists to settle Mars first, and after that…”
He thought about it, about a terraformed Mars; it was the stuff of boyhood dreams. He considered strolling in the foothills of Olympus Mons and laughed aloud.
Sally nudged him. “What?”
He told her. “Hannah would miss her friends. But I suppose kids are adaptable…”
“You’re already considering it?”
“No, not really. Let’s wait to see what Kath has to say, okay?”
They collected Hannah from school, tired and rosy-cheeked from a long day. She ran on ahead, skipping and shouting with a couple of friends. On the way back, Geoff suggested they pop into the Three Horseshoes. “I could kill a pint.”
They sat at the table by the fishpond while Hannah lay on her belly and poked a finger into the water. The fish broke the surface, staring up at her. On his way to the bar, Geoff wondered what the koi made of the giant being whose pink finger promised, but did not deliver, food.
He carried two pints of Leffe and a fresh orange juice from the bar, and they sat in the westering sun and watched their daughter play with the fish. Sally said, “Mars…”
He smiled at her, and it struck him anew that his wife was quite beautiful.
He laughed. “Mars indeed!” he said.
HE SPENT A troubled night, his dreams plagued by images of Obterek blue men lasering down defenceless humans.
He woke around five, the room light despite the drawn curtains, and listened to the sound of Sally’s breathing. He reached out and slipped a hand across the small of her back, reassured by her warmth.
Hannah, their alarm clock, burst into the room at seven-thirty and woke Allen from a light slumber. She chattered constantly until breakfast, where a bowl of Weetabix shut her up. They walked her to school along the canal path and returned silently, each lost in their own thoughts.
“Tea?” Sally asked when they got back.
Allen nodded. “What time’s Kath due?”
“She said around ten.”
He looked at the clock. Nine-twenty. “Not long then.”
He was feeling curiously apprehensive, and he could not really say why — whether it was due to the idea of Mars, or of meeting, face to face, a self-aware entity in human form.
They sat on either side of the kitchen table and sipped their tea. At last Allen said, “How would you feel about moving to Mars, if it’s really on?”
She pursed her lips and rocked her head, considering. “I honestly don’t know. I suppose it would depend on the job, and the type of people we’d be with. I know, I know, we wouldn’t know about the latter until we got there. But I suppose I could adapt to living almost anywhere, so long as I had you and Hannah, a decent job, and we were surrounded by good people.”