The Book of Strange New Things

by Michel Faber

  He walked over to his window and peered through the glass. The sun had risen but was still quite low in the sky, half-blinding him with its glare. He cupped a hand against his brow. Out on the deserted tarmac, he saw an optical illusion of a legion of human bodies edging forward from behind a far wing of the base. He blinked to make the illusion vanish. It didn’t.

  A few minutes later, he joined the throng of USIC personnel outside. It seemed the entire population of the base had left the building and was walking en masse towards the scrubland beyond the tarmac. Peter’s first thought was that this must be a fire drill, or that there’d been some sort of accident that had filled the base with toxic fumes. But everyone appeared relaxed and in good spirits. Some still carried mugs of coffee. A black man smiled at him and nodded; he was the guy who’d tossed Peter a muffin on the first day but whose name (Rude? Rooney?) Peter couldn’t quite retrieve. Two females he’d never been introduced to waved at him as well. An animated murmur rippled through the crowd. It was like a queue for a funfair or a concert.

  Peter drew abreast with the nearest person he knew by name, which happened to be Hayes, the literal-minded engineer who’d delivered the speech at the official opening of the Centrifuge & Power Facility. He’d made conversation with her several times since then, and had grown to enjoy how boring she was. Her boringness was so perfect that it had transcended itself to become a kind of eccentricity, and her own unawareness of it was funny and sort of touching. Other USIC personnel felt the same way about her, he’d noticed. There was a twinkle in their eye when she droned on.

  ‘What have we come out here for?’ he asked her.

  ‘I don’t know why you’ve come,’ she replied. ‘I can only speak for why we’ve come.’ In anyone else, this would be testiness or sarcasm. In her, it was earnest determination to stay within the limits of the subject matter on which she could speak with authority.

  ‘OK,’ he said, falling into step beside her. ‘Why have you come out here?’

  ‘We got a call from the team at the Mother,’ she said.

  ‘Oh yes?’ It took him a couple of seconds to figure out she meant the Big Brassiere. Nobody but her called it the Mother, but still she would repeat the term at every opportunity, hoping it would catch on.

  ‘They told us there were animals headed this way. A horde. Or maybe they said a herd.’ Her brow wrinkled at the ambiguity. ‘A large number, anyway.’

  ‘Animals? What sort of animals?’

  She took further cognisance of the parameters of her knowledge. ‘Native animals,’ she said.

  ‘I thought there weren’t any!’

  Hayes mistook his excitement for scepticism. ‘I’m sure our colleagues at the Mother are reliable eye-witnesses,’ she said. ‘I don’t believe they would play a practical joke on us. We’ve discussed practical jokes in USIC briefings, and agreed that they’re counterproductive and potentially hazardous.’

  Peter nodded, his attention wandering to the terrain ahead. Visibility was poor, not only because of the intense glare but because copious amounts of mist were swirling along the ground, spread wide over hundreds of metres like a swarm of spectral tumbleweeds. The eye played tricks: some obscure thing would appear to be moving forwards, emerging from the fog, only to be revealed a moment later as a clump of vegetation, demurely rooted in the soil.

  The troop of humans reached the end of the tarmac, and the ground underfoot was soft. Peter surveyed the front ranks of the USIC personnel and noted who was walking foremost. It was Stanko, the guy from the mess hall. His gangly frame was graceful in motion; his long arms swung loosely and casually. It suddenly occurred to Peter how odd it was, in the circumstances, that Stanko wasn’t carrying a weapon. In fact . . . No one was. In fact . . . in fact, had he seen a gun at all since coming to Oasis? Could this really be a community without weapons? Could there be such a thing? How astonishing, if it were so . . . But on the other hand, wasn’t it foolhardy to be so indifferent to danger? Weren’t there times when it was crazy to set out without a rifle in hand? Who had authorised this communal foray, armed with nothing but curiosity? Were they all walking to their deaths, doomed to be crushed or torn to pieces by savage animals?

  The answer wasn’t long in coming. A breeze pushed the mist backward and a large swathe of scrubland was swept clear, abruptly revealing the herd, or horde, of advancing creatures – perhaps eighty or a hundred of them. The USIC personnel gasped, whooped and muttered, each according to their nature. Then, inevitably, there was laughter. The animals were the size of chickens. Small chickens.

  ‘Well, will ya look at that,’ drawled Stanko, beaming.

  The creatures seemed to be half-bird, half-mammal. Featherless, their hide was pink and leathery, mottled with grey. Duck-like heads bobbed with the rhythm of their waddling walk. Puny, vestigial wings hung against their flanks, gently jogged by the motion of the march but otherwise flaccid, like the rumpled lining of pulled-out trouser pockets. Their torsos were remarkably fat – rotund as teapots. Their gait was solemn and hilarious.

  ‘I cannot be-leeeeve this!’ BG’s voice. Peter looked for him in the crowd but there were a dozen people in the way and it would be impolite to cut across them.

  By unspoken mutual assent, they stopped moving forward, so as not to spook the animals. The horde was waddling ever closer, apparently unperturbed by the alien onlookers. Their fat bodies kept up the pace, making slow but inexorable progress. At a distance, it had been unclear how many limbs each creature had under its belly, two or four. Closer up, it turned out to be four: squat little legs, unbirdlike in their muscular stockiness. Downy, paddle-like paws of a much darker grey than the rest of the body gave them the appearance of wearing shoes.

  ‘Cute to the power of ten,’ somebody said.

  ‘Cute to the power of a hundred,’ somebody else said.

  Seen at close range, the animals’ heads were not quite so duck-like. Their bills were fleshier, drooping slightly like dog snouts. Their minuscule, expressionless eyes were very close together, conveying an impression of utter stupidity. They didn’t look up, around or at each other, only straight ahead. They were on course to pass right by the USIC base, on their way elsewhere. They made no sound apart from the faint, rhythmic thwuh-thwuh-thwuh-thwuh of their feet on the soil.

  ‘What are we gonna call these critters?’ somebody asked.

  ‘Chickadees.’

  ‘Duckaboos.’

  ‘How about fatsos?’

  ‘Woglets.’

  ‘Xenomammals.’

  ‘Flabbits.’

  ‘Lunch!’

  There was a flurry of laughter but someone immediately hollered: ‘Forget it, Powell.’

  ‘Couldn’t we try just one?’ protested Powell.

  ‘They may be highly intelligent.’

  ‘You’re kidding me.’

  ‘They may be considered sacred. By the natives.’

  ‘Who says they’re edible?’ called a woman’s voice. ‘They could be poisonous as hell.’

  ‘They’re headed in the direction of Freaktown,’ Stanko pointed out. ‘If they’re edible and if it’s OK to eat them, we’ll probably get some eventually. Like, given to us. And it’ll be kosher.’

  ‘What do you mean, kosher?’

  ‘I didn’t mean . . . I meant, nothing sneaky about it. Just part of the regular deal.’

  ‘You’re all being disgusting,’ another woman’s voice remarked. ‘How could anyone even think of eating these? They’re so adorable.’

  ‘Adorable as a vegetable. Look at those eyes. Three brain cells, max.’

  ‘Maybe they bite.’

  And so they stood there, bantering, happy as children, while the exotic procession shuffled past.

  ‘Hey, Peter! How’s tricks, bro?’ It was BG. He was in a jovial mood, if somewhat in need of a washcloth. This outing had evidently interrupted him in the middle of eating or drinking something white and frothy, judging from the creamy moustache haloing his upper lip.

&
nbsp; ‘I’m fine, BG,’ said Peter. ‘A bit tired. And you?’

  ‘On top of it, man, on top of it. Ain’t these guys great?’ He indicated the horde of animals, whose hundred hefty backsides swayed in formation as they shuffled by.

  ‘A real thrill to see,’ Peter agreed. ‘I’m glad I didn’t miss them. Nobody told me.’

  ‘It was on the PA system, bro. Loud and clear.’

  ‘Not in my room.’

  ‘Ah, they must’ve switched it off for you, man. Out of respect. You got your private spiritual stuff to concentrate on. You don’t want somebody naggin’ in your ear fifty times a day, “Could So-And-So come to Room 25, please”, “Could all available personnel report to the loading bay”, “Haircuts available in one hour in Room 9”, “Hey everybody, get your asses out of the East Wing entrance, ’cause there’s a huge posse of funny-lookin’ little motherfuckers headed this way!”’

  Peter smiled, but the news of his exclusion from the public address system bothered him. He was disconnected enough from the lives of the USIC personnel as it was. ‘Well,’ he sighed, ‘I would hate to have missed this.’

  ‘But you didn’t, bro,’ beamed BG. ‘You didn’t.’ He wiggled his eyebrows upwards at the heavens. ‘You must’ve got a tip-off, am I right?’

  ‘Maybe I did.’ Peter was exhausted all of a sudden, weighed down by his sweat-sodden clothing and his undischarged sense of inadequacy. God’s enigmatic instruction about the need for further study and making full proof of his ministry rematerialised in his mind.

  BG got down to business: the reason he’d pushed through his colleagues to reach Peter. ‘So, what would you call ’em?’

  ‘Call them?’

  ‘Our cute little pals there,’ said BG, waving his hand at the retreating army.

  Peter thought for a moment. ‘The Oasans must have a word for them.’

  ‘No use to us, bro.’ BG contorted his face and flapped his tongue idiotically in and out of his lips, emitting a blubbering sound. A second later, with the aplomb of a professional comedian, he composed his features into a mask of dignity. ‘With Tartaglione gone,’ he said, ‘there ain’t nobody here can understand the noises those guys make. You heard the old story of the kangaroo, Peter?’

  ‘No, BG: tell me the old story of the kangaroo.’

  The animal horde was fully past now, making incremental headway towards their destination. Some of the USIC staff stood peering at the dwindling swarm of bodies, but most started ambling back towards the base. BG laid an arm around Peter’s shoulder, indicating that they should walk together. ‘There was this explorer guy,’ he said, ‘way back in the day, called Captain Cook. His specialty was landing on brand new pieces of real estate across the ocean, and swiping them off of the black folks that lived there. Anyway, he went all the way down to Australia. You know where that is?’

  Peter nodded.

  ‘A lot of folks here get kinda hazy on geography,’ said BG. ‘Specially if they never been there. Anyway, Captain Cook landed in Australia and he saw these amaaazing animals jumpin’ around. Big furry motherfuckers with gigantic rabbit legs and a pouch on their stomach and standin’ upright and shit. And he asked the black folks, “What do you guys call this creature?”, and the black folks said “Kangaroo”.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ said Peter, sensing that some sort of punchline was coming.

  ‘Years later, some dude studied the black folks’ language, and guess what? “Kangaroo” meant “What you sayin’, bro?”’

  BG bellowed with laughter, his massive body quaking with mirth as he escorted the pastor back to civilisation. Peter laughed too, but even as his mouth made the correct shape and his throat produced the appropriate sounds, he knew what God wanted him to do. He would learn the Oasans’ language. He would learn it if it killed him.

  20

  Everything would be all right if she only could

  And so they began. Pressed close together, Peter and Beatrice could no longer see each other. Their mouths were joined, their eyes clasped shut, their bodies could have been anyone’s bodies since the world was created.

  A few minutes later, he was wide awake. Bea was a billion miles removed from him, and he was shuffling to the washing machine, holding his soiled bedsheets bundled in his arms. Outside the window, it was the same sunny afternoon as it had been when he’d fallen asleep. The room was bathed in golden light just as before, as though time itself had been baked by the sun, while somewhere far away, his wife’s days and nights were flickering unseen.

  Peter fed the bedsheets into the metallic drum. The CONSERVE WATER – COULD THIS LOAD BE HAND-WASHED? placard teased at his conscience, but he couldn’t recall his semen ever smelling so pungent and he was worried that if he tried to hand-wash the sheets, the odour might permeate his quarters and be instantly noticeable if a visitor walked in. Grainger, for instance.

  He scooped some soap flakes into the washing machine from the plastic tub provided. The flakes were waxy, as if shaved from a block of real old-fashioned soap. They certainly weren’t any kind of chemical detergent. Might they be whiteflower in one of its myriad forms? He lowered his nose to the tub and sniffed, but the smell of his own body was distracting. He shut the machine and set it going.

  Funny, when he was among the Oasans, he never masturbated or had wet dreams. It was as though his sexual nature went into hibernation. He was male, and male equipment hung from his pelvis, but it was just there, irrelevant as an earlobe. Only when he returned to the USIC base did his sexuality revive. Likewise, it was only when he was in the USIC base that he felt the full weight of loneliness.

  He stood naked next to the Shoot. Its screen was cold and dark, though he couldn’t recall switching it off. It must have switched itself off sometime during his sleep, to conserve energy. He hoped he’d managed, before exhaustion overtook him, to send whatever messages he’d been writing to Bea. It was all a bit of a blur. What he’d said; what she’d said. He vaguely remembered something about the carpets in the living room having to be removed and thrown away. Or maybe it was the curtains. And rats. Something about rats. Oh yes: Bea had walked to the kerbside to add a garbage bag to the already overflowing wheelie bin there (collections were irregular these days) and she’d got the shock of her life when a rat leapt out, narrowly missing her face.

  The rat was probably as frightened as you, he’d reassured her. Or words to that effect.

  Locked in the shower cubicle, he lathered himself clean, while his bedclothes churned nearby. Scalded seeds of his DNA gurgled gently into the drainage pipes.

  Sitting at the Shoot, towelled and fresh, he was reaching forward to check for more messages from Bea when he noticed a droplet of blood trickling down his upper arm. He’d washed his hair and, while massaging his scalp, had dislodged a scab from the top of one of his ears. His burns were healing well but the flesh of his ears was rich in blood vessels and needed to be left undisturbed while the epidermal cells did their work. He looked around for toilet paper; remembered that USIC didn’t supply any. He had some Band-Aids somewhere, but a fresh droplet tickled his shoulder and he didn’t fancy searching through his bag. Instead he picked up a pair of underpants and fitted them on his head so that the fabric nestled against his bleeding ear.

  Lord, please don’t let Grainger walk in unexpectedly now . . .

  Once more he seated himself at the Shoot. A new message had loaded in. He opened it, already visualising the word ‘dear’ before it manifested on the screen.

  Peter,

  I am so, so angry wiuth you. You’re my husband and I love you but I’m hurt and furious.

  In all the time we’ve been apart you have mnentioned NOT ONE WORD about our baby. Are you trying to teach me a lesson or do you just not care? I have dropped a few hints reminding you htat I’m pregnant but I haven’t pushed too hard because it’s really up to you to decide if you’ll engage with it or not.

  In the past whenever we discussed having kids, you always found reasons why we shouldn’t �
�� ‘not yet’. You always assured me you would LOVE to do it one day and that it was only a matter of timing. Well I’m sorry if I got the timing wrong but I was terrified you would never come back amd you are the only man I want to have childrenb with. Yes I know I sound confused but I don’t think I’m as confused as you are. I see now that you’ve been avoiuding avoiding avoiding fatherhood all these years. It’s a scary step, everyone knows that but people take that leap imto the dark and that’s how the human race goes on. But your missions were always more compelling weren’t they? So many challenges. Another day amnother challenge. Challenges which are really not too hard at all. Because we can try our best to help strangers, but utimately those strangers are responsible for their own fate, aren’t they? If we can’t help them, it’s sad but we just move on and help somepne else. But a child isn’t like that. Not when it’s your own child. Your own child’s fate matters more than anything. You can’t AFFORD to fail even thoiugh you probably will, and that’s what’s so scary. But you know what? – for millions of years people have been stupidf enough or brave enough to try anyway. I’m feeling that pressure right now carrying our baby inside me.

  And you’re clearly not interested.

  Peter I’m sorry if it looks like I’m not being sympthaetic to the difficulties that you’re no doubt facinfg in your mission. But you haven’t really told me anything about those difficylties. So I can only imagine. Or more to the point, NOT imagine. All I can see from the few morsels you’ve shared with me, is that you’re having a big adventure up there. You’ve been given the cushiest treatment any Christian missionary has ever had in the entire history of evangelism. Other missionaries have been thrown into prison, spat on, speared, pelted wiuth stones, threatened wiht knives and guns, hacked to death by machetes, crucified upside down. At the very least they’ve been given the cold shoukder and frustrated in every conceivable way. As far as I can tell, you arrived to a hero’s welcome. USIC drives you to the Oasans and picks you up again when you’re ready for a rest. Your congregation all love Jesus already and think you’re the bee’s knees and want nothing from you but Bible study. You supervise building works while getting a suntan, and every now and then, somebody brings you a painting to hang up on the ceiling. It sounds like you’re compiling your very own Sistine Chapel up there! And the latest news I get from you is that you just saw a parade of cute littlw animals.