Eric Brown: Kéthani

He drove through the town and up a steep hill, then turned right up an even steeper minor road. Hillcrest Farm occupied a bluff overlooking the acute incision of the valley. Coachlights burned orange around the front porch. A police car was parked outside.

Lincoln climbed from the Range Rover and hurried across to the porch. He stood for a second before pressing the doorbell, composing himself. He always found it best to adopt a neutral attitude until he could assess the mood of the bereaved family. More often than not the atmosphere in the homes of the dead was one of excitement and anticipation.

Infrequently, especially if the bereaved were religious, a more formal grief prevailed.

He pressed the bell and seconds later a ruddy-faced local constable opened the door. “There you are. We’ve been wondering if you’d make it, weather like it is.”

“Nice night for it,” Lincoln said, stepping into the hall.

The constable gestured up a narrow flight of stairs. “The dead man’s a farmer—silly bugger went out looking for a lost ewe. Heart attack. His daughter was out with him—but he was dead by the time she fetched help. He’s in the front bedroom.”

Lincoln followed the constable up the stairs and along a corridor. The entrance to the bedroom was impossibly low; both men had to stoop as if entering a cave.

The farmer lay fully dressed on the bed, rugged and grey like the carving of a knight on a sarcophagus. Half a dozen men and women in their twenties and thirties were seated around the bed on dining chairs. An old woman, presumably the farmer’s widow, sat on the bed itself, her husband’s lifeless blue hand clutched in hers.

Lincoln registered the looks he received as he entered the room: the light of hope and gratitude burned in the eyes of the family, as if he, Lincoln himself, was responsible for what would happen over the course of the next six months.

An actor assuming a role, Lincoln nodded with suitable gravity to each of the family in turn.

“If anyone has any questions, anything at all, I’ll be glad to answer them.” It was a line he came out with every time to break the ice, but he was rarely questioned these days.

He stepped forward and touched the implant at the dead man’s temple. It purred reassuringly. The nanomechs had begun the initial stage of the process upon the death of the farmer—the preparation of the body for its onward journey.

“I’ll fetch the container,” Lincoln said—he never called it a coffin—and nodded to the constable.

Together they carried the polycarbon container from the back of the Range Rover, easing it around the bends in the stairs. The family formed a silent huddle outside the bedroom door. Lincoln and the constable passed inside and closed the door behind them.

They lifted the corpse into the container and Lincoln sealed the sliding lid. The job of carrying the container down the stairs—attempting to maintain dignity in the face of impossible angles and improbable bends—was made all the more difficult by the presence of the family, watching from the landing.

Five minutes of gentle coaxing and patient lifting and turning, and the container was in the back of the Range Rover.

The constable handed over a sheaf of papers, which Lincoln duly signed and passed back. “I’ll be on my way, Mr. Lincoln,” the constable said. “See you later.” He waved and climbed into his squad car.

One of the farmer’s daughters hurried from the house. “You’ll stay for a cup of tea?”

Lincoln was about to refuse, then had second thoughts. If he returned home early, there was always the chance that Susanne would have waited up for him. “Yes, that’d be nice. Thanks.”

He followed her into a big, stone-flagged kitchen, an Aga stove filling the room with warmth.

He could tell that she had been crying. She was a plain woman in her mid-thirties, with the stolid, resigned appearance of the unfortunate sibling left at home to help with the farm work.

He saw the crucifix on a gold chain around her neck, and only then noticed that her temple was without an implant. He began to regret accepting the offer of tea.

He sat at the big wooden table and wrapped his hands around the steaming mug. The woman sat down across from him, nervously meeting his eyes.

“It happened so quickly. I can hardly believe it. He had a weak heart—we knew that. We told him to slow down. But he didn’t listen.”

Lincoln gestured. “He was implanted,” he said gently.

She nodded, eyes regarding her mug. “They all are, my mother, brothers and sisters.” She glanced up at him, something like mute appeal in her eyes. “It seems that all the country is, these days.”

When she looked away, Lincoln found his fingers straying to the outline of his own implant.

“But…” she whispered, “I’m sure things before were… I don’t know… better. I mean, look at all the suicides. Thousands of people every month take their lives…” She shook her head, confused. “Don’t you think that people are less… less concerned now, less caring?”

“I’ve heard Cockburn’s speeches. He says something along the same lines.”

“I agree with him. To so many people this life is no longer that important. It’s something to be got through, before what follows.”

How could he tell her that he felt this himself?

He said, “But wasn’t that what religious people thought about life, before the change?”

She stared at him as if he were an ignoramus. “No! Of course not. That might have been what atheists thought religious people felt… But we love life, Mr. Lincoln. We give thanks for the miracle of God’s gift.”

She turned her mug self-consciously between flattened palms. “I don’t like what’s happened to the world. I don’t think it’s right. I loved my father. We were close. I’ve never loved anyone quite so much.” She looked up at him, her eyes silver with tears. “He was such a wonderful man. We attended church together. And then the Kéthani came,” she said with venom, “and everything changed. My father, he…” she could not stop the tears now, “he believed what they said. He left the Church. He had the implant, like all the rest of you.”

He reached out and touched her hand. “Look, this might sound strange, coming from me, but I understand what you’re saying. I might not agree, but I know what you’re experiencing.”

She looked at him, something like hope in her eyes. “You do? You really do? Then…” She fell silent, regarding the scrubbed pine tabletop. “Mr. Lincoln,” she said at last, in a whispered entreaty, “do you really have to take him away?”

He sighed, pained. “Of course I do. It was his choice. He chose to be implanted. Don’t you realise that to violate his trust, his choice…” He paused. “You said you loved him. In that case respect his wishes.”

She was slowly shaking her head. “But I love God even more,” she said. “And I think that what is happening is wrong.”

He drained his tea with a gesture of finality. “There’ll be a religious service of your choice at the Station tomorrow.”

She looked up and murmured, “What do they want with our dead, Mr. Lincoln? Why are they doing this to us?”

He sighed. “You must have read the literature, seen the documentaries. It’s all in there.”

“But you… as a ferryman… surely you can tell me what they really want?”

“They want what they say—nothing more and nothing less.”

A silence came between them. She was nodding, staring into her empty mug. He stood and touched her shoulder as he left the kitchen. He said goodbye to the family in the living room— gathered like the survivors of some natural catastrophe, unsure quite how to proceed—and let himself out through the front door.