Graham’s friends, his neighbours and the regulars from the Fleece, were already tucking in. Sam brought me a glass of red wine and we stood talking to Richard Lincoln.
“I wonder if he’ll be the same old happy-go-lucky Graham as before?” Sam asked.
Richard smiled. “I don’t see why not,” he said.
“But he’ll be changed, won’t he?” Sam persisted. “I mean, not just physically?”
Richard shrugged. “He’ll appear a little younger, fitter. And who knows how the experience will have changed him psychologically.”
“But don’t the aliens—” Sam began.
Richard was saved the need to reply. A door at the far end of the room opened and the Station Director, Masters, stepped into the reception lounge and cleared his throat.
“First of all, I’d like to welcome you all to the Onward Station.” He gave a little speech extolling the service to humankind bestowed by the Kéthani and then explained that Graham Leicester was with close family members right at this moment, his wife and children, and would join us presently.
I must admit that I was more than a little curious as to how the experience of dying, being resurrected, and returning to Earth after six months had affected Graham. I’d heard rumours about the post-resurrection period on Kéthan: humans were brought back to life and ‘instructed’, informed about the universe, the other life-forms that existed out there, the various tenets and philosophies they held. But I wanted to hear firsthand from Graham exactly what he’d undergone.
I expected to be disappointed. I’d read many a time that returnees rarely spoke of their experiences on Kéthan: that either they were reluctant to do so or were somehow inhibited by their alien saviours.
Five minutes later Graham stepped through the sliding door, followed by his wife and two teenage daughters.
I suppose the reaction to his appearance could be described as a muted gasp—an indrawn breath of mixed delight and amazement.
Graham had run the local hardware store, a big, affable, overweight fifty-something, with a drinker’s nose and a rapidly balding head.
Enter a revamped Graham Leicester. He looked twenty years younger, leaner and fitter; gone was the rubicund, veined face, the beer belly. Even his hair had grown back.
He circulated, moving from group to group, shaking hands and hugging his delighted friends.
He saw us and hurried over, gave Sam a great bear hug and winked at me over her shoulder. I embraced him. “Great to see you back, Graham.”
“Good to be back.”
His wife was beside him. “We’re having a little do down at the Fleece, if you’d like to come along.”
Graham said, “A pint of Landlord after the strange watery stuff I had out there…” He smiled at the thought.
Thirty minutes later we were sitting around a table in the main bar of our local, about ten of us. Oddly enough, talk was all about what had happened in the village during the six months that Graham had been away. He led the conversation, wanting to know all the gossip. I wondered how much this was due to a reluctance to divulge his experiences on Kéthan.
I watched him as he sipped his first pint back on Earth.
Was it my imagination, or did he seem quieter, a little more reflective than the Graham of old? He didn’t gulp his beer, but took small sips. At one point I asked him, nodding at his half-filled glass. “Worth waiting for? Can I get you another?”
He smiled. “It’s not as I remembered it, Stuart. No, I’m okay for now.”
I glanced across the table. Sam was deep in conversation with Graham’s wife, Marjorie. Sam looked concerned. I said to Graham, “I’ve read that other returnees have trouble recalling their experiences out there.”
He looked at me. “I know what they mean. It’s strange, but although I can remember lots…” He shook his head. “When I try to talk about it…” He looked bewildered. “I mean, I know what happened in the dome, but I can’t begin to express it.”
I nodded, feigning comprehension.
“Have you decided what you’re going to do now?”
His gaze seemed to slip into neutral. “I don’t know. I recall something from the domes. We were shown the universe, the vastness, the races and planets… The Kéthani want us to go out there, Stuart, work with them in bringing the word of the Kéthani to all the other races. I was offered so many positions out there…”
I had to repress a smile at the thought of Graham Leicester, ex-Oxenworth hardware store owner, as an ambassador to the stars.
“Have you decided what you’re going to do?” I asked.
He stared into his half-drunk pint. “No,” he said at last. “No, I haven’t.” He looked up at me. “I never thought the stars would be so attractive,” he murmured.
Graham and his wife left at nine, and the drinking continued. Around midnight Sam and I wended our way home, holding onto each other as we negotiated the snowdrifts.
She was very quiet, and at home took me in a fierce embrace. “Stuart,” she whispered, “rip all my clothes off and make love to me.”
Sometimes the act of sex can transcend the mere familiar mechanics that often, after a year of marriage, become rote. That night, for some reason, we were imbued with a passion that recalled our earlier times together. Later we sprawled on the bed, sweating and breathless. I was overcome with an inexpressible surge of love for the woman who was my wife.
“Stuart,” she whispered.
I stroked her thigh. “Mmm?”
“I was talking to Marjorie. She says Graham’s changed. He isn’t the man he was. She’s afraid.”
I held her. “Sam, he’s undergone an incredible experience. Of course he’s changed a little, but he’s still the same old Graham underneath. It’ll just take time for him to readjust.”
She was quiet for a few seconds, before saying, “Perhaps, Stuart, they take our humanity away?”
“Nonsense!” I said. “If anything, they give us a greater humanity. You’ve heard all those stories about dictators and cynical businessmen who return full of compassion and charity.”
She didn’t reply. Perhaps five minutes later she said, “Perhaps the Kéthani take away our ability to love.”
Troubled, I pulled Sam to me and held her tight.
A few days later I arrived home with a book for Samantha. It was Farmer’s critically acclaimed account of the arrival of the Kéthani and its radical social consequences.
I left it on the kitchen table and over dinner said, “I found this in the library. Fascinating stuff. Perhaps you’d like to read it.”
She picked up the book and leafed through it, sniffed, with that small, disdainful wrinkle of her nose I found so attractive.
“Wouldn’t understand it if I did,” she said.
After dinner she poured two glasses of red wine and joined me in the living room. She curled next to me on the sofa.
“Stuart…” She began.
She often did this—said my name and then failed to qualify it. The habit at first drove me crazy, but soon became just another of her idiosyncrasies that I came to love.
“Do you know something?” she began again. “Once upon a time there were certainties, weren’t there?” She fingered her implant, perhaps unaware that she was doing so.
I stared at her. “Such as?”
“Death,” she said. “And, like, if you loved someone so much, then you were certain that it would last forever.”
“Well, I suppose so.”
“But not any more.”
“Well, death’s been banished.”
She looked up at me, her gaze intense. “When I met you and fell in love, Stuart, it was like nothing I’d experienced before. You were the one, kind and gentle and caring. You loved me—”
“I still do.”
She squeezed my hand. “I know you do, but…”