Kethani

"And a month later, a sodding month later, Khalid, the Kethani came..."

I gripped his arm even tighter and felt an incredible wave of compa.s.sion for my friend. "Come on, Jeff. It"s freezing out here. Let"s get inside. You need a drink."

He straightened up and took a deep breath, then looked at me and smiled. "I"m fine, Khalid. Yes. A pint. My round, okay?"

I smiled as we set off side by side. "I won"t argue, Jeffrey."

The main bar of the Fleece greeted us with warmth and the hum of conversation. We settled ourselves around our usual table and Jeffrey got the pints in. The usual faces were there, warming themselves before the open fire: Richard Lincoln and Ben Knightly.

"No Zara tonight?" Richard asked.

"Ploughed under with work," I said. "I told her I"d have a pint or two for her."

Jeffrey returned from the bar with a tray of Taylor"s Landlord. He smiled at me. There was no sign of the emotion he had experienced minutes earlier.

At one point that evening, he said, "I"ve been having... I suppose you"d call it counselling... about what happened to Caroline."

Ben said, "Haven"t the Kethani set up... I don"t know what you"d call them-clinics? Anyway, places you can go to talk about what"s happened, how it affects you personally..." He stopped there. Ben, alone in our group, was not implanted, and he had never told us the reason why-but that"s another story.

All across the world, stricken citizens remembered life before the Kethani, grieving over loved ones who had died-died and gone to oblivion everlasting-while accepting the gift for themselves and suffering the consequences of renewed grief and guilt. I"d read about the psychiatric clinics set up to help us.

Richard Lincoln said, "Representatives of the Kethani, humans recruited to do the administrative work of the aliens, have started counselling stations. The thing is, there are rumours."

I looked at him. "What do you mean?"

He shrugged. "Look, this is just hearsay. But I"ve heard that these counsellors... well, that they"re actually representatives of the Kethani race."

We stared at him. As a ferryman, his words on these matters carried a certain weight.

"You"ve heard that at the Station?" I asked.

"Unofficially, of course. Personally, I don"t know what to think..."

Jeffrey said, with a distant look in his eyes, "To think of it, I might have been pouring out my woes to an extraterrestrial."

For the rest of the night, we chatted about the pros and cons of this idea.

The thought of the Kethani amongst us...

Jeffrey said, "Whether I"ve been talking to a human or an alien," he smiled, "I know that it"s done me some good. Some things just can"t be handled alone."

I was to remember these words, a few weeks later, when Jeffrey suffered another tragic loss.

TWO.

ONWARD STATION.

That winter was the coldest in living memory, and January saw a record fall of snow across the north of England. On the last Monday of the month I sat in the warmth of the staff room and gazed out across the snow-sealed moorland, my mind completely blank. Miller, Head of Maths, dropped himself into the opposite seat, effectively blocking my view.

"Jeffrey," he said. "You take year thirteen for Film Studies, don"t you?"

"For my sins."

"What do you make of the Hainault girl?"

"I was away when she started," I said. It had been mid-December, and I"d had other things on my mind.

"Oh, of course. Sorry. Well, you take them today, don"t you?"

"Last period. Why?"

He had the annoying habit of tapping the implant at his temple with a nicotine-stained finger, producing an insistent, hollow beat.

"Just wondered what you"d make of her, that"s all."

"Disruptive?"

"The Hainault girl?" He grunted a laugh. "Quite the contrary. Brilliant pupil. Educated privately in France before arriving here. She"s wasted at this dump. It"s just..."

"Yes?"

He hesitated. "You"ll see when you take the cla.s.s," he said, and stubbed out his cigarette.

I watched, puzzled, as he stood and shuffled from the room.

"Tomlinson, Wilkins-if you want to turn out for the school team on Wednesday, shut it now."

Silence from the usually logorrhoeic double act. I stared around the cla.s.s, challenging.

"Thank you. Now, get into your study groups and switch on the screens. If you recall..." I glanced at my notes, "last week we were examining the final scenes of Brighton Rock. Brighton Rock. I want you to watch the last fifteen minutes, then we"ll talk." I want you to watch the last fifteen minutes, then we"ll talk."

I glanced around the room. "Claudine Hainault?"

The new girl was sitting alone at the back of the cla.s.s, already tapping into her computer. She looked up when I called her name, tossed a strand of hair from her eyes, and smiled.

She was blonde and slim, almost impossibly pretty. She appeared older than her eighteen years, something about her poise and confidence giving her a sophistication possessed by none of her cla.s.smates.

I moved to her desk and knelt. "Claudine, I"ll run through what"s happened so far, then leave you to it."

"It is okay, Mr. Morrow." She spoke precisely, with a slight accent. "I know the film."

Only then did I notice that she was not implanted.

I returned to my desk, sat down, and willed myself not to stare at the girl.

The lesson progressed. Once, when I sensed that she was not looking, I glanced over at Claudine Hainault. The skin of her right temple was smooth, without the square, raised outline of the implant device.

With five minutes to go before the bell, a boy looked up from the screen. He shook his head. "But Mr. Morrow... he died. died. And this was before... before the implants. How did people live without going mad?" And this was before... before the implants. How did people live without going mad?"

I felt a tightness in my throat. "It was only two years ago," I said. "You"ll learn all about that in Cultural Studies."

The cla.s.s went silent. They were all staring at Claudine Hainault. To her credit, she affected an interest in the screen before her.

Then the bell shattered the silence and all was forgotten in the mad scramble to be the first to quit the cla.s.sroom.

At four I followed the school bus as it crawled along the gritted lane between snow-drifted hedges. I lived in a converted farmhouse five miles from the school, and Claudine Hainault, I discovered with a pang of some emotion I could not quite define, was my neighbour-our houses separated by the grim, slate-grey expanse of the reservoir.

The bus braked and the girl climbed down and walked along the track towards an isolated farmhouse, a tiny figure in a cold and inhospitable landscape. I watched her until she disappeared from sight, then I restarted the engine and drove home.

I pulled into the driveway minutes later, unlocked the front door and stepped into a freezing house. The framed photographs of Caroline glimmered, indiscernible, in the twilight. I turned on the lights and the heating, microwaved an instant meal and ate in the lounge while listening to the radio news. I washed it down with a bottle of good claret-but even the wine made me think of the Hainault girl.

For a long time I sat and stared out through the picture window. The Onward Station was situated only a mile away, a breathtaking crystalline tower, scintillating in the moonlight like a confection of spun ice. Tonight it illuminated the landscape and my lounge, a monument to the immortality of humankind, a tragic epitaph to all those who had suffered and died before its erection.

The following Friday at first break, Miller approached me in the staff room. "So what do you make of the Hainault girl, Jeff?"

I shrugged. "She"s very able," I said non-committally.

"I"m worried about her. She seems withdrawn... depressed. She doesn"t mix, you know. She has no friends." He tapped the implant at his temple. "I was wondering... you"re good at drawing the kids out. Have a word with her, would you? See if anything"s troubling her."

He was too absorbed in relighting his cigarette to notice my stare. Troubling her? Troubling her? I wanted to ask; the poor girl isn"t implanted- I wanted to ask; the poor girl isn"t implanted-what do you think is troubling her?

I had spent the week doing my best not to think about Claudine Hainault, an effort that proved futile. I could not help but notice her every time I took year thirteen; how she always sat alone, absorbed in her work; how she never volunteered to answer questions, though I knew full well from the standard of her written work that she had the answers; how, from time to time, she would catch my eye and smile. Her smile, at these times, seemed at odds with her general air of sadness.

At lunchtime I was staring out of the staff room window when I noticed a knot of kids gathered in the corner of the schoolyard. There were about six of them, confronting a single girl.

I rushed out and crossed the tarmac. The group, mainly girls, was taunting Claudine. She faced them, cursing in French.

"That"s quite enough!" I called. "Okay, break it up." I sent the ringleaders off to visit the head-teacher and told the others to scarper.

"But we were just telling Claudine that she"s going to die!" one of the girls said in parting.

When I turned to Claudine she had her back to me and was staring through the railings at the distant speck of the Onward Station. I wanted to touch her shoulder, but stopped myself.

"Are you alright?"

She nodded, not looking at me. Her long blonde hair fell to the small of her back, swept cleanly behind her ears. When she finally turned and smiled at me, her expression seemed carved from ice, imbued with fort.i.tude.

That afternoon I remained at school an extra hour, catching up on some marking I had no desire to take home. It was dark when I set off, but at least I wasn"t trapped behind the school bus, and the lanes were free of traffic. A couple of miles from school, my headlights picked out a quick, striding figure, silhouetted against the snow. I slowed down and braked, reached over and opened the pa.s.senger door.

She bent her knees and peered in at me.

"Claudine," I said. "What on earth are you doing walking home? Do you realise how far...?"

"Oh, Mr. Morrow," she said. "I missed the bus."

"Hop in. I"ll take you home."

She climbed in and stared ahead, her small face red with cold, diadems of melting snow spangling her hair.

"Were you kept back?" I asked.

"I was using the bathroom."

I didn"t believe her. She had missed the bus on purpose, to avoid her cla.s.smates.

We continued in silence for a while. I felt an almost desperate need to break the ice, establish contact and gain her confidence. I cleared my throat.

"What brought you to England?" I asked at last.

"My mother, she is English," she said, as if that were answer enough.

"Does your father work here?"

She shook her head minimally, staring straight ahead.

I concentrated on the road, steering around the icy bends. "Couldn"t you have phoned your mother to come for you?" I said. "She does drive?" Private transport was a necessity this far out.

"My mother, she is an alcoholic, Mr. Morrow," she said with candour. "She doesn"t do anything."

"Oh. I"m sorry." I felt myself colouring. "Look," I said, my mouth dry, "if you don"t want to catch the bus in future, I"ll drive you home, okay?"

She turned and smiled at me, a smile of complicity and grat.i.tude.

I was aware of the pounding of my heart, as if I had taken the first irrevocable step towards founding a relationship I knew to be foolhardy but which I was powerless to prevent.

I looked forward to our short time together in the warmth of my car at the end of every school day. I probed Claudine about her life in France, wanting to know, of course, why she was not implanted. But with an adroitness unusual in one so young, she turned around my questions and interrogated me. I found myself, more often than not, talking about my own past.

At one point I managed to steer the conversation away from me. "I"ve been impressed with the standard of your work," I said, aware that I sounded didactic. "Your grades are good. What do you plan to study at university?"

She wrinkled her nose. "Oh, I thought perhaps philosophy. I"m interested in Nietzsche and Cioran."