Kéthani

by Eric Brown

  “Of course I will.”

  “And… something else.” She reached across to the bedside table, and gave me a sealed letter. “Will you give this to him, Khalid? It’s an explanation of my belief. I want him to consider everything, so that he can decide for himself whether he wants to retain his implant.”

  I squeezed her hand and promised that I would give him the letter, then said goodbye and slipped from the room.

  I did return the following day, only to learn that Mrs. Emmett had died peacefully in the early hours of the morning.

  Three months later, in the middle of October, a heavy fall of snow heralded Davey Emmett’s return to Earth.

  I was just one of three people gathered at the Onward Station to greet him. The other two were care assistants who had worked with Davey over the years. They had never, they said, met a returnee; I refrained from telling them that I had died and been resurrected by the Kéthani.

  I recalled my own transformation, both mentally and physically, and wondered how the Kéthani might have remade Davey Emmett.

  Five minutes later we found out. We were in a small reception lounge furnished with a few chairs and a table bearing wine and fruit juice. Normally, more people would attend a returning ceremony, and a larger lounge would be required: but Davey had made few friends during his thirty years on Earth.

  The sliding door at the back of the room opened, and Davey stepped through. The woman beside me gasped, and I understood her reaction. Even I, who had been expecting a marked metamorphosis, was taken aback.

  Gone was the overweight adult-child, the sallow-faced, balding misfit unable to establish eye contact or hold a conversation.

  Davey Emmett seemed taller, slimmer. His face was lean, even handsome; he appeared to be in his mid-twenties. He wore a neat suit and strode purposefully into the room, smiling.

  He shook our hands, greeting us by name. “It’s good to see you, Khalid.”

  We exchanged inane pleasantries for a while. I recalled my own resurrection ceremony, and the mutual inability of the returnee to express quite what he had been through, and the circumspection of the celebrants faced with the miracle of someone returned from the dead.

  “Director Masters informed me of my mother’s passing,” Davey said. Masters was head of the Onward Station. “Khalid, if you could drive me home via the cemetery…?”

  “Of course.”

  The meeting broke up five minutes later and I drove Davey from the towering crystal obelisk of the Station, through the snow-covered landscape towards Oxenworth.

  After a minute, I broke the silence. “I saw your mother during her illness, Davey. She wasn’t in pain, and didn’t fear death. She had her own strong faith.”

  Davey nodded. “I know. I remember her telling me all about it.”

  I glanced across at him. “How much do you recall from… from before?”

  He considered for a second or two, frowning. “It’s strange, but I recall everything. Who I was, my thoughts and reactions. But it’s very much like an adult looking back on his childhood. We have only a refracted, blurred image of who that person was. It’s almost like looking back at the life of a stranger.”

  He was silent for a while, staring out at the snow-softened landscape undulating to the distant moorland horizon.

  “The Kéthani remade me completely, Khalid. They took what they had, the fundamental David Emmett, and rebuilt a fully functioning, intelligent human being from the unpromising raw material. The odd thing is, I feel that they maintained a continuity. I am David Emmett, but whole, now.”

  “I think I know what you mean, Davey. I died ten years ago. The person who came back… well, he was much changed, too.”

  We came to the cemetery and I turned into the long drive.

  We climbed from the car, into the teeth of the subzero wind, and I led Davey across to where his mother was interred.

  Her grey marble headstone projected from the fleecy snow, bearing her name, date of birth and death, and a line from a Buddhist text: We each of us have a choice of eternities.

  There were few deaths these days, and the cemetery was little used. The headstone next to Mrs. Emmett’s recorded that Claudine Hainault had been buried there twelve years previously.

  I felt tears stinging my eyes.

  Davey stood at the foot of his mother’s grave, head bowed, hands clasped behind his back. The cold wind stirred his full head of black hair.

  I said, “Your mother asked me to explain why she couldn’t be here to meet you, Davey. And she asked me to give you this.” I passed him the letter.

  He took it and looked at me. “You mean, why she couldn’t face the person I would be—the person I might have been, but for the accident?”

  I smiled to myself. He was ahead of me and had saved me from an awkward explanation.

  “Do you understand how it must have been, from her point of view?” I said inadequately.

  “I understand,” he said. “I just wonder how much her belief system was a result of the guilt she felt after the accident. I wonder if she rationalised that she was atoning in this life for sins accrued in a previous one… and if she believed in reincarnation in the hope that my next existence might be a better one.” He smiled to himself. “This was all before the coming of the Kéthani, of course.”

  I shook my head and shrugged, smiling sadly at the thought of Mrs. Emmett.

  “The terrible thing was,” Davey went on, “that my mother wasn’t responsible for the accident. We were standing at the side of the road and I just pulled my hand from hers and ran off, into the path of a car… Thanks to the Kéthani, I remember everything.” He paused, then said, “My mother blamed herself, of course.”

  He lifted his head and stared into the heavens, and I saw that his eyes were filmed with tears.

  “I wonder if she’d forgive me?” he asked at last.

  “Your mother was a good and forgiving person,” I said.

  He stared at the cold, grey headstone. “Would things have turned out differently, for her, but for that incident?”

  I said at last, “Who can tell?”

  “I wonder if she is happy, wherever she is?”

  I let that question blow away on the cold wind, and said instead, “Can I drive you home?”

  He hesitated. “No. No, thanks, Khalid.” He pointed across the valley, to High Fold Farm. “It’s not far, I’ll walk.”

  I shook his hand and made my way back to the car.

  I thought of the way the Kéthani had remade us, and then it came to me that, since my return, I had never contacted Zara to apologise for how I had treated her over the years. I knew in my heart that it was my duty to do so, but even then I honestly doubted whether I would be man enough to go through with it.

  The Kéthani improve us all, to varying degrees.

  I drove from the cemetery, then braked on the road that climbs over the moors. I gazed down on a desolate scene of continuous snow and rank upon rank of headstones, those terrible reminders of the dead.

  Davey Emmett was the only living figure in the vast and inimical landscape. As I watched, he opened the letter from his mother and read it slowly. Then he raised his head and stared into the sky, at the stars just beginning to appear in the heavens.

  I looked at the road ahead, then started the car and drove towards Oxenworth and home.

  Interlude

  Over the twenty years since the coming of the Kéthani, the Tuesday night group of friends at the Fleece had grown, evolved, and become for me a second family… or even a first family, if the truth be told. I came to love these quiet, ordinary people, and I was heartened by the fact that my acquaintance with them would continue far into the future.

  I arrived late at the Fleece that night, after a busy shift on the implant ward. It was almost ten o’clock by the time I shrugged off my coat, grabbed a welcome pint, and eased myself into my customary seat beside the fire.

  Sam said, “Khal, we were beginning to think you’d never mak
e it.”

  “I was beginning to worry, too,” I laughed, taking a swallow of the amber nectar.

  Over the years, my actual workload at Bradley General had decreased—there were fewer citizens to be implanted, these days, as more and more people elected to go out among the stars, or to stay out there immediately after their resurrections. I had cut down my hours in the ward to just four a day: today’s rush had been a statistical blip.

  Dan Chester said, “I’ve just had this from Lucy. They’re…” he smiled and shook his head, as if in wonderment. “I find this hard to believe, but they’re aboard a Kéthani faster-than-light ship beyond the Nilakantha Stardrift, en route to their second posting on an Earth-like world orbiting a super-massive red giant… Anyway,” he finished, passing me an information pin and a screen.

  I pressed play and stared at the screen.

  Lucy smiled out at me, surrounded by passing humans in one-piece suits. She appeared to be in some kind of bar. It reminded me for all the world of a scene from one of the space opera shows I’d watched as a kid.

  Davey sat beside her, an arm around her shoulders.

  “Dad, everyone in the Fleece—if you’re still drinking there! Silly question! Where else would you be? Well, we’re aboard an FTL cruiser heading for Kalopia VII, to bring the word of the Kéthani to a race of just post-industrial humanoids. We’re well, and looking forward to the posting.” She talked about their work for a few minutes, then turned and looked into Davey’s eyes. “We’re very happy. It’s… I can’t begin to describe how amazing it is out here… Look, we’ve got to rush—can’t miss the last post. I’ll be in touch again soon. Love you, Dad. Take care!”

  Davey waved and smiled, and Lucy reached out and cut the recording.

  I shook my head as I passed Dan the screen. “My God… It doesn’t seem two minutes since the wedding.”

  “Four years, Khal,” Dan said.

  We were silent for a while after that, each of us lost in our own thoughts.

  I looked round the bar. It was quiet, which was not surprising these days. Oxenworth was quiet. Half the houses stood empty. Not everyone had gone to the stars; many people had moved to the cities, replacing those who had decided to leave Earth.

  Stuart Kingsley said, as if reading my thoughts, “I was in Leeds yesterday, and do you know… It seemed busy, but I was in a bookshop and I happened to look at a local history book, and a photograph of the Headrow in 2006. The crowds! There were thousands of people in the streets…”

  Richard Lincoln finished his pint and said, “The world’s population has fallen by five per cent in the past five years, and the predictions are that it’ll continue like that for the foreseeable future.”

  Elisabeth shook her head. “So… I’m no mathematician… how long before the world is empty?”

  Stuart said, “Roughly a century, Lis. If the exodus continues at this rate.”

  Ben looked at me and said, “What is it, Khal?”

  I must have appeared to be miles away. I shook myself and said, “I don’t know… but for the past couple of years I’ve felt… I find it hard now quite how to describe the feeling…” I shrugged. “I know, on some subconscious level, that all I’ve taken for granted, all that’s familiar, is drawing to some kind of close.”

  “Things are changing,” Jeffrey said. “Little by little, inevitably. Nothing is as it was before. Our way of life, which we’ve taken for granted for so long…”

  That gave us pause for thought. We stared into our drinks, for once collectively silenced.

  Something that Lucy had said in her communiqué from the stars repeated itself in my head. Dad, everyone in the fleece—if you’re still drinking there! Silly question!

  I felt, oddly, very old then, as if we were the preservers of a way of life that was soon to change. I had the feeling that we were treading water, waiting… All we needed was something, or someone, to urge us on.

  We didn’t know what that might be, at the time.

  We didn’t know that we were waiting for a catalyst, and that that catalyst should prove to be a man called Gregory Merrall.

  TEN

  THE FAREWELL PARTY

  Gregory Merrall had been part of our group for just three months by the time of the Farewell Party, though it seemed that we had never been without his quiet, patriarchal presence. He was a constant among the friendly faces who met at the Fleece every Tuesday evening, our confidant and king, some might even say our conscience.

  I remember his arrival amongst us. It was a bitter cold night in early November and the village had been cut off for two days due to a severe fall of snow. When I saw him stride into the main bar—an anachronistic figure in Harris tweeds and plus fours—I assumed he was a stranded traveller.

  He buttressed the bar and drank two or three pints of Landlord.

  There were nine of us gathered about the inglenook that night, and as each of us in turn went to the bar to buy our round, the stranger made a point of engaging us in conversation.

  “There are worse places to be stranded in than Oxenworth,” I said when it was my round. “The Fleece is the best pub for miles around.”

  He smiled. “I’m not stranded—well, not in that sense,” he said, offering his hand. “Merrall, Gregory Merrall.”

  “Khalid Azzam,” I told him. “You’ve moved to Oxenworth?”

  “Bought the old Dunnett farm on the hill.”

  I knew immediately—and I often look back and wonder quite how I knew—that Merrall would become part of our group. There was something, about him that inspired trust. He was socially confident without being brash and emanated an avuncular friendliness that was endearing and comforting.

  I noticed that he was nearing the end of his pint. “It’s my round,” I said. “Would you like to join us?”

  “Well, that’s very kind. I don’t mind if I do.”

  So I introduced him to the group and he slipped into the conversation as if the niche had been awaiting him: the niche, I mean, of the quiet wise man, the patriarchal figure whose experience, and whose contemplation of that experience, he brought to bear on our varied conversations that evening.

  It was a couple of weeks later, and I’d arrived early. Richard Lincoln and Andy Souter were at the bar, nursing their first pints. Richard was in his late sixties and for a second I mistook him for Gregory.

  He frowned at my double take as he bought me a pint.

  “Thought for a second you were Merrall,” I explained.

  “The tweeds,” he said. “Bit out of fashion.” I’d always thought it paradoxical that someone who worked so closely with the Kéthani regime should adopt so conservative a mode of dress.

  We commandeered our table by the fire and Andy stowed his cornet case under his stool. Andy was a professional musician, a quiet man in his late thirties with a cornetist’s pinched top lip. He conducted the local brass band and taught various instruments at the college in Bradley. He was the latest recruit—discounting Merrall—to our Tuesday night sessions. He ran a hand through his ginger mop and said, “So, what do you think of our Gregory?”

  “I like him a lot,” I said. “He’s one of us.”

  Richard said, “Strange, isn’t it, how some people just fit in? Odd thing is, for all he’s said a lot, I don’t know that much about him.”

  That gave me pause. “Come to think of it, you’re right.” All I knew was that he was from London and that he’d bought the old farmhouse on the hill.

  Andy nodded. “The mysterious stranger…”

  “He’s obviously well travelled,” Richard said.

  That was another thing I knew about him from his stories of India and the Far East. I said, “Isn’t it odd that although he’s said next to nothing about himself, I feel I know him better than I do some people who talk about themselves nonstop.”

  For the next hour, as our friends hurried in from the snow in ones and twos, conversation centred around the enigmatic Mr. Merrall. It turned out that no one knew muc
h more than Richard, Andy and me.

  “Very well, then,” said Doug Standish, our friendly police officer, “let’s make it our objective tonight to find out a bit more about Gregory, shall we?”

  Five minutes later, at nine o’clock on the dot— as was his habit—Gregory breezed in, shaking off the snow like a big Saint Bernard.

  He joined us by the fire and seconds later was telling us about a conversation he’d had with his bank manager that morning. That provoked a round of similar stories, and soon our collective objective of learning more about our new-found friend was forgotten in the to and fro of bonhomie and good beer.

  Only as I was wending my way home, with Richard by my side, did it occur to me that we had failed abjectly to learn anything more about Gregory than we knew already.

  I said as much to the ferryman.

  He was staring at the rearing crystal pinnacle of the Onward Station, perched miles away on the crest of the moors.

  “Greg’s so friendly it seems rude to pry,” he said.

  A week later I accidentally found out more about Gregory Merrall and, I thought, the reason for his insularity.

  I arrived at the Fleece just after nine, eager to tell what I’d discovered. The group was ensconced before the blazing fire.

  Ben and Elisabeth—in their fifties now and still holding hands—both looked at the book I was holding. Ben said, “Tired of our conversation, Khalid?”

  Andy Souter laughed, “If we’re all doing our own thing, then I’ll get my cornet out and practice.”

  Dan Chester made to cover his ears. “Spare us, Andy, please!”

  I smiled. Everyone turned my way as I held up the novel, my hand concealing the name of the author.

  “A Question of Trust,” Samantha Kingsley said. “I didn’t know you were a great reader, Khalid.”

  “I’m not. I was in Bradley today, and this was in the window of the bookshop.”