The Book of Strange New Things (8 page)

Love,

Peter

He slept, and awoke to the sound of rain.

For a long time he lay in the dark, too weary to stir, listening. The rain sounded different from rain back home. Its intensity waxed and waned in a rapid cyclical rhythm, three seconds at most between surges. He synchronised the fluctuations with his own breathing, inhaling when the rain fell softer, exhaling when it fell hard. What made the rain do that? Was it natural, or was it caused by the design of the building: a wind-trap, an exhaust fan, a faulty portal opening and closing? Could it be something as mundane as his own window flapping in the breeze? He could see no further than the slats of the Venetian blind.

Eventually his curiosity got the better of his fatigue. He staggered out of bed, fumbled for the bathroom light, was momentarily blinded by halogen overkill. He squinted at his watch, the only item of apparel he’d kept on when he’d gone to bed. He’d slept . . . how long? . . . only seven hours . . . unless he’d slept thirty-one. He checked the date. No, only seven. What had woken him? His erection, perhaps.

The bathroom was in all respects identical to a bathroom one might expect to find in a hotel, except that the toilet, instead of employing a flush mechanism, was the kind that sucked out its contents in a whoosh of compressed air. Peter pissed slowly and with some discomfort, waiting for his penis to unstiffen. His urine was dark orange. Alarmed, he filled a glass with water from the tap. The liquid was pale green. Clean and transparent, but pale green. Stuck to the wall above the sink was a printed notice:
COLOR OF WATER IS GREEN. THIS IS NORMAL AND CERTIFIED SAFE. IF IN DOUBT, BOTTLED WATER & SOFT DRINKS ARE AVAILABLE, SUBJECT TO AVAILABILITY, FROM USIC STORE,
$50
PER
300ml.

Peter stared at the glass of green liquid, parched but wary. All those stories of British tourists drinking foreign water while on holiday and getting poisoned. Delhi belly and all that. Two reassuring Scripture quotations came to his mind, ‘Take no thought for what ye shall drink’ from
Matthew 6:25
and ‘To the pure, all things are pure’ from
Titus 1:15
, but those were clearly meant for other contexts. He looked again at the placard for the bottled alternative: $50
PER
300ml. Out of the question. He and Bea had already discussed what they would do with the money he earned on this mission. Pay off their mortgage. Rebuild the nursery room of their church so the children had more light and sunshine. Buy a van adapted for wheel-chairs. The list went on and on. Every dollar he spent here would cross something worthwhile off it. He lifted the glass and drank.

It tasted good. Divine, in fact. Was that a blasphemous thought? ‘Oh, give it a rest,’ Beatrice would no doubt advise him. ‘There are more important things in the world to fret about.’ What things might there be to fret about in
this
world? He would find out soon enough. He stood up, flushed the toilet, drank more of the green water. It tasted ever-so-slightly of honeydew melon, or maybe he was imagining that.

Still naked, he walked to the bedroom window. There must be a way of raising the blind, even though there were no switches or buttons in sight. He felt around the edges of the slats, and his fingers snagged in a cord. He tugged on it and the blind lifted. It occurred to him as he continued pulling on the cord that he might be exposing his nakedness to anyone who happened to be passing by, but it was too late to worry about that now. The window – one large pane of Plexiglass – was wholly revealed.

Outside, darkness still ruled. The area surrounding the USIC airport complex was a wasteland, a dead zone of featureless bitumen, dismal shed-like buildings, and spindly steel lamps. It was like a supermarket car park that went on for ever. And yet Peter’s heart pumped hard, and he breathed shallowly in his excitement. The rain! The rain wasn’t falling in straight lines, it was . . . dancing! Could one say that about rainfall? Water had no intelligence. And yet, this rainfall swept from side to side, hundreds of thousands of silvery lines all describing the same elegant arcs. It was nothing like when rain back home was flung around erratically by gusts of wind. No, the air here seemed calm, and the rain’s motion was graceful, a leisurely sweeping from one side of the sky to the other – hence the rhythmic spattering against his window.

He pressed his forehead to the glass. It was blessedly cool. He realised he was running a slight fever, wondered if he was hallucinating the curvature of the rainfall. Peering out into the dark, he made an effort to focus on the hazes of light around the lamp-posts. Inside these halo-like spheres of illumination, the raindrops were picked out bright as tinfoil confetti. Their sensuous, undulating pattern could not be clearer.

Peter stepped back from the window. His reflection was ghostly, criss-crossed by the unearthly rain. His normally rosy-cheeked, cheerful face had a haunted look, and the tungsten glow of a distant lamppost blazed inside his abdomen. His genitals had the sculptured, alabaster appearance of Greek statuary. He raised his hand, to break the spell, to reorient himself to his own familiar humanity. But it might as well have been a stranger waving back.

My dear Beatrice,

No word from you. I feel as though I’m literally suspended – as though I can’t let out my breath until I have proof that we can communicate with each other. I once read a Science Fiction story in which a young man travelled to an alien planet, leaving his wife behind. He was only away for a few weeks and then he returned to Earth. But the punchline of the story was that Time passed at a different rate for her than it did for him. So when he got back home, he discovered that 75 earth years had sped by, and his wife had died the week before. He arrived just in time to attend the funeral, and all the old folks were wondering who this distraught young man might be. It was a cheesy, run-of-the-mill Sci-Fi tale but I read it when I was at an impressionable age and it really got to me. And of course now I’m scared it will come true. BG, Severin and Tuska have all been to Oasis & back several times over the years and I suppose I should take that as proof that you’re not wrinkling up like a prune! (Although I would still love you if you did!)

As you can probably tell from my babbling, I’m still horribly jetlagged. Slept well but nowhere near enough. It’s still dark here, smack dab in the middle of the three-day night. I haven’t been outside yet, but I’ve seen the rain. The rain here is amazing. It sways backwards and forwards, like one of those bead curtains.

There’s a well-appointed bathroom here and I’ve just had a shower. The water is green! Safe to drink, apparently. Wonderful to have a proper wash at last, even though I still smell odd (I’m sure you’d laugh to see me sitting here, sniffing my own armpits with a frown on my face) and my urine is a weird colour.

Well, that’s not the note I wanted to end on, but I can’t think of anything else to say right now. I just need to hear from you. Are you there? Please speak!

Love,

Peter

Having sent this missive, Peter loitered around his quarters, at a loss for what to do next. The USIC representative who’d escorted him off the ship had made all the correct noises about being available for him if he needed anything. But she hadn’t specified how this availability would work. Had she even divulged her name? Peter couldn’t recall. There certainly wasn’t any note left lying on the table, to welcome him, give him a few pointers and tell him how to get in touch. There was a red button on the wall labelled
EMERGENCY
, but no button labelled
BEWILDERMENT
. He spent quite a while searching for the key to his quarters, mindful that it might not look like a conventional key but might be a plastic card of the sort issued by hotels. He found nothing that even vaguely resembled a key. Eventually, he opened his door and examined the lock, or rather the place where a lock would be if there’d been one. There was only an old-fashioned swivel handle, as though Peter’s quarters were a bedroom within an unusually large home.
In my father’s house are many mansions
. USIC evidently wasn’t concerned about security or privacy. OK, maybe its personnel had nothing to steal and nothing to hide, but even so . . . Odd. Peter looked up and down the corridor; it was vacant and his was the only door in view.

Back inside, he opened the fridge, verified that the empty ice cube tray was the only thing in it. An apple wouldn’t have been too much to expect, would it? Or perhaps it would. He kept forgetting how far from home he was.

It was time to go out and face that.

He got dressed in the clothes he’d worn yesterday – underpants, jeans, flannel shirt, denim jacket, socks, lace-up shoes. He combed his hair, had another drink of greenish water. His empty stomach gurgled and grunted, having processed and eliminated the noodles he’d eaten on the ship. He strode to the door; hesitated, sank to his knees, bowed his head in prayer. He had not yet thanked God for delivering him safely to his destination; he thanked Him now. He thanked Him for some other things, too, but then got the distinct feeling that Jesus was standing at his back, prodding him, good-humouredly accusing him of stalling. So he sprang to his feet and left at once.

The USIC mess hall was humming, not with human activity, but with recorded music. It was a large room, one wall of which consisted almost wholly of glass, and the music hung around it like a fog, piped from vents in the ceiling. Apart from a vague impression of watery glitter on the window, the rain outside was felt rather than seen; it added a sense of cosy, muffled enclosure to the hall.

‘
I stopped to see a weeping willow

Crying on his pillow

Maybe he’s crying for me
. . . ’ sang a ghostly female voice, seemingly channelled through miles of subterranean tunnels to emerge at last from an accidental aperture.

‘
And as the skies turn gloomy
,

Night blooms whisper to me
,

I’m lonesome as I can be
. . . ’

There were four USIC employees in the mess hall, all of them young men unknown to Peter. One, an overweight, crewcut Chinese, dozed in an armchair next to a well-stocked magazine rack, his face slumped on a fist. One was working at the coffee bar, his tall spindly body draped in an oversize T-shirt. He was intently fiddling with a touch-sensitive screen balanced on the counter, poking at it with a metal pencil. He chewed at his swollen lips with large white teeth. His hair was heavy with some sort of gelatinous haircare product. He looked Slavic. The other two men were black. They were seated at one of the tables, studying a book together. It was too large and slim to be a Bible; more likely a technical manual. At their elbows were large mugs of coffee and a couple of dessert plates, bare except for crumbs. Peter could smell no food in the room.

‘
I go out walking after midnight
,

Out in the starlight
.

Just hoping you may be
. . . ’

The three awake men noted his arrival with a nod of low-key welcome but did not otherwise interrupt what they were doing. The snoozing Asian and the two men with the book were all dressed the same: loose Middle Eastern-style shirt, loose cotton trousers, no socks, and chunky sports shoes. Islamic basketball players.

‘Hi, I’m Peter,’ said Peter, fronting up to the counter. ‘I’m new here. I’d love something to eat, if you’ve got it.’

The Slavic-looking young man shook his prognathous face slowly to and fro.

‘Too late, bro.’

‘Too late?’

‘Twenty-four-hourly stock appraisal, bro. Began an hour ago.’

‘I was told by the USIC people that food is provided whenever we need it.’

‘Correct, bro. You just gotta make sure you don’t need it at the wrong time.’

Peter digested this. The female voice on the PA system had come to the end of her song. A male announcement followed, sonorous and theatrically intimate.

‘You’re listening to
Night Blooms
, a documentary chronicle of Patsy Cline’s performances of ‘Walkin’ After Midnight’ from 1957 right through to the posthumous duets in 1999. Well, listeners, did you do what I asked? Did you hold in your memory the girlish shyness that radiated from Patsy’s voice in the version she performed for her debut on
Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts
? What a difference eleven months makes! The second version you’ve just heard was recorded on December 14, 1957, for the Grand Ole Opry. By then, she clearly had more of an inkling of the song’s uncanny power. But the aura of wisdom and unbearable sadness that you’ll hear in the
next
version owes something to personal tragedy, too. On June 14, 1961, Patsy was almost killed in a head-on car collision. Incredibly, only a few days after she left hospital, we find her performing ‘After Midnight’ at the Cimarron Ballroom in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Listen, people, listen closely, and you will hear the pain of that terrible auto accident, the grief she must have felt at the deep scars on her forehead, which never healed . . . ’

The ghostly female voice wafted across the ceiling once more.

‘
I go out walking after midnight
,

Out in the moonlight just like we used to do
.

I’m always walking after midnight
,

Searching for you
. . . ’

‘When is the next food delivery?’ asked Peter.

‘Food’s already here, bro,’ said the Slavic man, patting the counter. ‘Released for consumption in six hours and . . . twenty-seven minutes.’

‘I’m sorry, I’m new here; I didn’t know about this system. And I really am very hungry. Couldn’t you . . . uh . . . release something early, and just mark it as having been served in six hours from now?’

The Slav narrowed his eyes.

‘That would be . . . committing an untruth, bro.’

Peter smiled and hung his head in defeat. Patsy Cline sang ‘
Well, that’s just my way of saying I love you
. . . ’ as he walked away from the counter and sat down in one of the armchairs near the magazine rack, directly behind the sleeping man.