“I’m not too sure he’d appreciate our going behind his back like that,” I said.
Khalid said, “I’ll look into it at hospital, talk to a shrink and see if there’s anything they might suggest.”
We all nodded, impotent in the light of our friend’s religious hallucinations.
The topic of conversation changed, and I enjoyed a few more pints, but I could not help but contrast the Matt I had known over the weeks and the figure I had seen collapsed in manic prayer earlier that evening.
The following night I arrived at rehearsal five minutes late, and the players were already tuning up. Old Mrs. Emmett gestured me over. “Matthew just phoned,” she said. “He’s at the church, in a meeting. He said he’d be here at eight.”
I suggested that we run through a few numbers for thirty minutes until he arrived, and I conducted the Oxenworth Community Orchestra through an arrangement of the theme tune to Raiders of the Lost Ark. It sounded strangely flat and lifeless without Matthew in charge. Eight o’clock came and went, with no sign of our conductor. At eight-thirty, Mrs. Emmett said, “You don’t suppose anything’s happened to him? Sure-iv he would have phoned to tell us if he couldn’t make it?”
I remembered last night, and part of me feared for Matt. I volunteered to pop along to see what was keeping him.
The snow had not let up in the last week, and it was a foot deep in the little-used lane that connected the church to the village hall. I hurried through a fresh fall, shoulders hunched, came to the church and pushed through the heavy timber doors.
The place was warm and silent. I hurried down the aisle, looking for Matt. I peered into the vestry, but he wasn’t there, and so I tried his little office next door.
It was there that I found him.
He was sitting in a swivel chair behind his vast oak desk. The chair was not facing the desk, but turned away, as if he had been addressing someone standing in front of the roaring fire.
He was smiling, his posture slightly slumped, and something about the glassy immobility of his stare told me that he was dead.
I hurried around the desk and felt for his pulse. There was none. I touched the implant, at his temple: the small, square device thrummed beneath my fingertips. Even now, the nano-machines would be coursing through Matt’s system, working their miracle, and bringing him back to life.
Already, the Onward Station would know about his death; a ferryman would be on his way.
I phoned the police at Bradley, and then let Mrs. Emmett know that Matt wouldn’t be in that night. I left it at that; for some reason I couldn’t bring myself to say that my friend was dead.
I found a chair and sat down, considering that a few years ago, before the coming of the Kéthani, Matt would have been dead forever. Like my mother and father, and my brother…
Ten minutes later the police arrived, and minutes after that Dan Chester. I could see the sadness in their eyes as they took in the corpse: despite the fact of our resurrection, evidence of our erstwhile mortality still has a powerful effect on us. Dan and his assistant removed Matt’s body from the office; I gave a statement to the police and fifteen minutes later returned to the village hall to relay the news to a shocked orchestra.
After that, there was nowhere else to go but the Fleece, for a session of liquid therapy.
Khalid was there, propping up the bar, and I told him about the evening’s events.
An hour later, Doug Standish joined us. “Thought you two might be here, somehow. The usual?”
When he returned from the bar, he said, “I was down at the station when I heard about Matt. Apparently he had a massive heart attack.”
For the rest of the evening we reminisced about Matt, telling stories of our friend, and smiling at the memories. As we left the Fleece around midnight, we were halted in our tracks by a blinding bolt of light from the distant Onward Station as it beamed the demolecularised remains of the dead up to the Kéthani starship.
Khalid stared up, his brown face made pale by the light. “There he goes,” he whispered.
“I wonder what kind of Matt he’ll be on his return?” I wondered.
I took charge of the rehearsals at the village hall, and in spring we staged the first and what would turn out to be the last of the concerts in the church itself. It went down well, but something was missing—Matthew. The orchestra was a dying thing. In six months, I guessed, it would be gone, with no hope of resurrection, Kéthani or otherwise. Only when life became eternal did I truly appreciate the fact that nothing ever lasts forever.
Matt was missing from our Tuesday night sessions, too; our gatherings just weren’t the same without him.
The day of his return came about, and there was a big crowd of locals in the reception lounge of the Onward Station that afternoon. His parishioners were out in force, ninety-nine per cent of them implanted; a gaggle of clergy was present, too. His Tuesday night friends formed a small knot among the crowd.
At three on the dot, the head of operations at the Station, Director Masters, made a short speech, and Matt stepped through the sliding doors and greeted us.
Matthew, in his late forties when he died, now looked a good ten years younger, his waistline slimmed down, the fat of his face pared—even the distinguished grey at his temples was gone. He looked leaner, fitter, somehow more full of energy, if that were possible.
He made the rounds, shaking hands, hugging, slapping backs; many of his flock were in tears.
I wondered if it was significant that he was no longer wearing his dog collar, or if he was undercover here, too.
“The beer brigade!” he greeted the Tuesday nighters. “God, I’ve missed a pint where I was…” We laughed.
One hour later, Matt was driven away by the officials of his Church.
As I watched him go, I thought over what he had said all those months ago about the Kéthani and their place in the scheme of things, and I wondered if Father Matthew Renbourn would slip quietly back into his old way of life in the village. I should have known the answer to that, of course.
That evening, just as I was about to call it a day, pack up my cornet, and slip out for a quick one at the Fleece, the phone rang.
It was Matt.
I couldn’t conceal my surprise. “Matt, great to hear from you. Look, do you fancy a pint? We’re meeting at the Fleece at nine.”
He made an excuse—he had a lot of work on. But, he said, he would like to see me.
I evinced my surprise yet again. “Well, of course. Great. Where?”
“Could you pop along to the church in ten minutes?”
It was high summer and a magnificently balmy evening. Not that I appreciated the sunset and the birdsong as I made my way down the lane to St. Luke’s. My head was full of my imminent meeting with Matt.
I found him in his office, seated behind his desk in the very same chair I’d found him in six months earlier.
He smiled at me. “Andy, sit down. I’d like to thank you for your work with the orchestra.”
“You’re welcome. It’s not the same without you… But that isn’t why you wanted to see me, is it?”
He grinned disarmingly. “Of course not. Doug told me that it was you who discovered the… my body.”
I nodded. “It was something of a shock,” I said.
“I can well imagine.” He paused and thought about what he was going to say next. “I think I owe you an explanation,” he continued.
I stared at him, not understanding. “About what?”
“About my death,” he murmured, “what else?”
I made a feeble gesture. “But what is there to explain?” I said. “You died of a massive coronary.”
“Officially, Andrew, I died of a massive coronary.”