by Eric Brown
“I think you’d better ask her that yourself,” I said, and left it at that. I changed the subject. “How about a meal at the Fleece when we get back? Would you like that?”
“Mmm,” she said, without her usual enthusiasm for the idea, and fell silent.
We were a couple of miles from home when the onboard mobile rang. I cursed.
“Dan Chester here,” I said, hoping the collection would be nearby.
“Dan.” It was Masters, the Controller at the Station. “I’ve just had a call from someone over in Bradley. This is most irregular. They’ve reported a death.”
I slowed down, the better to concentrate. “I don’t understand. Was the subject implanted?”
“Apparently so.”
“Then why didn’t it register with you?”
“Exactly what I was wondering. That’s why I want you to investigate. I’m sending a team from the Station straight away, but I thought that as you’re in the area…”
I sighed. “Okay. Where is it?”
Masters relayed the address.
“Right. I’ll be in touch when I’ve found out what’s going on.” I cut the connection.
Bradley was only a mile or two out of my way. I could be there in ten minutes, sort out the problem in the same time, and be at the Fleece with a pint within the half hour.
I glanced back at Lucy. She was asleep, her head nodding with the motion of the Rover.
The Grange, Bradley Lower Road, turned out to be a Georgian house tucked away in a dense copse a mile down a treacherous, rutted track. The Range Rover negotiated the potholes with ease, rocking back and forth like a fairground ride.
Only when the foursquare manse came into view, surrounded by denuded elm and sycamore, did I remember hearing that the Grange had been bought at a knockdown price a few years ago by some kind of New Age eco-community.
A great painted rainbow decorated the facade of the building, together with a collection of smiley faces, peace symbols and anarchist logos.
A motley group of men and women in their thirties had gathered on the steps of the front door, evidently awaiting my arrival. They wore dungarees and oversized cardigans and sweaters; many of them sported dreadlocks.
Lucy was still sleeping. I locked the Rover and hurried over to the waiting group, a briefcase containing release forms and death certificates tucked under my arm.
A stout woman with a positive comet’s tail of blonde dreads greeted me. I was pleased to see that she was implanted—as were, so far as a brief glance could tell me, most of the other men and women standing behind her. Some radical groups I’d heard of were opposed to the intervention of the Kéthani, and openly hostile to their representatives.
“Dan Chester,” I said. “I’m the ferryman from the Station.”
“Dan, I’m Marsha,” the woman said. “Welcome to New Haven. I’ll show you to…”
The press parted, and Marsha escorted me across a garishly painted hallway and down a corridor.
Marsha was saying, “Sanjay was against the resurrection process, Dan. We were surprised when he decided to be implanted, a couple of weeks ago.” She paused outside a door, pushed it open and stood back. I stepped over the threshold and stopped in my tracks.
Sanjay lay on a mattress in the corner of the room. He had opened the vein of his left arm all the way from the wrist to the crook of his elbow. Blood had spurted up the far wall, across the window, and soaked into the mattress around the body.
“Billy found him about thirty minutes ago,” Marsha was explaining. “We knew Sanjay was depressed, but we never thought…”
I took in the scene, and knew immediately that there was something not quite right about the corpse. By now the nanomechs released by the implant should have been effecting repairs on the wound. The body should have the relaxed appearance of someone asleep, not the stone-cold aspect of a corpse.
I hurried over, knelt, and placed my fingertips to the implant beneath the skin of the young man’s left temple.
The implant should have emitted a definite vibration, similar to the contented purring of a cat. I felt nothing.
I glanced over my shoulder; Marsha and half a dozen others were watching him from the door. “If I could be left alone for a minute or two…” I said.
They retreated, closing the door behind them.
I pulled out my mobile and got through to Masters at the Station.
“Dan here,” I said. “I’m with the subject. You’re not going to believe this—he’s implanted, but he’s dead.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Perhaps… I don’t know. I’ve never heard of a malfunction before. But there’s always a first time.”
“No way,” Masters said. “They can’t go wrong.”
“Well, it looks as though this one has.” I paused. “What the hell should I do?”
“The team should be with you any minute. I’ve called the police in. They’ll take over once they arrive.”
I cut the connection, moved to the window, and stared out, touching my own implant. I avoided another glance at the corpse, but I knew I would see the man’s agonised expression for a long time to come. He had been implanted, and had taken his own life, fully expecting to be resurrected…
Five minutes later I watched another Range Rover draw up beside mine, followed by a police car. Four Station officials, led by Richard Lincoln, hurried across the snow-covered drive and up the steps, two constables in their wake.
A minute later Richard appeared at the door, along with the officials and the police officers.
“What the hell’s going on, Dan?” Richard said.
“I wish I knew.” I indicated the corpse and went through my findings. The other officials recorded my statement and took video footage of the room.
Richard questioned Marsha and a few of the others, while the police called for forensic back-up.
I followed Richard outside and climbed into the Rover. Lucy was still asleep.
Richard tramped through the snow and I wound down the window. “We’ll take the body back to the Station when the police have finished,” he said, “try to find out what happened with the implant.”
I looked beyond him, to the posse of communards on the steps of the Grange, silent and watchful.
“Has anyone told them?”
Richard shook his head. “I’ll come back and explain the situation when we’ve found out exactly what happened. See you later, Dan.”
I fired the engine and headed up the track. The Fleece beckoned. I considered a rich pint of Taylor’s Landlord and a hot meal, and tried to forget about what I’d seen back at the Grange.
The Fleece was one of those horse brass and beams establishments that had resisted the tide of modernisation sweeping the country. Norman, the landlord, had the twin assets of a good publican: friendliness and the ability to keep a good pint. The food wasn’t bad, either.
It was seven o’clock by the time we settled ourselves in the main bar, a little too early for the regular Tuesday night crowd. I ordered myself a pint of Landlord and steak and kidney pie with roast potatoes, and for Lucy a fresh orange juice and veggie burger with salad.
The food arrived. Lucy was far from her lively self tonight; she was tired and hardly talked, answered my questions with monosyllabic replies and pushed her food around the plate with a distinct lack of interest.
I put my arm around her shoulders and pulled her towards me. “Home and an early night for you, m’girl.”
“Can I watch TV for a bit before I go to bed? Please.”
“Okay, seeing as there’s no school in the morning.”
I was about to suggest we leave when Khalid pushed through the door, a swirl of snow entering with him, and signalled across to me. He mimed downing a pint and pointed at my empty glass. I relented and gave him the thumbs up.
No doubt Lucy would tell Marianne that I’d kept her at the pub way past her bedtime, and I wouldn’t hear the last of it the next time I picked her up. Marianne thought alcoh
ol the tipple of the devil, and all who drank it damned.
Khalid ferried two pints from the bar and sat down across the table from me.
“Hi, sleepy-head,” he said to Lucy. Her eyelids were fighting a losing battle against sleep.
“Just the man,” Khalid said to me. “I hoped you’d be here.”
“It’s Tuesday night,” I said. “What’s wrong?”
“The implanted suicide you visited today,” he said.
I considered him over my pint. “Masters contacted you?”
Khalid nodded. “They brought the body into the hospital and I inspected the implant.”
I voiced what I’d been dreading since discovering the dead man. “It malfunctioned?” I asked, hard though that was to believe.
“Malfunctioned?” Khalid shook his head and accounted for the top two inches of his pint. He sighed with satisfaction. “I’d say that was well nigh impossible.”
“So…?”
“This is only the second case I’ve come across, but I’ve heard rumours that they’re more widespread than we first believed.”
He took another mouthful.
“What,” I said, unable to stop myself smiling, “is more widespread?”
“This is between you and me, okay? Don’t tell Masters I said anything. Your people at the Station have yet to come out with an official statement.” He saw that I was about to jump in with the obvious question, and raised a hand. “Okay, okay…” He leaned forward, a little melodramatically—only Old Wilf was at the bar, and he was stone deaf. “Some cowboys have started pirating fake implants.”
I lowered my pint and stared at him. “Why on earth…?” I began.
“It was only a matter of time,” Khalid said. “Think about it. There are thousands of people out there who refuse for whatever reasons to be implanted…” his eyes flickered, almost imperceptibly, towards Lucy. “They’re… what… one in a few hundred thousand? A minority, anyway. And like any minority, they occasionally suffer victimisation. Wouldn’t it be easier, they reckon, if they could have something that looks like, but wasn’t, an implant? They’d blend in, become one of the crowd. They would no longer stand out.”
“It makes a kind of sense,” I said. “And so some enterprising back-street surgeon has started offering the service?”
“Doesn’t have to be a surgeon. Anyone with a little medical knowledge can perform the operation. A quick slit, insert something the same shape as an implant, and seal the wound with synthi-flesh. Thirty minutes later you’re back out on the street.”
I thought through the implications. “But if these people don’t inform friends, loved ones?”
He was nodding. “Exactly. Like today. Sanjay’s friends thought he was implanted and fully expected him to be resurrected.”
“Christ,” I said. “The whole thing’s tragic.”
“And there are thousands of people going around out there with these fake, useless implants. Masters said something about a law to make them illegal. He’s talking to a few politicians tomorrow.”
Lucy had stretched out on the seat next to me and was snoring away. Had she been awake and bored, guilt might have driven me homeward. As it was, I owed Khalid a pint, and at that very second Ben Knightly and Elisabeth Carstairs dashed in from the snowstorm that was evidently raging outside. I was off work for a couple of days, and I could treat myself to a lie-in in the morning.
I pointed to Khalid’s empty glass. “Another?”
“You’ve twisted my arm.”
I bought another round. Ben and Elisabeth joined us and we stopped talking shop.
It was another hour, and two more pints, before conscience got the better of me. I refused all offers of more beer, eased the still sleeping Lucy into my arms, and carried her from the bar and along the street.
The cold had awoken her by the time I pushed through the front door. I carried her to her room, where she changed into her pyjamas. Five minutes later she was snuggling into my lap before the fire and we were watching a DVD of a French mime act, which apparently was the latest craze in kids’ entertainment.
She was asleep ten minutes later, and I turned down the sound and switched over to a news programme. Half awake myself, and cradling my daughter in my arms, I allowed a succession of images to wash over me and considered how lucky I was.
So I might have married the last religious zealot in West Yorkshire, but from that match made in Hell had issued Lucy Katia Chester. And to think that, back in my twenties, I’d vowed never to have children. I sometimes shudder to think of the joy I would have missed had I remained faithful to my bachelor principles.
A newscaster was reporting anti-Kéthani riots in Islamabad, but by then I was fading fast.
I took Lucy to Bolton Abbey the following day. I bundled her up in her chunky pink parka, bobble hat, and mittens against the biting cold, and we walked through the trees along the riverbank. Down below, the river was frozen for the first time in living memory, its usually quicksilver torrent caused in shattered slabs of grey and silver. Later we lobbed snowballs at each other among the stark ruins of the Abbey. It was quiet—no one else had dared to venture out, with the thermometer fifteen below zero—and to hear her laughter echoing in the stillness was a delight. I had quite forgotten to ring Marianne last night, to enquire about Lucy’s illness, but she seemed fine today so I decided not to bother.
We had lunch in the Devonshire Arms across the road from the Abbey, and in the afternoon visited Marsworld, a couple of miles north of Skipton. We wandered around the replica rockets that had carried the scientific team to the red planet a couple of years ago, then visited mock-ups of the dozen domes where the explorers were living right at that moment. I had worried that Lucy might find it boring, but she turned out to be fascinated; she’d had lessons about the mission at school, and actually knew more about it than I did.
We drove home through the narrow lanes at four, with dusk rapidly falling. I proceeded with a caution I would not have shown had I been alone: I carried a precious cargo on the back seat… The only time I was truly content, and could rest easy, was when Lucy was with me. At other times, I envisaged, perhaps unfairly, the unthinking neglect with which Marianne might treat her.
“Do you know what would be nice, Daddy?” Lucy said now.
“What?” I asked, glancing at her in the rear-view.
“I would really like it if you and Mummy would live together again.”
She had said this before, and always I had experienced a hopeless despair. I would have done anything to secure my daughter’s happiness, but this was one thing that I could not contemplate.
“Lucy, we can’t do that. We have our separate lives now.”
“Don’t you love Mummy any more?”
“Not in the same way that I once did,” I said.
“But a little bit?” she went on.
I nodded. “A little bit,” I said.
She was quiet for a time, and then said, “Why did you move away, Daddy? Was it because of me?”
I slowed and looked at her in the mirror. “Of course not. What made you think—?”
“Mummy said that you stopped loving her because you couldn’t agree about me.”
I gripped the wheel, anger welling. I might have hated the bitch, but I had kept that animosity to myself. Never once had I attempted to turn Lucy against her mother.
“That’s not true, Lucy. We disagreed about a lot of things. What you’ve got to remember is that we both love you more than anything else, okay?”
We underestimate children’s capacity for not being fobbed off with platitudes. Lucy said, “But the biggest thing you disagreed about was me, wasn’t it? You wanted me to be implanted, and Mummy didn’t.”
I sighed. “That was one of the things.”
“Mummy says that God doesn’t want people to be implanted. If we’re implanted, then we don’t go to heaven. She says that the aliens are evil—she says that they’re in the same football league as the Devil.”
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I smiled to myself. I just wanted to take Lucy in my arms and hug her to me. I concentrated on that, rather than the anger I felt towards Marianne.
“That isn’t true,” I said. “God made everyone, even the Kéthani. If you’re implanted, then you don’t die. Eventually you can visit the stars, which I suppose is a kind of heaven.”
She nodded, thinking about this. “But if I die, then I’ll go to a different heaven?” she asked at last.
If you die without the implant, I thought, you will remain dead for ever and ever, amen, and no Christian sky-god will effect your resurrection.
“That’s what your mum thinks,” I said.
She was relentless with her dogged eight-year-old logic. “But what do you think, Daddy?”
“I think that in ten years, when you’re eighteen, you can make up your own mind. If you want, you can be implanted then.” Ten years, I thought: it seemed an eternity.
“Hey,” I said, “we’re almost home. What do you want for dinner? Will you help me make it?”
“Spaghetti!” she cried, and for the rest of the journey lectured me on the proper way to make Bolognese sauce.
That evening, after we’d prepared spaghetti together and eaten it messily in front of the TV, Lucy slept next to me while I tried to concentrate on a documentary. It was about a non-implanted serial killer in the US, who preyed on implanted victims and claimed, technically, that he wasn’t committing murder.
I lost interest and found myself thinking about Marianne.
I had met her ten years ago, when I was thirty. She had been twenty-six, and I suspected that I’d been her very first boyfriend. Her Catholicism had intrigued me at the time, her moral and ethical codes setting her apart in my mind from the hedonism I saw all around. The Kéthani had arrived the year before, and their gift of the implants had changed society for ever. In the early days, many people adopted a devil-may-care attitude towards life—they were implanted, they could not die, so why not live for the day? Others opposed the changes.
I was implanted within a year of the Kéthani’s arrival. I was not religious, and had always feared extinction. It had seemed the natural thing to do to accept the gift of immortality, especially after the first returnees arrived back on Earth with the stories of their resurrection.