The Book of Strange New Things

by Michel Faber

  Uncanny how similar the after-effects of the Jump were to extremes of alcohol abuse. But worse. Like the mother of all hangovers combined with a dose of magic mushrooms. Neither BG nor Severin had mentioned hallucinations, but maybe these guys were simply more robust than him. Or maybe they were both fast asleep right now, quietly recuperating instead of making fools of themselves.

  He waited for the room to become a geometric space of fixed angles anchored in gravity, and then he got up. He checked the Shoot for messages. Still no word from Bea. Perhaps he should have asked Grainger to come to his room to check his machine, make sure he was using it correctly. But it was night and she was a woman and he barely knew her. Nor would their relationship have got off to an auspicious start if he’d hallucinated that she was sprouting multiple eyes and mouths and then collapsed at her feet.

  Besides, the Shoot was so simple to operate that he couldn’t imagine how anyone – even a technophobe like himself – might misunderstand it. The thing sent and received messages: that was all. It didn’t play movies, make noises, offer to sell him products, inform him about the plight of mistreated donkeys or the Brazilian rainforest. It didn’t offer him the opportunity to check the weather in southern England or the current number of Christians in China or the names and dates of dynasties. It just confirmed that his messages had been sent, and that there was no reply.

  Abruptly he glimpsed – not on the matt grey screen of the Shoot, but in his own mind – a picture of tangled wreckage on an English motorway, at night, garishly lit by the headlights of emergency vehicles. Bea, dead, somewhere on the road between Heathrow and home. Loose pearls scattered across the asphalt, black slicks of blood. A month ago already. History. Such things could happen. One person embarks on an outrageously hazardous journey and arrives unscathed; another goes for a short, routine drive and gets killed. ‘God’s sick sense of humour,’ as one grieving parent (soon to leave the church) had once put it. For a few seconds, the nightmarish vision of Beatrice lying dead on the road was real to Peter, and a nauseous thrill of terror passed through his guts.

  But no. He mustn’t let himself be deluded by imaginary horrors. God was never cruel. Life could be cruel, but not God. In a universe made dangerous by the gift of free will, God could be relied upon for support no matter what happened, and He appreciated the potentials and limitations of each of His children. Peter knew that if anything awful happened to Bea, there was no way he’d be able to function here. The mission would be over before it began. And if there was one thing that had become clear in all the months of thought and prayer leading up to his journey to Oasis, it was that God really wanted him here. He was safe in God’s hands, and so was Bea. She must be.

  As for the Shoot, there was one easy way of checking whether he was using it correctly. He located the USIC icon – a stylised green scarab – on the screen, and clicked open the menu behind it. It wasn’t much of a menu, just three items: Maintenance (repairs), Admin and Graigner, obviously set up in haste by Grainger herself. If he wanted a more substantial list of correspondents, it was up to him to organise it.

  He opened a fresh message page, and wrote:

  Dear Grainger. Then deleted ‘Dear’ and substituted ‘Hi’, then deleted that and just had ‘Grainger’, then reinstated ‘Dear’, then deleted it again. Unwarranted intimacy versus unfriendly brusqueness . . . a flurry of confused gestures before communication could begin. Letter-writing must have been so much easier in the olden days when everyone, even the bank manager or the tax department, was Dear.

  Hi Grainger.

  You were right. I am tired. I should sleep some more. Sorry for any inconvenience.

  Best wishes,

  Peter

  Laboriously, he undressed. Every item of his clothing was swollen with damp, like he’d been caught in a downpour. His socks peeled away from his wrinkled feet like muddy clumps of foliage. His trousers and jacket clung obstinately to him, resisting his attempts to tug free. Everything he removed weighed heavy and fell to the floor with a dull whump. At first, he thought that fragments of his clothing had actually crumbled off and rolled across the floor, but on closer inspection, the loose bits were dead insects. He picked up one of the bodies and held it between his fingers. The wings had lost their silvery translucence, and were stained red with dye. Legs had been lost. It was an effort, actually, to perceive this mangled husk as an insect at all: it looked and felt like the pulverised remains of a hand-rolled cigarette. Why had these creatures hitched a ride in his clothes? He’d probably killed them just by the friction of walking.

  Remembering the camera, he fished it out of his jacket pocket. It was slippery with moisture. He switched it on, intending to review the pictures he’d taken of the USIC perimeter and to snap a few more here, to show Bea his quarters, his sodden clothes, maybe one of the insects. A spark leapt from the mechanism, stinging him, and the light died. He held the camera in his hand, staring down at it as though it were a bird whose tiny heart had burst from fright. He knew the thing was unfixable and yet he half-hoped that if he waited a while, it would hiccup back into life. Just a moment ago, it had been a clever little storehouse of memories for Bea, a trove of images which would come to his aid in a near future he’d already inhabited in his imagination. Him and Bea on the bed, the gadget glowing between them, her pointing, him following the line of her finger, him saying ‘That? Oh, that was . . . ’ ‘And that was . . . ’ ‘And that was . . . ’ Now suddenly none of it was. In his palm lay a small metal shape with no purpose.

  As the minutes passed, he became aware that his naked flesh smelled strange. It was that same faint honeydew melon scent he detected in the drinking water. The atmosphere swirling around out there had not been content merely to lick and stroke his skin, it had made him fragrant, as well as provoking copious sweat.

  He was too tired to wash, and a slight quaver in the straight line of the skirting board warned him that the whole room might soon start moving again if he didn’t shut his eyes and rest. He collapsed on the bed and slept for an eternity which, when he awoke, turned out to have been forty-odd minutes.

  He checked the Shoot for messages. Nothing. Not even from Grainger. Maybe he didn’t know how to use this machine after all. The message he’d sent Grainger was not a foolproof test, because he’d worded it in such a way that it hadn’t strictly required a response. He thought for a minute, then wrote:

  Hello again Grainger,

  Sorry to bother you, but I haven’t noticed any phones or any other method of getting hold of somebody directly. Are there none?

  Best wishes,

  Peter

  He showered, towelled himself half-dry and lay on the bed again, still naked. If his messages to Grainger had failed to get through and she turned up a few minutes from now, he would wrap himself in a sheet and talk to her through the door. Unless she walked right in without knocking. She wouldn’t do that, would she? Surely the social conventions of the USIC base weren’t that different from the norm? He looked around the room for a suitable object to wedge against the door, but there was nothing.

  Once, years ago, while going through the complicated procedure of locking up the church (deadbolts, padlocks, mortice locks, even a chain), he’d suggested to Beatrice that they should have an open-door policy.

  ‘But we do,’ she’d said, puzzled.

  ‘No, I mean no locks at all. The doors open to anyone, any time. “Entertaining angels unawares”, as the Scripture puts it.’

  She’d stroked his head as if he were a child. ‘You’re sweet.’

  ‘I’m serious.’

  ‘So are the drug addicts.’

  ‘We don’t have any drugs here. And nothing that could be sold for drugs.’ He gestured at the walls decorated with children’s drawings, the pews with their comfy old cushions, the wobbly lectern, the stacks of well-worn Bibles, the general absence of silver candelabras, antique sculptures and precious ornaments.

  Bea sighed. ‘Anything can be sold for drugs. Or
at least the person can try. If he’s desperate enough.’ And she gave him a You’d know all about that, wouldn’t you? look.

  Indeed, he knew all about that. He just had a tendency to forget.

  Despite his resolution to stay awake until the time Grainger might show up if she hadn’t received his message, Peter fell asleep. Two hours passed and, when he woke, the room was stable and the view through the window was unchanged: lonesome expanses of darkness, speckled with eerie lamplight. He shambled out of bed and his foot kicked something flimsy across the floor: one of his socks, dried out and stiff, transformed from cotton into cardboard. He sat at the Shoot and read a fresh response from Grainger that had his own ‘sorry to bother you’ lure hanging off it.

  A telephone call would have bothered me a lot more, she wrote, especialy if Id been asleep. No, there are no phones. USIC tried setting them up in the early days but reception ranged from lousy to nonexistant. The atmosphere is wrong, too thick or something. So weve done without. And its been OK. Lets face it, most of what phones get used for is a total waste of time anyway. Weve got red buttons all over the place for emergencies (and never need them!). Our work schedules are on printed rosters so we know where to turn up and what to do. As far as chat goes we talk face to face if were not too busy – and if were too busy we shouldnt be trying to chat. When special announcements need to be made, we pipe them over the PA. We can use the Shoot also but most people wait until they can discuss things face to face. Everybodys an expert here and discussions can get quite technical and then theres the give+take of problem solving in situ. Writing stuff down so as the other person can understand it and then waiting for an answer is a nightmare. Hope this helps, Grainger.

  He smiled. In one sentence, she’d flushed thousands of years of written communication briskly down the toilet, having already discarded a century and a half of telephone use in the previous dump. The ‘hope this helps’ chaser was a cute touch, too. Chutzpah of a kind.

  Still smiling, and picturing the boyish face of Grainger in his head, he checked for messages from Beatrice, not really expecting any. A long scroll of text manifested on the screen and, because it appeared instantaneously, without fuss or fanfare, he was slow to recognise it for what it was. The screen was full to overflowing. He looked into the nest of words, and spotted the name Joshua. A cluster of six letters, meaningless to most other people, but it sprang into his soul and made it come alive with vivid images: Joshua’s paws, with their comical white tufts between the pink pads; Joshua covered in plaster dust from next door’s renovations; Joshua performing his death-defying circus leap from the top of the fridge to the ironing board; Joshua scratching at the kitchen window, his soft cry inaudible over the peak-hour traffic; Joshua asleep in the basket of dried washing; Joshua on the kitchen table, stroking his furry jaw against the earthenware teapot that never got used for any other purpose than this; Joshua in bed with him and Bea. And then he saw Bea: Bea only half-covered by the yellow duvet, reluctant to move because the cat was asleep against her thigh. Bea’s ribcage and bosom, poking through the threadbare cotton of her favourite T-shirt which was too old to be worn in public anymore but which was just right for bed. Bea’s neck, long and smooth except for two pale creases like seams. Bea’s mouth, her lips.

  Dear Peter, her letter began.

  Oh, the preciousness to him of those words! If there’d been no more to her message than this, he would have been satisfied. He would have read Dear Peter, Dear Peter, Dear Peter over and over, not out of vanity, but because these were words from her to him.

  Dear Peter,

  I’m crying with relief as I write this. Knowing that you’re alive has made me all shaky and woozy, as if I’ve been holding my breath for a month and I’ve finally let it out. Praise the Lord that He kept you safe.

  What’s it like where you are? I don’t mean the room, I mean outside, the whole place in general. Please tell me, I’m desperate to know. Have you taken any pictures?

  As for me, relax, I haven’t aged fifty years or even developed any wrinkles since you last saw me. Just some bags under my eyes from lack of sleep (more about that later).

  Seriously, the last four weeks have been hard, not knowing if you would get there in one piece or if you were already dead and nobody told me. I kept loitering around this machine even though I knew that nothing would come through for ages yet.

  Then when your message finally did come I wasn’t here to receive it. I was trapped at work. I did a morning shift which went OK and I was about to go home but by 2.45 it was clear we would be 3 staff members down – Leah and Owen phoned in sick and Susannah just didn’t turn up. No joy from the nursing agency so I was asked to stay on and do a double, which I did. Then at 11 PM, guess what? – half the night staff didn’t show up either. So I was pressured to do a triple shift! Highly illegal, but do they care?

  Tony from next door popped round to feed Joshua but didn’t sound too happy when I phoned him. ‘We’ve all got problems,’ he said. All the more reason to help each other, I almost said. But he sounded stressed out. If this happens again, I may have to ask the students on the other side. I’d probably have to teach them how to use a tin opener.

  Speaking of Joshua, he isn’t coping well with your absence. He wakes me up at 4 AM, miaowing in my ear and then flopping down demonstratively on your side of the bed. Then I lie awake until I have to get ready for work. Oh, the joys of being an abandoned mother.

  I’ve been checking the news on my phone obsessively, in case there was a news report about you. I know that’s daft. USIC is not exactly the world’s most high-profile organisation, is it? We’d never even heard of them before they approached you. But still . . .

  Anyway, you’re safe now – I’m so indescribably relieved. I’ve finally stopped trembling and I feel less woozy. I’ve read and re-read your two messages over and over! And yes, you’re right to assume that it’s better to write to me when your brain is scrambled than not to write at all. Perfection is not ours to achieve.

  Which reminds me: please stop worrying about the last time we made love. I told you it was all right and it was (and is). The orgasm wasn’t primarily what I wanted from the experience, trust me.

  Also, stop worrying about what these guys (Severin etc) think of you. It’s irrelevant. You didn’t go to Oasis to impress them. You went to Oasis to witness to souls who have never heard of Jesus. In any case these USIC guys have jobs to do and you’ll probably not see much of them.

  I can’t really picture the Oasis rain from your description but green water sounds a bit alarming. The weather here has been terrible since you left. Heavy downpours every day. I wouldn’t say it’s like bead curtains, more like getting a bucket of water emptied over your head. There’s been flooding in some towns in the Midlands, cars floating down the street, etc. We’re OK except that the toilet bowl is slow to drain after a flush, ditto the plughole in the shower cubicle. Not sure what’s going on there. Too busy to get it seen to.

  Life in our parish continues hectic. The situation with Mirah (?Meerah) and her husband has reached crisis point. She finally told him she’s been attending our church and he hit the roof. Or to be more precise, he hit Mirah. Many times. Her face is a swollen mess, she can barely see. She says she wants to leave him and she needs our (my) help with the legalities – housing, employment, benefits, etc. I’ve been making some preliminary phone calls (ie, a few hours so far) but mainly just providing TLC. Her prospects for independence are not good. She can barely speak English, she’s totally unskilled and to be honest I think she’s of below average intelligence. I see my role as being there for her emotionally until her face heals a bit and she goes back to her husband. In the meantime I hope our house doesn’t become the scene of an Arabic honour killing. I’m sure that would traumatise Joshua no end.

  I know I sound flippant, but the bottom line is that I don’t think Meerah (?Mirah – I’ll have to get the spelling straight if I’m to be filling in application forms for Crisis L
oans, etc) is ready to receive the support & strength she would get if she gave her heart to Christ. I think she’s attracted to the friendly, tolerant atmosphere of our church and the tantalising notion of being a free woman. She talks about being a Christian as if it’s a gym club membership you can sign up for.

  Well, I see that it’s about 1.30 AM which is bad news for me because Joshua will no doubt wake me two and a half hours from now, and I’m not even in bed yet. I hear rain again. I love you and miss you. Don’t worry about anything. Trust in Jesus. He has made the journey with you. (I only wish I had.) Remember that Jesus is working through you even at those times when you feel you’re out of your depth.

  As for our old friend Saint Paul, he might not approve of how much I wish I could curl up in bed next to you right now. But yes, let’s quote his wise advice on other matters. My darling, we both know that the effects of your travels will eventually pass and you’ll be rested and then you’ll no longer be able to sit in your cosy quarters writing epistles to me and looking out at the rain. You’ll have to open the door and start work. As Paul says, ‘Walk in wisdom toward them that are without, redeeming the time.’ And remember I’m thinking of you!

  Kisses, hugs, and a headbutt from Joshua,

  Beatrice

  Peter read this letter eight or nine times at least before he could bear to part with it. Then he fetched his bag, the one that the Virgin check-in girl had doubted was enough for a one-way transatlantic flight, dumped it on the bed and zipped it open. It was time to get dressed for work.

  Apart from his Bible, notepads, a second pair of jeans, polished black shoes, trainers, sandals, three T-shirts and three pairs of socks and underpants, the bag contained one item of apparel that had seemed uselessly exotic when he’d packed it, an item he’d figured he was about as likely to wear as a tutu or a tuxedo. The USIC interviewers had advised him that there was no particular dress code on Oasis but that if he intended to spend a significant amount of time outdoors, he might wish to invest in some Arabic-style garments. Indeed, they’d dropped strong hints that he might regret it if he didn’t. So, Beatrice had bought him a dishdasha from the local cut-price Muslim outfitters.