Eric Brown - Kéthani

They moved into the big, terracotta-tiled kitchen and checked the room thoroughly. They found the entrance to a small cellar and descended cautiously. The cellar was empty. Next they returned to the kitchen and moved into the adjacent dining room, but again found nothing.

“Upstairs?” Lincoln said.

Standish nodded. He led the way, climbing the wide staircase in silence. There were three bedrooms on the second floor, two bare and unoccupied, the third furnished with a single bed. They went through them from top to bottom. He was aware of the steady pounding of his heart as Standish pulled aside curtains and opened wardrobes. Last of all they checked the converted attic, spartanly furnished like the rest of the bedrooms, and just as free of lurking gunmen.

“Clean as a whistle,” Lincoln said as they made their way downstairs.

“I wish we’d found the killer,” Standish muttered. “I don’t like the alternative.” What was the alternative, he wondered? An eerie, impossible murder in a house surrounded by snow…

They entered the lounge. Lincoln knelt beside the body, reached out, and touched the woman’s implant.

Years ago, before the Kéthani, Standish had seen any number of bodies during the course of a working week, and he had never really become accustomed, or desensitised, to the fact that these once living people had been robbed of existence.

Now, when he did occasionally come across a corpse in the line of duty, he was immediately struck by the same feeling of futile waste and tragedy—only to be brought up short with the realisation that now, thanks to the Kéthani, the dead would be granted new life.

Lincoln looked up at him, his expression stricken. “Christ, Doug. This isn’t right.”

Standish felt his stomach turn. “What?”

Lincoln slumped back against the wall. Standish could see that he was sweating. “Her implant’s dead.”

“But I thought you said… you received the signal at the Station, right?”

Lincoln nodded. “It was the initial signal indicating that the subject had died.”

“So it should still be working?”

“Of course. It should be emitting a constant pulse.” He shook his head. “Look, this has never happened before. It’s unknown. These things just don’t pack up. They’re Kéthani technology.”

“Maybe it was one of those false implants? Don’t people with objections to the Kéthani sometimes have them?”

Lincoln waved. “Sarah worked for the Kéthani, Doug. And anyway, it was working. I saw the signal myself. Now the damned thing’s dead.”

Standish stared down at the woman, a wave of nausea overcoming him. He was struck once more by her attenuated Nordic beauty, and he was sickened by the thought that she would never live again. Amanda would have called him a sexist bastard: as if the tragedy were any the greater for the woman being beautiful.

“Can’t something be done?”

Lincoln lifted his shoulders in a hopeless shrug. “I don’t honestly know. The device needs to be active in the minutes immediately after the subject’s death, in order to begin the resurrection process. Maybe the techs at the Station might be able to do something. Like I said, this has never happened before.”

The room was hot, suffocatingly so. Standish moved to a window at the back of the room and was about to open it when he saw something through the glass.

He stepped from the lounge and into the kitchen. The back door was open a few inches. He crossed to it and, with his handkerchief, eased it open a little further and peered out.

The snow on the path directly outside the door had been melted in a circle perhaps a couple of metres across, revealing a stone-flagged path and a margin of lawn. The snow began again immediately beyond the melt, but there was no sign of footprints or any other tracks.

He returned to the lounge. Lincoln was on his mobile, evidently talking to someone at the Onward Station. “And there’s nothing at your end, either? Okay. Look, get a tech down here, fast.”

Standish crossed the room and stood before the big picture window, staring out at the darkening land with his back to the corpse. He really had no wish to look upon the remains of Sarah Roberts. Her reflection, in the glass, struck him as unbearably poignant, even more angelic as it seemed to float, ghost-like and evanescent, above the floor.

Lincoln joined him. “They’re sending someone down to look at the implant.”

Standish nodded. “The scene-of-crime team should be here any minute.” He glanced at the ferryman. “You didn’t hear her visitor’s voice when she returned from answering the door?”

“Nothing. I was aware that there was someone in the room by Sarah’s attitude. She seemed eager to end the call. But I didn’t see or hear anyone else.”

“Have you any idea which door she answered, front or back?”

Lincoln turned and looked at the vid-screen. “Let’s see, she was facing the screen, and she moved off to the left—so she must have answered the back door.”

That would fit with the door being ajar—but what of the melted patch?

“What kind of person was she? Popular? Boyfriend, husband?”

Lincoln shrugged. “I didn’t really know her. Station gossip was that she was a bit of a cold fish. Remote. Kept herself to herself. Didn’t make friends. She wasn’t married, and as far as I know she didn’t have a partner.”

“What was her job at the Station?”

“Well, she was designated a liaison officer, but to be honest I don’t exactly know what that entailed. I kept her up to date with the dead I delivered and the returnees, but I don’t know what she did with the information. She worked with Masters, the Station Director. He’d know more than me.”

“How long had she been at the Station?”

“Two or three months. But before that she’d worked at others up and down the country, so I heard.”

Standish nodded. “I’m just going to take another look around. I’ll be down when the scene-of-crime people turn up.”

He left the lounge and climbed the stairs again. He stood in the doorway of the only furnished bedroom and took in the bed—a single bed, which struck him as odd—and the bedside table with nothing upon it.

He moved to the bathroom and scanned the contents: a big shower stall, a Jacuzzi in the corner, plush white carpet… He stared around the room, trying to fathom precisely why he had the subtle feeling that something was not quite right. It was more a vague sensation than anything definite.

He heard the muffled groan of a labouring engine and rejoined Lincoln in the lounge.

Two minutes later Kendrick, the scene-of-crime team chief, appeared at the door with three other officers, and Standish and Lincoln went over their findings.

The tech from the Station turned up shortly after that and knelt over the corpse, examining the woman’s implant with the aid of a case full of equipment, scanners and a softscreen, and other implements Standish didn’t recognise.

Kendrick drew Standish to one side. “They’re bringing in a chap from Manchester, inspector. I know technically this is your territory, but the commissioner’s decided he wants the big boys in.”

Standish opened his mouth to complain, then thought better of it. Kendrick was merely the messenger; it would achieve nothing to vent his frustration on the scene-of-crime chief.

Twenty minutes later Lincoln clapped him on the shoulder. “Heading past the Dog and Gun? Fancy a quick one?”

“You’re a mind-reader, Richard. Lead the way.”

They retreated with their pints of Old Peculier to the table beside the fire. The barroom of the Dog and Gun was empty but for themselves and half a dozen youngsters at the far end of the bar. The kids wore the latest silvered fashions—uncomfortably dazzling to the eye—and talked too loudly amongst themselves. As if we really want to hear their inane views of life in the twenty-first century, Standish thought.