Kéthani

by Eric Brown

  He rarely spoke, as I recalled, and had the mental age of a young child. He was obsessed with collecting stamps—he was poring over a thick album now. I remembered looking at one of his albums years ago when he’d come to the hospital with his mother. He collected stamps not by country or subjects depicted, as is common with philatelists, but by size and shape and colour.

  Now he lowered his head short-sightedly over the page, a big Tweedledee absorbed in the polychromatic pattern of stamps before him.

  As I watched him, I wondered if Davey was aware of his life-threatening illness.

  Mrs. Emmett returned bearing a tray. For a woman in her seventies, she was remarkably upright and spry—and mentally sharp, as I found out.

  She sat down and poured two coffees, then gave me a penetrating sidewise glance. “It must be very hard for people wholly convinced of the benefits the Kéthani have bestowed,” she said, “to comprehend the stance taken by the few dissenters amongst us.” She spoke eloquently, in a soft voice free of accent or dialect.

  I found myself smiling. “Well, we do live in an increasingly secular age,” I began.

  “The two sides cannot be reconciled,” she went on. “We with faith are wholly convinced of the truth of our views, while those that hold with the Kéthani pity us for our ignorance, for our choice of passing up the opportunity of certain immortality.” She paused and smiled. “Those with scientific certainty fail to understand the certainty of those with true faith.”

  I smiled. “You’re telling me, politely, to mind my own business.”

  She laughed, the sound like a cut glass chime. “Of course not, Khalid. I’m merely stating my position. I’d be genuinely interested in hearing your argument.”

  I took a sip of the excellent coffee. “Well, it’s an argument based not so much on faith or theory,” I said, “as on my own experience.”

  She inclined her head. “I understand that you now work on the implant ward at Bradley.”

  “I do, but that isn’t the experience I was referring to. You see…” I paused, choosing my words carefully. “Over ten years ago, Mrs. Emmett, I died.” I elected to leave out the messy personal details of my death. “I was resurrected on the home planet of the Kéthani and… instructed, I suppose is the best way to put it. I’ve only a vague recollection of what happened in the Kéthani domes, just nebulous memories, images. What I do retain is the sensation of rebirth, the wonder of renewed life, and the sense of rightness that accompanied my resurrection. I knew so much more. I became—and this is ironic, as it’s the result of an alien process—more humane. I was convinced of the rightness of what I had undergone and the genuine sense of destiny I was to undergo. I knew I had to return to Earth and spread the word of the implantation process—”

  Mrs. Emmett interrupted, “If you don’t mind my saying, Khalid, what you have said so far sounds not so much a matter of reason, but of faith.”

  I smiled. “I suppose it does.” I paused, marshalling my thoughts. “But the Kéthani believe that the process of resurrection after death is the only true hope of continued existence.” I wondered, then, how much my words had been influenced by my own prejudices.

  “Or that,” she said, again with that sweet smile, “is what they told you.”

  “Not so much told,” I said, “as showed. I find it hard to explain, but at the end of the process, I knew they were right.”

  “Just as, at the culmination of my years of instruction with my Rinpoche,” Mrs. Emmett said, “I knew that the way of Buddha was, for me, the true and right path.” Her bright blue eyes twinkled at me. “Faith, Khalid.”

  I had to smile. “Touché,” I said.

  “But…” she said.

  I looked up at her.

  “But?” I echoed, encouraged.

  “But, Khalid, I presume you didn’t come here to try to save my life.” She was ahead of me, and knew it, and I couldn’t help but admire her intelligence.

  I looked across at Davey, who was thoroughly absorbed in his stamp collection. “Richard told me that Davey is ill,” I began, uncomfortable about discussing the man in his presence.

  “And you think I should have Davey implanted for his own good?”

  I looked her in the eye. “Irrespective of your own beliefs,” I said, “I think you should give Davey the chance to decide for himself whether he would like the opportunity of virtual immortality.”

  She looked at me sharply. “The opportunity?” she said. “But if I agree now to have him implanted, how would that be giving Davey the chance to decide for himself?”

  I smiled. I could see the way ahead, the chance to save Davey from the imposition of his mother’s trenchantly held beliefs. Was that arrogant of me, small-minded?

  I went on, “You see, if Davey is implanted, then when he dies and is taken to Kéthan he will be resurrected not as he is now, but with certain… how should I put it?… changes. He will still be Davey, still intrinsically himself, but his intelligence and understanding will be boosted. He’ll be the Davey who you would have had if not for…”

  I stopped, for I saw a flicker of pain in her expression.

  She said, “That might be a difficult fact to face, Khalid. To have Davey as I might have had him for all these years.”

  “But,” I persisted, “wouldn’t it be better for him to be cured, to live a full and extended life?”

  “That is to assume that what he experiences now is not full and rewarding, Khalid. All experience is relative and valid, as Buddha teaches us.”

  “Then perhaps it would be a valid experience to allow Davey the opportunity of resurrection,” I countered.

  She looked at me, assessing. “But, Khalid, forgive me—you haven’t answered my question. You said that I should give Davey the opportunity to make his own choice. But if I did agree to have him implanted, then I would be making the choice for him.”

  I moved forward, sat on the edge of the chair in my desire to win the argument. “But you see, when Davey returns from Kéthan, resurrected, he would still be implanted. Returnees aren’t suddenly rendered immortal. They still have the implant which will keep them alive should they ‘die’ again, before they are taken to Kéthan for a second, or third or fourth, resurrection.”

  “And…” Mrs. Emmett began, a dawning light in her eyes.

  I nodded. “That’s right, when Davey returns from Kéthan, he will be implanted—and if he so wishes he can have the implant removed. If he shares your faith, then he can make a choice based on a full understanding of all the factors involved.”

  I stopped there and watched Mrs. Emmett closely to see how she had taken my argument.

  She was staring at her empty coffee cup, frowning slightly. At last she looked up and nodded. “You present a very interesting scenario, Khalid,” She said at last. “It is certainly something I need to think about.”

  I nodded and finished my coffee. I should have realised that nothing I could have said would have made her change her mind there and then.

  I wondered if, when I left, she would rationalise the discussion and allow her faith to maintain the status quo.

  As she showed me to the door a little later, she touched my arm and said, “Buddha taught that there is no objective truth, Khalid. Each of us carries within us a subjective truth, if only we can find it.”

  I smiled.

  She went on, “I’ve tried so hard, Khalid, but the truth is that I’m not a very good Buddhist.”

  “What makes you say—?” I began.

  She smiled, sadly. “Attachment is wrong, Khalid. I am being selfish in my love for Davey. I should be able to look past my attachment and see what is best for Davey.”

  I made the long trek back to the car and drove home, happy with the morning’s work.

  I had quite forgotten about Mrs. Emmett and Davey when, three days later, my secretary received a call. She put her head around the door. “There’s a Mrs. Emmett on the line,” she said. “She won’t be put off. Shall I tell her you’re b
usy?”

  “Emmett? No, put her through.”

  I picked up the phone. “Mrs. Emmett?” I fully expected her to tell me that she had had second thoughts, and that our conversation had done nothing to change her mind. “How can I help?”

  She came straight to the point. “Khalid, I’ve been giving due consideration to our little talk the other day. I’ve been reading my Buddhism… and under the circumstances I think it would be in Davey’s best possible interests if he were implanted.”

  I refrained from punching the air in triumph, but I could feel myself grinning idiotically. “That’s good news, Mrs. Emmett.”

  “Davey’s at home with me at the moment,” she said. “But he’s taken a turn for the worse and he’s due to be admitted into Bradley General tomorrow.”

  “I’ll arrange for him to come straight to the implant ward,” I told her.

  She hesitated. “Would I… That is, could I be present when Davey is implanted?”

  “By all means. I’ll arrange everything and see you tomorrow.”

  “Thank you very much for your help, Khalid.”

  I smiled and cut the connection.

  The following afternoon I ushered Mrs. Emmett and Davey into my surgery and explained the implantation procedure. Davey sat clutching a stamp album, oblivious that we were discussing his future.

  Mrs. Emmett was surprised that the operation would be over so quickly. “I thought it would be performed under general anaesthetic,” she said.

  I smiled. “No, local. It takes about ten minutes. I simply make an incision in the skin of the temple and insert the implant. I seal the wound, and the implant does the rest. It releases nano-machines into the subject’s body, which monitor the metabolism. When the subject ‘dies’, the implant takes over and revives the system.”

  Mrs. Emmett was shaking her head. “And then, when Davey is returned, he can make his decision as to whether or not he wishes to retain the implant?”

  I nodded. “That’s right. Now, if you’d care to step this way.”

  Davey proved to be a docile patient. A nurse administered a sedative and a local anaesthetic, and while Davey lay on the couch with his head turned to the left, I made the slit in his right temple, eased the implant home, and sealed the wound.

  Mrs. Emmett perched on a stool, watching intently.

  I looked up and smiled. “There, done.”

  “Quite amazing, Khalid.”

  While Davey was drinking a cup of sugary tea, Mrs. Emmett confided her concerns to me. “It will be a very strange experience, Khalid, when Davey returns, to see him as he might have been if not for…” She smiled, sadly. “You see, so much of my life has been taken up with his welfare. I retired early in order to keep him with me. I could have sent him to a care home, but after my husband died… well, Davey was all I had.”

  She fell silent, her gaze distant, perhaps considering how her life might have worked out had it not been for Davey’s handicap.

  I realised, then, that Davey’s return would be at once a cause for celebration and, for Mrs. Emmett, much soul-searching.

  Once Davey was implanted, he was spared the treatment he would have undergone for his condition. A month after his implant, he was admitted to Bradley General where he died peacefully. Richard Lincoln, accompanied by Mrs. Emmett and myself, drove the body up to the Onward Station. There was a small, secular ceremony of leave-taking, and then Davey was beamed aboard the orbiting Kéthani starship. I drove Mrs. Emmett home, promising to accompany her to the ceremony that would greet Davey’s return to Earth in six months’ time.

  That year, winter hung on well into April. There was a late fall of snow at Easter, transforming the land with its total and pristine beauty. Life proceeded as normal, a round of work and Tuesday night sessions at the Fleece. They were the highlight of the week, a few hours of relaxation among good friends.

  I saw Zara once in Bradley, and that was painful. She was walking arm in arm with her new husband, on the opposite side of the street. They didn’t see me, for which I was thankful. The sight of her, tall and beautiful and seemingly happy, released a slew of painful memories. I went over and over our final days together, and Zara’s accusations. I was a bastard, she had said, a domineering, selfish, bigoted, sexist bastard.

  And then I had killed myself and been resurrected—remade, as it were, by the Kéthani. I became a new man.

  A few months after Davey Emmett’s death, Richard Lincoln took me to one side in the Fleece and told me that Mrs. Emmett was in hospital.

  “I saw her yesterday while I was making a pick up,” he said. “She has cancer. It’s terminal. She said she wanted to see you.”

  I looked at him. “You don’t think…?” I began.

  “What, that she wants to be implanted? A conversion at the eleventh hour? I doubt it, not our Mrs. Emmett.”

  “I’ll drop by and see her tomorrow,” I promised, and returned to my pint, wondering what the old lady might want to see me about.

  She was in a private room on the oncology ward, sitting upright in bed and hooked up to a bank of machines. If I had expected a feeble, self-sorry old woman who had given up all hope, then I had grossly underestimated Mrs. Katherine Emmett.

  She gave a cheery smile when I hesitantly entered the room. “Khalid, pull up a chair. How are you?”

  I smiled and shook my head. “Isn’t it me who should be asking you how you are?”

  She laughed. “I’m fine, Khalid. Oddly enough, given the circumstances, I’ve really never felt better.”

  I took her hand. “You’re an amazing woman,” I found myself saying.

  She laughed again, mockingly this time. “I’m seventy-six, Khalid, and I’ve had a full and eventful life. I’m quite prepared for the end of this stage of existence.”

  I gestured at the equipment surrounding the bed. “They’re doing their damnedest to keep you alive.”

  She leaned forward and whispered, mock-conspiratorially, “It’s because I’m not implanted, Khalid. They’re frightened to death of death. They’re trying to do everything they can to squeeze a few more weeks of life from me. But as I’ve told them over and over, I’m ready to go.”

  “They haven’t tried to get you to agree to an implant?”

  “Of course they have. I had some young thing down here just yesterday. He didn’t know his theology, though—I tied him up in knots.”

  “So it’d be useless if I tried to…”

  “Absolutely and categorically futile, Khalid, my friend.”

  I tried another tack. “How long do they give you?”

  “Perhaps a month. The liver, you see.”

  “But you won’t be around to see Davey when he returns…”

  She allowed a few seconds to elapse before she replied—sufficient time to make me regret the statement.

  “No,” she said, “I won’t be around. And do you know something? I don’t want to be around, to be honest.”

  I stared at her. “Surely—” I began, and stopped myself.

  She leaned forward. “Khalid, I want to tell you something. I’ve never told another living soul this, and I want to get it off my chest before I go.” I squeezed her hand, wondering what I was about to hear.

  “Khalid, do you know what was wrong with Davey? I mean, what was responsible for his condition?”

  I shook my head. “His medical records would have been privy only to his own doctor,” I began.

  She smiled, returning the pressure of my hand. “It was an accident, Khalid. When he was two years old. I’d taken him out shopping. If only I’d delayed going out or not gone at all… But we can’t undo the past, can we? Oh, I’ve often wondered how what happened might have been the repercussions of sins I might have committed in a previous life. That was the only part of Buddhist theory that I found hard to accept.” She laughed. “For obvious reasons, Khalid! Anyway, you see, it was my fault… the accident. We had stopped at the side of the road, and Davey got away from me… ran straight into the
road, in front of…” She paused, gathering herself, and then went on. “The doctors said it was miracle that Davey survived, even though he was severely brain damaged.”

  She stopped, and the silence seemed to ring like an alarm. When I looked up at her, I saw tears streaming unchecked down her wrinkled cheeks. I found a tissue and passed it to her, and she blotted the tears with a gesture at once dignified and pitiful.

  “I’ve had to live with the guilt for so long,” she said, “even though my acceptance of karma should lead me to be able to see guilt for the illusion it is. As I said, I’m not a very good Buddhist.”

  I began to protest.

  She gave a sigh and went on, “So do you see why I couldn’t bear to see Davey when he returned? He will be how he would have been, were it not for my neglect. And the sight of him, so changed, will remind me not only of my foolishness, but of the Davey I should have been able to love, growing up like other children.”

  She was crying again, and all I could do was grip her hand.

  At last, tentatively, I said, “But if you were to be implanted, you would be able to share his life from now on.”

  She smiled at me through her tears. She lifted my hand and kissed my knuckles. “You’re a good man, Khalid. You mean well. But Davey would be a stranger to me. It wasn’t meant to be. Did you know,” she said, more brightly now, “that scientists opposed to the Kéthani have developed a new theory of consciousness?”

  I smiled. “They have?”

  She nodded, enthusiastic. “You see, they posit that our consciousness, the very essence that makes us ourselves, resides on some infinitesimally small, quantum level, a level that permeates the cosmos. And when we die, we don’t just fizzle out like a spent match, but our consciousness remains integrated with the matrix of existence…” She laughed to herself. “It’s what Buddha said all those hundreds of years ago, Khalid!”

  “Well, what do you know, Mrs. Emmett,” I smiled.

  Before I left, promising to pop in the following day, she restrained me with a fierce grip. “Khalid, when Davey returns, will you meet him at the Station, explain what happened, why I couldn’t be there for him? Will you make sure that he understands, Khalid?”