Kéthani

by Eric Brown

  He took a long pull on his pint and said, “Interesting fact.” He looked around the table. “Okay, here’s a little quiz for you. How many returnees come back to Earth and commit crimes?”

  The question brought to mind what Zara had told me about Simon Robbins.

  Doug Standish frowned. “You mean, per thousand? What percentage?”

  Dan shook his head. “No, I mean how many individuals?”

  Elisabeth laughed. “In Britain, Europe, worldwide?”

  “Worldwide.”

  Jeff Morrow placed his pint precisely on its mat and said, “Well, it’s obviously low. So I’d say… God, I don’t know. How many returnees are there every year, worldwide?”

  “In the region of a million,” Richard Lincoln said, helpfully.

  “In that case,” Jeff said, “I’d guess around twenty, thirty thousand…”

  Dan smiled and said, “Lis?”

  “I don’t know, around the same figure.”

  It went on like this, until all eyes rested on me. I said, meaning to be dismissive, “How about ten, Dan?” and hid behind my pint.

  Dan slapped the table. “Well, Khalid’s the closest.”

  Expostulations sounded around the table.

  Ben said, “What kind of crimes are we talking about, here? Murders?”

  “All crimes,” Dan said. He paused dramatically, then said, “The actual figure is precisely zero.”

  Elisabeth laughed, incredulous.

  Before anyone could demur, Dan pulled a pamphlet from his coat pocket and slid it across the table.

  Elisabeth picked it up and read through it quickly.

  Dan was saying, “The UN conducted a study recently. If you look on page ten, second paragraph, Lis,” he directed. “It’s an incontrovertible fact. Returnees do not commit crimes, of any kind.”

  Jeff looked across at Doug Standish. “Can you confirm this, Doug? Have you arrested any returnees recently?”

  Doug looked up from his pint. “The odd thing is… and this isn’t official police policy… but when I’m considering suspects, I tend almost always to discount those we know are returnees. I’m not even sure it’s a conscious thing.” He shrugged. “But I don’t doubt the report,” he finished.

  For the rest of the evening we discussed what the Kéthani were doing to us, out there.

  It is a paradox: it took an alien race to invest us with humanity…

  I absented myself from proceedings before closing time, attracting a few worried glances at this untoward behaviour, and made my way down the main street. Instead of letting myself into the house, which would be cold and empty at this late hour, I slipped into my car and sat in the driving seat, considering what I was going to do next.

  I was drunk, and hardly capable of driving safely, but to be honest this was the least of my worries.

  I started the engine and drove from the village, then turned onto the bypass and headed towards Bradley. I drove slowly. It was a fine summer’s night, and a full moon illuminated the countryside, but even at this late hour there was other traffic on the road. In retrospect I’m amazed that I managed to drive the seven miles into Bradley without killing myself or some other hapless driver.

  I parked across the road from where Zara and her study group met every Tuesday evening. It was a big Georgian terrace house, with a stained glass door and a flashy silver Porsche sitting by the kerb.

  There were no lights on in the downstairs windows. But upstairs, in the main bedroom, an orange light burned.

  I was filled with rage: part of me wanted to charge in and confront Zara there and then. But that intemperate action would have robbed me of my ultimate act of revenge.

  One hour later, the bedroom light went out. I steeled myself. The light in the hallway came on, and a minute later the front door opened.

  I saw Zara, and the man behind her. I wondered if this were the celebrated artist, Simon Robbins—the man the Kéthani had turned into a paragon.

  I looked away. I didn’t want to see them say goodbye… I started the car and drove off at speed, so that I would arrive home before Zara.

  I feigned sleep when she arrived a little later. In reality I lay awake, planning what I should do.

  I find it impossible to write about what happened over the course of the next few weeks, even after all these years. Richard Lincoln was there at the beginning, and at the end, and I’ve talked to him about it over many a beer since then. So let Richard tell my sorry story…

  SIX

  THE WISDOM OF THE DEAD

  I was in the main bar of the Fleece when Khalid announced that his wife was leaving him, and I was in the lounge of his converted coach-house a year later when he explained to me the circumstances of his death.

  That night I finished a long shift making deliveries to the Onward Station high on the moors, and I was in need of a pint or two in the company of the usual Tuesday night crowd.

  It was a balmy summer’s evening, and the clientele of the Fleece were making the most of the weather and drinking in the lane. The main bar was almost empty, but for the regulars: Ben and Elisabeth, Jeff Morrow, Dan Chester my colleague, Doug Standish, and Khalid.

  I carried my pint over to their table, sat down, and stared around at my friends. They were quiet. “You look as though you’ve just got back from a funeral,” I said.

  They said nothing, and I thought for a second that I’d committed a terrible social gaffe, and they had been to a funeral.

  Jeff just shrugged, uneasy. Ben and Elisabeth looked away. I smiled. “What’s wrong?”

  Khalid said, “I think it’s my fault, Richard,” and fell silent.

  Jeff said, “You can tell us, Khal. We’re friends, you know?”

  Elisabeth caught my gaze and pulled a worried face.

  Khalid was sitting at the end of the table, his pint untouched before him. He was usually immaculately turned out, clean-shaven and dapper. Tonight he was unshaven, his hair dishevelled. His gaze was remote.

  From time to time he fingered the implant at his temple, absently.

  He looked up at each of us in turn.

  Only then did I think to myself: I’m not going to like this one bit…

  He cleared his throat and said, “Zara’s leaving me.” He looked at his watch. “In fact, she’s probably left already.”

  Doug Standish said, “My God.”

  Elisabeth took Khalid’s hand.

  I murmured something along the lines that I was sorry. More than that, I was shocked. I liked Zara. She taught English at Jeff’s school in Bradley, an attractive, intelligent woman in her early forties. She and Khalid had always struck me as a loving and devoted couple.

  Khalid stared at his pint. “Things haven’t been going well for a while. We haven’t been communicating. She was… cold, remote. I thought it was…” He shrugged and looked helpless. “I don’t know what I thought. Then last week I… I confronted her. She admitted she was seeing someone and… and she decided to move out.”

  We sympathised, with all the useless old platitudes that come to play in these situations.

  Khalid fell silent, obviously not wanting to say anything more, and we changed the subject. Conversation was forced for the rest of the evening. Khalid downed his pint, and I bought him another, then a third and a fourth.

  At eleven-thirty the others made their farewells and left.

  Khalid finished his pint and looked at me. “How about a drink back at my place, Richard? I have some bottled Landlord.”

  Khalid lived in a coach-house a few doors down from the Fleece. It was a big place, with a front door that opened straight onto the pavement. Khalid, key in hand, paused before the door, and took a deep breath.

  We stepped into the cold house and I settled myself in a sofa while Khalid fetched the beer. It was a large, comfortable room, with white walls, ancient black beams and a big brass-cowled fireplace.

  Then I noticed the sculpture.

  Khalid entered the room and stopped. He star
ed at the sculpture, his expression folding. I thought he was about to weep.

  The carving, in dark, polished wood, showed two figures, a man and a woman, entwined in an intimate embrace.

  A Post-it note was affixed to the woman’s out-thrust buttock. Before Khalid snatched it up, I read: Khal, I couldn’t fit this in the car. I’ll be back for it later. Zara.

  He looked at me. “We think we know people, don’t we?”

  I smiled sympathetically and took a long swallow of ale.

  Khalid slumped into an armchair. “I was happy with Zara in the early years. She was perfect. We fitted. I always thought I wanted to spend the rest of my life with this woman.” He shrugged, regarding the bottle in his hand. “I assumed she thought the same. Then things started going wrong. A couple of years ago… I sensed a shift in things, how we related. She was keeping something back. I thought it was a phase.”

  I shook my head. His words released unpleasant memories. Six months after the coming of the Kéthani my wife, Barbara, had left me in acrimonious circumstances. Even though our relationship hadn’t been working for years, and the split was inevitable, it was still painful. I could imagine the anguish Khalid was suffering.

  He looked up. “When I confronted her, she said she’d met someone at the study group she went to on Tuesdays, and intended to live with him. He’s an artist. A sculptor.”

  I glanced at the entwined figures without making it obvious: of course, now that I looked closely, the naked female figure in the arms of the male was Zara.

  Khalid saw my gaze and laughed. “She bought this about six months ago. She put it in the bedroom. I mean, Richard, how bloody cruel can you get?”

  The silence stretched. I wanted to say something, but nothing seemed appropriate.

  He went on, “I tried asking, again and again, what I’d done wrong, what was wrong with our relationship. The frustrating thing was, she refused to talk. She simply said that she was sorry, that she’d fallen out of love with me, as simple as that. She said we had nothing in common any more, we didn’t communicate. And then she met… Simon, he’s called.” He wept, pressing the back of his hand to his mouth in a bid to stem the sobs.

  Then, quickly, he apologised, and I smiled and shook my head and told him how it had been with Barbara, all those years ago. It was the early hours before I dragged myself home.

  But I recall the last thing he said to me before I left. “Richard, I never realised that love could turn to so much hatred.”

  Life continued.

  We met in the Fleece every Tuesday. Khalid was there in body, but not in spirit. He seemed to inhabit some far-off realm. Usually eager to take part in any discussion, these days he was silent, unwilling to be drawn on any topic. He would nurse his pint and stare into space, emanating an almost palpable air of misery.

  I called around one day to find him slumped in an armchair, staring into the empty hearth.

  “It’s only me,” I called from the hall on finding the front door open. “I’ve brought this back.” I indicated the hammer I’d borrowed weeks earlier.

  “I won’t stay,” I went on, seeing him in the chair. But he protested.

  “No, stay a while. Coffee?” He seemed eager for company.

  “The hell of it is,” he said a little later, “that everything reminds me of Zara. This house, the village.”

  “Have you thought of moving? Selling this place, I mean?”

  He shook his head. “To be honest I’ve been so low that I can’t shift myself to do anything. I’ve thought about selling up, but that’d be as good as admitting defeat. I keep thinking that the pain will stop, in time. But if anything it only gets worse.”

  I indicated the place beside the hearth where the sculpture had stood. “I see she’s taken it away.”

  “She hasn’t been back here,” he said, bitter. “I had to take it round to Simon’s place. I never really realised how easy it would be to murder someone and think nothing of it.” He looked up at me. “You’re shocked, I can see. I went round to his studio and told him I wouldn’t be needing the sculpture, thanks. He was so damned reasonable about things that I wanted to hit him over the head with it. The terrible thing is, Richard, that I feel I could be violent towards Zara, too.”

  I nodded. “Have you seen her since…?”

  “Once, by accident.”

  “Don’t you think it’d make things easier if you could still be friends?”

  “I don’t know. Sometimes I think that, and at others I think I never want to see her again.”

  A few weeks later I was in the supermarket in Bradley when I heard a familiar voice behind me.

  “Richard?” Her tone was diffident, unsure.

  I turned. “Zara. Nice to see you.”

  She looked radiant. She had that demure, elegant poise possessed by some Anglo-Pakistani women in their forties; she was tall, slim, raven-haired and wore subtle purple eye shadow that complemented her mocha skin.

  “Richard…” She waited until an old woman was out of earshot, then went on in a low voice, “I hope you don’t hate me for what happened between me and—”

  I blustered. “These things happen.”

  She laid a hand on my arm. “I just had to get out, Richard. The relationship was just too oppressive.”

  I nodded, at a loss to know how to respond.

  “Khal comes from a very traditional Bradford family,” she went on. “He was domineering. Do you know, he didn’t really like my teaching?”

  I made some murmured comment along the lines that I never realised.

  “Life was getting oppressive. Towards the end I really hated him. And then I met Simon, and I knew that I’d made a big mistake in marrying Khal.”

  I nodded again, and said, “Sometimes these realisations hit you, Zara. And you’re happy now?”

  She hesitated. “Simon and I want to get married, but Khal—”

  “He won’t grant a divorce?” I didn’t know whether to be disappointed at Khalid’s pettiness or amazed at Zara’s bourgeois desire to marry. Once bitten, I wanted to tell her…

  “How cruel can you get, Richard? I spoke to him on the phone the other day, and the hatred…”

  “Have you talked with him about why you left? Have you tried telling your side of the story?”

  She almost laughed at that. “You don’t know him!” she said. “He wouldn’t listen to a word I said. He’s in the right, always. Richard, as far as he’s concerned, I’m just a woman.”

  I said goodbye a little later, saying that we must keep in touch.

  I recall driving home through the autumn twilight and wondering who was right, who wrong, and if objective truth was a valid concept.

  I called on Khalid that evening, to see if he wanted to join me in a pint. He opened the front door and blinked at me. Even in the shadow of the hallway, I noticed his black eye.

  “Argument with the door?” I asked.

  He didn’t see the humour in my observation. “With Simon Robbins,” he said. “Zara was on the phone this morning, telling me that she wants a divorce. Simon wants to marry her.”

  I almost said that he’d gain nothing from refusing Zara’s request.

  “I snapped. I went round to his studio earlier and did what I should have done months ago.”

  I winced. “That wouldn’t endear Zara to you—”

  “You don’t think I give a fuck about what she thinks any more, do you?” he said. He looked at his knuckles; they were bruised and bloodied, and I felt a quick stab of sympathy for the victim of his anger.

  I asked him if he’d care for a drink, but he just smiled and said he wasn’t feeling up to socialising.

  Over the course of the next few months, Khalid rarely showed up at the Fleece for our Tuesday night sessions. I called round a few times, but he was sullen and uncommunicative.

  At one point he seemed so low that I said, “Khal, look… Don’t do anything stupid, okay?”

  He stared at me, then laughed. “What,
like kill myself? The Kéthani have taken away that option, haven’t they?” He tapped his implant. “Though I could always have this taken out, I suppose.” Something in his bitter tone, his intense stare as I left him, alarmed me.

  Winter arrived. Snow fell with a vengeance. The village was cut off for two days, lending a siege mentality to the place. We made the best of it and inhabited the main bar of the Fleece, as you do in emergencies. Lucy and the other kids made snowmen and sledged until frostbite threatened.

  A week before Christmas, with snow still falling and more on the way, Khalid called around. It was a fortnight since I’d last seen him, and I took his visit as a hopeful sign. He seemed a little brighter.

  He was going away for the holiday period, visiting student friends in Norfolk, and wanted to borrow the elasticated rope I used to secure luggage on my roof rack.

  We chatted desultorily over coffee; not once did he mention Zara, which I took as another good sign.

  Christmas Eve came around yet again, and I was due to meet everyone at the Fleece for our traditional festive get-together. This year Ben and Elisabeth had invited Jeff Morrow and myself— lone sheep at this time of the year—along with Dan Chester and Lucy, round to their place for Christmas day. I was looking forward to the occasion. I usually make lame excuses and stay at home, or put my name down on the work roster, but for some unaccountable reason this time I’d succumbed to pressure and agreed to forgo my usual seasonal humbug. Perhaps the thought of watching Lucy, opening her presents, stirred memories of my own daughter doing the same, many years ago.

  She was in Canada now, married with a child. I kept meaning to visit, but apathy always won out. I’ve noticed that with the advance of the years we find our safe routines and resist all opportunities to deviate.

  I heard the sound around eight. I had never before heard a gunshot, and I had no idea, then, that it was such. It sounded too dull and muffled—reminiscent of the bangers we let off in the confined space of the gents’ loo when we were kids.

  I thought nothing more of it, until five minutes later when I heard a hammering on the front door.