Kéthani

by Eric Brown

  Zara said, “Whichever it is, we have the Kéthani to thank.”

  For the first time that night, Ben spoke up. He was the only one among our group who was not implanted, and we had never questioned him as to why this was so. Some things, we thought, were just too personal to share.

  “Perhaps,” he said, “the people who come back, the returnees, aren’t really the people they were. Perhaps,” and he smiled as he said this, making me think that he wasn’t entirely serious, “perhaps they’re aliens in disguise?”

  We laughed and argued amongst ourselves for a while, and then Ben said, “I’ve often wondered about the bastards who die and come back. I mean, the really evil people. Killers, despots, psychotics. They come back changed—I know that. But who’s to say that they are who they once were?”

  Zara smiled. “You don’t really think…?”

  Ben laughed. “Of course not. I’ve read enough to realise that the maniacs are somehow mentally altered up there, for the better. Made humane.” He shook his head, his gaze lost in the leaping flames of the open fire. “It makes you wonder, though, exactly what does happen…”

  Talk drifted onto other subjects.

  Ben remained quiet for the rest of the evening. It was only later—a year later, to be precise—that he told us the reason why he was not implanted, and why he wondered at the process of transformation undergone by the returnees.

  THREE

  THE KÉTHANI INHERITANCE

  That winter, two events occurred that changed my life. My father died and, for the first time in thirty years, I fell in love. I suppose the irony is that, but for my father’s illness, I would never have met Elisabeth Carstairs.

  He was sitting in the lounge of the Sunny View nursing home that afternoon, chocked upright in his wheelchair with the aid of cushions, drooling and staring at me with blank eyes. The room reeked of vomit with an astringent overlay of bleach.

  “Who’re you, then?”

  I sighed. I was accustomed to the mind-numbing, repetitive charade. “Ben,” I said. “Benjamin. Your son.”

  Sometimes it worked, and I would see the dull light of recognition in his rheumy eyes. Today, however, he remained blank.

  “Who’re you, then? What do you want?”

  “I’m Ben, your son. I’ve come to visit you.”

  I looked around the room, at the other patients, or “guests” as the nurses called them; they all gazed into space, seeing not the future, but the past.

  “Who’re you, then?”

  Where was the strong man I had hated for so long? Such was his decrepitude that I could not bring myself to hate him any longer; I only wished that he would die.

  I had wished him dead so many times in the past. Now it came to me that he was having his revenge, that he was protracting his life purely to spite me.

  In Holland, I thought, where a euthanasia law had been passed years ago, the old bastard would be long dead.

  I stood and moved to the window. The late afternoon view was far from sunny. Snow covered the hills to the far horizon, above which the sky was mauve with the promise of evening.

  I was overcome with a sudden and soul-destroying depression.

  “What’s this?” my father said.

  I focused on his apparition reflected in the plate-glass window. His thin hand had strayed to his implant.

  “What’s this, then?”

  I returned to him and sat down. I would go through this one more time—for perhaps the hundredth time in a year—and then say goodbye and leave.

  His frail fingers tapped the implant at his temple, creating a hollow drumming sound.

  “It’s your implant,” I said.

  “What’s it doing there?”

  It sat beneath the papery skin of his temple, raised and rectangular, the approximate size of a matchbox.

  “The medics put it there. Most people have them now. When you die, it will bring you back to life.”

  His eyes stared at me, then through me, uncomprehendingly.

  I stood. “I’m going now. I’ll pop in next week…” It would be more like next month, but, in his shattered mind, all days were one now.

  As I strode quickly from the room I heard him say, “Who’re you, then?”

  An infant-faced Filipino nurse beamed at me as I passed reception. “Would you like a cup of tea, Mr. Knightly?”

  I usually refused, wanting only to be out of the place, but that day something made me accept the offer.

  Serendipity. Had I left Sunny View then, I might never have met Elisabeth. The thought often fills me with panic.

  “Coffee, if that’s okay? I’ll be in here.” I indicated a room designated as the library, though stocked only with Mills and Boon paperbacks, Reader’s Digest magazines and large-print Western novels.

  I scanned the chipboard bookcases for a real book, then gave up. I sat down in a big, comfortable armchair and stared out at the snow. A minute later the coffee arrived. The nurse intuited that I wished to be left alone.

  I drank the coffee and gazed at my reflection in the glass. I felt like a patient, or rather a “guest”.

  I think I was weeping when I heard, “It is depressing, isn’t it?”

  The voice shocked me. She was standing behind my chair, gripping a steaming mug and smiling.

  I dashed away a tear, overcome with irritation at the interruption.

  She sat down in the chair next to mine. I guessed she was about my age—around thirty— though I learned later that she was thirty-five. She was broad and short with dark hair bobbed, like brackets, around a pleasant, homely face.

  “I know what it’s like. My mother’s a guest here. She’s senile.” She had a direct way of speaking that I found refreshing.

  “My father has Alzheimer’s,” I said. “He’s been in here for the past year.”

  She rolled her eyes. “God! The repetition! I sometimes just want to strangle her. I suppose I shouldn’t be saying that, should I? The thing is, we were so close. I love her dearly.”

  I found myself saying, “In time, when she dies and returns, her memory will—” I stopped, alarmed by something in her expression.

  It was as if I had slapped her.

  Her smile persisted, but it was a brave one now in the face of adversity. She shook her head. “She isn’t implanted. She refused.”

  “Is she religious?”

  “No,” she said, “just stubborn. And fearful. She doesn’t trust the Kéthani.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She shook her head, as if to dismiss the matter. “I’m Elisabeth, by the way. Elisabeth Carstairs.”

  She reached out a hand, and, a little surprised at the forthright gesture, I took it. I never even thought to tell her my own name.

  She kept hold of my hand, turning it over like an expert palm reader. Only later did I come to realise that she was as lonely as I was: the difference being, of course, that Elisabeth had hope, something I had given up long ago.

  “Don’t tell me,” she said, examining my weather-raw fingers. “You’re a farmer, right?”

  I smiled. “Wrong. I build and repair dry-stone walls.”

  She laughed. “Well, I was almost there, wasn’t I? You do work outdoors, with your hands.”

  “What do you do?” I would never have asked normally, but something in her manner put me at ease. She did not threaten.

  “I teach English. The comprehensive over at Bradley.”

  “Then you must know Jeff Morrow. He’s a friend.”

  “You know Jeff? What a small world.”

  “We meet in the Fleece every Tuesday.” I shrugged. “Creatures of habit.”

  She glanced at her watch and pulled a face. “I really should be getting off. It’s been nice talking…” She paused, looking quizzical.

  I was slow on the uptake, then realised. “Ben,” I said. “Ben Knightly. Look, I’m driving into the village. I can give you a lift if you—”

  She jangled car keys. “Thanks anyway.”
<
br />   I stood to leave, nodding awkwardly, and for the first time she could see the left-hand side of my face.

  She stared, something stricken in her eyes, at where my implant should have been.

  I hurried from the nursing home and into the raw winter wind, climbed into my battered ten-year-old Sherpa van and drove away at speed.

  The following evening, just as I was about to set off to the Fleece, the phone rang. I almost ignored it, but it might have been a prospective customer, and I was going through a lean spell.

  “Hello, Ben Knightly? Elisabeth here, Elisabeth Carstairs. We met yesterday.”

  “Of course, yes.” My heart was thudding, my mouth dry, the usual reactions of an inexperienced teenager to being phoned by a girl.

  “The thing is, I have a wall that needs fixing. A couple of cows barged through it the other day. I don’t suppose…?”

  “Always looking for work,” I said, experiencing a curious mixture of relief and disappointment. “I could come round tomorrow, or whenever’s convenient.”

  “Sometime tomorrow afternoon?” She gave me her address.

  “I’ll be there between two and three,” I said, thanked her and rang off.

  That night, in the main bar of the Fleece, I was on my third pint of Landlord before I broached the subject of Elisabeth Carstairs.

  Jeff Morrow was a small, thoughtful man who shared my interest in football and books. An accretion of sadness showed in his eyes. He had lost two people close to him, over the years; one had been his wife, killed in a car accident before the coming of the Kéthani; the other a lover who had refused to be implanted.

  He had never once commented on the fact that I was not implanted, and I respected him for this.

  The other members of our party were Richard Lincoln and Khalid and Zara Azzam.

  “I met a woman called Elisabeth Carstairs yesterday,” I said. “She teaches at your school, Jeff.”

  “Ah, Liz. Lovely woman. Good teacher. The kids love her. One of those naturals.”

  That might have been the end of that conversation, but I went on, “Is she married?”

  He looked up. “Liz? God no.”

  Richard traced the outline of his implant with an absent forefinger. “Why ‘God, no’, Jeff? She isn’t—?”

  “No, nothing like that.” He shrugged, uncomfortable. Jeff is a tactful man. He said to me, “She’s been looking after her mother for the past ten years. As long as I’ve known her, she’s never had a boyfriend.”

  Khalid winked at me. “You’re in there, Ben.” Zara dug her husband in the ribs with a sharp elbow.

  I swore at him. Jeff said, “Where did you meet?”

  I told him, and conversation moved on to the health of my father (on his third stroke, demented, but still hanging on), and then by some process of convoluted logic to Leeds United’s prospects this Saturday.

  Another thing I liked about the Tuesday night group was that they never made digs about the fact that I’d never had a girlfriend since they’d known me—since my early twenties, if the truth be known.

  I’d long ago reconciled myself to a life mending dry-stone walls, reading the classics, and sharing numerous pints with friends at the Fleece.

  And I’d never told anyone that I blamed my father. Some wounds are too repulsive to reveal.

  It was midnight by the time I made my way up the hill and across the moors to the cottage. I recall stopping once to gaze at the Onward Station, towering beside the reservoir a mile away. It coruscated in the light of the full moon like a stalagmite of ice.

  As I stared, a beam of energy, blindingly white, arced through the night sky towards the orbiting Kéthani starship, and the sight, I must admit, frightened me.

  “I tried repairing it myself,” Elisabeth said, “but as you can see I went a bit wrong.”

  “It’s like a jigsaw puzzle,” I said. “It’s just a matter of finding the right piece and fitting it in.”

  It was one of those rare, brilliantly sunny November days. There was no wind, and the snow reflected the sunlight with a twenty-four carat dazzle.

  I dropped the last stone into place, rocked it home, and then stood back and admired the repair.

  “Thirty minutes,” Elisabeth said. “You make it look so easy.”

  I smiled. “Matter of fact, I built this wall originally, twelve years ago.”

  “You’ve been in the business that long?”

  We chatted. Elisabeth wore snow boots and a padded parka with a fur-lined hood that that made her look like an Eskimo. She stamped her feet. “Look, it’s bitter out here. Would you like a coffee?”

  “Love one.”

  Her house was a converted barn on the edge of the moor, on the opposite side of the village to my father’s cottage where I lived. Inside it was luxurious: deep pile carpets, a lot of low beams and brass. The spacious kitchen was heated by an Aga.

  I stood on the doormat, conscious of my boots.

  “Just wipe them and come on in,” she said, laughing. “I’m not house-proud, unlike my mother.”

  I sat at the kitchen table and glanced through the door to a room full of books. I pointed. “Like reading?”

  “I love books,” she said, handing me a big mug of real coffee. “I teach English, and the miracle is that it hasn’t put me off reading. You?” She leaned against the Aga, holding her cup in both hands.

  We talked about books for a while, and I think she was surprised at my knowledge.

  Once I saw her glance at my left temple, where the implant should have been. I felt that she wanted to comment, to question me, but couldn’t find a polite way of going about it.

  The more I looked at her, and the more we talked, the more I realised that I found her attractive. She was short, and a little overweight, and her hair was greying, but her smile filled me with joy.

  Romantic and inexperienced as I was, I extrapolated fantasies from this meeting, mapped the future.

  “How often do you visit your mother?” I asked, to fill a conversational lull.

  “Four times a week. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday.”

  I hesitated. “How long has she been ill?”

  She blew. “Oh… when has she ever been well! She had her first stroke around ten years ago, not long after we moved here. I’ve been working part-time and looking after her ever since. She’s averaged about… oh, a stroke every three years since. The doctors say it’s a miracle she’s still with us.”

  She hesitated, then said, “Then the Kéthani came, and offered us the implants… and I thought all my prayers had been answered.”

  I avoided her eyes.

  Elisabeth stared into her cup. “She was a very intelligent woman, a member of the old Labour Party before the Blair sell-out. She knew her mind. She wanted nothing to do with afterlife, as she called it.”

  “She was suspicious of the Kéthani?”

  “A little, I suppose. Weren’t we all, in the beginning? But it was more than that. I think she foresaw humanity becoming complacent, apathetic with this life when the stars beckoned.”

  “Some people would say she was right.”

  A silence developed. She stared at me. “Is that the reason you…?”

  There were as many reasons for not having the implant, I was sure, as there were individuals who had decided to go without. Religious, philosophical, moral… I gave Elisabeth a version of the truth.

  Not looking her in the eye, but staring into my empty cup, I said, “I decided not to have the implant, at first, because I was suspicious. I thought I’d wait; see how it went with everyone who did have it. A few years passed… It seemed fine. The returnees came back fitter, healthier, younger. Those that went among the stars later, they recounted their experiences. It was as the Kéthani said. We had nothing to fear.” I looked up quickly to see how she was taking it.

  She was squinting at me. She shrugged. “So, why didn’t you…?”

  “By that time,” I said, “I’d come to realise something. Li
ving on the edge of death, staring it in the face, made life all the more worth living. I’d be alone, on some outlying farm somewhere, and I’d be at one with the elements… and, I don’t know, I came to appreciate being alive.”

  Bullshit, I thought. It was the line I’d used many a time in the past, and though it contained an element of truth, it was not the real reason.

  Elisabeth was intelligent; I think she saw through my words, realised that I was hiding something, and I must admit that I felt guilty about lying to her.

  I thanked her for the coffee and made to leave.

  “How much for the work?” she said, gesturing through the window at the repaired wall.

  I hesitated. I almost asked her if she would like to go for a meal, but stopped myself just in time. I told myself that it would seem crass, as if she had to accept the invitation in payment. In fact, the coward in me shied away from escalating the terms of our relationship.

  “Call it fifty,” I said.

  She gave me a fifty euro note and I hurried from the house, part of me feeling that I had escaped, while another part was cursing my fear and inadequacy.

  I found myself, after that, visiting my father on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday. Sunny View seemed a suitably neutral venue in which to meet and talk to Elisabeth Carstairs.

  I even found myself looking forward to the visits.

  About two weeks after I repaired her wall, I was sitting in the lounge with my father. It was four o’clock and we were alone. Around four-thirty Elisabeth would emerge from her mother’s room and we would have coffee in the library.

  I was especially nervous today because I’d decided to ask her if she would like to come for a meal the following day, a Thursday. I’d heard about a good Indonesian place in Bradley.

  I’d come to realise that I liked Elisabeth Carstairs for who she was, her essential character, rather than for what she might represent: a woman willing to show me friendship, affection, and maybe even more.