Eric Brown - Kéthani

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.

The day of his return came about, and there was a big crowd of locals in the reception lounge of the Onward Station that afternoon. His parishioners were out in force, ninety-nine per cent of them implanted; a gaggle of clergy was present, too. His Tuesday night friends formed a small knot among the crowd.

At three on the dot, the head of operations at the Station, Director Masters, made a short speech, and Matt stepped through the sliding doors and greeted us.

Matthew, in his late forties when he died, now looked a good ten years younger, his waistline slimmed down, the fat of his face pared—even the distinguished grey at his temples was gone. He looked leaner, fitter, somehow more full of energy, if that were possible.

He made the rounds, shaking hands, hugging, slapping backs; many of his flock were in tears.

I wondered if it was significant that he was no longer wearing his dog collar, or if he was undercover here, too.

“The beer brigade!” he greeted the Tuesday nighters. “God, I’ve missed a pint where I was…” We laughed.

One hour later, Matt was driven away by the officials of his Church.

As I watched him go, I thought over what he had said all those months ago about the Kéthani and their place in the scheme of things, and I wondered if Father Matthew Renbourn would slip quietly back into his old way of life in the village. I should have known the answer to that, of course.

That evening, just as I was about to call it a day, pack up my cornet, and slip out for a quick one at the Fleece, the phone rang.

It was Matt.

I couldn’t conceal my surprise. “Matt, great to hear from you. Look, do you fancy a pint? We’re meeting at the Fleece at nine.”

He made an excuse—he had a lot of work on. But, he said, he would like to see me.

I evinced my surprise yet again. “Well, of course. Great. Where?”

“Could you pop along to the church in ten minutes?”

It was high summer and a magnificently balmy evening. Not that I appreciated the sunset and the birdsong as I made my way down the lane to St. Luke’s. My head was full of my imminent meeting with Matt.

I found him in his office, seated behind his desk in the very same chair I’d found him in six months earlier.

He smiled at me. “Andy, sit down. I’d like to thank you for your work with the orchestra.”

“You’re welcome. It’s not the same without you… But that isn’t why you wanted to see me, is it?”

He grinned disarmingly. “Of course not. Doug told me that it was you who discovered the… my body.”

I nodded. “It was something of a shock,” I said.

“I can well imagine.” He paused and thought about what he was going to say next. “I think I owe you an explanation,” he continued.

I stared at him, not understanding. “About what?”

“About my death,” he murmured, “what else?”

I made a feeble gesture. “But what is there to explain?” I said. “You died of a massive coronary.”

“Officially, Andrew, I died of a massive coronary.”

I tried a smile. “And unofficially?”

“I’m not at all sure you’d believe me.”

“Try me.”

Matt leaned back in his chair and arranged his fingers in a fair imitation of a church steeple. “There is a lot we don’t know about, Andy. A lot happening in the big, wide universe out there that we, with our limited perceptions, cannot even guess at.” He paused, looked at his hands. “Do you recall those figures—the figures of light? I mentioned they were following me.”

“How can I forget?”

He nodded. “That night, six months ago, one came to see me, came here, into this very office. That night. Orchestra night.”

“What happened?” I asked, my voice far from steady. “What did it say?”

“It said nothing,” he told me. “It merely sent me on the next stage of my journey.”

I was suddenly aware of how loud my heartbeat was. “It killed you?” I murmured.

“It reached out,” he said, “and touched my chest, just here,” he lay his fingertips on his sternum, “and I felt a sudden and ineffable sense of joy, of affirmation, and I knew that my true quest had begun.”

I shook my head. “I don’t think I understand,” I began.

“When I was resurrected on Kéthan, I was instructed. I learned many things about the universe, the various races out there, the many philosophies. I was given the option of returning to Earth, or going among the stars. They showed me a vast starship, due to explore what we call the Lesser Magellanic Cloud. They want me to be aboard it when it sails.”

I hardly heard myself say, “In what capacity?”

He beamed at me. “To spread the word,” he said.

“The Kéthani…” I whispered. “You said, a while ago, that they were but tools to achieve God’s purpose.”

He nodded. “And I think they know that, too, my friend.”

A little later he showed me to the door of the church and shook my hand.

“Goodbye, Andrew,” Matt said, and turned and walked up the aisle towards the altar and the figure of Jesus on the cross. I watched him kneel and bow his head in prayer.

That was the last time I saw Father Matthew Renbourn. In the morning he slipped quietly from the village, leaving behind him the mystery of his death and the even greater mystery of his mission among the stars.

That night, I left Matt praying to his God and made my slow way to the Fleece. There, I informed the others what Matt had told me, and we speculated long into the night whether our friend was blessed… or deluded.

Fifteen years had passed since the coming of the Kéthani, and I often looked back and marvelled that so short a time had elapsed since that momentous day on the moors when I beheld the arrival of the Onward Station. I looked back, too, and found it hard to imagine life before the Kéthani. The world had been a vastly different place, then; but more, the human race had been very different. In the centuries and millennia BK, as we came to know it, humanity had schemed and grabbed and fought and killed on a global level, playing out imperatives that had their roots in individual neuroses: we were the descendants of animals, and within us was the conditioning of the jungle. We had feared death, and in consequence perhaps we had also feared life.