Eric Brown - Kéthani

That year, winter hung on well into April. There was a late fall of snow at Easter, transforming the land with its total and pristine beauty. Life proceeded as normal, a round of work and Tuesday night sessions at the Fleece. They were the highlight of the week, a few hours of relaxation among good friends.

I saw Zara once in Bradley, and that was painful. She was walking arm in arm with her new husband, on the opposite side of the street. They didn’t see me, for which I was thankful. The sight of her, tall and beautiful and seemingly happy, released a slew of painful memories. I went over and over our final days together, and Zara’s accusations. I was a bastard, she had said, a domineering, selfish, bigoted, sexist bastard.

And then I had killed myself and been resurrected—remade, as it were, by the Kéthani. I became a new man.

A few months after Davey Emmett’s death, Richard Lincoln took me to one side in the Fleece and told me that Mrs. Emmett was in hospital.

“I saw her yesterday while I was making a pick up,” he said. “She has cancer. It’s terminal. She said she wanted to see you.”

I looked at him. “You don’t think…?” I began.

“What, that she wants to be implanted? A conversion at the eleventh hour? I doubt it, not our Mrs. Emmett.”

“I’ll drop by and see her tomorrow,” I promised, and returned to my pint, wondering what the old lady might want to see me about.

She was in a private room on the oncology ward, sitting upright in bed and hooked up to a bank of machines. If I had expected a feeble, self-sorry old woman who had given up all hope, then I had grossly underestimated Mrs. Katherine Emmett.

She gave a cheery smile when I hesitantly entered the room. “Khalid, pull up a chair. How are you?”

I smiled and shook my head. “Isn’t it me who should be asking you how you are?”

She laughed. “I’m fine, Khalid. Oddly enough, given the circumstances, I’ve really never felt better.”

I took her hand. “You’re an amazing woman,” I found myself saying.

She laughed again, mockingly this time. “I’m seventy-six, Khalid, and I’ve had a full and eventful life. I’m quite prepared for the end of this stage of existence.”

I gestured at the equipment surrounding the bed. “They’re doing their damnedest to keep you alive.”

She leaned forward and whispered, mock-conspiratorially, “It’s because I’m not implanted, Khalid. They’re frightened to death of death. They’re trying to do everything they can to squeeze a few more weeks of life from me. But as I’ve told them over and over, I’m ready to go.”

“They haven’t tried to get you to agree to an implant?”

“Of course they have. I had some young thing down here just yesterday. He didn’t know his theology, though—I tied him up in knots.”

“So it’d be useless if I tried to…”

“Absolutely and categorically futile, Khalid, my friend.”

I tried another tack. “How long do they give you?”

“Perhaps a month. The liver, you see.”

“But you won’t be around to see Davey when he returns…”

She allowed a few seconds to elapse before she replied—sufficient time to make me regret the statement.

“No,” she said, “I won’t be around. And do you know something? I don’t want to be around, to be honest.”

I stared at her. “Surely—” I began, and stopped myself.

She leaned forward. “Khalid, I want to tell you something. I’ve never told another living soul this, and I want to get it off my chest before I go.” I squeezed her hand, wondering what I was about to hear.

“Khalid, do you know what was wrong with Davey? I mean, what was responsible for his condition?”

I shook my head. “His medical records would have been privy only to his own doctor,” I began.

She smiled, returning the pressure of my hand. “It was an accident, Khalid. When he was two years old. I’d taken him out shopping. If only I’d delayed going out or not gone at all… But we can’t undo the past, can we? Oh, I’ve often wondered how what happened might have been the repercussions of sins I might have committed in a previous life. That was the only part of Buddhist theory that I found hard to accept.” She laughed. “For obvious reasons, Khalid! Anyway, you see, it was my fault… the accident. We had stopped at the side of the road, and Davey got away from me… ran straight into the road, in front of…” She paused, gathering herself, and then went on. “The doctors said it was miracle that Davey survived, even though he was severely brain damaged.”

She stopped, and the silence seemed to ring like an alarm. When I looked up at her, I saw tears streaming unchecked down her wrinkled cheeks. I found a tissue and passed it to her, and she blotted the tears with a gesture at once dignified and pitiful.

“I’ve had to live with the guilt for so long,” she said, “even though my acceptance of karma should lead me to be able to see guilt for the illusion it is. As I said, I’m not a very good Buddhist.”

I began to protest.

She gave a sigh and went on, “So do you see why I couldn’t bear to see Davey when he returned? He will be how he would have been, were it not for my neglect. And the sight of him, so changed, will remind me not only of my foolishness, but of the Davey I should have been able to love, growing up like other children.”

She was crying again, and all I could do was grip her hand.

At last, tentatively, I said, “But if you were to be implanted, you would be able to share his life from now on.”

She smiled at me through her tears. She lifted my hand and kissed my knuckles. “You’re a good man, Khalid. You mean well. But Davey would be a stranger to me. It wasn’t meant to be. Did you know,” she said, more brightly now, “that scientists opposed to the Kéthani have developed a new theory of consciousness?”

I smiled. “They have?”

She nodded, enthusiastic. “You see, they posit that our consciousness, the very essence that makes us ourselves, resides on some infinitesimally small, quantum level, a level that permeates the cosmos. And when we die, we don’t just fizzle out like a spent match, but our consciousness remains integrated with the matrix of existence…” She laughed to herself. “It’s what Buddha said all those hundreds of years ago, Khalid!”

“Well, what do you know, Mrs. Emmett,” I smiled.

Before I left, promising to pop in the following day, she restrained me with a fierce grip. “Khalid, when Davey returns, will you meet him at the Station, explain what happened, why I couldn’t be there for him? Will you make sure that he understands, Khalid?”

“Of course I will.”

“And… something else.” She reached across to the bedside table, and gave me a sealed letter. “Will you give this to him, Khalid? It’s an explanation of my belief. I want him to consider everything, so that he can decide for himself whether he wants to retain his implant.”

I squeezed her hand and promised that I would give him the letter, then said goodbye and slipped from the room.

I did return the following day, only to learn that Mrs. Emmett had died peacefully in the early hours of the morning.

Three months later, in the middle of October, a heavy fall of snow heralded Davey Emmett’s return to Earth.

I was just one of three people gathered at the Onward Station to greet him. The other two were care assistants who had worked with Davey over the years. They had never, they said, met a returnee; I refrained from telling them that I had died and been resurrected by the Kéthani.

I recalled my own transformation, both mentally and physically, and wondered how the Kéthani might have remade Davey Emmett.