Kéthani

THREE THE KÉTHANI INHERITANCE

That winter, two events occurred that changed my life. My father died and, for the first time in thirty years, I fell in love. I suppose the irony is that, but for my father’s illness, I would never have met Elisabeth Carstairs.

He was sitting in the lounge of the Sunny View nursing home that afternoon, chocked upright in his wheelchair with the aid of cushions, drooling and staring at me with blank eyes. The room reeked of vomit with an astringent overlay of bleach.

“Who’re you, then?”

I sighed. I was accustomed to the mind-numbing, repetitive charade. “Ben,” I said. “Benjamin. Your son.”

Sometimes it worked, and I would see the dull light of recognition in his rheumy eyes. Today, however, he remained blank.

“Who’re you, then? What do you want?”

“I’m Ben, your son. I’ve come to visit you.”

I looked around the room, at the other patients, or “guests” as the nurses called them; they all gazed into space, seeing not the future, but the past.

“Who’re you, then?”

Where was the strong man I had hated for so long? Such was his decrepitude that I could not bring myself to hate him any longer; I only wished that he would die.

I had wished him dead so many times in the past. Now it came to me that he was having his revenge, that he was protracting his life purely to spite me.

In Holland, I thought, where a euthanasia law had been passed years ago, the old bastard would be long dead.

I stood and moved to the window. The late afternoon view was far from sunny. Snow covered the hills to the far horizon, above which the sky was mauve with the promise of evening.

I was overcome with a sudden and soul-destroying depression.

“What’s this?” my father said.

I focused on his apparition reflected in the plate-glass window. His thin hand had strayed to his implant.

“What’s this, then?”

I returned to him and sat down. I would go through this one more time—for perhaps the hundredth time in a year—and then say goodbye and leave.

His frail fingers tapped the implant at his temple, creating a hollow drumming sound.

“It’s your implant,” I said.

“What’s it doing there?”

It sat beneath the papery skin of his temple, raised and rectangular, the approximate size of a matchbox.

“The medics put it there. Most people have them now. When you die, it will bring you back to life.”

His eyes stared at me, then through me, uncomprehendingly.

I stood. “I’m going now. I’ll pop in next week…” It would be more like next month, but, in his shattered mind, all days were one now.

As I strode quickly from the room I heard him say, “Who’re you, then?”

An infant-faced Filipino nurse beamed at me as I passed reception. “Would you like a cup of tea, Mr. Knightly?”

I usually refused, wanting only to be out of the place, but that day something made me accept the offer.

Serendipity. Had I left Sunny View then, I might never have met Elisabeth. The thought often fills me with panic.

“Coffee, if that’s okay? I’ll be in here.” I indicated a room designated as the library, though stocked only with Mills and Boon paperbacks, Reader’s Digest magazines and large-print Western novels.

I scanned the chipboard bookcases for a real book, then gave up. I sat down in a big, comfortable armchair and stared out at the snow. A minute later the coffee arrived. The nurse intuited that I wished to be left alone.

I drank the coffee and gazed at my reflection in the glass. I felt like a patient, or rather a “guest”.

I think I was weeping when I heard, “It is depressing, isn’t it?”

The voice shocked me. She was standing behind my chair, gripping a steaming mug and smiling.

I dashed away a tear, overcome with irritation at the interruption.

She sat down in the chair next to mine. I guessed she was about my age—around thirty— though I learned later that she was thirty-five. She was broad and short with dark hair bobbed, like brackets, around a pleasant, homely face.

“I know what it’s like. My mother’s a guest here. She’s senile.” She had a direct way of speaking that I found refreshing.

“My father has Alzheimer’s,” I said. “He’s been in here for the past year.”

She rolled her eyes. “God! The repetition! I sometimes just want to strangle her. I suppose I shouldn’t be saying that, should I? The thing is, we were so close. I love her dearly.”

I found myself saying, “In time, when she dies and returns, her memory will—” I stopped, alarmed by something in her expression.

It was as if I had slapped her.

Her smile persisted, but it was a brave one now in the face of adversity. She shook her head. “She isn’t implanted. She refused.”

“Is she religious?”

“No,” she said, “just stubborn. And fearful. She doesn’t trust the Kéthani.”

“I’m sorry.”

She shook her head, as if to dismiss the matter. “I’m Elisabeth, by the way. Elisabeth Carstairs.”

She reached out a hand, and, a little surprised at the forthright gesture, I took it. I never even thought to tell her my own name.

She kept hold of my hand, turning it over like an expert palm reader. Only later did I come to realise that she was as lonely as I was: the difference being, of course, that Elisabeth had hope, something I had given up long ago.

“Don’t tell me,” she said, examining my weather-raw fingers. “You’re a farmer, right?”

I smiled. “Wrong. I build and repair dry-stone walls.”

She laughed. “Well, I was almost there, wasn’t I? You do work outdoors, with your hands.”

“What do you do?” I would never have asked normally, but something in her manner put me at ease. She did not threaten.

“I teach English. The comprehensive over at Bradley.”

“Then you must know Jeff Morrow. He’s a friend.”

“You know Jeff? What a small world.”

“We meet in the Fleece every Tuesday.” I shrugged. “Creatures of habit.”

She glanced at her watch and pulled a face. “I really should be getting off. It’s been nice talking…” She paused, looking quizzical.

I was slow on the uptake, then realised. “Ben,” I said. “Ben Knightly. Look, I’m driving into the village. I can give you a lift if you—”

She jangled car keys. “Thanks anyway.”

I stood to leave, nodding awkwardly, and for the first time she could see the left-hand side of my face.

She stared, something stricken in her eyes, at where my implant should have been.

I hurried from the nursing home and into the raw winter wind, climbed into my battered ten-year-old Sherpa van and drove away at speed.

The following evening, just as I was about to set off to the Fleece, the phone rang. I almost ignored it, but it might have been a prospective customer, and I was going through a lean spell.

“Hello, Ben Knightly? Elisabeth here, Elisabeth Carstairs. We met yesterday.”

“Of course, yes.” My heart was thudding, my mouth dry, the usual reactions of an inexperienced teenager to being phoned by a girl.

“The thing is, I have a wall that needs fixing. A couple of cows barged through it the other day. I don’t suppose…?”

“Always looking for work,” I said, experiencing a curious mixture of relief and disappointment. “I could come round tomorrow, or whenever’s convenient.”

“Sometime tomorrow afternoon?” She gave me her address.

“I’ll be there between two and three,” I said, thanked her and rang off.

That night, in the main bar of the Fleece, I was on my third pint of Landlord before I broached the subject of Elisabeth Carstairs.

Jeff Morrow was a small, thoughtful man who shared my interest in football and books. An accretion of sadness showed in his eyes. He had lost two people close to him, over the years; one had been his wife, killed in a car accident before the coming of the Kéthani; the other a lover who had refused to be implanted.

He had never once commented on the fact that I was not implanted, and I respected him for this.

The other members of our party were Richard Lincoln and Khalid and Zara Azzam.

“I met a woman called Elisabeth Carstairs yesterday,” I said. “She teaches at your school, Jeff.”

“Ah, Liz. Lovely woman. Good teacher. The kids love her. One of those naturals.”

That might have been the end of that conversation, but I went on, “Is she married?”

He looked up. “Liz? God no.”

Richard traced the outline of his implant with an absent forefinger. “Why ‘God, no’, Jeff? She isn’t—?”

“No, nothing like that.” He shrugged, uncomfortable. Jeff is a tactful man. He said to me, “She’s been looking after her mother for the past ten years. As long as I’ve known her, she’s never had a boyfriend.”

Khalid winked at me. “You’re in there, Ben.” Zara dug her husband in the ribs with a sharp elbow.

I swore at him. Jeff said, “Where did you meet?”

I told him, and conversation moved on to the health of my father (on his third stroke, demented, but still hanging on), and then by some process of convoluted logic to Leeds United’s prospects this Saturday.

Another thing I liked about the Tuesday night group was that they never made digs about the fact that I’d never had a girlfriend since they’d known me—since my early twenties, if the truth be known.

I’d long ago reconciled myself to a life mending dry-stone walls, reading the classics, and sharing numerous pints with friends at the Fleece.

And I’d never told anyone that I blamed my father. Some wounds are too repulsive to reveal.

It was midnight by the time I made my way up the hill and across the moors to the cottage. I recall stopping once to gaze at the Onward Station, towering beside the reservoir a mile away. It coruscated in the light of the full moon like a stalagmite of ice.

As I stared, a beam of energy, blindingly white, arced through the night sky towards the orbiting Kéthani starship, and the sight, I must admit, frightened me.

“I tried repairing it myself,” Elisabeth said, “but as you can see I went a bit wrong.”

“It’s like a jigsaw puzzle,” I said. “It’s just a matter of finding the right piece and fitting it in.”

It was one of those rare, brilliantly sunny November days. There was no wind, and the snow reflected the sunlight with a twenty-four carat dazzle.

I dropped the last stone into place, rocked it home, and then stood back and admired the repair.

“Thirty minutes,” Elisabeth said. “You make it look so easy.”

I smiled. “Matter of fact, I built this wall originally, twelve years ago.”

“You’ve been in the business that long?”

We chatted. Elisabeth wore snow boots and a padded parka with a fur-lined hood that that made her look like an Eskimo. She stamped her feet. “Look, it’s bitter out here. Would you like a coffee?”

“Love one.”

Her house was a converted barn on the edge of the moor, on the opposite side of the village to my father’s cottage where I lived. Inside it was luxurious: deep pile carpets, a lot of low beams and brass. The spacious kitchen was heated by an Aga.

I stood on the doormat, conscious of my boots.

“Just wipe them and come on in,” she said, laughing. “I’m not house-proud, unlike my mother.”

I sat at the kitchen table and glanced through the door to a room full of books. I pointed. “Like reading?”

“I love books,” she said, handing me a big mug of real coffee. “I teach English, and the miracle is that it hasn’t put me off reading. You?” She leaned against the Aga, holding her cup in both hands.

We talked about books for a while, and I think she was surprised at my knowledge.

Once I saw her glance at my left temple, where the implant should have been. I felt that she wanted to comment, to question me, but couldn’t find a polite way of going about it.

The more I looked at her, and the more we talked, the more I realised that I found her attractive. She was short, and a little overweight, and her hair was greying, but her smile filled me with joy.

Romantic and inexperienced as I was, I extrapolated fantasies from this meeting, mapped the future.

“How often do you visit your mother?” I asked, to fill a conversational lull.

“Four times a week. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday.”

I hesitated. “How long has she been ill?”

She blew. “Oh… when has she ever been well! She had her first stroke around ten years ago, not long after we moved here. I’ve been working part-time and looking after her ever since. She’s averaged about… oh, a stroke every three years since. The doctors say it’s a miracle she’s still with us.”

She hesitated, then said, “Then the Kéthani came, and offered us the implants… and I thought all my prayers had been answered.”

I avoided her eyes.

Elisabeth stared into her cup. “She was a very intelligent woman, a member of the old Labour Party before the Blair sell-out. She knew her mind. She wanted nothing to do with afterlife, as she called it.”

“She was suspicious of the Kéthani?”

“A little, I suppose. Weren’t we all, in the beginning? But it was more than that. I think she foresaw humanity becoming complacent, apathetic with this life when the stars beckoned.”

“Some people would say she was right.”

A silence developed. She stared at me. “Is that the reason you…?”

There were as many reasons for not having the implant, I was sure, as there were individuals who had decided to go without. Religious, philosophical, moral… I gave Elisabeth a version of the truth.

Not looking her in the eye, but staring into my empty cup, I said, “I decided not to have the implant, at first, because I was suspicious. I thought I’d wait; see how it went with everyone who did have it. A few years passed… It seemed fine. The returnees came back fitter, healthier, younger. Those that went among the stars later, they recounted their experiences. It was as the Kéthani said. We had nothing to fear.” I looked up quickly to see how she was taking it.

She was squinting at me. She shrugged. “So, why didn’t you…?”

“By that time,” I said, “I’d come to realise something. Living on the edge of death, staring it in the face, made life all the more worth living. I’d be alone, on some outlying farm somewhere, and I’d be at one with the elements… and, I don’t know, I came to appreciate being alive.”

Bullshit, I thought. It was the line I’d used many a time in the past, and though it contained an element of truth, it was not the real reason.

Elisabeth was intelligent; I think she saw through my words, realised that I was hiding something, and I must admit that I felt guilty about lying to her.

I thanked her for the coffee and made to leave.

“How much for the work?” she said, gesturing through the window at the repaired wall.

I hesitated. I almost asked her if she would like to go for a meal, but stopped myself just in time. I told myself that it would seem crass, as if she had to accept the invitation in payment. In fact, the coward in me shied away from escalating the terms of our relationship.

“Call it fifty,” I said.

She gave me a fifty euro note and I hurried from the house, part of me feeling that I had escaped, while another part was cursing my fear and inadequacy.

I found myself, after that, visiting my father on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday. Sunny View seemed a suitably neutral venue in which to meet and talk to Elisabeth Carstairs.

I even found myself looking forward to the visits.

About two weeks after I repaired her wall, I was sitting in the lounge with my father. It was four o’clock and we were alone. Around four-thirty Elisabeth would emerge from her mother’s room and we would have coffee in the library.

I was especially nervous today because I’d decided to ask her if she would like to come for a meal the following day, a Thursday. I’d heard about a good Indonesian place in Bradley.

I’d come to realise that I liked Elisabeth Carstairs for who she was, her essential character, rather than for what she might represent: a woman willing to show me friendship, affection, and maybe even more.

We had a lot in common, shared a love of books, films, and even a similar sense of humour. Moreover, I saw in Elisabeth a fundamental human decency, perhaps born out of hardship, that I detected in few other people.

“Who’re you, then?”

“Ben,” I said absently, my thoughts miles away.

He regarded me for about a minute, then said, “You always were bloody useless!”

I stared at him. He had moments of lucidity: for a second, he was back to his old self, but his comment failed to hurt. I’d heard it often before, when the sentiment had been backed by an ability to be brutal.

“Dry-stone walls!” he spat.

“Is that any worse than being a bus driver?” I said.

“Useless young…” he began, and dribbled off.

I leaned forward. “Why don’t you go to hell!” I said, and hurried from the room, shaking.

I sat in the library, staring out at the snow and shaking. I wondered if, when my father was resurrected and returned, he would have any memory of the insult.

“Hello, Ben. Nice to see you.”

She was wearing her chunky primrose parka and, beneath it, a jet-black cashmere jumper.

“You don’t look too good,” she said, sitting down and sipping her coffee.

I shrugged. “I’m fine.”

“Some days he’s worse than others, right? Don’t tell me. Mum’s having one of her bad days today.”

More than anything I wanted to tell her that I cared nothing for my father, but resisted the urge for fear of appearing cruel.

We chatted about the books we were reading at the moment; she had loaned me Chesterton’s Tales of the Long Bow, and I enthused about his prose.

Later, my coffee drunk, I twisted the cup awkwardly and avoided her eyes. “Elisabeth, I was wondering… There’s a nice Indonesian restaurant in Bradley. At least, I’ve heard it’s good. I was wondering—”

She came to my rescue. “I’d love to go,” she said, smiling at me. “Name a day.”

“How about tomorrow? And I’ll pay.”

“Well, I’ll get the next one, then. How’s that sound? And I’ll drive tomorrow, if you like.”

I nodded. “Deal,” I said, grinning like an idiot.

I was working on a high sheepfold all the following day, and I was in good spirits. I couldn’t stop thinking about Elisabeth, elation mixed equally with trepidation. From time to time I’d stop work for a coffee from my Thermos, sit on the wall I was building, and stare down at the vast, cold expanse of the reservoir, and the Onward Station beside it.

Ferrymen came and went, delivering the dead. I saw Richard Lincoln’s Range Rover pull up and watched as he unloaded a container and trolleyed it across the car park and into the Station.

At five I made my way home, showered and changed and waited nervously for Elisabeth to pick me up.

The meal was a success. In fact, contrary to my fears, the entire night was wonderful. We began talking from the time she collected me and never stopped.

The restaurant was quiet, the service excellent, and the food even better. We ate and chattered, and it seemed to me that I had known this friendly, fascinating woman all my life.

I could not see in Elisabeth the lonely, loveless woman that Jeff had described; she seemed comfortable and at ease. I feared I would appear gauche and naive to her, but she gave no indication of thinking so. Perhaps the fact was that we complemented each other, two lonely people who had, by some arbitrary accident, overcome the odds and discovered each other.

Elisabeth drove us back through a fierce snowstorm and stopped outside her converted barn. She turned to me in the darkness. “You’ll come in for a coffee, Ben?”

I nodded, my mouth dry. “Love to,” I said.

We sat on the sofa and drank coffee and talked, and the free and easy atmosphere carried over from the restaurant. It was one o’clock by the time I looked into my empty mug and said, “Well, it’s getting on. I’d better be…”

She reached out and touched my hand with her fingers. “Ben, stay the night, please.”

“Well… If it’s okay with you.”

“Christ,” she said, “what do you think?” And, before I knew it, she was in my arms.

I had often wondered what the first time would be like, tried to envisage the embarrassment of trying to do something that I had never done before. The simple fact was that, when we undressed each other beside the bed, and came together, flesh to soft, warm flesh, it seemed entirely natural, and accomplished with mutual trust and affection—and I realised that I’d never really had anything to fear, after all.

I was awoken in the night by a bright flash of light. I rolled over and held Elisabeth to me, cupped her bottom in my pelvis and slipped a hand across her belly.

The window overlooked the valley, the reservoir, and the Station.

High-energy pulse beams lanced into the stratosphere.

“You ‘wake?” she murmured.

“Mmm,” I said.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” she whispered. Shafts of dazzling white light bisected the sable sky, but more beautiful to me was holding a warm, naked woman in my arms.

“Mmm,” I said.

“I always keep the curtains open,” she whispered. “I like to watch the lights when I can’t sleep. They fill me with hope.”

I watched the lights with her. Hard to conceive that every beam of energy contained the newly dead of Earth.

“Elisabeth,” I said.

“Hmm?”

“Have you read much about the Kéthani?”

She turned to face me, her breasts against my chest. She stroked my face and lightly kissed my lips. “Just about everything there is to read.”

“Something I don’t understand,” I said. “Millions of humans die, and are taken away and resurrected. Then they have a choice. They can either come back and resume their lives on Earth, or they can do the bidding of the Kéthani, and go among the stars, as explorers, ambassadors…”

“Or they can come to Earth, live a while, and then leave for the stars.”

I hesitated, then said, “And we trust them?”

“We do now. At first, millions of us didn’t. Then the reports started to come back from those who had died, been resurrected, and gone among the stars. And the stories they told, the accounts of a wondrous and teeming universe…”

I nodded. “I’ve seen the documentaries. But—”

“What?”

“What about all those humans who are…” I tried to think of a diplomatic phrase, “let’s say, unsuited even for life on Earth. I mean, thugs and murderers, dictators, psychopaths.”

My father…

“Hard to imagine Pol Pot or Bush acting as an ambassador for an enlightened alien race,” I said.

She stroked my hair. “They’re changed in the resurrection process, Ben. They come back… different. Altered. Still themselves, but with compassion, humanity.” She laughed, suddenly.

“What?” I asked.

“The irony of it,” she said. “That it takes an alien race to invest some people with humanity!”

She reached down and took me in her fingers, and guided me into her. We made love, again, bathed in the blinding light of the dead as they ascended to heaven.

Our parents died the following week, within days of each other.

On the Monday afternoon I was working on the third wall of the sheepfold when my mobile rang. “Hello, Ben Knightly here,” I called above the biting wind.

“Mr. Knightly? This is Maria, from Sunny View. Your father was taken into Bradley General at noon today. The doctor I spoke to thinks that it might only be a matter of hours.”

I nodded, momentarily at a loss for words.

“Mr. Knightly?”

“Thanks. Thank you. I’ll be there as soon…” I drifted off.

“Very well, Mr. Knightly. I’m so sorry.”

I thanked her again and cut the connection.

I continued the section of wall I was working on, placing the stones with slow deliberation, ensuring a solid finish.

I had anticipated this day for months: it would mark the start of a temporary freedom, an immediate release from the routine of visiting the nursing home. For six months I would be free of the thought of my father on Earth, demanding my attention.

It was perhaps two hours after receiving the call that I drove into the car park at Bradley General and made my way along what seemed like miles of corridors to the acute coronary ward. My father had suffered a massive heart attack. He was unconscious when I arrived, never came round, and died an hour later.

The sudden lack of a regular bleep on his cardiogram brought me from my reverie. I was staring through the window at the snow-covered fields, thinking that a few walls out there could do with attention.

Then the bleep changed to a continuous note, and I looked at my father. He appeared as he had before death; grey, open-mouthed, and utterly lifeless.

A ferryman came for him, asked me if I would be attending the farewell ceremony—I declined—and took him away in a box they called a container, not a coffin. I signed all the necessary papers, and then made my way to Elisabeth’s house.

That night, after making love, we lay in bed and watched the first energy beam leave the Onward Station at ten o’clock.

“You’re quiet,” she said.

I hesitated. “My father died today,” I told her.

She fumbled for the light, then turned and stared at me. “Why on earth didn’t you say something earlier?”

I reached out for her and pulled her to me. “I didn’t think it mattered,” I said.

She stroked my hair. I had never told her of my relationship with my father, always managed to steer the subject away from our acrimony.

She kissed my forehead. “He’ll be back in six months,” she soothed. “Renewed, younger, full of life.”

How could I tell her that that was what I feared most?

The following Thursday I finished work at five and drove to Elisabeth’s. The day after my father died, she had asked me to move in with her. I felt that our relationship had graduated to another level. I often had to pause and remind myself how fortunate I was.

We settled into a routine of domestic bliss. We took turns at cooking each other meals more daring and spectacular than we would have prepared for ourselves alone.

I was expecting, that night, to be assailed by the aroma of cooking meat when I entered the kitchen, but instead detected only the cloying fragrance of air freshener. The light was off.

Then I made out Elisabeth. She was sitting on the floor by the far wall, the receiver of the phone cradled redundantly in her lap.

I saw her look up when I came in, and I reached instinctively for the light.

Her face, revealed, was a tear-stained mask of anguish.

My stomach flipped, for I knew immediately.

“Oh, Ben,” she said, reaching for me. “That was the nursing home. Mum died an hour ago.”

I was across the room and kneeling and hugging her to me, and for the first time I experienced another person’s heartfelt grief.

The funeral was a quiet affair at the village church—the first one there, the vicar told me, for years. A reporter from a national newspaper was snooping, wanting Elisabeth’s story. I told him where to go in no uncertain terms. There was less I could do to deter the interest of a camera crew from the BBC, who kept their distance but whose very presence was a reminder, if any were required, of the tragedy of Mary Carstairs’s death.

Every day we walked up to the overgrown churchyard, and Elisabeth left flowers at the grave, and wept. If anything, my love for her increased over the next few weeks; I had never before felt needed, and to have someone rely on me, and tell me so, made me realise in return how much I needed Elisabeth.

One evening I was cooking on the Aga when she came up behind me very quietly, slipped her arms around my body and laid her head between my shoulder blades. “God, Ben. I would have gone mad without you. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

I turned and held her. “Love you,” I whispered.

I introduced her to the Tuesday night crowd, where she became an instant hit. I think my friends were both surprised and delighted that I’d found someone at last.

We were in the Fleece, three months after my father’s death, when Richard Lincoln entered the main bar and handed me a package. “Special delivery from the Onward Station.”

I turned the silver envelope over. It was small and square, the size of the DVD I knew it would contain. My name and address were printed on both sides, below the double star logo of the Kéthani.

“A message from your father, Ben,” Richard said.

I could not bring myself to enjoy the rest of the evening: the package was burning a hole in my pocket.

When we returned home, Elisabeth said, “Well?”

I laughed, wrestling her towards the bedroom. “Well, what?”

“Aren’t you going to play it?”

“Don’t think I’ll bother.”

She stared at me. “Aren’t you curious?”

“Not particularly.”

“Well, if you aren’t, I am. Come on, we’ll play it on the TV in the bedroom.”

I lay in bed, staring out at the rearing obelisk of the Station, while she inserted the DVD into the player. Then, with Elisabeth in my arms, I turned and stared at the screen.

My father had decided against a visual recording: only his broad, bluff Yorkshire voice came through, while the screen remained blank. I was relieved that I would be spared the sight of his new, rejuvenated image.

“Ben, Reg here. I’m well. We still haven’t seen the Kéthani—can you believe that? I thought I’d catch a glimpse of them at least.” He paused. The fact that his voice issued from a star twenty light years away struck me as faintly ridiculous. “I’m in a group with about a dozen other resurrectees, all from different countries. We’re learning a lot. I still haven’t decided what I’m doing yet, when I get back…” He hesitated, then signed off. His murmured farewell was followed by a profound silence.

And that was it, as casual as a postcard from Blackpool; except, I told myself, there was something almost human in his tone, an absence of hostility that I had not heard in years.

But that did nothing to help lessen my dread of the bastard’s return.

Whenever Elisabeth broached the topic of implants, however tenuously, I managed to change the subject. In retrospect, I was ashamed at how my reluctance to undergo the implantation process affected her; at the time, selfishly, I could apprehend only my own frail emotions.

More than once, late at night, when we had made love, she would whisper that she loved me more than anything in the world, and that she did not want to lose me.

A week before my father was due to return, she could no longer keep her fears to herself.

She was sitting at the kitchen table when I returned from work. She indicated the letter I’d received that morning from the Onward Station. My father was returning in seven days; he had asked to meet me at a reception room in the Station.

It was the meeting I had dreaded for so long.

She was quiet over dinner, and finally I said, “Elisabeth, what is it?” I imagined that the news of my father’s return had reminded her again of her mother’s irrevocable demise.

She was silent for a while.

“Please don’t avoid the issue this time,” she said at last. “Don’t change the subject or walk off.” Her hand was shaking as she pushed away her plate.

“What is it?” I asked, stupidly.

She looked up, pinned me with her gaze.

“I can’t stand the thought of losing you, Ben.” It was almost a whisper.

“Don’t worry, you won’t. I have no intention of leaving you.”

“Don’t be so crass!” she said, and her words hurt. “You know what I mean.” She shook her head, trying to fight back the tears. “Sometimes I experience a kind of panic. I’m on my own, driving to school or whatever, and I imagine you’ve been in some accident… and you can’t begin to understand how that makes me feel. I don’t want to lose you.”

“Elisabeth—”

She hit the table with the ham of her right hand. “What if you’re in a car crash, or drop dead of a heart attack? What then? You’ll be dead, Ben! Dead forever. There’ll be no bringing you back.” She was crying now. “And I’ll be without you forever.”

“What are the chances of that?” I began.

“Don’t be so bloody rational!” she cried. “Don’t you see? If you were implanted, then I wouldn’t worry. I could love you without the constant, terrible fear of losing you.” She paused, and then went on, “And this thing about not being implanted making you appreciate being alive all the more.” She shook her head. “I don’t believe it for a minute. You’re hiding something. You fear the Kéthani or something.”

“It’s not that.”

“Ben, listen to me.” Her tone was imploring. “When you’re implanted, it invests you with a wonderful feeling of liberation. Of freedom. You really do appreciate being alive all the more. We’ve been afraid of death for so long, and then the Kéthani came along and gave us the greatest gift, and you spurn it.”

We sat in silence for what seemed an age, Elisabeth staring at me, while I stared at the tabletop.

She could have said, then, “If you love me, Ben, you’ll have the implant,” and I wouldn’t have blamed her. But she wasn’t the type of person who used the tactics of blackmail to achieve their desires.

At last I said, “My father made my life a misery, Elisabeth. My mother died when I was ten, and from then on he dominated me. He’d hit me occasionally, but far worse was the psychological torture. You have no idea what it’s like to be totally dominated, to have your every move watched, your every word criticised, whatever you do put down and made worthless.” I stopped. The silence stretched. I was aware of a pain in my chest, a hollowness. “I’ve never been able to work out why he was like that. All I know is that, until his illness, I lived in fear of him.”

I stopped again, staring at my big, clumsy hands on the tabletop. “His criticism, his snide comments, his lack of love… they made me feel worthless and inadequate. I hated being alive. I’d often fantasise about killing myself, but the only thing that stopped me was the thought that my father would gain some sick satisfaction from my death.” I looked up, tears in my eyes, and stared at Elisabeth. “He turned me into a lonely, socially inept wreck. I found it hard to make friends, and the thought of talking to women…”

She reached out, gently, and touched my hand.

I shook my head. “Ten years ago he had his first stroke, and I had to look after him. The bastard had me just where he wanted me, and he made my life even worse. I dreamed of the day he’d die, freeing me…

“And then the Kéthani came, with their damned gift, and he was implanted, and the thought of my father living forever…” I took a long, deep breath. “I wasn’t implanted, Elisabeth, because I wanted to die. As simple as that. I hated being alive, and I was too weak and inadequate to leave and start a life of my own.”

“But now?” she asked, squeezing my fingers.

“But now,” I said, “he’s coming back next week.”

We went to bed, and held each other in silence as the white light streaked into the air above the Onward Station.

And Elisabeth whispered, “Don’t be afraid any longer, Ben. You have me, now.”

I left the van in the car park and approached the Station. I had never seen it at such close quarters before, and I had to crane my neck in order to see its sparkling summit, five hundred metres overhead.

I felt as cold as the surrounding landscape, my heart frozen. I wanted to get the meeting over as soon as possible, find out what he intended to do.

I passed the letter to a blue-uniformed woman at a reception desk, and another woman led me down a long white corridor. A cold, sourceless light pervaded the place, chilling me even further.

With the fixed smile of an air hostess, the woman ushered me into a small, white room, furnished with two sofas, and told me that my father would be along in five minutes.

I sat down. Then I stood up quickly and paced the room.

I almost panicked, recalling the sound of his voice, his silent, condemnatory expression. I was sweating, and felt a tightness in my chest.

A door at the far side of the room slid open and a figure in a sky blue overall walked through.

All I could do was stand and stare.

It was a version of my father I recalled from my teenage years. He looked about forty, no longer grey and bent, but strong and upright, with a full head of dark hair.

For so long, in my mind’s eye, I had retained an image of my father in his sixties, and had vented my hatred on that persona. Now he was the man who had blighted my early years, and I was the young boy again, abject and fearful.

He stepped forward, and I managed to stand my ground, though inside I was cowering.

He nodded and held out a hand. “Ben,” he said.

And the sound of his voice was enough. I had a sudden memory, a vivid flash of an incident from my youth not long after my mother’s death: he had discovered me in my bedroom, crying over the faded photograph of her I kept beside my bed. He had stared at me in bitter silence for what seemed like an age, and then, with his big, clumsy hands, he had unbuckled his belt and pulled it from his waist. His first, back-handed strike had laid me out across the bed, and then he had set about me with the belt, laying into me with blows that burned red-hot in time to his words, “You’re a man, now, Ben, and men do not cry!”

His beatings had become regular after that; he would find the slightest excuse in my behaviour to use his belt. Later it occurred to me that my beatings were a catharsis that allowed him to vent his own, perverted grief.

But, now, when he stepped forward and held out his hand, I could take no more. I had intended to confront my father, ask him what he intended, and perhaps even tell him that I did not want him to return. Instead, I fled.

I pushed my way from the room and ran down the corridor. I was no longer a man, but the boy who had escaped the house and sprinted onto the moors all those years ago.

I left the Onward Station and stopped in my tracks, as if frozen by the ice-cold night.

I heard a voice. “Ben…” The bastard had followed me.

Without looking round, I hurried over to the van. I fumbled with the keys, my desire to find out his intentions forgotten in the craven need to get away.

“Ben, we need to talk.”

Summoning my courage, I turned and stared at him. In the half-light of the stars, he seemed less threatening.

“What do you want?”

“We need to talk, about the future.”

“The future?” I said. “Wasn’t the past bad enough? If you think you can come back, start again where you left off, spoil the life I’ve made since you died…” I was amazed that I had managed to say it. I was shaking with rage and fear.

“Ben,” my father said. “My own father was no angel, but that’s no excuse.”

“What do you want?” I cried.

He stared at me, his dark eyes penetrating. “What do you want, Ben? I have a place aboard a starship heading for Lyra, if I wish to take it. I’ll be back in ten years. Or I can stay here. What do you want me to do…?”

He left the question hanging, and the silence stretched. I stared at him as the cold night invaded my bones. The choice was mine; he was giving me, for the first time in my life, a say in my destiny. It was so unlike my father that I wondered, briefly, if in fact the Kéthani had managed to instil in him some small measure of humanity.

“Go,” I found myself saying at last, “and in ten years, when you return, maybe then…”

He stared at me for what seemed like ages, but I would not look away, and finally he nodded. “Very well, Ben. I’ll do that. I’ll go, and in ten years…”

He looked up, at the stars, and then lowered his eyes to me for the last time. “Goodbye, Ben.”

He held out his hand, and after a moment’s hesitation I took it.

Then he turned and walked back into the Station, and as I watched him go I felt an incredible weight lift from my shoulders, a burden that had punished me for years.

I looked up into the night sky, and found myself crying.

At last I opened the door of the van, climbed inside, and sat for a long time, considering the future.

Much later I looked at my watch and saw that it was seven o’clock. I started the engine, left the car park and drove slowly from the Onward Station. I didn’t head for home, but took the road over the moors to Bradley.

It was nine by the time I arrived at the Fleece.

I had phoned Elisabeth and told her to meet me there, saying that I had a surprise for her. I’d also phoned Jeff Morrow, Richard Lincoln, and the Azzams, to join in the celebration. They sat at a table across the room, smiling to themselves.

Elisabeth entered the bar, and my heart leapt.

She hurried over and sat down opposite me, looking concerned and saying, “How did it go with…?”

I reached across the table and took her hand. “I love you,” I said.

She stared at me, tears silvering her eyes. Her lips said my name, but silently.

Then she moved her hand from mine, reached up and, with gentle fingers, traced the outline of the implant at my temple.