Kethani

I thought through the implications. "But if these people don"t inform friends, loved ones?"

He was nodding. "Exactly. Like today. Sanjay"s friends thought he was implanted and fully expected him to be resurrected."

"Christ," I said. "The whole thing"s tragic."

"And there are thousands of people going around out there with these fake, useless implants. Masters said something about a law to make them illegal. He"s talking to a few politicians tomorrow."

Lucy had stretched out on the seat next to me and was snoring away. Had she been awake and bored, guilt might have driven me homeward. As it was, I owed Khalid a pint, and at that very second Ben Knightly and Elisabeth Carstairs dashed in from the snowstorm that was evidently raging outside. I was off work for a couple of days, and I could treat myself to a lie-in in the morning.

I pointed to Khalid"s empty gla.s.s. "Another?"

"You"ve twisted my arm."

I bought another round. Ben and Elisabeth joined us and we stopped talking shop.

It was another hour, and two more pints, before conscience got the better of me. I refused all offers of more beer, eased the still sleeping Lucy into my arms, and carried her from the bar and along the street.

The cold had awoken her by the time I pushed through the front door. I carried her to her room, where she changed into her pyjamas. Five minutes later she was snuggling into my lap before the fire and we were watching a DVD of a French mime act, which apparently was the latest craze in kids" entertainment.

She was asleep ten minutes later, and I turned down the sound and switched over to a news programme. Half awake myself, and cradling my daughter in my arms, I allowed a succession of images to wash over me and considered how lucky I was.

So I might have married the last religious zealot in West Yorkshire, but from that match made in h.e.l.l had issued Lucy Katia Chester. And to think that, back in my twenties, I"d vowed never to have children. I sometimes shudder to think of the joy I would have missed had I remained faithful to my bachelor principles.

A newscaster was reporting anti-Kethani riots in Islamabad, but by then I was fading fast.

I took Lucy to Bolton Abbey the following day. I bundled her up in her chunky pink parka, bobble hat, and mittens against the biting cold, and we walked through the trees along the riverbank. Down below, the river was frozen for the first time in living memory, its usually quicksilver torrent caused in shattered slabs of grey and silver. Later we lobbed s...o...b..a.l.l.s at each other among the stark ruins of the Abbey. It was quiet-no one else had dared to venture out, with the thermometer fifteen below zero-and to hear her laughter echoing in the stillness was a delight. I had quite forgotten to ring Marianne last night, to enquire about Lucy"s illness, but she seemed fine today so I decided not to bother.

We had lunch in the Devonshire Arms across the road from the Abbey, and in the afternoon visited Marsworld, a couple of miles north of Skipton. We wandered around the replica rockets that had carried the scientific team to the red planet a couple of years ago, then visited mock-ups of the dozen domes where the explorers were living right at that moment. I had worried that Lucy might find it boring, but she turned out to be fascinated; she"d had lessons about the mission at school, and actually knew more about it than I did.

We drove home through the narrow lanes at four, with dusk rapidly falling. I proceeded with a caution I would not have shown had I been alone: I carried a precious cargo on the back seat... The only time I was truly content, and could rest easy, was when Lucy was with me. At other times, I envisaged, perhaps unfairly, the unthinking neglect with which Marianne might treat her.

"Do you know what would be nice, Daddy?" Lucy said now.

"What?" I asked, glancing at her in the rear-view.

"I would really like it if you and Mummy would live together again."

She had said this before, and always I had experienced a hopeless despair. I would have done anything to secure my daughter"s happiness, but this was one thing that I could not contemplate.

"Lucy, we can"t do that. We have our separate lives now."

"Don"t you love Mummy any more?"

"Not in the same way that I once did," I said.

"But a little bit?" she went on.

I nodded. "A little bit," I said.

She was quiet for a time, and then said, "Why did you move away, Daddy? Was it because of me?"

I slowed and looked at her in the mirror. "Of course not. What made you think-?"

"Mummy said that you stopped loving her because you couldn"t agree about me."

I gripped the wheel, anger welling. I might have hated the b.i.t.c.h, but I had kept that animosity to myself. Never once had I attempted to turn Lucy against her mother.

"That"s not true, Lucy. We disagreed about a lot of things. What you"ve got to remember is that we both love you more than anything else, okay?"

We underestimate children"s capacity for not being fobbed off with plat.i.tudes. Lucy said, "But the biggest thing you disagreed about was me, wasn"t it? You wanted me to be implanted, and Mummy didn"t."

I sighed. "That was one of the things."

"Mummy says that G.o.d doesn"t want people to be implanted. If we"re implanted, then we don"t go to heaven. She says that the aliens are evil-she says that they"re in the same football league as the Devil."

I smiled to myself. I just wanted to take Lucy in my arms and hug her to me. I concentrated on that, rather than the anger I felt towards Marianne.

"That isn"t true," I said. "G.o.d made everyone, even the Kethani. If you"re implanted, then you don"t die. Eventually you can visit the stars, which I suppose is a kind of heaven."

She nodded, thinking about this. "But if I die, then I"ll go to a different heaven?" she asked at last.

If you die without the implant, I thought, you will remain dead for ever and ever, amen, and no Christian sky-G.o.d will effect your resurrection.

"That"s what your mum thinks," I said.

She was relentless with her dogged eight-year-old logic. "But what do you you think, Daddy?" think, Daddy?"

"I think that in ten years, when you"re eighteen, you can make up your own mind. If you want, you can be implanted then." Ten years, I thought: it seemed an eternity.

"Hey," I said, "we"re almost home. What do you want for dinner? Will you help me make it?"

"Spaghetti!" she cried, and for the rest of the journey lectured me on the proper way to make Bolognese sauce.

That evening, after we"d prepared spaghetti together and eaten it messily in front of the TV, Lucy slept next to me while I tried to concentrate on a doc.u.mentary. It was about a non-implanted serial killer in the US, who preyed on implanted victims and claimed, technically, that he wasn"t committing murder.

I lost interest and found myself thinking about Marianne.

I had met her ten years ago, when I was thirty. She had been twenty-six, and I suspected that I"d been her very first boyfriend. Her Catholicism had intrigued me at the time, her moral and ethical codes setting her apart in my mind from the hedonism I saw all around. The Kethani had arrived the year before, and their gift of the implants had changed society for ever. In the early days, many people adopted a devil-may-care att.i.tude towards life-they were implanted, they could not die, so why not live for the day? Others opposed the changes.

I was implanted within a year of the Kethani"s arrival. I was not religious, and had always feared extinction. It had seemed the natural thing to do to accept the gift of immortality, especially after the first returnees arrived back on Earth with the stories of their resurrection.

Not long after my implantation, I trained to become a ferryman-and but for this I might never have met Marianne. Her mother, an atheist and implanted, had died unexpectedly of a cerebral haemorrhage, and I had collected the body.

I had been immediately attracted to Marianne"s physicality, and found her world view-during our many discussions in the weeks that followed our first date-intriguing, if absurd.

She thought the Kethani evil, the implantation process an abomination in the eyes of the Lord, and looked forward to the day when she would die and join the virtuous in heaven.

She was appalled by my blithe acceptance of what I took to be our alien saviours.

We were married a year after our first meeting.

I was in love, whatever I thought that meant at the time. I loved her so much that I wanted to save her. It was only a matter of time, I thought, before she came to see that my acceptance of the Kethani was sane and sensible.

She probably thought the reverse: given time, her arguments would bring about my religious salvation.

We had never spoken about what we might do if we had children. She was a successful accountant for a firm in Leeds, and told me that she did not want children. She claimed that Lucy was a mistake, but I"d often wondered since whether she had intended conceiving a child, and whether she had consciously planned what followed.

During the course of her pregnancy, I refrained from raising the subject of implants, but a couple of days after Lucy was born I presented the implantation request form to Marianne for her signature.

She would not sign, and of course, because both our signatures were required, Lucy could not undergo the simple operation to ensure her continual life.

We remained together for another year, and it was without doubt the worst year of my life. We argued; I accused my wife of terrible crimes in the name of her mythical G.o.d, while she called me an evil blasphemer. Our positions could not be reconciled. My love for Lucy grew in direct proportion to my hatred of Marianne. We separated at the end of the year, though Marianne, citing her religious principles, would not grant me a divorce.

I saw Lucy for two or three days a week over the course of the next five years, and the love of my daughter sustained me, and at the same time drove me to the edge of sanity, plagued continually by fear and paranoia.

That night, in the early hours, Lucy crept into my bed and snuggled up against me, and I dozed, utterly content.

We slept in late the following morning, had lunch, then went for a long walk. At five we set off for Hockton, Lucy quiet in the back seat.

I led her from the Range Rover to the front door, where I knelt and stroked a tress of hair from her face. I kissed her. "See you next week, poppet. Love you."

She hugged me and, as always, I had to restrain myself from weeping.

She hurried into the house and I left without exchanging a word with Marianne.

I threw myself into my work for the next five days. We were busy; Richard Lincoln was away on holiday, and I took over his workload. I averaged half a dozen collections a day, ranging across the length and breadth of West Yorkshire.

Tuesday night arrived, and not a day too soon. I was due to pick up Lucy in the morning and keep her for the duration of my three-day break. I celebrated with a few pints among congenial company at the Fleece. The regulars were present; Khalid and Zara, Ben and Elisabeth, Jeff Morrow and Richard, the latter just back from the Bahamas with a tan to prove it.

It was midnight by the time I made my way home, and there was a message from Marianne on the answerphone. Would I ring her immediately about tomorrow?

Six pints to the good, I had no qualms about ringing her when she might be in bed.

In the event, she answered the call with disconcerting alacrity. "Yes?"

"Dan here," I said. "I got the message."

"It"s about Lucy. I wouldn"t bother coming tomorrow. She came down with something. She"ll be in bed for a couple of days."

"What"s wrong?" I asked, fear gripping me by the throat.

"It"s nothing serious. The doctor came, said something about a virus."

"I"ll come anyway," I said. "I want to see her."

"Don"t bother," Marianne said. "I really don"t want to have you over here if it isn"t absolutely necessary."

"I couldn"t give a d.a.m.n about what you want!" I said. "I want to see Lucy. I"m coming over."

But she had slammed down the receiver, leaving me talking to myself.

I considered phoning back, but didn"t. It would only show her how angry I was. I"d go over in the morning anyway, whether she liked it or not.

A blizzard began just as I set off, and the road over the moors to Hockton was treacherous. It took me almost an hour to reach the village, and it was after eleven by the time I pulled up outside Marianne"s cottage.

I fully expected her not to answer the door, but to my surprise she pulled it open after the first knock. "Oh," she said. "It"s you."

I stepped past her. "Where"s Lucy?"

She indicated the stairs with a plastic beaker full of juice. I climbed to Lucy"s room, Marianne following.

"Daddy!" Lucy called out when I entered. She was sitting up in bed, a colouring book on her lap. She looked thin and pale.

I sat on the bed and took her hand. Marianne pa.s.sed her the beaker of juice. I looked up at her. "What did the doctor say?"

She shrugged. She was hugging herself, and looked pinched and sour, resentful of my presence. "He just said it was just a virus that"s going round. Nothing to worry about."

"What about medication?"

"He suggested Calpol if her temperature rose."

She retreated to the door, watching me. I turned to Lucy and squeezed her hand. "How are you feeling, poppet?"

Her head against the pillow, she smiled bravely. "Bit sick," she said.

I looked up. Marianne was still watching me. "If you"d give us a few minutes alone..."

Reluctantly she withdrew, closing the door behind her.

I winked at Lucy. "You"ll be better in no time," I said.

"Will I have to have more tests, Daddy?"

"I don"t know. What did the doctor say when he came?"

She shook her head. "He didn"t come here. Mummy took me to the hospital."

"Hospital?"

She nodded. "A doctor needled me and took some blood."