Eric Brown: Kéthani

“When?” Lincoln asked, suddenly aware of the steady pounding of his heart.

“Today,” Susanne said. She glanced at her watch. “At noon today—at this Station.”

“This Station?” Lincoln said. “Of all the hundreds in Britain?” He shook his head, some unnameable emotion making words difficult. “What… what does she want?”

“To see you, of course. She wants to apologise. She told me she’s learned a great many things up there, and one of them was compassion.”

Oh, Christ, he thought.

“Susanne,” he said, “I don’t think I could face your mother right now.”

She turned to him. “Please,” she said, “Please, this time, can’t you make the effort—for me? What do you think it’s been like, watching you two fight over the years?”

Lincoln baulked at the idea of meeting this resurrected Barbara, this reconstructed, compassionate creature. He wanted nothing of her pity.

“Look,” Susanne said at last, “she’s leaving soon, going to some star I can’t even pronounce. She wants to say goodbye.”

Lincoln looked towards the horizon, at the coruscating tower of the Station.

“We used to walk a lot round here when I was young,” Susanne said. There was a note of desperation in her voice, a final appeal.

Lincoln looked at his watch. It was almost ten. They could easily make it to the Station by midday, if they set off now.

He wondered if he would have been able to face Barbara, had she intended to stay on Earth.

At last, Lincoln reached out and took his daughter’s hand.

They walked down the hill, through the snow, towards the achingly beautiful tower of the Onward Station.

It was a freezing Tuesday evening and I was hurrying to the Fleece, anticipating the roaring fire and a pint or three of creamy Landlord ale, when I saw the muffled figure up ahead. It was a man, lagged in a greatcoat with a scarf bandaged around his ears. Only his eyes showed, as he leaned against the farm gate and stared over the snow-covered landscape at the bypass far below.

He turned when I approached, and I realised with surprise that it was Jeffrey Morrow. “Jeff,” I said, “What the hell are you doing?”

Something about his posture, the way he was slumped against the gate, alarmed me, and when I drew close enough to look in his eyes I saw the unshed tears there.

In reply, he just turned to the bypass and pointed a gloved finger. “It happened there, Khalid. Two years ago tomorrow. That bend, right there.”

I gripped his arm. “Jeff. Come on, I’ll get you a pint.”

“I was at home, doing some marking. I was expecting Caroline around six… Six came and went, and she didn’t phone. I knew something was wrong, then. You see, she always phoned. I tried her mobile, of course. It was switched off. At seven, Khalid, I was about to phone the police. Then Richard came to the door and told me…”

A single tear trickled down his cheek, freezing before it reached his mouth. He dashed it off as if in denial, as if to leave it there would be an admission of weakness.

“And a month later, a sodding month later, Khalid, the Kéthani came…”

I gripped his arm even tighter and felt an incredible wave of compassion for my friend. “Come on, Jeff. It’s freezing out here. Let’s get inside. You need a drink.”

He straightened up and took a deep breath, then looked at me and smiled. “I’m fine, Khalid. Yes. A pint. My round, okay?”

I smiled as we set off side by side. “I won’t argue, Jeffrey.”

The main bar of the Fleece greeted us with warmth and the hum of conversation. We settled ourselves around our usual table and Jeffrey got the pints in. The usual faces were there, warming themselves before the open fire: Richard Lincoln and Ben Knightly.

“No Zara tonight?” Richard asked.

“Ploughed under with work,“ I said. “I told her I’d have a pint or two for her.”

Jeffrey returned from the bar with a tray of Taylor’s Landlord. He smiled at me. There was no sign of the emotion he had experienced minutes earlier.

At one point that evening, he said, “I’ve been having… I suppose you’d call it counselling… about what happened to Caroline.”

Ben said, “Haven’t the Kéthani set up… I don’t know what you’d call them—clinics? Anyway, places you can go to talk about what’s happened, how it affects you personally…” He stopped there. Ben, alone in our group, was not implanted, and he had never told us the reason why—but that’s another story.

All across the world, stricken citizens remembered life before the Kéthani, grieving over loved ones who had died—died and gone to oblivion everlasting—while accepting the gift for themselves and suffering the consequences of renewed grief and guilt. I’d read about the psychiatric clinics set up to help us.

Richard Lincoln said, “Representatives of the Kéthani, humans recruited to do the administrative work of the aliens, have started counselling stations. The thing is, there are rumours.”

I looked at him. “What do you mean?”

He shrugged. “Look, this is just hearsay. But I’ve heard that these counsellors… well, that they’re actually representatives of the Kéthani race.”

We stared at him. As a ferryman, his words on these matters carried a certain weight.

“You’ve heard that at the Station?” I asked.

“Unofficially, of course. Personally, I don’t know what to think…”

Jeffrey said, with a distant look in his eyes, “To think of it, I might have been pouring out my woes to an extraterrestrial.”

For the rest of the night, we chatted about the pros and cons of this idea.

The thought of the Kéthani amongst us…

Jeffrey said, “Whether I’ve been talking to a human or an alien,” he smiled, “I know that it’s done me some good. Some things just can’t be handled alone.”

I was to remember these words, a few weeks later, when Jeffrey suffered another tragic loss.

That winter was the coldest in living memory, and January saw a record fall of snow across the north of England. On the last Monday of the month I sat in the warmth of the staff room and gazed out across the snow-sealed moorland, my mind completely blank. Miller, Head of Maths, dropped himself into the opposite seat, effectively blocking my view.

“Jeffrey,” he said. “You take year thirteen for Film Studies, don’t you?”

“For my sins.”

“What do you make of the Hainault girl?”

“I was away when she started,” I said. It had been mid-December, and I’d had other things on my mind.

“Oh, of course. Sorry. Well, you take them today, don’t you?”

“Last period. Why?”

He had the annoying habit of tapping the implant at his temple with a nicotine-stained finger, producing an insistent, hollow beat.

“Just wondered what you’d make of her, that’s all.”

“Disruptive?”

“The Hainault girl?” He grunted a laugh. “Quite the contrary. Brilliant pupil. Educated privately in France before arriving here. She’s wasted at this dump. It’s just…”

“Yes?”

He hesitated. “You’ll see when you take the class,” he said, and stubbed out his cigarette.

I watched, puzzled, as he stood and shuffled from the room.

“Tomlinson, Wilkins—if you want to turn out for the school team on Wednesday, shut it now.”

Silence from the usually logorrhoeic double act. I stared around the class, challenging.

“Thank you. Now, get into your study groups and switch on the screens. If you recall…” I glanced at my notes, “last week we were examining the final scenes of Brighton Rock. I want you to watch the last fifteen minutes, then we’ll talk.”