Kethani Part 29

I let that question blow away on the cold wind, and said instead, "Can I drive you home?"

He hesitated. "No. No, thanks, Khalid." He pointed across the valley, to High Fold Farm. "It's not far, I'll walk."

I shook his hand and made my way back to the car.

I thought of the way the Kethani had remade us, and then it came to me that, since my return, I had never contacted Zara to apologise for how I had treated her over the years. I knew in my heart that it was my duty to do so, but even then I honestly doubted whether I would be man enough to go through with it.

The Kethani improve us all, to varying degrees.

I drove from the cemetery, then braked on the road that climbs over the moors. I gazed down on a desolate scene of continuous snow and rank upon rank of headstones, those terrible reminders of the dead.

Davey Emmett was the only living figure in the vast and inimical landscape. As I watched, he opened the letter from his mother and read it slowly. Then he raised his head and stared into the sky, at the stars just beginning to appear in the heavens.

I looked at the road ahead, then started the car and drove towards Oxenworth and home.

Interlude Over the twenty years since the coming of the Kethani, the Tuesday night group of friends at the Fleece had grown, evolved, and become for me a second family... or even a first family, if the truth be told. I came to love these quiet, ordinary people, and I was heartened by the fact that my acquaintance with them would continue far into the future.

I arrived late at the Fleece that night, after a busy shift on the implant ward. It was almost ten o'clock by the time I shrugged off my coat, grabbed a welcome pint, and eased myself into my customary seat beside the fire.

Sam said, "Khal, we were beginning to think you'd never make it."

"I was beginning to worry, too," I laughed, taking a swallow of the amber nectar.

Over the years, my actual workload at Bradley General had decreased-there were fewer citizens to be implanted, these days, as more and more people elected to go out among the stars, or to stay out there immediately after their resurrections. I had cut down my hours in the ward to just four a day: today's rush had been a statistical blip.

Dan Chester said, "I've just had this from Lucy. They're..." he smiled and shook his head, as if in wonderment. "I find this hard to believe, but they're aboard a Kethani faster-than-light ship beyond the Nilakantha Stardrift, en route to their second posting on an Earth-like world orbiting a super-ma.s.sive red giant... Anyway," he finished, pa.s.sing me an information pin and a screen.

I pressed play and stared at the screen.

Lucy smiled out at me, surrounded by pa.s.sing humans in one-piece suits. She appeared to be in some kind of bar. It reminded me for all the world of a scene from one of the s.p.a.ce opera shows I'd watched as a kid.

Davey sat beside her, an arm around her shoulders.

"Dad, everyone in the Fleece-if you're still drinking there! Silly question! Where else would you be? Well, we're aboard an FTL cruiser heading for Kalopia VII, to bring the word of the Kethani to a race of just post-industrial humanoids. We're well, and looking forward to the posting." She talked about their work for a few minutes, then turned and looked into Davey's eyes. "We're very happy. It's... I can't begin to describe how amazing it is out here... Look, we've got to rush-can't miss the last post. I'll be in touch again soon. Love you, Dad. Take care!"

Davey waved and smiled, and Lucy reached out and cut the recording.

I shook my head as I pa.s.sed Dan the screen. "My G.o.d... It doesn't seem two minutes since the wedding."

"Four years, Khal," Dan said.

We were silent for a while after that, each of us lost in our own thoughts.

I looked round the bar. It was quiet, which was not surprising these days. Oxenworth was quiet. Half the houses stood empty. Not everyone had gone to the stars; many people had moved to the cities, replacing those who had decided to leave Earth.

Stuart Kingsley said, as if reading my thoughts, "I was in Leeds yesterday, and do you know... It seemed busy, but I was in a bookshop and I happened to look at a local history book, and a photograph of the Headrow in 2006. The crowds! There were thousands of people in the streets..."

Richard Lincoln finished his pint and said, "The world's population has fallen by five per cent in the past five years, and the predictions are that it'll continue like that for the foreseeable future."

Elisabeth shook her head. "So... I'm no mathematician... how long before the world is empty?"

Stuart said, "Roughly a century, Lis. If the exodus continues at this rate."

Ben looked at me and said, "What is it, Khal?"

I must have appeared to be miles away. I shook myself and said, "I don't know... but for the past couple of years I've felt... I find it hard now quite how to describe the feeling..." I shrugged. "I know know, on some subconscious level, that all I've taken for granted, all that's familiar, is drawing to some kind of close."

"Things are changing," Jeffrey said. "Little by little, inevitably. Nothing is as it was before. Our way of life, which we've taken for granted for so long..."

That gave us pause for thought. We stared into our drinks, for once collectively silenced.

Something that Lucy had said in her communique from the stars repeated itself in my head. Dad, everyone in the fleece-if you're still drinking there! Silly question! Dad, everyone in the fleece-if you're still drinking there! Silly question!

I felt, oddly, very old then, as if we were the preservers of a way of life that was soon to change. I had the feeling that we were treading water, waiting... All we needed was something, or someone, to urge us on.

We didn't know what that might be, at the time.

We didn't know that we were waiting for a catalyst, and that that catalyst should prove to be a man called Gregory Merrall.

TEN.

THE FAREWELL PARTY.

Gregory Merrall had been part of our group for just three months by the time of the Farewell Party, though it seemed that we had never been without his quiet, patriarchal presence. He was a constant among the friendly faces who met at the Fleece every Tuesday evening, our confidant and king, some might even say our conscience.

I remember his arrival amongst us. It was a bitter cold night in early November and the village had been cut off for two days due to a severe fall of snow. When I saw him stride into the main bar-an anachronistic figure in Harris tweeds and plus fours-I a.s.sumed he was a stranded traveller.

He b.u.t.tressed the bar and drank two or three pints of Landlord.

There were nine of us gathered about the inglenook that night, and as each of us in turn went to the bar to buy our round, the stranger made a point of engaging us in conversation.

"There are worse places to be stranded in than Oxenworth," I said when it was my round. "The Fleece is the best pub for miles around."

He smiled. "I'm not stranded-well, not in that sense," he said, offering his hand. "Merrall, Gregory Merrall."

"Khalid Azzam," I told him. "You've moved to Oxenworth?"

"Bought the old Dunnett farm on the hill."

I knew immediately-and I often look back and wonder quite how how I knew-that Merrall would become part of our group. There was something, about him that inspired trust. He was socially confident without being brash and emanated an avuncular friendliness that was endearing and comforting. I knew-that Merrall would become part of our group. There was something, about him that inspired trust. He was socially confident without being brash and emanated an avuncular friendliness that was endearing and comforting.

I noticed that he was nearing the end of his pint. "It's my round," I said. "Would you like to join us?"

"Well, that's very kind. I don't mind if I do."

So I introduced him to the group and he slipped into the conversation as if the niche had been awaiting him: the niche, I mean, of the quiet wise man, the patriarchal figure whose experience, and whose contemplation of that experience, he brought to bear on our varied conversations that evening.

It was a couple of weeks later, and I'd arrived early. Richard Lincoln and Andy Souter were at the bar, nursing their first pints. Richard was in his late sixties and for a second I mistook him for Gregory.

He frowned at my double take as he bought me a pint.

"Thought for a second you were Merrall," I explained.

"The tweeds," he said. "Bit out of fashion." I'd always thought it paradoxical that someone who worked so closely with the Kethani regime should adopt so conservative a mode of dress.

We commandeered our table by the fire and Andy stowed his cornet case under his stool. Andy was a professional musician, a quiet man in his late thirties with a cornetist's pinched top lip. He conducted the local bra.s.s band and taught various instruments at the college in Bradley. He was the latest recruit-discounting Merrall-to our Tuesday night sessions. He ran a hand through his ginger mop and said, "So, what do you think of our Gregory?"

"I like him a lot," I said. "He's one of us."

Richard said, "Strange, isn't it, how some people just fit in? Odd thing is, for all he's said a lot, I don't know that much about him."

That gave me pause. "Come to think of it, you're right." All I knew was that he was from London and that he'd bought the old farmhouse on the hill.

Andy nodded. "The mysterious stranger..."

"He's obviously well travelled," Richard said.

That was another thing I knew about him from his stories of India and the Far East. I said, "Isn't it odd that although he's said next to nothing about himself, I feel I know him better than I do some people who talk about themselves nonstop."

For the next hour, as our friends hurried in from the snow in ones and twos, conversation centred around the enigmatic Mr. Merrall. It turned out that no one knew much more than Richard, Andy and me.

"Very well, then," said Doug Standish, our friendly police officer, "let's make it our objective tonight to find out a bit more about Gregory, shall we?"

Five minutes later, at nine o'clock on the dot- as was his habit-Gregory breezed in, shaking off the snow like a big Saint Bernard.

He joined us by the fire and seconds later was telling us about a conversation he'd had with his bank manager that morning. That provoked a round of similar stories, and soon our collective objective of learning more about our new-found friend was forgotten in the to and fro of bonhomie and good beer.

Only as I was wending my way home, with Richard by my side, did it occur to me that we had failed abjectly to learn anything more about Gregory than we knew already.

I said as much to the ferryman.

He was staring at the rearing crystal pinnacle of the Onward Station, perched miles away on the crest of the moors.

"Greg's so friendly it seems rude to pry," he said.

A week later I accidentally found out more about Gregory Merrall and, I thought, the reason for his insularity.

I arrived at the Fleece just after nine, eager to tell what I'd discovered. The group was ensconced before the blazing fire.

Ben and Elisabeth-in their fifties now and still holding hands-both looked at the book I was holding. Ben said, "Tired of our conversation, Khalid?"

Andy Souter laughed, "If we're all doing our own thing, then I'll get my cornet out and practice."

Dan Chester made to cover his ears. "Spare us, Andy, please!"

I smiled. Everyone turned my way as I held up the novel, my hand concealing the name of the author.

"A Question of Trust," Samantha Kingsley said. "I didn't know you were a great reader, Khalid." Samantha Kingsley said. "I didn't know you were a great reader, Khalid."

"I'm not. I was in Bradley today, and this was in the window of the bookshop."

"So," Richard said. "Who's it by?"

"Three guesses," I said.

"You," Stuart Kingsley said. "You've retired from the implant ward and started writing?"

"Not me, Stuart. But you do know him."

Sam cheated. She was sitting next to me, and she tipped her stool and peeked at the author's photo on the back of the jacket.

"Aha!" she said. "Mystery solved."

I removed my hand from the byline.

Dan said, "Gregory!"

"This explains a few things," I said. "His experience, his reluctance to talk about himself-some writers are notoriously modest." I opened the book and read the mini-biography inside the back flap. "Gregory Merrall was born in 1965 in London. He has been a full-time freelance writer for more than thirty years, with novels, collections, and volumes of poetry to his name."

Five minutes later Gregory hurried in, hugging himself against the bone-aching cold. He crossed to the fire and roasted his outstretched hands before the flames.

He saw the book, which I'd placed on the table before me, and laughed. "So... my secret's out."

"Why didn't you tell us?" Richard said, returning from the bar with a pint for our resident writer.

Gregory took a long draught. "It's something I don't much like talking about," he said. "People a.s.sume a number of things when you mention you're a scribbler. They either think you're bragging, that you're incredibly well-off-would that that were so!-that you're some kind of intellectual heavyweight, or that you'll immediately start regaling them with fabulous stories."

"Well," Sam said, "you have told us some fascinating tales."

Gregory inclined his head in gracious a.s.sent. "It's just not something I feel the need to talk about," he went on. "What matters is not so much talking about it, but getting it done."