Andy nodded. "The mysterious stranger..."

"He's obviously well traveled," 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 centered 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 newfound 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, tired from a hard day on the implant ward, but 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 bugle out and practise."

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."

"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.

Richard exclaimed, "Gregory!"

"This explains a few things," I said. "His experience, his reluctance to talk about himself-some writers don't like it known that they write." 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 draft. "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."

The evening unfolded, and at one point someone asked Gregory (it was Stuart, a lecturer at Leeds and something of an egghead himself), "How do you think the coming of the Kethani has affected how we write about the human experience?"

Gregory frowned into his pint. "Where to begin? Well, it's certainly polarized writers around the world. Some have turned even further inward, minutely chronicling the human condition in the light of our newfound immortality. Others have ignored it and written about the past, and there's a vast market for nostalgia these days! A few speculate about what life might be like post-death, when we take the leap into the vast inhabited universe."

Richard looked at him. "And where would you put yourself, Gregory?"

Merrall picked up his novel and leafed through it, pausing-occasionally to read a line or two. "I'm firmly in the speculative camp," he said, "trying to come to some understanding of what life out there might be like, why the Kethani came to Earth-what their motives might be."

That set the subject for the rest of the evening-the Kethani and their modus operandi. Of the nine regulars around the table that night, only three of us had died, been resurrected on the home planet of the Kethani, and returned to Earth: Stuart and Samantha Kingsley, and myself.

I looked back to my resurrection, and what I had learned. I had become a better human being, thanks to the aliens, but in common with everyone else who had been resurrected and returned to Earth, I found it difficult to recall precisely what it was I had learned in the Kethani dome, quite how I had become a better person.

At one point Andy Souter said, "I read a novel, a couple of years ago, about a guy who was really a Kethani disguised as a human, come among us to change our ways."

Gregory nodded. "I know it. The Effectuator by Duchamp."

"I've heard rumors that that happens," I said. I shrugged. "Who knows?"

Sam lowered her pint of lager and asked Gregory, "Do you think that happens? Do you think the Kethani are amongst us?"

Gregory considered. "It's entirely possible," he said. "No one has ever seen a Kethani, and as they obviously possess technology far in advance of anything we know, then pa.s.sing themselves off as human wouldn't pose that much of a problem."

Andy said, "But the morality of it... I mean, surely if they're working for our good, then they could at least be open about it."

"The Kethani work in mysterious ways..." Sam said.

Andy went on, "We take them for granted... we a.s.sume they're working for our good. But we don't really know, for sure."

Six pints the worse, I turned to Gregory and said, "Well, you write about the... the whole thing, the Kethani, death, and revival... what do you think?"

He was some seconds before replying. He stared into the fire. "I think," he said, "that the Kethani are the saviors of our race, and that whatever they have planned for us when we venture out there-though I don't presume to know what that might be-will be wholly for our good."

After that, talk turned to how things had changed due to the coming of the Kethani. I said, ''The change has been gradual, very gradual. I mean, so slow it's been hardly noticeable." I looked around the table. "You've all felt it; it's as if we're treading water, biding our time. It's as if a vast sense of complacency has descended over the human race." I'd never put these feelings into words before-they'd been a kind of background niggle in my consciousness. "I don't know... Sometimes I feel as if I'm only really alive among you lot on Tuesday nights!"

Richard laughed. "I know what you mean. Things that once were seen as important-everything from politics to sport-no longer have that... vitality."

"And," Stuart put in, "England is emptying. Come to that, the world is. I don't know what the figures are, but more and more people are staying out there when they die."

And with that thought we called it a night, departed the cozy confines of the snug, and stepped out into the freezing winter night.

The Onward Station was like an inverted icicle in the light of the full moon, and as I made my way home a brilliant bolt of magnesium light illuminated the night as another batch of the dead were beamed up to the waiting Kethani starship.

A COUPLE OF weeks later the conversation returned to the perennial subject of the Kethani, and what awaited us when we died.

Richard Lincoln posed the question: would we return to Earth after our resurrections, or would we travel among the stars as the amba.s.sadors of our alien benefactors?

Gregory looked across at me. "You returned to Earth, didn't you, Khalid? Why, when all the universe awaited you?"

I shrugged, smiled. "I must admit... I was tempted to remain out there. The universe... the lure of new experience... it was almost too much to refuse. But-I don't know. I was torn. Part of me wanted to travel among the stars, but another, stronger part of me wanted to return." I looked across at Richard Lincoln, who was the only person I had told about the reasons for my suicide, and my return to Earth. "Perhaps I feared the new," I finished. "Perhaps I fled back to what was familiar, safe..." I shrugged again, a little embarra.s.sed at my inarticulacy under the penetrating scrutiny of Gregory Merrall.

He turned to Stuart and Sam. "And you?"

The couple exchanged a glance. Stuart was in his mid-forties, Sam ten years younger, and they were inseparable-as if what they'd experienced, separately, in the resurrection domes on that far-off alien world, had brought them closer together.

Stuart said, "I hadn't really given much thought to my death, or resurrection. I naturally a.s.sumed I'd come back to Earth, continue life with Sam-we'd been married just over a year when I had the accident-go back to my lectureship at the university. But while I was in the dome, I... I learned that there was far more to life than what I'd experienced, and would experience, back on Earth."

"And yet you returned," Gregory said.

Stuart looked across at his wife. "I loved Sam," he said. "I was tempted... tempted to remain out there. But I reasoned that I could always return to the stars, later."

Sam said, looking at Gregory almost with defiance, "Two days after Stu died, I killed myself. I wanted to be with him. I couldn't live without him, not even for six months." She stopped abruptly and stared down into her drink.

"And?" Gregory prompted gently.

"And when I got up there, when I was resurrected... I mean, I still loved Stu, but something... I don't know-something was different." She smiled. "The stars called, and nothing would be the same again. Anyway, I decided to come back, see how it went with Stu, and take it from there."

I said, "And look what happened. 'Happily ever after,' or what?"

"We both felt the same," Stuart said. "It was as if our love had been tested by what we learnt out there. We considered going back, but... well, we fell into the old routine, work and the pub..."

He laughed and raised his pint in ironic salutation.

"That's very interesting," Gregory said. "I've done some research. In the early days, only two in ten who died and were resurrected chose to remain out there. The majority opted for what they knew. Now, out of every ten, seven remain. And the average is rising."

"Why do you think that is?" Ben asked.

Gregory pursed his lips, as if by a drawstring, and contemplated the question. "Perhaps we've come to trust the Kethani. We've heard the stories of those who've been to the stars and returned, and we know there's nothing to fear."

"But," Elisabeth said, with a down-to-earth practicality, "surely the draw of the familiar should be too much for most of us, those of us who want to return and do all the things on Earth that we never got round to doing."

But Gregory was shaking his head. "You'd think so, but once you've experienced resurrection and instruction by the Kethani, and gone among the stars-"

Stuart interrupted, "You sound as if you've experienced it first-hand?"

Gregory smiled. "I haven't. But I have interviewed hundreds, maybe even thousands, of returnees from life among the stars, for a series of novels I wrote about the Kethani."

"And?" I said.

"And I found that the idea of a renewed life on Earth, for many, palls alongside the promise of the stars. And when these people experience life out there, they find life on Earth well-nigh impossible." He smiled. "'Provincial' was the word that came up again and again."

We contemplated our beers in silence.

At last I said, "And you, Gregory. What would you do?"

He stared at us, one by one. "When I die, which I think won't be long in happening, then I'll remain out there among the stars, doing whatever the Kethani want me to do."

A FEW DAYS later I received a package of books through the post. They were the Returnee trilogy, by Gregory Merrall, sent courtesy of his publisher in London.

That week at the pub, I found that every one of us in the group had received the trilogy.

"I don't know what I was expecting," Stuart said, "but they're good."

"More than good," said Elisabeth, who was the literary pundit amongst us. "I'd say they were excellent, profoundly moving."

Gregory was away that Tuesday-visiting his publisher-so we didn't have the opportunity to thank him. That week I devoured the books and, like Stuart and Elisabeth, found them a heady experience.

He had the ability to write about ideas and the human experience in such a way that the one complemented the other. His characters were real, fully fleshed human beings, about whom the reader cared with a pa.s.sion. At the same time, he wrote about their experiences in a series of philosophical debates that were at once-for a literary dunce like myself-understandable and page-turning.

I canva.s.sed Stuart's opinion on the following Tuesday. I wondered if he, as an intellectual, had been as impressed by Gregory's books as I had. He had, and for an hour that evening before the man himself turned up, all of us discussed the Returnee trilogy with pa.s.sion and something like awe that we knew its author.

At one point, Stuart said, "But what did you all think about the finale, and what did it mean? Gregory seemed to be saying that life on Earth was over, that only humankind's journey among the stars was what mattered."

Ben nodded. "As if Earth were a rock pool, which we had to leave in order to evolve."

At that point Gregory came in with a fanfare of wind and a swirl of snowflakes. We fought to buy him a drink and heaped praise on his novels.

I think he found all the fuss embarra.s.sing. "I hope you didn't think it a tad arrogant, my having the books sent."

We a.s.sured him otherwise.

"It was just," he said, "that I wanted you to know my position." He smiled. "And it saved me giving a lecture."

Elisabeth asked, "What are you working on now, Gregory?"

He hesitated, pint in hand. "Ah... well, I make it a rule never to talk about work in progress. Superst.i.tion. Perhaps I fear that gabbing about the book will expend the energy I'd use writing it."

She gave a winning smile. "But on this occasion..."

Gregory laughed. "On this occasion, seeing as I'm among friends, and I've almost finished the book anyway..."

And he proceeded to tell us about his next novel, ent.i.tled The Suicide Club.

It was about a group of friends who, dissatisfied with their routine existence on Earth, stage a farewell party at which they take their own lives, are resurrected, and then go among the stars as amba.s.sadors of the Kethani.