Eric Brown: Kéthani

By the time he arrived at the Station a silver dawn was breaking over the horizon, revealing a landscape redesigned, seemingly inflated, by the night’s snowfall. The Onward Station appeared on the skyline, a fabulous tower of spun glass scintillating in the light of the rising sun.

He visited the Station perhaps four or five times a week, and never failed to stare in awe— struck not only by the structure’s ethereal architecture, but by what it meant for the future of humankind.

He braked in the car park alongside the vehicles of the dozen other ferrymen on duty today. He climbed out and pulled the polycarbon container from the back of the Range Rover, the collapsible chromium trolley taking its weight. His breath pluming before him in the ice-cold air, he hurried towards the entrance set into the sloping walls.

The interior design of the Station was arctic in its antiseptic inhospitality, the corridors shining with sourceless, polar light. As he manoeuvred the trolley down the seemingly endless corridors, he felt as ever that he was, truly, trespassing on territory forever alien.

He arrived at the preparation room and eased the container onto the circular reception table, opening the lid. The farmer lay unmoving, maintained by the host of alien nanomechs that later, augmented by others more powerful, would begin the resurrection process. They would not only restore him to life, strip away the years, but make him fit and strong again; the man who returned to Earth in six months would be physically in his thirties, but effectively immortal.

In this room, Lincoln never ceased to be overcome by the wonder, as might a believer at the altar of some mighty cathedral.

He backed out, pulling the trolley after him, and retraced his steps. To either side of the foyer, cleaners vacuumed carpets and arranged sprays of flowers in the greeting rooms, ready to receive the day’s returnees, their relatives and loved ones.

He emerged into the ice-cold dawn and hurried across to the Range Rover. On the road that climbed the hill behind the Station, he braked and sat for ten minutes staring down at the diaphanous structure.

Every day a dozen bodies were beamed from this Station to the starship in geo-sync orbit, pulses of energy invisible during the daylight hours. At night the pulses were blinding columns of white lightning, illuminating the land for miles around.

Lincoln looked up, into the rapidly fading darkness. A few bright stars still glimmered, stars that for so long had been mysterious and unattainable—but which now, hard though it was sometimes to believe, had been thrown open to humankind by the beneficence of beings still mistrusted by many, but accepted by others as saviours.

And why had the Kéthani made their offer to humankind?

There were millions upon millions of galaxies out there, the aliens said, billions of solar systems, and countless, literally countless, planets that sustained life of various kinds. Explorers were needed, envoys and ambassadors, to discover new life, and make contact, and spread the greetings of the civilised universe far and wide.

Lincoln stared up at the fading stars and thought what a wondrous fact, what a miracle; he considered the new worlds out there, waiting to be discovered, strange planets and civilisations, and it was almost too much to comprehend that, when he died and was reborn, he too would venture out on that greatest diaspora of all.

He drove home slowly, tired after the exertions of the night. Only when he turned down the cart track, and saw the white Fiat parked outside the cottage, was he reminded of his daughter.

He told himself that he would make an effort today. He would not reprimand her for saying nothing about Barbara’s illness, wouldn’t even question her. God knows, he had never done anything in the past to earn her trust and affection. It was perfectly understandable that she had complied with her mother’s last wishes.

Still, despite his resolve, he felt a slow fuse of anger burning within him as he climbed from the Range Rover and let himself into the house.

He moved to the kitchen to make himself a coffee, and as he was crossing the hall he noticed that Susanne’s coat was missing from the stand, and likewise her boots from beneath it.

From the kitchen window he looked up at the broad sweep of the moorland, fleeced in brilliant snow, to the gold and silver laminated sunrise.

He made out Susanne’s slim figure silhouetted against the brightness. She looked small and vulnerable, set against such vastness, and Lincoln felt something move within him, an emotion like sadness and regret, the realisation of squandered opportunity.

On impulse he fetched his coat, left the cottage and followed the trail of her deep footprints up the hillside to the crest of the rise.

She heard the crunch of his approach, turned and gave a wan half-smile. “Admiring the view,” she whispered.

He stood beside her, staring down at the limitless expanse of the land, comprehensively white save for the lee sides of the dry-stone walls, the occasional distant farmhouse.

Years ago he had taken long walks with Susanne, enjoyed summer afternoons with her on the wild and undulating moorland. Then she had grown, metamorphosed into a teenager he had no hope of comprehending, a unique individual—no longer a malleable child—over whom he had no control. He had found himself, as she came more and more to resemble her mother and take Barbara’s side in every argument, in a minority of one.

He had become increasingly embittered, over the years. Now he wanted to reach out to Susanne, make some gesture to show her that he cared, but found himself unable to even contemplate the overture of reconciliation.

In the distance, miles away on the far horizon, was the faerie structure of the Station, its tower flashing sunlight.

At last she said, “I’m sorry,” so softly that he hardly heard.

His voice seemed too loud by comparison. “I understand,” he said.

She shook her head. “I don’t think you do.” She paused. Tears filled her eyes, and he wondered why she was crying like this.

“Susanne…”

“But you don’t understand.”

“I do,” he said gently. “Your mother didn’t want me to know about her illness—she didn’t want me around. Christ, I was a pain enough to her when she was perfectly well.”

“It wasn’t that,” Susanne said in a small voice. “You see, she didn’t want you to know that she’d been wrong.”

“Wrong?” He stared at her, not comprehending. “Wrong about what?”

She took a breath, said, “Wrong about the implant,” and tears escaped her eyes and tracked down her cheeks.

Lincoln felt something tighten within his chest, constrict his throat, making words difficult.

“What do you mean?” he asked at last.

“Faced with death, in the last weeks… it was too much. I… I persuaded her to think again. At last she realised she’d been wrong. A week before she died, she had the implant.” Susanne looked away, not wanting, or not daring, to look upon his reaction to her duplicity.

He found it impossible to speak, much less order his thoughts, as the realisation coursed through him.

Good God. Barbara…

He felt then love and hate, desire and a flare of anger.

Susanne said, “She made me swear not to tell you. She hated you, towards the end.”

“It was my fault,” he said. “I was a bastard. I deserved everything. It’s complex, Susanne, so bloody damned complex—loving someone and hating them at the same time, needing to be alone and yet needing what they can give.”

A wind sprang up, lifting a tress of his daughter’s hair. She fingered it back into place behind her ear. “I heard from her three months ago—a kind of CD thing delivered from my local Station. She told me that she’d been terribly cruel in not telling you. I… I meant to come up and tell you earlier, but I had no idea how you’d react. I kept putting it off. I came up yesterday because it was the last chance before she returns.”