Kéthani

by Eric Brown

  Over breakfast, I suggested that we go for a long walk across the moors. It was a dazzling winter’s morning, the sky blue and the snow an unblemished mantle for as far as the eye could see.

  I drove Claudine back to her house to change into walking boots and a thick coat. We left the car at my place and started along the bright, metalled lane. Later we struck off across the moors, following a bridleway that would take us, eventually, to the escarpment overlooking the valley, the reservoir and a scattering of farmhouses.

  Somewhere along the way her mittened hand found my cold fingers and squeezed. She was smiling as I exaggerated the misfortunes of the school football team, which I organised. I would never have thought that I could be so cheered by something as simple as her smile.

  Claudine looked up, ahead, and her expression changed. I followed the line of her gaze and saw the sparkling pinnacle of the Onward Station projecting above the crest of the hill.

  Her mouth was open in wonder. “God… This is the closest I’ve been to it. I never realised it was so beautiful.”

  She pulled me along, up the incline. As we climbed, more and more of the Station was revealed in the valley below. At last we stood on the lip of the escarpment, staring down. My attention was divided equally between the alien edifice and Claudine. She gazed down with wide eyes, her nose and cheeks red with the cold, her thoughts unguessable.

  It was not so much the architecture of the Station that struck the onlooker, as the material from which it was made. The Station—identical to the thousands of others situated around the world— rose from the snow-covered ground like a cathedral constructed from glass, climbing to a spire that coruscated in the bright winter sunlight.

  As we watched, a pale beam—weakened by the daylight—fell through the sky towards the Station, bringing a cargo of returnees back home.

  I put my arm around Claudine’s shoulders. She said, “The very fact of the Station is like the idea it promotes.”

  I made some interrogational noise.

  “Beguiling,” she said. “It is like some Christmas bauble that dazzles children, I think.”

  “For ages humankind has dreamed of becoming immortal,” I said, staring at her. “Thanks to the Kéthani…”

  She laid her head against my shoulder, almost sadly. “But,” she said, gesturing in a bid to articulate her objection. “But don’t you see, Jeff, that it really doesn’t matter? Whether we live seventy years, or seven thousand—it’s still the same old futile repetition of day-to-day existence.”

  Anger slow-burned within me. “Futile? What about our ability to learn, to experience, to discover new and wondrous things out there?”

  She was shaking her head. “It is merely repetition, Jeff—a going through the motions. We’ve done all these things on Earth, and so what? Are we any happier as a race?”

  “But I think we are,” I said. “Now that the spectre of death is banished—” I stopped myself.

  Claudine just shook her head.

  Into the silence, I said, “I honestly don’t understand why you aren’t implanted.”

  She looked up at me, so young and vulnerable. “I’ll tell you why, Jeff. I’ve read the philosophical works of the Kéthani and the other races out there—or at least read summaries of them. My father and I… in the early days we went through them all. And do you know what?”

  I shook my head, suddenly weary. “No. What? Tell me.”

  She smiled up at me, but her eyes were terrified. “They understand everything, and have come to the realisation that the universe and life in it is just one vast mechanistic carousel. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Claudine, Claudine. Of course it doesn’t. But we must live with that. There never were any answers, unless you were religious. But you must make your own meaning. We have so much time ahead of us to live for the day, to love—”

  She laughed. “Do you know something? I don’t believe in love, very much. I saw my parents’ relationship deteriorate, turn to hate. I can feel it,” she looked at me, “but I can’t believe that it will last.”

  “It changes,” I began, then fell silent.

  She squeezed my hand. “Let’s go home,” she said. “I’m hungry. I’ll prepare lunch, okay?”

  We set off down the hillside, passing the Station. A ferryman driving a Range Rover pulled into the car park, delivering another dead citizen. Tonight, the darkness would pulse with white light as the bodies were transported to the Kéthani starship in orbit high above.

  After lunch that afternoon we lounged before the roaring fire and talked. When the words ran out it seemed entirely natural, an action of no consequence to the outside world, but important only to ourselves, that we should seek each other with touches and kisses, coming in silence to some mutual understanding of our needs.

  That night, as we lay close in bed, we stared through the window at the constellations. The higher magnitude stars burned in the freezing night sky, while beyond them the sweep of the Milky Way was a hazy opaline blur.

  “Hard to believe there are hundreds of thousands of humans out there,” she said, close to sleep.

  I thought of the new planets, the strange civilisations, that I would some day encounter—and I experienced a sudden surge of panic at the fact that Claudine was willingly forgoing the opportunity to do the same. I wanted to shake her in my sudden rage and demand that she underwent the implantation process.

  It was a long while before I slept.

  The following day an ambulance brought Claudine’s mother home, and I drove her over to the farmhouse. She kissed me before climbing from the car, suddenly solemn. “See you at school,” she said, and was gone.

  Suddenly, the routine of school seemed no longer a burden. I could put up with the recalcitrance of ignorant teenagers and the petty in-fighting between members of staff. The sight of Claudine in the schoolyard, or seated at her desk, filled me with rapture. Her swift, knowing smile during lessons was an injection of some effervescent and exhilarating drug.

  After school I would pull off the road, up some lonely and abandoned cart track, and we would make love in the little time we had before I dropped her off at home. She told me that she would spend the following weekend at my place— she’d tell her mother that she was staying with a friend—and the days until then seemed never-ending.

  On the Friday, just as I was about to leave the building, Miller buttonholed me in the corridor. “What the hell’s going on, Jeffrey?”

  My heart hammered. “What do you mean?”

  “Between you and the Hainault girl, for Chrissake. It’s glaringly obvious. They way you look at each other. You’re a changed man.”

  “There’s nothing going on,” I began.

  “Look,” he said. He paused, as if unsure whether to go on. “Someone saw you with her yesterday—in your car on the moors.” He shook his head. “This can’t continue, Jeffrey. It’s got to stop—”

  I didn’t let him finish. I pushed past him and hurried out and across to the car park. Claudine was standing by the bus stop on the main road, and as I let her in she gave me a dazzling smile that banished the threat of Miller’s words and the consequences if I ignored them.

  On the Saturday night we lay in bed and talked, and I told her what Miller had said to me.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she whispered in return. “They can’t do anything. We’ll be more careful in future, I think. Now forget about bloody Miller.”

  We went for a long walk on the Sunday afternoon, avoiding the Station as if mutually fearing the argument it might provoke. Claudine was quiet, withdrawn, as if Miller’s words were troubling her.

  She wept quietly after we made love that night. I held her. “Claudine—I’ve decided to resign, quit school. I’ll find a job in town. There’s plenty of work about. You can move in here, okay?” I babbled on, a love-struck teenager promising the world.

  She was silent for a time. At last she whispered, “It wouldn’t work.”

  Something turned
in my stomach. “What?” I said.

  “Love doesn’t last,” she said quietly. “It would be fine at first, and then…”

  At that moment the room was washed in a blinding beam of light as the dead were beamed from the Onward Station to the Kéthani starship. I was appalled at what I saw in the sudden illumination. Claudine’s eyes were raw from crying, her face distorted in a silent grimace of anguish.

  “Like everything,” she sobbed, “it would corrupt.”

  I held her to me, unable to respond, unable to find the words that might convince her otherwise.

  At last I said, “But I can still see you?” in desperation.

  She smiled through her tears and nodded; touched, perhaps, by my naive hope.

  In the early hours she slipped from the bed and kissed me softly on the cheek, before dressing and hurrying home.

  Next day at school I desperately sought from Claudine some sign that I had not spoiled our relationship with my demands of the night before. In class, she smiled at me with forced brightness, a smile that disguised a freight of sadness and regret.

  We had agreed that I would no longer drive her home, to scotch the rumours flying about the school, and that evening her absence during the journey was painful. I looked ahead to the weekend when we would be together, and the days seemed endless.

  On Tuesday Claudine was not at school. I assumed that she had slept in and missed the bus.

  During the first period I saw the police car pull into the school grounds, but thought nothing of it.

  Fifteen minutes later the secretary tapped on the classroom door and entered. I should have guessed that something was amiss by the way she averted her gaze as she handed me the note—but what seems obvious in retrospect is never apparent at the time. The Head had called a staff meeting at first break.

  When the bell went I crossed the hall to the staff room. I recall very well what I was thinking as I pushed open the door. My thoughts were full of Claudine, of course. The next time I saw her in private, I would plead with her to live with me once I had resigned my post at the school; to her claim that love never lasted I would counter that at least we should give it a try.

  The room was crowded with ashen-faced teachers, and a dread silence hung in the air. Miller made his way to my side, his expression stricken.

  “What?” I began, my stomach turning.

  The Head cleared his throat and began to speak, and I heard only fragments of what he said.

  “Claudine Hainault… Tragic accident… Her body was found in the reservoir…”

  I felt myself removed from proceedings, abstracted through shock from the terrible reality unfolding around me.

  Teachers began to weep. Miller gripped my arm, guided me to the nearest chair.

  “The police think she slipped… went under… It was so cold she was paralysed and couldn’t get out.”

  I wanted to scream at the injustice, but all I could do was weep.

  “Such a terrible tragedy…” The Head paused and stared around the room. “As you know, she refused to be implanted.”

  I made myself attend the funeral.

  I drank half a bottle of whisky before leaving the house, and somehow survived the service. It brought back memories of another funeral, just over two years ago. Claudine was buried in the Oxenworth village churchyard, just three graves along from Caroline, beneath a stand of cherry trees which would flower with the coming of spring.

  A television crew was present, along with reporters and photographers from the national press. So few people really died these days, and Claudine’s being young and attractive made the story all the more sensational. Relatives flew in from France. Her mother was an inconsolable wreck. I tried to ignore Miller and his begrudging words of commiseration; his attitude was consoling and at the same time censorious, unable to condone my love for Claudine.

  I watched the coffin being lowered into the black maw of the grave, finding it impossible to accept that Claudine was within it. Then I slipped away and walked to the reservoir. A pathetic spread of wind-blown flowers, left by pupils and stricken locals, marked the spot on the bank where she had fallen.

  That night I wrote a letter of resignation to the school authorities. It would be impossible to go back to the place where I had first met Claudine, to the classrooms haunted by her absence. I considered selling the house and moving from the area. Claudine still seemed present, as if she might at any second emerge from another room, smiling at me.

  That night I drank myself unconscious.

  In the morning, waking from oblivion to face the terrible fact of her death anew, I dressed and made my way downstairs and saw the letter lying on the doormat.

  I read my name and address in Claudine’s precise schoolgirl hand.

  With trembling fingers I ripped open the envelope and pulled out the single folded sheet.

  I sank to the floor, disbelieving. I moaned with grief intensified, made more painful than I ever imagined possible.

  I read her note a second time, then again and again, as if by doing so I might change what she had written, and what it meant.

  My Dear Jeff, she began, and continued with words I would never forget, I’m sorry. I’m so very sorry—but I can’t go on. I love you, but it can’t last, nothing lasts. I’ve known joy with you and perhaps it is best to end that joy at its height, rather than have it spoil.

  And I wanted to cry, no! I wanted the chance to vent my anger and tell her how very wrong she was.

  You know I don’t want immortality. Life is so very hard to bear at the best of times. To face life everlasting… I feel at peace when I contemplate what I’m going to do—please try to understand. She was going to leave her house—had left her house—and walk to the reservoir, and give herself to the frigid embrace of the water… How could I understand that? How could I understand an act so irrational, an act of violence provoked by fears and pressures known only to herself? How often since have I wished I had known her better, had been a lover capable of being there when she needed me most?

  I can hear you asking how could I do this to you. But, Jeff, you will survive—you have all the time in the universe. In a hundred years I will be a fleeting memory, and in a thousand…

  They say that time heals all wounds.

  And she had finished, With all my love, Claudine.

  I spend a long time contemplating the events of the past, going over my time with Claudine and wondering where I went wrong. I blame myself, of course, for not persuading her to undergo the implantation process, for not being able to show her how much I loved her. I blame myself for not giving her reason enough to go on living.

  I am haunted by her words, You have all the time in the universe…

  At night I sit in the darkened lounge and stare out at the rearing edifice of the Onward Station, marvelling at its beauty and contemplating the terrible gift of the Kéthani.

  Interlude

  Five years had passed since the coming of the Kéthani, and after the first two years of turbulent change—two years of rioting and protest around the world—order had been restored. Hundreds of thousands of returnees came back to Earth, and though they had been subtly changed by the experience of dying and being reborn, none were the zombies or monsters that the Jeremiahs and prophets of doom had forecast.

  Slowly, things began to change on Earth. So slowly, so gradually, that it was almost unnoticeable.

  That evening—after a long day on the ward where I worked as an implant surgeon—I was enjoying a pint in the Fleece when Jeffrey Morrow said, “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but over the past few years things have got better on Earth, don’t you think?”

  We looked at him. Jeffrey had greyed in the years since I first got to know him, which wasn’t at all surprising, considering what he’d undergone. He was a quiet man, much given to introspection and thoughtful silences. After Claudine’s death, we had persuaded him to remain in the area, to stay on at the school in Bradley, to face the terrors of his
past and not to run away.

  Considering what Jeffrey had experienced in recent years, this latest pronouncement was a little unexpected, to say the least.

  “Got better?” I said. “How do you mean?”

  “I came across an academic paper the other day,” Jeffrey said, “by some high-up in the UN.” He was on his fourth pint, and his eyes were distant. “It was a breakdown of the incidences of conflict around the world. And do you know something—since the coming of the Kéthani, cases of armed conflict have decreased globally by almost seventy per cent.”

  Richard Lincoln nodded. “I’ve heard the same. Not only that, violence in general has fallen around the world. For instance, murder rates are in decline.”

  That led us to speculate about the reasons for this gradual amelioration of the human condition…

  Richard said, “Well, you know what I think—”

  Zara laughed and hummed the spooky opening bars of the Twilight Zone. “The aliens are amongst us, Richard?”

  He pointed at her, mock stern. “Oh, ye of little faith. The Kéthani have powers which we can’t even dream of, so it stands to reason that they’d come among us to help us along the way.”

  I thought about that, then said, “I’m not saying you’re wrong, Richard. But I think that that might be unnecessary.”

  Richard downed half his pint. “Go on.”

  “Think about it. We die. They transport us to their homeworld. They bring us back to life. And we come back—changed. I’ve heard it said that people come back… I don’t know… better, improved.”

  Richard objected, “But that doesn’t disprove my thesis, Khalid!”

  “No—what I’m saying is that if things have got better on Earth, if there is less conflict, then maybe it’s caused less by the activity of the Kéthani down here and more by what the Kéthani did to us up there. Maybe it’s the mentality of the returnees that is changing things.” It was a nice thought—and how was I to know that, in a few years time, I would have first-hand knowledge of just how the resurrection process could render change in an individual?