“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…?”