I tried a smile. “And unofficially?”
“I’m not at all sure you’d believe me.”
“Try me.”
Matt leaned back in his chair and arranged his fingers in a fair imitation of a church steeple. “There is a lot we don’t know about, Andy. A lot happening in the big, wide universe out there that we, with our limited perceptions, cannot even guess at.” He paused, looked at his hands. “Do you recall those figures—the figures of light? I mentioned they were following me.”
“How can I forget?”
He nodded. “That night, six months ago, one came to see me, came here, into this very office. That night. Orchestra night.”
“What happened?” I asked, my voice far from steady. “What did it say?”
“It said nothing,” he told me. “It merely sent me on the next stage of my journey.”
I was suddenly aware of how loud my heartbeat was. “It killed you?” I murmured.
“It reached out,” he said, “and touched my chest, just here,” he lay his fingertips on his sternum, “and I felt a sudden and ineffable sense of joy, of affirmation, and I knew that my true quest had begun.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think I understand,” I began.
“When I was resurrected on Kéthan, I was instructed. I learned many things about the universe, the various races out there, the many philosophies. I was given the option of returning to Earth, or going among the stars. They showed me a vast starship, due to explore what we call the Lesser Magellanic Cloud. They want me to be aboard it when it sails.”
I hardly heard myself say, “In what capacity?”
He beamed at me. “To spread the word,” he said.
“The Kéthani…” I whispered. “You said, a while ago, that they were but tools to achieve God’s purpose.”
He nodded. “And I think they know that, too, my friend.”
A little later he showed me to the door of the church and shook my hand.
“Goodbye, Andrew,” Matt said, and turned and walked up the aisle towards the altar and the figure of Jesus on the cross. I watched him kneel and bow his head in prayer.
That was the last time I saw Father Matthew Renbourn. In the morning he slipped quietly from the village, leaving behind him the mystery of his death and the even greater mystery of his mission among the stars.
That night, I left Matt praying to his God and made my slow way to the Fleece. There, I informed the others what Matt had told me, and we speculated long into the night whether our friend was blessed… or deluded.
Interlude
Fifteen years had passed since the coming of the Kéthani, and I often looked back and marvelled that so short a time had elapsed since that momentous day on the moors when I beheld the arrival of the Onward Station. I looked back, too, and found it hard to imagine life before the Kéthani. The world had been a vastly different place, then; but more, the human race had been very different. In the centuries and millennia BK, as we came to know it, humanity had schemed and grabbed and fought and killed on a global level, playing out imperatives that had their roots in individual neuroses: we were the descendants of animals, and within us was the conditioning of the jungle. We had feared death, and in consequence perhaps we had also feared life.
And now, a decade and a half later?
I’ll employ a cliché: humanity was more humane. I witnessed more small acts of charity in my day-to-day dealings with people, more gestures of care and kindness. I saw less cruelty, less hatred. We were, perhaps, leaving behind the animal within us and evolving into something else.
So much change in fifteen years…
All this is a preliminary to the scene I’m about to relate, which happened unsurprisingly in the main bar of the Fleece.
It was a few days before Christmas, the fire was roaring, and the usual faces were gathered about the table. Conversation was good.
Then I looked up as the door opened, admitting a swirl of wind and a beautiful woman.
She was dressed in high boots and a black coat buttoned up to her chin, and the face I stared at was pale and elfin, with a midnight fall of jet-black hair.
She stamped her feet and brrr’d her lips, then looked over to our group, smiled and lifted gloved fingers in a little wave—and only then did I realise, with a start, who it was.
Dan Chester stood, crossed the room, and embraced his daughter, Lucy.
She hugged us one by one, saying how good it was to be back home. “Khal,” she said. “It’s great to see you!”
She sat down and sipped a half a pint of Ram Tam, and told us all about life at university in London.
It was perhaps two years since I’d last seen Lucy, and she had changed, imago-like, from a shy teenager into a confident, self-possessed young woman in her late teens.
She was studying xeno-biology and international relations, preparatory to leaving Earth. She had discussed her decision with her father: it was the thing she most wanted to do, and though Dan had found it hard to accept that soon, within two years, she would be light years away among the stars, he could not find it within him to deny her dreams.
She looked around the group and said, “Did you know that the university is Kéthani-run?”
“What?” Richard Lincoln quipped, “the dons wave tentacles or pseudo-pods?”
Lucy laughed. “Perhaps I should say it’s Kéthani administered. All the courses are geared to students who have made the decision to leave Earth and work with the Kéthani.”
“I suppose it makes sense,” Sam said.
“There’s a wonderful atmosphere of… not only of learning, but of camaraderie. We’re about to do something wondrous out there, and the excitement is infectious.”
Andy Souter, our resident sceptic, said, “What exactly will you be doing out there, Lucy?”
She smiled and looked into her drink. When she looked up, I saw the light of… dare I say evangelism… in her eyes. “We’ll be taking the word of the Kéthani to the universe, Andy. We’ll be endowing as yet uncontacted races with what the Kéthani have given us; I’ll be working with pre-industrial, humanoid races, bringing them to an understanding of the Kéthani, rather than have them learn about the Kéthani as we did, with the sudden arrival of the Onward Stations. Other students will be liaising between disputing races or helping races who have fought to the point of extinction. Oh…” she beamed around the table, “there’s no limit to the work to be done out there!”
I could see that Andy remained unconvinced, but her enthusiasm won me over.
I said, “The human race has certainly evolved since the Kéthani came, Lucy.”
“Evolved,” she said. “Yes, that’s the word, Khal. Evolved. Everyone has changed, haven’t they, not only the returnees, but those who haven’t yet died.” She looked round the group.
“We no longer fear death, do we? That curse has been lifted from our psyches. We can… for the first time in existence, we can look ahead and enjoy being alive.”
I smiled. Years ago, I would have labelled her optimism as the product of youth; but now that optimism had infected all of us.
The door opened, and someone hurried into the bar and ordered a drink, a young man in a thick coat and walking boots. Lucy turned quickly and smiled at the new arrival, and it was wonderful to see the unmistakable light of love in her eyes.
I recognised the man as Davey Emmett.
Lucy said, in almost a whisper, “I, more than most, have so much to thank the Kéthani for…”
Davey carried his pint across the room and joined us. He kissed Lucy and sat down beside her, and I noticed that immediately Lucy found his hand with hers and squeezed.
Davey smiled across at me. “Khalid, it’s been a long time.”
I nodded. “Almost a year? How are you?”