Chapter 4: Origins

Turning back to Bronwen he said, “There isn’t much to tell, really. Nobody knows what to do in these circumstances. The military want to blow them out of the sky before they land. The Church of England wants to send a missionary as first contact. The Government probably wants to send a canvasser with a Party Manifesto. The Civil Service want to send a Customs and Immigration officer to search their space ship for excess duty-free, and to quiz them on their status as refugees or economic migrants. Nobody knows why they are coming. At least we have contacted them, but nobody will tell me how, and more worryingly, nobody will tell me why they won’t tell me. As to how this all started, it was an odd decision by the Queen herself, she decided that as her governments had always held strong views about other governments that was well and good in respect of other nations on earth, but was too limiting for interstellar relations. She wondered how the average politician would react to meeting a ‘hive mind’ for example, or a species which had no concept of sex.”

He paused, “So we designed a non-existent organisation to cope with these non-existent visitors, complete with non-existent Centre and communications, at this point it was an interesting intellectual exercise, but no more. Then it was suggested that, perhaps it might be useful to build a single mobile communications unit for use when needed, in such circumstances as a plane crash close to a motor way. The specs included Angel Two and Three as sort of Gold commanders on site.”

Bronwen thought he had finished, then he said, “Rumours suddenly started to circulate that a UFO had crashed in the USA killing all the occupants, and it was said that we needed three working communications systems, and a list of acceptable sites, and several Two/Three pairs. And here we are.”

After that William bustled off and Bronwen saw that Huw was talking to a somewhat agitated little man whom she recognised by sight but could not place. She decided not to join them and was alone with her thoughts for a few moments.