Kéthani

by Eric Brown

  Khalid went on, serious now, “Are you okay?”

  Matt sat down before the fire. I gestured to Sam at the bar to pull Matt a pint.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  Matt looked from Doug to Khalid, and then at me. “You know I mentioned yesterday that I thought I was being followed?”

  I nodded, guessing what was coming.

  “Followed?” Doug said, his professional interest aroused.

  “For about a month or so now,” Matt said, “‘I’ve been seeing… well, I don’t know if you’ll understand…”

  “Try us,” Khalid said.

  “Well, I’ve been seeing bright, white figures lurking at the edge of my vision, which mysteriously disappear when I try to look closer…”

  I said, “And you saw another figure tonight, right?”

  Matt took a long draught of creamy ale and nodded. He explained to Khalid and Doug, “In the hall, towards the end of the rehearsal. I saw something… a figure… near the door to the kitchen and cloakroom, but when I went to have a look… Nothing. It’d vanished.”

  Doug said, “Tell us more about these figures.”

  “There isn’t much more to tell,” Matt said. “I’ve seen about half a dozen of them now, approximately once a week. Tall, glowing figures, watching me—or that’s what I feel they’re doing. And when I investigate, they’re gone in a flash of light.”

  Something about the expression on Doug’s big, jowly face prompted me to ask, “What?”

  “It’s strange,” he said, staring into the remains of his pint with a distant expression, “but remember the murder of Sarah Roberts a few years ago?”

  Khalid said, “Wasn’t she something to do with the Onward Station?”

  Doug nodded. “A liaison officer. Anyway, I investigated the case. Very mysterious.” He gave a gruff laugh. “Like something out of an Agatha Christie novel. Roberts was found dead in a house surrounded by snow—no footprints leading to or from the place. Also,” he looked up at me, “Ben Knightly reported seeing a great beam of light, almost like a meteorite’s tail, fall into the valley where the farmhouse was, on the night she was killed.”

  Matt stared at him. “And? Was the case ever solved?”

  “It’s odd, but I always thought there was something strange about the affair. As if certain aspects of it were hushed up. Oh, officially it was explained—we found that the killer had probably stowed himself in the house before the snow fell, and then escaped later when the snow on the path to the house had been thoroughly churned. But it was never solved. The killer was never found. And do you know something, I’ve always had a strange feeling about that case—as if there was more involved than met the eye.”

  “Like what?” Khalid wanted to know.

  “Well, I heard rumours much later that Sarah Roberts wasn’t human at all, but a Kéthani emissary, keeping an eye on things on Earth.”

  “But why would anyone want her dead?” I asked, amazed.

  Doug shrugged his big, bison-like shoulders. “I honestly don’t know. It’s almost as if, when I think about it, I’m prevented from recollecting the events with any clarity.”

  Khalid hummed the signature tune from an old sci-fi TV show. “Creepy. And you think that Matt’s mysterious figure and white light might be linked?”

  Doug looked at the priest. “Do you have you any idea what they might be, Matt? Any theories?”

  Matt stared into the leaping flames of the log fire, as if contemplating whether to tell us what he was thinking. He looked up, at each of us in turn. “I don’t expect you to share my conviction, gentlemen, but it occurred to me that they just might be angels.”

  He drained his pint, excused himself on the grounds of a sick parishioner, and left the three of us staring at each other in wonderment.

  On Thursday evening I finished practising around nine and decided to pop into the Fleece for a quick one.

  Khalid and Doug, Ben and Elisabeth, along with Richard Lincoln and Dan Chester, the local ferrymen, were encamped around the table beside the fire. The topic of conversation, not surprisingly, was Matt and his angels.

  “Do you think he’s going off his rocker?” Elisabeth asked.

  “You know these religious types,” Dan said. He’d been married to a Catholic who’d refused to have their daughter, Lucy, implanted. He viewed all religions that were opposed to the Kéthani with suspicion, and it had taken him a while to welcome Matt into the fold.

  “I’m concerned,” Khalid said. “Matt doesn’t seem to be himself these days.”

  “Well, neither would you if you were seeing angels!” Elisabeth said.

  “I think the hallucinations are manifestations of… I don’t know… stress, overwork.” Khalid looked at me. “What do you think, Andy? You know him well. He always seems hale and hearty, but what is he like when he isn’t…” he smiled and said, “performing?”

  I laughed. “Do you know something? I think he always is performing.”

  “Even when alone?” Elisabeth asked.

  “Is a man who believes, as Matt does,” I speculated, “ever alone?”

  “You mean he’s performing before his God?” Dan said, sarcastically. “Nice one.”

  Elisabeth stared into her Belgian lager. “What do you expect from a religion that doesn’t allow its clergy to express their sexual desires? It’s a wonder he isn’t hallucinating Playboy centrefolds.”

  “Anyway,” I said, in an attempt to bring the conversation back into line. “I don’t mind saying that I’m worried for Matt. Let’s keep an eye on him, okay?”

  We all nodded and agreed.

  Towards closing time, I noticed that Khalid was looking somewhat pensive.

  “A penny for them,” I said.

  “Oh, I was just remembering something. You recall a while back, Matt said something along the lines that the Kéthani are in the power of God?”

  I nodded. “It struck me as bizarre, too.”

  “Well… What he said just doesn’t sit with what I experienced on Kéthan, with what I learned.”

  “Go on.” Conversation around the table had ceased, and all eyes were on Khalid.

  “The odd thing is, when I look back on my experience of resurrection on Kéthan, to be honest I can’t actually recall exactly what happened.” He smiled. “I learned a lot about myself. I became a better human being. And I know I absorbed philosophies, too. Anyway, the abiding impression I gained is that the Kéthani don’t believe in a spiritual afterlife. I gathered that they think the foundation of the universe is purely materialistic. That’s why they go about the universe, bestowing immortality upon ‘lesser’ races…” He shrugged. “I think Matt’s deluding himself.”

  Elisabeth said, “But you said yourself that you don’t have a perfect recollection of what happened.”

  He nodded. “I know. And perhaps I’m wrong. But that doesn’t make me any the less worried for Matt, though.”

  As we were leaving the pub that evening, Elisabeth caught up with me and said, “About Matt, Andy—you’re seriously concerned?”

  I said reassuringly, “I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about, Elisabeth.”

  Three days later, though, I had cause to revise that opinion.

  I was driving home from a job in Leeds, taking the treacherous moor road towards Bradley. The roads had been gritted the night before, but were still icy in patches, and the undulating countryside on either hand was resplendent with snow in the light of the setting sun.

  I was a couple of miles from Oxenworth when I saw the old Micra.

  It had veered off the lane and into the ditch, and the driver’s door was flung open. I slowed as I approached. There was no sign of the driver or any other occupant.

  I braked and only then realised that I recognised the vehicle. It was Matt’s. The mental alarm bells started ringing.

  I jumped from my car and strode over to the little red car, half expecting to find Matt collapsed in the ditch.

  He wasn’t, but wha
t I found was perhaps even more worrying. A set of footprints led away from the abandoned vehicle, up the snow-covered grass verge towards a stile. On the other side, I made out the footsteps disappearing off up the rise of a field.

  I set off in pursuit, wondering what on earth might have provoked Matt into leaving the car, climbing the wall, and haring off over a snow-covered field at sunset.

  I clambered over the stile and sank into the snow up to my knees. I plodded up the incline, panting with the unaccustomed exercise. It was hard going, as I had to lift my feet high to clear the snow with each step.

  I followed the trail left by Matt up the rise of the field to its high crown. The evidence of the snow showed that he’d stumbled from time to time, creating churned areas of dark shadow in the blindingly white mantle.

  I wondered how long he’d been out here and hoped that I wouldn’t find him unconscious after hours of exposure.

  In the event I found him fully conscious, though that hardly came as a relief.

  I crested the crown of the hill and peered down the other side. I made out a dark figure, reduced in the distance. It gave the odd impression of being that of a dwarf, at first, until I realised that Matt was kneeling in the snow so that only his upper body showed.

  I yelled his name and clumsily galumphed down the hillside.

  “Matt! What the hell—”

  I drew near. He was kneeling in prayer, his red hands clasped beneath his chin, and his body was shaking with sobs.

  “Matt!” I cried again, falling beside him and putting my arm around his shoulders.

  He seemed barely aware of my presence. He was staring into the distance, his expression at once amazed and terrified.

  “Matt!”

  He turned and stared at me. “Andrew?”

  “Come on,” I said, attempting to haul him to his feet. The cold was getting to me, and I could only assume that Matt was half-frozen. “Back to my car.”

  “Andrew,” he went on, “if only you could have seen them! They were… beautiful and at the same time terrible. The light… But what can they mean, Andrew? What portent? Am I damned or exalted? What do they mean?”

  It was his words, more than the fact of his sequestration in the middle of a frozen field, that alarmed me then. Initially I had been worried for his physical health; now I worried about his mental stability.

  “They were at the side of the road,” he said, “watching me. I stopped and climbed out. They moved, flew towards the sunset, creatures of such beauty and grace, Andrew.” He stared at me as I hauled him to his feet and walked him slowly back to the car. “But what can they want with me?”

  Somehow I managed to get him over the stile and safely ensconced in the passenger seat of my car. I found his keys and locked his Micra, then drove the remaining mile into the village.

  He sat beside me, hunched, occasionally wiping his eyes with a big handkerchief. He said nothing, and I found it impossible to initiate any meaningful conversation. At one point he broke down again, sobbed briefly, and then pulled himself together—actually squared his shoulders and sat upright, as if chastising himself for such a lapse.

  I drove him to his house beside the church. “I’ll see you inside, Matt,” I said.

  I helped him from the car and walked him down the drive. He gave me the keys and I opened the door and ushered him into the lounge. He sat on the sofa, fingering his rosary, while I fixed a couple of stiff scotches from a well-stocked bar in the corner of the room.

  He gripped the glass and smiled at me. “I needed this, Andrew. Thanks.”

  “If there’s anything else I can do…?” I said lamely.

  He shook his head. “I’m fine. It’s just… well, it isn’t every day that one is pursued by angels, is it? I cannot help but wonder what it is they want with me.”

  I smiled and looked away from his penetrating gaze.

  “Do you know, Andrew, sometimes, I can’t work out whether I am blessed, or damned…”

  I considered what Khalid had told me last night, about his experience on Kéthan, and wondered whether to broach the subject with Matt. I decided against it, however: he was confident in his belief, one might almost say his passion. Who was I to gainsay that?

  A little later, after assuring him that I’d fetch his car, and his reassuring me that he was feeling much better now, I took my leave and repaired to the Fleece.

  It was after nine by this time, and the table by the fire was crowded. Khalid, Ben, and Elisabeth budged up to make room for me. Dan said, “I was just telling the others, Andy. On the way over from Bradley I saw a car abandoned in the ditch. I’m sure it was Matt’s. You know? That little red one he has?”

  I nodded. “I know. I saw it too—then I found Matt.”

  I gave them the story.

  Everyone was silent when I finished. I looked around the table, and the similar expressions of concern on the faces was in an odd way reassuring. It confirmed what I’d thought for a while: these men and women, my friends for over a year since I moved to the village, were good people.

  “So,” I said into the silence. “What do we do?”

  Dan said, “Is there much we can do, Andy? Be there for him…”

  “Perhaps,” Elisabeth said, “the Catholic Church has some kind of… I don’t know… helpline for distressed clergy.”

  “Maybe we should contact his bishop,” Ben suggested.

  “I’m not too sure he’d appreciate our going behind his back like that,” I said.

  Khalid said, “I’ll look into it at hospital, talk to a shrink and see if there’s anything they might suggest.”

  We all nodded, impotent in the light of our friend’s religious hallucinations.

  The topic of conversation changed, and I enjoyed a few more pints, but I could not help but contrast the Matt I had known over the weeks and the figure I had seen collapsed in manic prayer earlier that evening.

  The following night I arrived at rehearsal five minutes late, and the players were already tuning up. Old Mrs. Emmett gestured me over. “Matthew just phoned,” she said. “He’s at the church, in a meeting. He said he’d be here at eight.”

  I suggested that we run through a few numbers for thirty minutes until he arrived, and I conducted the Oxenworth Community Orchestra through an arrangement of the theme tune to Raiders of the Lost Ark. It sounded strangely flat and lifeless without Matthew in charge. Eight o’clock came and went, with no sign of our conductor. At eight-thirty, Mrs. Emmett said, “You don’t suppose anything’s happened to him? Sure-iv he would have phoned to tell us if he couldn’t make it?”

  I remembered last night, and part of me feared for Matt. I volunteered to pop along to see what was keeping him.

  The snow had not let up in the last week, and it was a foot deep in the little-used lane that connected the church to the village hall. I hurried through a fresh fall, shoulders hunched, came to the church and pushed through the heavy timber doors.

  The place was warm and silent. I hurried down the aisle, looking for Matt. I peered into the vestry, but he wasn’t there, and so I tried his little office next door.

  It was there that I found him.

  He was sitting in a swivel chair behind his vast oak desk. The chair was not facing the desk, but turned away, as if he had been addressing someone standing in front of the roaring fire.

  He was smiling, his posture slightly slumped, and something about the glassy immobility of his stare told me that he was dead.

  I hurried around the desk and felt for his pulse. There was none. I touched the implant, at his temple: the small, square device thrummed beneath my fingertips. Even now, the nano-machines would be coursing through Matt’s system, working their miracle, and bringing him back to life.

  Already, the Onward Station would know about his death; a ferryman would be on his way.

  I phoned the police at Bradley, and then let Mrs. Emmett know that Matt wouldn’t be in that night. I left it at that; for some reason I couldn’t bring myse
lf to say that my friend was dead.

  I found a chair and sat down, considering that a few years ago, before the coming of the Kéthani, Matt would have been dead forever. Like my mother and father, and my brother…

  Ten minutes later the police arrived, and minutes after that Dan Chester. I could see the sadness in their eyes as they took in the corpse: despite the fact of our resurrection, evidence of our erstwhile mortality still has a powerful effect on us. Dan and his assistant removed Matt’s body from the office; I gave a statement to the police and fifteen minutes later returned to the village hall to relay the news to a shocked orchestra.

  After that, there was nowhere else to go but the Fleece, for a session of liquid therapy.

  Khalid was there, propping up the bar, and I told him about the evening’s events.

  An hour later, Doug Standish joined us. “Thought you two might be here, somehow. The usual?”

  When he returned from the bar, he said, “I was down at the station when I heard about Matt. Apparently he had a massive heart attack.”

  For the rest of the evening we reminisced about Matt, telling stories of our friend, and smiling at the memories. As we left the Fleece around midnight, we were halted in our tracks by a blinding bolt of light from the distant Onward Station as it beamed the demolecularised remains of the dead up to the Kéthani starship.

  Khalid stared up, his brown face made pale by the light. “There he goes,” he whispered.

  “I wonder what kind of Matt he’ll be on his return?” I wondered.

  I took charge of the rehearsals at the village hall, and in spring we staged the first and what would turn out to be the last of the concerts in the church itself. It went down well, but something was missing—Matthew. The orchestra was a dying thing. In six months, I guessed, it would be gone, with no hope of resurrection, Kéthani or otherwise. Only when life became eternal did I truly appreciate the fact that nothing ever lasts forever.

  Matt was missing from our Tuesday night sessions, too; our gatherings just weren’t the same without him.