Kéthani

Interlude

I renounced my religion soon after my eighteenth birthday and was a committed atheist when the Kéthani came. When I met Zara Zaman she still believed, though she practised a liberal form of Islam which had come about after the East-West troubles in the early part of the century. The coming of the Kéthani sorely tested her faith, as she watched the hard line taken by the imams of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Over the years, as a belief in God became untenable with the fact of the Kéthani, I saw her faith erode, to be replaced by a ferocious intellectual quest to understand everything possible about our extraterrestrial benefactors.

That particular Tuesday evening, she reminded me that she wouldn’t be coming to the Fleece tonight: her study group was meeting in Bradley and she was giving a presentation.

I tried to hide my irritation, but failed.

She stared at me across the lounge. “I told you, Khal, last week.”

“So from now on Tuesday nights at the Fleece are out?”

“For me, yes. No one’s stopping you from going.”

“You’ll be missed. Zara. You could at least come once a month, say.”

She shook her head. “I don’t think you understand how important this is to me, Khal.” She paused, then said, “Or do you resent my doing this? Learning, bettering myself?”

“Of course not!” I said, a little too quickly. I wondered, deep down, if this was the source of my unease: she was learning more and more about areas of Kéthani study which I should have found interesting—especially considering my line of work—but which in my apathy I didn’t. Also, she would be meeting other people, other men, and I must admit that this rankled. In retrospect, I admit to being shallow and jealous.

“Khal, you ought to come along.”

And miss the company of my friends, I thought. The idea didn’t appeal.

She went on, “I’m giving a talk on how the changes have affected international relations. Did you know, for instance, that incidences of espionage have almost ceased since the Kéthani came? And wars—the world is enjoying a period of global peace for the first time in recorded history. Khal, we’re studying the reasons for this. It’s truly fascinating.”

“Well, you can fill me in when you come up with all the answers.”

She pulled on her coat. “You cynical bastard!” was her parting shot as she hurried from the house.

I just stood and watched her go, feeling sick.

Something had happened to our relationship over the years. Our mutual passion, our love, had tempered, changed into something that was hard to define, still harder to name. It would be clichéd to say that we had drifted apart, no longer tethered by the tie of mutual interests; our conversations these days centred on day-to-day platitudes. We never discussed real issues. This, I had to admit, was fine by me. I was happy. But Zara, I knew, wanted more. It sickened me to look ahead to the time when she realised that I was no longer the man she had loved, all those years ago.

I found my coat and made my way to the Fleece.

Ben and Elisabeth were already ensconced in the main bar, and were halfway down their first pints. Richard Lincoln was carrying more drinks from the bar, assisted by the new addition to the Tuesday night group. Dan Chester was a ferryman up at the Station, and we’d got to know him soon after his arrival in Oxenworth that summer.

He was a small, dark, thin-faced handsome man in his late thirties. He was divorced and shared the custody of his daughter Lucy with his ex-wife. He’d spoken briefly about his relationship with her—she was a devout Catholic, and considered the Kéthani the minions of Satan.

As we settled ourselves around the table, Richard pulled a copy of today’s Guardian from the pocket of his tweed jacket and slapped it on the table. It was folded to a page reporting the Pope’s recent and unexpected volte-face on the issue of contraception.

“Seen that, Dan?” he asked.

Dan scanned the report. He grunted. “Tell me when the Vatican changes its mind on the Kéthani,” he said.

Dan’s daughter Lucy was eight years old, and she was not implanted. To say that she was the mainstay of Dan’s life would be an understatement. He was devoted to her. He was also, for reasons that were obvious, paranoid about her health and safety.

We chatted for an hour about the medievalism of the Catholic Church.

Dan was quiet. He was going through a difficult period with his wife and Lucy, which I found out about in the most dramatic fashion a few weeks later.

He was a reasonable man caught up in a wholly unreasonable situation.