The Book of Strange New Things (5 page)

‘She’s a very independent and capable woman.’

‘Would you say you’re an independent and capable man?’

‘I hope so.’

‘When did you last get drunk?’

‘About seven, eight years ago.’

‘Do you feel like a drink now?’

‘I wouldn’t mind some more of this peach juice.’

‘With ice?’

‘Yes, thank you.’

‘Imagine this,’ the woman said. ‘You visit a foreign city and your hosts invite you out for dinner. The restaurant they take you to is pleasant and lively. There’s a large transparent enclosure of cute white ducklings running around behind their mother. Every few minutes, a chef grabs one of the ducklings and tosses it into a vat of boiling oil. When it’s fried, it gets served up to the diners and everyone is happy and relaxed. Your hosts order duckling and say you should try it, it’s fantastic. What do you do?’

‘Is there anything else on the menu?’

‘Sure, lots of things.’

‘Then I’d order something else.’

‘You could still sit there and eat?’

‘It would depend on what I was doing in these people’s company in the first place.’

‘What if you disapproved of them?’

‘I’d try to steer the conversation towards the things I disapproved of, and then I’d be honest about what I thought was wrong.’

‘You don’t have a problem specifically with the duckling thing?’

‘Humans eat all sorts of animals. They slaughter pigs, who are much more intelligent than birds.’

‘So if an animal is dumb it’s OK to kill it?’

‘I’m not a butcher. Or a chef. I’ve chosen to do something else with my life. That’s a choice against killing, if you like.’

‘But what about the ducklings?’

‘What
about
the ducklings?’

‘You wouldn’t feel compelled to save them? For example, would you consider smashing the glass enclosure, so they could escape?’

‘Instinctively, I might. But it probably wouldn’t do those ducklings any good. If I was really haunted by what I saw in that restaurant, I suppose I could devote my whole life to re-educating the people in that society so they would kill the ducks more humanely. But I would rather devote my life to something that might persuade human beings to treat
each other
more humanely. Because human beings suffer so much more than ducks.’

‘You might not think so if you were a duck.’

‘I don’t think I would think much about
anything
if I were a duck. It’s higher consciousness that causes all our griefs and tortures, don’t you think?’

‘Would you step on a cricket?’ interjected one of the other questioners.

‘No.’

‘A cockroach?’

‘Maybe.’

‘You’re not a Buddhist, then.’

‘I never claimed to be a Buddhist.’

‘You wouldn’t say that all life is sacred?’

‘It’s a beautiful concept, but every time I wash, I kill microscopic creatures that were hoping to live on me.’

‘So where’s the dividing line for you?’ the woman rejoined. ‘Dogs? Horses? What if the restaurant was frying live kittens?’

‘Let
me
ask
you
a question,’ he said. ‘Are you sending me to a place where people are doing terrible, cruel things to other creatures?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Then why ask me these sorts of questions?’

‘OK, how about this one: Your cruise ship has sunk, and now you’re stuck in a life raft with an extremely irritating man who also happens to be homosexual . . . ’

And so it went on. For days and days. So long, in fact, that Bea lost patience and began to wonder if he should tell USIC that his time was too precious to waste on any more of these charades.

‘No, they want me,’ he’d reassured her. ‘I can tell.’

Now, on a balmy morning in Florida, having earned the corporation’s stamp of approval, Peter turned to face the driver and posed the question to which, in all these months, he hadn’t been given a straight answer.

‘What
is
USIC, exactly?’

The driver shrugged. ‘These days, the bigger the company, the less you can figure out what it does. Time was when a car company made cars, a mining company dug mines. It’s not like that anymore. You ask USIC what they specialise in and they tell you things like . . . Logistics. Human resources. Large-scale project development.’ The driver sucked the last of the Tang through a straw, making an ugly gurgling sound.

‘But where does all the money come from?’ said Peter. ‘They’re not funded by the government.’

The driver frowned, distracted. He needed to make sure his vehicle was in the correct lane. ‘Investments.’

‘Investments in what?’

‘Lots of things.’

Peter shielded his eyes with one hand; the glare was giving him a headache. He recalled that he’d asked the same question of his USIC interrogators, at one of the early interviews when Beatrice was still sitting in.

‘We invest in
people
,’ the elegant female had replied, shaking her artfully clipped grey mane, laying her scrawny, delicate hands on the table.

‘All corporations say that,’ Beatrice remarked, a bit rudely he thought.

‘Well, we really mean it,’ said the older woman. Her grey eyes were sincere and animated by intelligence. ‘Nothing can be achieved without people. Individuals, unique individuals with very special skills.’ She turned to Peter. ‘That’s why we’re talking to you.’

He’d smiled at the cleverness of this phrasing: it could function as flattery – they were talking to him because it was obvious he was one of these special people – or it could be a preamble to rejection – they were talking to him to maintain the high standards that would, in the end, disqualify him. One thing was for sure: the hints that he and Bea dropped about what a fine team they’d make if they could go on this mission together fell like cookie crumbs and disappeared into the carpet.

‘One of us needs to stay and look after Joshua, anyway,’ said Bea when they discussed it afterwards. ‘It would be cruel to leave him for so long. And there’s the church. And the house, the expenses; I need to keep working.’ All valid concerns – although an advance payment from USIC, even a small fraction of the full sum, would have covered an awful lot of cat food, neighbourly visits and heating bills. ‘It just would have been nice to be invited, that’s all.’

Yes, it would have been nice. But they were not blind to good fortune when it was offered. Peter had been chosen, from among many others who were not.

‘So,’ he said to the driver, ‘how did
you
first get involved with USIC?’

‘Bank foreclosed on our house.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

‘Bank foreclosed on just about every damn house in Gary. Repossessed them, couldn’t sell them, let them fall apart and rot. But USIC made us a deal. They took on the debt, we got to keep the house, and in exchange we worked for them, for like, grocery money. Some of my old pals called it slavery. I call it . . . humanitarian. And those old pals of mine, they’re in trailer parks now. And here’s me, driving a limousine.’

Peter nodded. He’d already forgotten the name of the place where this guy was from, and he had only the vaguest grasp on the current health of the American economy, but he understood very well what it meant to be thrown a lifeline.

The limousine cruised gently to the right and was cloaked in cooling shade from the pine trees on the verge. A wooden road sign – the sort that normally advertised campsites, roadside grills or log-house holidays – announced an imminent turn-off for USIC.

‘You go to any sinking city in the country,’ continued the driver, ‘and you’ll find lots of people in the same boat. They may tell you they’re working for this or that company, but scratch underneath, and they’re working for USIC.’

‘I don’t even know what the letters in “USIC” stand for,’ said Peter.

‘Search me,’ said the driver. ‘A lot of companies these days got meaningless names. All the meaningful names have been taken. It’s a trademark thing.’

‘I assume the US part means United States.’

‘I guess. They’re multinational, though. Somebody even told me they started up in Africa. All I know is, they’re good to work for. Never screwed me around. You’ll be in good hands.’

Into thy hands I commend my spirit
, Peter naturally thought.
Luke 23:46
, fulfilling the prophesy of
Psalms 31:5
. Except that it wasn’t clear into whose hands he was about to be delivered.

‘This will sting some,’ said the black woman in the white lab coat. ‘In fact, it will be real unpleasant. You’ll feel like a pint of cold yoghurt is travelling up your veins.’

‘Gee, thanks. I can hardly wait.’ He settled his head uneasily in the padded polystyrene hollow of his coffin-like crib and tried not to look at the spike that was approaching his tourniquetted arm.

‘We wouldn’t want you to think there was anything wrong, that’s all.’

‘If I die, please tell my – ’

‘You won’t die. Not with this stuff inside you. Just relax and think nice thoughts.’

The cannula was in his vein; the IV drip was activated; the translucent substance moved into him. He thought he might vomit from the sheer ghastliness of it. They ought to have given him a sedative or something. He wondered if his three fellow travellers were braver than him. They were nestled in identical cribs, elsewhere in the building, but he couldn’t see them. He would meet them in a month from now, when he woke up.

The woman who had administered the infusion stood calmly watching over him. Without warning – but how could there be any warning? – her lipsticked mouth started to drift to the left of her face, the lips travelling across the flesh of her cheek like a tiny red canoe. The mouth did not stop until it reached her forehead, where it came to rest above her eyebrows. Then her eyes, complete with eyelids and lashes, moved down towards her jawline, blinking normally as they relocated.

‘Don’t fight it, just go with it,’ the mouth on the forehead advised. ‘It’s temporary.’

He was too frightened to speak. This was no hallucination. This was what happened to the universe when you were no longer able to hold it together. Atoms in clusters, rays of light, forming ephemeral shapes before moving on. His greatest fear, as he dissolved into the dark, was that he would never see other humans the same way again.

3

The grand adventure could surely wait

‘Man, man,
man
.’ A deep, rueful voice from the formless void. ‘That shit is one bad,
bad
motherfucker.’

‘Mind your language, BG. We got a religious person here with us.’

‘Well, ain’t
that
a lick on the dick. Gimme a hand outta this coffin, man.’

A third voice: ‘Me too. Me first.’

‘You’ll regret it, children.’ (This said with sing-song condescension.) ‘But OK.’ And there was a rustling and a grunting and a gasping and a muttering of hard labour.

Peter opened his eyes, but was too nauseous to turn his head towards the voices. The ceilings and walls seemed to be convulsing; the lights yo-yo’d. It was as though the solid framework of the room had turned elastic, walls billowing, ceiling flailing around. He shut his eyes against the delirium, but that was worse: the convulsions continued inside his skull, as though his eyeballs were inflating like balloons, as though the pulpy insides of his face might, any moment, squirt out through his nostrils. He imagined he could feel his brain filling up with – or being drained of – some vile, caustic liquor.

From elsewhere in the cabin, the grunting and scuffling went on, accompanied by deranged laughter.

‘You know, it’s pretty entertaining,’ remarked the mocking, sober voice, removed from the other two, ‘watching you guys flopping around on the floor like a couple of sprayed bugs.’

‘Hey, no fair! Damn system should wake us all up at the same time. Then we’d see who’s most fit.’

‘Well . . . ’ (The superior voice again.) ‘Somebody has to be first, I guess. To make the coffee and check that everything’s working.’

‘So go check, Tuska, and leave me and BG to slug it out for second place.’

‘Suit yourselves.’ Footsteps. A door opening. ‘You think you’ll have privacy? Dream on, people. I can watch you squirming around on the surveillance cameras. Smile!’

The door clicked shut.

‘Thinks the sun shines out of his ass,’ muttered a voice from the floor.

‘That’s ’cause you’re always kissin’ it, man.’

Peter lay still, gathering his strength. Intuitively he understood that his body would settle back to normal in its own good time, and that there was nothing gained in trying to function too soon, unless you were the competitive type. The two men on the floor continued to grunt and giggle and heave themselves about, in defiance of the chemicals that had allowed them to survive the Jump.

‘You gonna be the first one standing or am I?’

‘I’m up already, bro . . . see?’

‘You’re so full of shit, man. That ain’t standing, that’s leaning. Let go the bench.’

Sound of a body falling to the floor; more laughter.

‘See
you
do better, bro . . . ’

‘Easy.’

Sound of another body falling to the floor; dopey hysterics.

‘Forgot how bad it was, man.’

‘Nothing a half dozen cans of Coke won’t fix.’

‘Fuck that, man. A
line
of coke and you’re talkin’.’

‘If you want more drugs after this, you must be dumber than I thought.’

‘Just stronger, bro, just stronger.’

And so it went on. The two men sparred with each other, expelling bravado into the atmosphere, biding for time, until they were both on their feet. They grunted and panted as they rummaged in plastic bags, mocked each other’s taste in clothing, put on shoes, tested their bipedalism by walking around. Peter lay in his crib, breathing shallowly, waiting for the room to stop moving. The ceiling had calmed down, at least.

‘Yo, bro.’

A large face loomed into his range of view. For a second, Peter couldn’t recognise it as human: it seemed to be attached to the neck upside-down, with eyebrows on the chin and a beard at the top. But no: it was human, of course it was human, just very different from his own. Dark brown skin, a shapeless nose, small ears, beautiful brown eyes tinged with red. Neck muscles that could raise and lower an elevator in a twenty-storey shaft. And those eyebrow-like things on the chin? A beard. Not a full, furry beard, but one of those finely-sculpted fashion statements you could buy from a fancy barber. Years ago, it must have looked like a neat line drawn with a black felt-tip marker, but the man was middle-aged now, and the beard was patchy and speckled with grey. Advancing baldness had left him with just a few knobs of frizz on his head.