Silently, he damned himself. But what else could he do?
Doctor Fatima Hasid had never liked crowded rooms, even as a child. She’d skipped classes at the mosque because there were too many girls crammed into the small room put aside for women — the boys had a far larger room, and a better teacher — and she’d stopped going to them shortly after she entered secondary school. The NHS had had its fair share of crowded rooms, but as a doctor she’d been able to avoid them and see patients one by one. Entering the registry office was a foretaste of hell.
The lines seemed never-ending and she was silently relieved that she’d managed to convince her superiors to give her the afternoon off. London still had thousands of wounded on its hands, but they’d finally managed to get the worst of the wounded into proper hospitals — even if they had had to distribute them over Britain. The remainder, the ones who hadn’t been seriously injured, had had to be sent home. It had broken her heart to do it, but there’d been no choice. Their supplies had dropped to dangerously low levels.
Ahead of her, some boys were pushing and shoving. She hated to think what it was going to be like when her stepmother and her overweight sons and their relatives came to register themselves. Some of them were talking about refusing to register — after all, they’d had as little to do with the British Government as possible, except when it came to claiming benefits. Fatima suspected that if they tried to defy the aliens — the aliens they didn’t really believe in — they’d find that the aliens hammered them into the ground. The stories she’d heard from some of her patients were horrific.
She pulled her arms around herself as the queue kept inching forward, finally allowing her to catch sight of a desk. It was no surprise to see a human — a set of humans — standing behind it, trying to handle the paperwork. The aliens wouldn’t have wanted to waste their manpower on such a piddling task. Whatever the claims that they were all-powerful — the radio had certainly been assuring the British population that resistance was futile — there had to be limits on their manpower. Alien-power? She was still mulling that over when she finally reached the desk and sat down in front of the civil servant.
“Name, address, proof of identity…”
The words rattled out and Fatima did her best to answer. It seemed that no one else from her family had registered yet, which was hardly a surprise. The amount of data the aliens were collecting puzzled her for a long moment, before she realised that they probably had sophisticated computers capable of mining through the vast datafiles and drawing conclusions in a way that no human could match. It struck her that they were experienced at invading and occupying planets — and if that was the case, who else had they fought? There had always been stories of UFOs flying around and kidnapping people, flown by little grey men with anal fixations. Maybe they were real after all…
“You’re a doctor,” the civil servant said. “You’re in one of the protected categories.”
Fatima frowned, leaning forward. “Protected categories?”
“They’re looking for people with certain skills,” the civil servant admitted. “Doctors and nurses… they’re needed right where they are, so they probably won’t send for you and put you to work somewhere else. Others… they’re not so lucky. The men who register today who aren’t in a protected category will probably find themselves ordered to do brute labour in a week’s time.”
“I see,” Fatima said. “And you know this… how?”
“I don’t,” the civil servant said, “but I think it’s a reasonable guess, don’t you?”
Fatima couldn’t disagree. A machine on the desk buzzed and whirred, and finally discharged an ID card. Fatima studied it, trying to keep her consternation off her face. She hadn’t even noticed the camera, but there was a picture of her on the front of the card. It seemed that there were limits to alien technology after all, part of her mind noted. Every photograph she’d had taken for official purposes had managed to make her look bad, mad, dead or some combination of the three. The alien technology was no better.
“Carry it with you at all times,” the civil servant warned. “There’s a hefty fine if you lose it — and failing to produce it on demand could mean arrest, or worse. I don’t think they have lawyers telling them what they can and cannot do to prisoners…”
Fatima thanked him and left. Outside, night was already starting to fall and so she hurried home. A curfew had been declared and there were already terrible rumours about what happened to those caught outside by the aliens. And her stepmother would bitch and moan if she was home late. They were supposed to be hosting guests soon and she was required to help. She would almost sooner have faced the aliens.
Alan Beresford stood in an office that had once belonged to a banking CEO and stared out over London. The city was finally coming back to life at nights, even though the curfew meant that many who would once have been outside partying would be tucked up safe at home, doubtless wondering when their world would shatter around them once again. It was his world now… well, his and a few aliens, but it seemed they didn’t care about the perks he claimed for himself as long as he did a good job. And he had done a good job. It had been his idea to put the civil servants back to work, along with the men who ran the electricity and water companies. London was coming back to life — and so was the rest of the country.
The aliens were ruthlessly pragmatic, but they clearly didn’t have the manpower to govern all of Britain, let alone the world. Alan was still unsure of what they actually wanted in the long run, but he was confident that he would be able to find a way to be useful to them. And he had his own long-term plans. He’d put friends and cronies in positions of power all over the country, laying a network that could be used in his own interests as well as those of his masters. It helped that the Prime Minister appeared to have vanished somewhere in the chaos of the first few days. Apart from a single message which was proving alarmingly persistent on the internet, no one had heard anything from him. It was quite possible that he was dead.
Losing Prince Harry was equally annoying. Harry was King now that his father and brother were both dead. Alan doubted that the population of Britain would rise in outrage at losing their King, but Harry could have made an excellent figurehead for a new Britain. Or perhaps not. He’d been a soldier and would probably have old-fashioned ideas about loyalty and honour and service to his country running through his veins.
Foolish, Alan told himself, and smiled. Loyalty and honour meant nothing these days — and they’d meant little before the aliens arrived. All that mattered was what one did for one’s own self — and if it meant stamping on a few toes… well, you couldn’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.
He lifted his glass — an expensive wine, but it had been easy to obtain in starving London — and drank a silent toast. To power, he told himself… and to those bold enough to seize it.
Chapter Fifteen
North England
United Kingdom, Day 8
Haddon Hall was one of the original stately England manors, built before the English Civil War by a loyalist who had lost his life fighting for Good King Charles. It was a regal building, although hopelessly impractical for military purposes, surrounded by gardens that regularly won awards in regional and national contests. Some people would have found it a paradise, a chance to play at being an English aristocrat. Gabriel Burley found it maddening. It was a prison by any other name, a place where he could do anything — except leave. The handful of security staff — really soldiers wearing civilian clothes — were polite and friendly, but they wouldn’t let him leave. He was too important to risk falling into enemy hands.