“And before you came to Earth… you lived on Delta Pavonis V?”
“For a hundred years,” Kath said, “while in training for my assignment on Earth.”
“So… so you have been on Earth for more than a hundred years?”
“A little over one hundred, in various guises.”
Sally took a breath, her heart racing. She felt as if she were hyperventilating, and tried to assess what she was thinking, feeling.
She had always assumed that she had been Kath’s best friend — as they had shared so much in the past — and to find out now that Kath had had a previous incarnation, or many incarnations on Earth, gave her an obscure sense of being let down, of not being unique in Kath’s estimation.
Ridiculous, she knew.
She said, “A hundred years? So the Serene have known for that long that one day they would come to Earth and… change things?”
“For much longer than that,” Kath said.
“And they sent you here to…?”
“Initially I was sent here on a fact-finding mission, to gather and collate information and send it back to our home planet.”
“And then?”
“And then, along with other self-aware entities, I helped to smooth the way, to create benevolent institutions, create an intellectual atmosphere wherein the very notion of the other, the alien, could be discussed, accepted.”
“You had a different guise? You were not always Kathryn Kemp, of course?”
“Of course. I was a male for many years, then female, and then a male again.”
“And… how many of your fellow self-aware entities were there, and still are?”
“We numbered, in the early years, in our hundreds, and then fifty years ago in our thousands. Now… there are perhaps a million of us on the planet.”
A million, Sally thought.
“And you were never found out? There were never accidents like last night, when you might have been hospitalised, examined and discovered?”
“We are similar, physiologically, to yourselves. A surgical examination of our bodies would reveal nothing — only a neurological scan, or neurosurgery might give away the lie, but we had means of ensuring we never compromised our identities.”
She smiled at Sally, then surprised her by saying, “I don’t know about you, Sally, but I would love a cup of tea…” She gestured to the house. “Let me go and potter about in the kitchen, while you sit here and think about what I’ve said. Earl Grey?”
“My favourite.”
“I know…”
Impulsively, both Sally and Kath, human and Serene self-aware entity, came together in a hug. Sally held on and closed her eyes, and told herself that it really didn’t matter that her friend was not human.
Kath moved into the house and Sally sat in the shade, watching her as she moved back and forth behind the kitchen window.
Kath was Kath, she told herself — the friend she had had for more than thirty years. Did it matter, really matter, that she was alien? Perhaps if Kath had befriended Sally back in their college days with some ulterior motive in mind, then Sally would have cause for unease. But as far as she could tell they had come together spontaneously, drawn to each other by that inexplicable personal chemistry that attracted human beings to each other… or in this case humans and self-aware entities.
Unless…
A thought struck Sally as she watched Kath ease herself sideways through the back door bearing a tray.
Sally drew up a small table and Kath poured two cups of Earl Grey.
They sat side by side and Kath said, “I hope this doesn’t change things between us, Sally. I value our friendship.”
“So do I, of course. But there is something I’d like to know.”
“Go on.”
“Our friendship… Why? I mean, when we met, I was instantly attracted to you. It was spontaneous.” She looked at her friend, then away across the garden. “What I’d like to know is… was it planned on the part of the Serene, for some ultimate purpose?” She took a breath, and voiced her fear: “Were you aware of what would happen, with Geoff being a representative…?”
“Do you mean,” Kath asked, “can we see into the future?”
“I suppose I do mean that, yes.”
“Well, of course not. The Serene are powerful, that I will admit, and much of our science might seem to you like magic, but there are some things that are even beyond the remit of the Serene.”
“So our friendship?”
“Is nothing more than friendship, and nothing less. A coming together of like souls, if you will. We… are encouraged by our overseers to inhabit our lives as humans, to live and think and feel as you do. Part of that is to experience what makes being human so often rewarding, to share friendships and…”
“And love?”
Kath nodded. “That too, occasionally.”
Sally asked, “And you have known love?”
“Not this time, Sally. For the past thirty years I have been so busy with… with laying the groundwork, that I have had little time left for affairs of the heart. But in a previous life…yes, I loved a woman.”
Sally sipped her tea and regarded her friend. “That must have been hard.”
“In some ways it was, but in others it was not. We were together for twenty years. We self-aware entities are… developed with an aging capability, for want of a better expression. I grew old and watched my lover grow old too, and I felt sadness that her time was so brief while mine, comparatively, was so extended. To watch her die was painful, but an experience, I told myself, that was essential in order to fully understand what it is to be human.”
Sally looked at her friend, wondering at her past lives. “When was this?”
“In the middle of the last century. My guise was that of a British diplomat working at various postings around the world. I met and fell in love with a wonderful woman, a novelist whose work I still keep, and read. It’s a comfort to have her voice to hand.”
They drank their tea in silence for a time. A slight wind stirred the boughs of the cherry tree, and its scent descended like a balm.
Sally said at last, “I would have thought, when you ‘died’ this time, that… I don’t know; that the life you had would have ceased and you would have started a new incarnation.”
Kath nodded. “It sometimes does happen like that, Sally. It’s a ‘natural’ transition, so to speak. But not this time. I have important work which it is essential I continue in my guise as Kathryn Kemp.”
“And I suppose you can’t tell me of this work?”
“I’m sorry, I can’t. The work is sensitive and confidential.”
She looked at her friend, who was holding the small china teacup in both hands before her wide lips and smiling across the garden, considering who knew what memories? Sally said, “But you need not have told me all this, Kath. You could have been resurrected, and gone back to your life and our paths might never have crossed again.”
What did she hope would be Kath’s reply? That their friendship meant so much that she, Kath, could not continue living without telling Sally that she had not in fact met her end in a leafy English lane?
Kath was nodding. “I could have done that, but I would have been uncomfortable, both on a personal level and on a more fundamental, logistical level. I, Kath, your friend, would have been distressed at your pain, your grief — quite apart from the fact that, one day, our paths might have crossed… and I am human enough to envisage the hurt this would have caused you.” She reached out and squeezed Sally’s hand. “Also, I wanted to tell you what really happened last night.”
“What really happened? But I saw what happened? The speeding truck…”
Kath was regarding her earnestly. “Didn’t it occur to you that the truck came out of nowhere rather fast?”