As I watched, he stopped in the middle of the drive and stared up at the stars, and my mind was in chaos.
Why? I asked myself… Why had he—
And then the explanation came, falling from the heavens.
Gregory raised his arms above his head, as if in greeting or supplication, and from on high there descended, across the dark night sky like the scoring of a diamond point across a sheet of obsidian, what at first I thought was a shooting star. The vector it took, however, was vertical. It fell like a lance, heading for the farmhouse below, and I could only gasp in wonder, breathless, as it struck Gregory Merrall.
He vanished, and the light leapt up and retraced its course through the night sky, heading towards the waiting Kéthani starship.
My face stinging with tears, I set off towards the rearing obelisk of the Onward Station. I thought of Andy Souter, and his suspicion of Gregory Merrall, and his decision not to join us… and I wondered if Andy had been right to turn his back, this time, on the new life that awaited us.
I was sobbing by the time I reached the Station. I paused before its cut glass perfection, this thing of supernal alien beauty on the harsh Yorkshire landscape.
I wondered whether to tell Sam and Stuart that we had been lured to the stars by an… an impostor. Did it matter after all? I tried to marshal my emotions, to decide whether what Merrall had done could be considered an act of betrayal or of salvation. I wondered if I should go ahead with what we had planned.
I turned and stared out over the land that had been my home since birth, a land slowly emptying due to the ministrations of a mysterious alien race. Then I looked up at the stars, the million pulsating beacons of light, and I knew that there was only one course of action to take.
I hurried into the Station, to join my friends and to begin the new life that awaited me out there among the beckoning stars.
CODA
DIASPORA
A thousand years have passed since the events described in the preceding documents.
We went among the stars and experienced wonders beyond our wildest dreams; we each of us beheld sights almost beyond description, and certainly beyond the understanding of the humans we once were. We became the ambassadors of the Kéthani, and in so doing completed the next stage of our evolution, became more than human and at the same time more humane. We did the bidding of the Kéthani among the teeming races of the universe and learned that the reason our benefactors selected us for the task was a little more complex than we first thought. But that is another story.
Tomorrow I am meeting my old friends and we are returning to Earth, to the location where we first met, all those hundreds of years ago.
Earth is depopulated now; only a handful of wardens live among its petrified treasures, its overgrown vales, guardians of the cradle of humankind. Despite all the early objections, despite the scepticism and pessimism, the religious and philosophical opposition, time has worked to erode our fears and prove wrong the voices of dissent. The galaxy is now the true home of humankind, though people do return to Earth from time to time, so I’ve heard, to dwell in the past and relive old memories, before renewing their lives out there.
We will meet among the tumbled stones of the village we once called home, perhaps trace among the crumbled foundations the dwellings where we lived, the places where we met. We might even find the ruins of the Fleece…
We will recount our exploits on alien worlds, catching up with the deeds of friends we have not seen for dozens of years, in some cases a century or two. Then, talk will turn to the past, to life on Earth, when we were so very young and thought ourselves so experienced and wise.
And we might even shed a tear or two before we part again and return to our rightful place among the distant stars.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Portions of this novel appeared in the following publications:
“Ferryman” first appeared in New Worlds, 1997.
“Onward Station” first appeared in Interzone 135, 1998.
“The Kéthani Inheritance” first appeared in Spectrum 7, 2001.
“Thursday’s Child” first appeared in Spectrum 9, 2002.
“The Touch of Angels” first appeared in Threshold Shift, 2006.
“The Wisdom of the Dead” first appeared in Interzone 186, 2003.
“A Heritage of Stars” first appeared in Constellations, 2005.
“Matthew’s Passion” (written with Tony Ballantyne) is original to the collection.
“A Choice of Eternities” first appeared in Postscripts 1, 2004.
“The Farewell Party” first appeared in The Solaris Book of New SF, 2007.
The sections entitled “The Coming of the Kéthani” and “Diaspora”, and the linking material, are original to the collection.
I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the editors of the anthologies and magazines where these stories first appeared: David Garnett, David Pringle, Paul Fraser, Gary Turner, Peter Crowther, and George Mann. The chapter entitled “Matthew’s Passion” was written with Tony Ballantyne, and I’d like to take this opportunity to thank him for his input and hard work.