Kethani (27 page)

It’s a testament to the power of her faith, and her humanity, that she allowed her son the opportunity to make his own choice.

NINE

A CHOICE OF ETERNITIES

I was in the Fleece on Tuesday night when Richard Lincoln buttonholed me about old Mrs. Emmett. I’d arrived at seven and ordered a braised pork chop with roast potatoes and a pint of Landlord.

Sam was serving behind the bar. “You’re early, Khalid.”

“Hard day at the mill,” I said. “I need to wind down.”

“Well, the Landlord’s on form tonight. I’ll just go put your order in.”

She disappeared into the kitchen and I took a long draught of ale. Sam was right: it was nectar.

I’d had a tiring day at the hospital. Usually the implantation process went like a dream, but that afternoon, just as I was about to start the last implantation, the patient decided that he’d had second thoughts. He wanted a little time to consider what he was doing. It had been after six before I’d been able to get away.

I was the first of the Tuesday night crowd to arrive, but the others were not far behind. Ben and Elisabeth came in first, looking frozen stiff after the long walk through the snow; then the ferrymen Richard Lincoln and Dan Chester blew in, talking shop as usual, followed by Jeffrey Morrow. Next came Doug Standish and Andy Souter, and last of all Samantha’s husband, Stuart Kingsley. Samantha finished her shift at the bar and joined us.

I thought of Zara and the many happy Tuesday nights we’d spent at the Fleece with our friends, before my wife walked out on me and I killed myself, over ten years ago now.

I was on my third pint when Richard Lincoln returned from the bar with a round and sat down beside me.

Richard wore old-fashioned tweeds and liked his beer, but far from being the conservative country type he so much resembled, I found him liberal and open-minded. He lived next door to me along the street from the Fleece, and I considered him my best friend. Certainly he was the only person I’d told about what had really happened ten years ago.

“Cheers, Khalid,” Richard said, dispatching a good quarter of his pint in one swallow. “I wanted to talk to you about something. Another reluctant customer.”

On my return from Kéthan, I had told Richard that I’d decided to stay on Earth and spread the good word about the implantation process. From time to time he put me on to people he came across in his line of work who were reluctant, for various reasons, to undergo the implantation.

“Old Mrs. Emmett, up at High Fold Farm,” Richard said. “She has a son, Davey. He’s mentally handicapped.”

“And he isn’t implanted, right?”

“That’s the thing. Mrs. Emmett isn’t implanted, either. She’s no fool, Khalid. No addled hermit living on the moors. She might be in her seventies, but she’s all there. A retired university lecturer. She isn’t implanted on religious grounds.”

“Always the hardest to convert,” I said.

“The thing is, Davey is dying. Lung cancer. He was diagnosed a couple of months ago. I sent a counsellor from the Onward Station to talk to Mrs. Emmett last week, but she was having none of it.”

“And you think I might be able to talk her round?”

“Well, she does think highly of you,” Richard said.

I looked at him, surprised. “She does?”

“You treated her in hospital way back. She remembers you. I saw her in town last week and happened to mention your name. Actually, I asked her if you could come and talk to her about the Kéthani.”

I smiled at his presumption. “And she agreed?”

“When she heard your name, she relented. I was wondering, if you didn’t have a lot on...”

“Why not? You never know...” I thought hard, but couldn’t put a face to the name. It had been years ago, after all, and the workload of your average intern even back then had militated against the recollection of every patient.

Last orders were called and the final round bought, and it was well after midnight before the meeting broke up.

When I said goodbye to Richard outside my front door, I told him I’d visit Mrs. Emmett at the weekend.

High Fold was no longer a working farm. Like many once-thriving sheep farms in the area, it had suffered in the economic recession in the early years of the century. Its owners had sold up and moved away, and Mrs. Emmett had bought the farm, converted it at great expense, and lived there now in retirement with her son.

The snow was so bad on the Saturday morning that I had to leave the car on the main road above the farm. I struggled down the snow-filled track, towards the sprawling stone-built house on the hillside overlooking Oxenworth. By the time I reached the front door I knew I would never be cut out to be an Arctic explorer.

Mrs. Emmett answered my summons promptly, took one look at my bedraggled figure, and smiled. It was only then that I recalled the woman I had treated as a patient all those years ago.

The smile. Some people smile with just their mouths, others with all their faces. Mrs. Emmett’s smile encompassed all her face and emanated genuine warmth. I recalled the experience of feeling like a favourite nephew as she welcomed me.

“Dr. Azzam!” she said. “Khalid, it’s lovely to fee you. Come in. It’s terrible out there.”

I stepped into a spacious hall, removed my coat, and stamped the snow from my boots on the mat, then followed her into a lounge where a wood-burning stove belted out a fierce, furnace heat.

“I seem to remember you prefer coffee. I’ll just go and put it on. You know Davey of course.”

She left the room, and I sketched a smile and a wave at the man seated at a small table beside the stove.

He looked up briefly, but didn’t respond. He was absorbed in a world of his own. Davey Emmett was nearing thirty now, a chubby, childlike man, in both appearance and manner. I had never treated Davey—his affairs were looked after by a local doctor—and I had no idea of his medical history, whether his condition was congenital or the result of some childhood illness.

He rarely spoke, as I recalled, and had the mental age of a young child. He was obsessed with collecting stamps—he was poring over a thick album now. I remembered looking at one of his albums years ago when he’d come to the hospital with his mother. He collected stamps not by country or subjects depicted, as is common with philatelists, but by size and shape and colour.

Now he lowered his head short-sightedly over the page, a big Tweedledee absorbed in the polychromatic pattern of stamps before him.

As I watched him, I wondered if Davey was aware of his life-threatening illness.

Mrs. Emmett returned bearing a tray. For a woman in her seventies, she was remarkably upright and spry—and mentally sharp, as I found out.

She sat down and poured two coffees, then gave me a penetrating sidewise glance. “It must be very hard for people wholly convinced of the benefits the Kéthani have bestowed,” she said, “to comprehend the stance taken by the few dissenters amongst us.” She spoke eloquently, in a soft voice free of accent or dialect.

I found myself smiling. “Well, we do live in an increasingly secular age,” I began.

“The two sides cannot be reconciled,” she went on. “We with faith are wholly convinced of the truth of our views, while those that hold with the Kéthani pity us for our ignorance, for our choice of passing up the opportunity of certain immortality.” She paused and smiled. “Those with scientific certainty fail to understand the certainty of those with true faith.”

I smiled. “You’re telling me, politely, to mind my own business.”

She laughed, the sound like a cut glass chime. “Of course not, Khalid. I’m merely stating my position. I’d be genuinely interested in hearing your argument.”

I took a sip of the excellent coffee. “Well, it’s an argument based not so much on faith or theory,” I said, “as on my own experience.”

She inclined her head. “I understand that you now work on the implant ward at Bradley.”

“I do, but that isn’t the experience I was referring to. You see...” I paused, choosing my words carefully. “Over ten years ago, Mrs. Emmett, I died.” I elected to leave out the messy personal details of my death. “I was resurrected on the home planet of the Kéthani and... instructed, I suppose is the best way to put it. I’ve only a vague recollection of what happened in the Kéthani domes, just nebulous memories, images. What I do retain is the sensation of rebirth, the wonder of renewed life, and the sense of rightness that accompanied my resurrection. I knew so much more. I became—and this is ironic, as it’s the result of an alien process—more humane. I was convinced of the rightness of what I had undergone and the genuine sense of destiny I was to undergo. I knew I had to return to Earth and spread the word of the implantation process—”

Mrs. Emmett interrupted, “If you don’t mind my saying, Khalid, what you have said so far sounds not so much a matter of reason, but of faith.”

I smiled. “I suppose it does.” I paused, marshalling my thoughts. “But the Kéthani believe that the process of resurrection after death is the only true hope of continued existence.” I wondered, then, how much my words had been influenced by my own prejudices.

“Or that,” she said, again with that sweet smile, “is what they told you.”

“Not so much told,” I said, “as showed. I find it hard to explain, but at the end of the process, I
knew
they were right.”

“Just as, at the culmination of my years of instruction with my Rinpoche,” Mrs. Emmett said, “I
knew
that the way of Buddha was, for me, the true and right path.” Her bright blue eyes twinkled at me. “Faith, Khalid.”

I had to smile. “Touché,” I said.

“But...” she said.

I looked up at her.

“But?” I echoed, encouraged.

“But, Khalid, I presume you didn’t come here to try to save
my
life.” She was ahead of me, and knew it, and I couldn’t help but admire her intelligence.

I looked across at Davey, who was thoroughly absorbed in his stamp collection. “Richard told me that Davey is ill,” I began, uncomfortable about discussing the man in his presence.

“And you think I should have Davey implanted for his own good?”

I looked her in the eye. “Irrespective of your own beliefs,” I said, “I think you should give Davey the chance to decide for himself whether he would like the opportunity of virtual immortality.”

She looked at me sharply. “The opportunity?” she said. “But if I agree now to have him implanted, how would that be giving Davey the chance to decide for himself?”

I smiled. I could see the way ahead, the chance to save Davey from the imposition of his mother’s trenchantly held beliefs. Was that arrogant of me, small-minded?

I went on, “You see, if Davey is implanted, then when he dies and is taken to Kéthan he will be resurrected not as he is now, but with certain... how should I put it?...
changes.
He will still be Davey, still intrinsically himself, but his intelligence and understanding will be boosted. He’ll be the Davey who you would have had if not for...”

I stopped, for I saw a flicker of pain in her expression.

She said, “That might be a difficult fact to face, Khalid. To have Davey as I might have had him for all these years.”

“But,” I persisted, “wouldn’t it be better for him to be cured, to live a full and extended life?”

“That is to assume that what he experiences now is not full and rewarding, Khalid. All experience is relative and valid, as Buddha teaches us.”

“Then perhaps it would be a valid experience to allow Davey the opportunity of resurrection,” I countered.

She looked at me, assessing. “But, Khalid, forgive me—you haven’t answered my question. You said that I should give Davey the opportunity to make his own choice. But if I did agree to have him implanted, then I would be making the choice for him.”

I moved forward, sat on the edge of the chair in my desire to win the argument. “But you see, when Davey returns from Kéthan, resurrected, he would still be implanted. Returnees aren’t suddenly rendered immortal. They still have the implant which will keep them alive should they ‘die’ again, before they are taken to Kéthan for a second, or third or fourth, resurrection.”

“And...” Mrs. Emmett began, a dawning light in her eyes.

I nodded. “That’s right, when Davey returns from Kéthan, he will be implanted—and if he so wishes he can have the implant removed. If he shares your faith, then he can make a choice based on a full understanding of all the factors involved.”

I stopped there and watched Mrs. Emmett closely to see how she had taken my argument.

She was staring at her empty coffee cup, frowning slightly. At last she looked up and nodded. “You present a very interesting scenario, Khalid,” She said at last. “It is certainly something I need to think about.”

I nodded and finished my coffee. I should have realised that nothing I could have said would have made her change her mind there and then.

I wondered if, when I left, she would rationalise the discussion and allow her faith to maintain the status quo.

As she showed me to the door a little later, she touched my arm and said, “Buddha taught that there is no objective truth, Khalid. Each of us carries within us a subjective truth, if only we can find it.”

I smiled.

She went on, “I’ve tried so hard, Khalid, but the truth is that I’m not a very good Buddhist.”

“What makes you say—?” I began.

She smiled, sadly. “Attachment is wrong, Khalid. I am being selfish in my love for Davey. I should be able to look past my attachment and see what is best for Davey.”

I made the long trek back to the car and drove home, happy with the morning’s work.

I had quite forgotten about Mrs. Emmett and Davey when, three days later, my secretary received a call. She put her head around the door. “There’s a Mrs. Emmett on the line,” she said. “She won’t be put off. Shall I tell her you’re busy?”

“Emmett? No, put her through.”

I picked up the phone. “Mrs. Emmett?” I fully expected her to tell me that she had had second thoughts, and that our conversation had done nothing to change her mind. “How can I help?”