Eric Brown - Kéthani

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 myself to say that my friend was dead.