Eric Brown: Kéthani

“My God,” he said suddenly, apropos of nothing. “I sometimes wonder…”

His pronouncement startled us. He was staring at the TV screen. Zara stopped talking to Jeff about their school and said, “What, Richard?”

He nodded towards the news programme. “Look at that. Chaos. How will it end, for God-sake? I sometimes wonder why I became a ferryman…”

In silence we turned to the screen and watched. A year of turmoil had followed the coming of the Kéthani. The human race, suspicious and hostile at the best of times, did not trust the alien race that had arrived unannounced bearing its gift from the stars.

There had to be a catch, some said. No race could be so altruistic. We were, of course, judging the Kéthani by our own standards, which is always a mistake when attempting to understand the motivating forces of others.

The report showed scenes of rioting in the Philippines. Manila was ablaze. The government, pro-Kéthani, had been toppled by the anti-Kéthani armed forces, and a bloody coup was in progress. 3000 citizens were reported dead.

The scene shifted to a BBC reporter in Pakistan. There, the imams had declared the Kéthani evil and the implants an abomination. Hundreds of implanted citizens had been attacked and slaughtered.

The world was in chaos. Hundreds of thousands of citizens had lost their lives in the rioting. Two camps were emerging from the chaos: those opposed to the Kéthani and those who embraced the gift of the aliens with wholehearted enthusiasm. The divide happened on a global level: some countries accepted the gift, while others rejected it. Many nations were torn by internal opposing forces.

“Do you mind?” Lincoln asked, gesturing to the screen. “I don’t think I can take much more.”

Perhaps sensing that his disquiet had its source much closer to home, we murmured that of course he could turn it off.

He downed his pint and-turned to us. “Did I tell you that Barbara was… is… fervently opposed to the Kéthani?” he asked.

The divide was repeated on a smaller scale, splitting families, even husbands and wives.

“I was fifty years old when the Kéthani came,” Lincoln said now, staring into his empty glass, “and I’d felt that something was wrong for years. When they came, I thought that was obviously the answer.” He gestured at the screen. “I wonder now how things will end?”

Little by little, over the next few months, I came to understand what Richard Lincoln was going through.

Lincoln sat in the darkened living room and half-listened to the radio news. More unrest in the East; riots and protests against the implantation process in India and Malaysia. The president of France had taken his life, another suicide statistic to add to the growing list. The news finished and was followed by a weather report: a severe snowfall was forecast for that night and the following day.

Lincoln was hoping for a quiet shift when his mobile rang. It was his controller at the Station. She gave the name and address of the dead subject, then rang off.

Despite the weather and the inconvenience of the late hour—or rather the early hour; it was two in the morning—as ever he felt the visceral thrill of embarkation, the anticipation of what was to come.

He stepped into the hall and found his coat, already planning the route twenty miles over the moors to the dead man’s town.

He was checking his pocket for the Range Rover’s keys when he heard the muffled grumble, amplified by the snow, of a car engine. His cottage was a mile from the nearest road, serviced by a potholed cart track. No one ever turned down the track by mistake, and he’d had no visitors in years.

He waited, as if half-expecting the noise to go away, but the vehicle’s irritable whine increased as it fought through the snow and ice towards the cottage. Lincoln switched on the outside light and returned to the living room, pulling aside the curtain and peering out.

A white Fiat Electra lurched from pothole to pothole, headlights bouncing. It came to a stop outside the cottage, the sudden silence profound, and a second later someone climbed out.

Lincoln watched his daughter slam the car door and pick her way carefully through the snow.

The doorbell chimed.

He envisaged the tense confrontation that would follow, thankful for the call-out that would reduce his contact with Susanne to a minimum.

He pulled open the door. She stood tall in an expensive white mackintosh, collar turned up around her long, dark, snow-specked hair.

Her implant showed as a slight bulge at her temple.

She could hardly bring herself to look him in the eye. Which, he thought, was hardly surprising.

She gave a timid half-smile. “It’s cold out here, Richard.”

“Ah… Come in. This is a surprise. Why didn’t you ring?”

“I couldn’t talk over the phone. I needed to see you in person.”

To explain herself, he thought; to excuse her recent conduct.

She swept past him, shaking the melted snow from her hair. She hung her coat in the hall and walked into the living room.

Lincoln paused behind her, his throat constricted with an emotion he found hard to identify. He knew he should have felt angry, but all he did feel was the desire for Susanne to leave.

“I’m sorry. I should have come sooner. I’ve been busy.”

She was thirty, tall and good-looking and— damn them —treacherous genes had bequeathed her the unsettling appearance of her mother.

As he stared at her, Lincoln realised that he no longer knew the woman who was his daughter.

“But I’m here now,” she said. “I’ve come about—”

He interrupted, his pulse racing. “I don’t want to talk about your mother.”

“Well I do,” Susanne said. “This is important.”

“Look, it’s impossible right now. I’ve just had a call from the Station.”

“You’re going? Just when I get here?”

“I’m sorry, Susanne. Thing is, it’s quite a way—Hebden Bridge. I should really be setting off. Look… make yourself at home. You know where the spare room is. We can… we’ll talk in the morning, okay?”

He caught the flash of impatience on her face, soon doused by the realisation that nothing came between him and his calling.

She sighed. “Fine. See you in the morning.”

Relief lifting from his shoulders like a weight, Lincoln nodded and hurried outside. Seconds later he was revving the Range Rover up the uneven track, into the darkness.

The main road had been gritted earlier that night, and the snow that had fallen since had turned into a thin grey mush. Lincoln drove cautiously, his the only vehicle out this late. Insulated from the cold outside, he tried to forget about the presence of Susanne back at the cottage. He half-listened to a discussion programme on the World Service. He imagined half a dozen dusty academics huddled in a tiny studio in Bush House. Cockburn, the Cambridge philosopher, had the microphone: “It is indeed possible that individuals will experience a certain disaffection, even apathy, which is the result of knowing that there is more to existence than this life…”

Lincoln wondered if this might explain the alienation he had felt for a year, since accepting his present position. But then he’d always had difficulty in showing his emotions and consequently accepting that anyone else had emotions to show.

This life is a prelude, he thought, a farce I’ve endured for fifty years—the end of which I look forward to with anticipation.

It took him almost an hour to reach Hebden Bridge. The small town, occupying the depths of a steep valley, was dank and quiet in the continuing snowfall. Streetlights sparkled through the darkness.