Michel Faber - The Book of Strange New Things

‘Are you OK?’ said Conway, then laughed at the absurdity of the question.

‘I got bitten,’ said Peter.

‘By what?’

‘Uh… I don’t know what word you guys finally decided on. Flabbits? Chicadees? Whatever.’

Conway raked a hand through his non-existent hair. He was an electrical engineer, not a medic. He pointed behind the church, at a brand-new structure that resembled a washing machine with a miniature Eiffel Tower stuck on top. ‘Your Shoot relay,’ he explained. In normal circumstances, copious expressions of thanks and admiration would have been in order, and Peter could see that Conway was having trouble letting go of his moment of well-deserved praise.

‘I think I’d better get some treatment for this,’ said Peter, holding up his gory forearm.

‘I think maybe you better,’ agreed Conway.

By the time they reached the USIC base hours later, the bleeding had stopped but the flesh around his wounds was turning dark blue. Necrosis? Probably just bruising. The vermin’s jaws had punched him with the force of a power tool. During the drive, he’d had ample opportunity to examine his arm and he couldn’t see any bone peeping out, so he supposed the injury could be classified as superficial. He’d tucked the loose flap of skin back into place but he guessed it would need stitches to stay there.

‘We got us a new doctor,’ said Conway. ‘Just arrived.’

‘Oh yes?’ said Peter. He was losing sensation in his mangled leg.

‘Nice guy. And good at his job, too.’ It seemed a fatuous remark to make: everyone chosen by USIC was nice and good at their job.

‘Glad to hear it.’

‘So,’ pursued Conway, ‘let’s go see him. Now.’

But Peter refused to go straight to the infirmary, insisting that he must first stop off in his quarters. Conway wasn’t keen.

‘It won’t make any difference to the doctor how you’re dressed,’ he pointed out. ‘And they’ll clean you up with disinfectant and stuff.’

‘I know,’ said Peter. ‘I want to check for messages from my wife.’

Conway blinked in bemusement. ‘Can’t it wait?’ he said.

‘No, it can’t wait,’ said Peter.

‘OK,’ said Conway, and nudged the steering wheel. Unlike Peter, who couldn’t distinguish one concrete façade from another, he knew exactly where to go.

As soon as Peter walked into the USIC building, he was overcome with a fit of shivering. His teeth chattered as Conway led him to his quarters.

‘You’re not gonna keel over, are you?’

‘I’m fine.’ The atmosphere inside the complex was glacial, a vacuum laced with chilled, sterile oxygen lacking any of the other natural ingredients that would have made it air. Each breath hurt his lungs. The light seemed bunker-dim, ghastly. But didn’t he always feel this way, whenever he’d been in the field for a while? He always needed to acclimatise.

By the time they got to his room, Conway was very agitated indeed. ‘I’ll be right outside,’ he said. ‘Try to make it quick. I don’t want a dead preacher on my hands.’

‘I’ll do my best,’ said Peter, and shut him away from view. Fever, or some other disorder, was swelling the vessels in his head, and his teeth were still chattering so hard that his cheeks and jaw ached. Dizziness and lethargy came in waves, trying to knock him off his feet.

As he switched on the Shoot, he wondered if he was wasting precious seconds in which his life could be saved. But he doubted it. If the bite had poisoned him, USIC’s medical clinic was unlikely to have an antidote. The poison would do whatever the poison was going to do, and it would either happen with a bunch of concerned faces hanging over him or it would happen in the privacy of his own space. Maybe he had only hours to live. Maybe he would be the new pathologist’s first challenge, a corpse full of alien venom.

If so, he wanted, before he lost consciousness, to read just once more that Bea loved him and that she was OK. The Shoot glowed to life and a small green light near the bottom of the screen winked on and off, indicating that an invisible net was sweeping through the universe to find any words that might be from his wife.

Her message, when it came, was brief.

There is no God, she wrote.

‘Carpenter,’ said a voice floating above him.

‘Mm?’ he responded.

‘When I was a kid, people assumed I’d be a carpenter. I had a talent for it. But then… this is all a con, you know.’

‘A con?’

‘This air of sophistication medicine gets wrapped in. The doctor magician, the great master surgeon. Baloney. Fixing the human body doesn’t require that much finesse. The skills you need… I tell ya, it’s just carpentry, plumbing, sewing.’

Dr Adkins was proving his point by pushing a sewing-needle through Peter’s flesh to add another loop of fine black thread to the row. He was almost done. The stitches formed an elegant design, like a tattoo of a swallow in flight. Peter felt nothing. He was generously dosed with analgesics on top of having been injected with two whacks of local anaesthetic, and this, combined with his exhaustion, put him beyond the reach of pain.

‘Do you think I’ve been poisoned?’ he asked. The operating theatre seemed to be expanding and contracting slightly, in rhythm with his pulse.

‘Nothing in your blood to suggest you have,’ said Adkins, tying the final knot.

‘And what about… uh… I forgot his name. The doctor you came here to… uh… the one who died… ’

‘Everett.’

‘Everett. Have you established what killed him?’

‘Yup.’ Adkins tossed the needle onto the suture tray, which was immediately removed by Nurse Flores. ‘Death.’

Peter laid his embroidered arm across the white linen napkin covering his chest. He wanted to sleep now.

‘But the cause?’

Dr Adkins pursed his lips. ‘A cardio-vascular accident — with the emphasis on “accident”. His grandfather died the same way, apparently. These things happen. You can eat healthy foods, keep fit, take vitamins… But sometimes, you just die. It’s your time.’ He raised one eyebrow. ‘I guess you ’d call it an appointment with God.’

Peter flexed his fingers, appraised his tattoo of stitches again.

‘I thought it was my time for a while there.’

Adkins chuckled. ‘You’ll live to preach another day. And when you go back, just in case you cross paths with those nasties again, here’s my advice.’ He clamped his hands together, mimed a violent swing. ‘Take a golf club.’

Peter was too drugged to walk, so someone trundled him out of the surgery in a wheelchair. Two pale hands appeared from behind him and spread a cotton blanket over his knees, tucked it around his hips, deposited a transparent plastic bag containing his sandals in his lap.

‘Thank you, whoever you are,’ he said.

‘You’re welcome, I’m sure,’ said Grainger.

‘Oh, gosh, I’m sorry,’ said Peter. ‘I didn’t see you in the surgery.’

She wheeled him, straight and steady, along the sunlit corridor towards the big double doors. ‘I was in the waiting room. I don’t like the gory stuff.’

Peter lifted his arm, displayed the pure white bandage. ‘All fixed up,’ he said.

Even before she replied, he could sense she was not impressed. Her wrists, gripping the handles of the wheelchair, were tense — tenser than they needed to be.

‘You don’t take care of yourself when you’re out there,’ she said. ‘For Christ’s sake, you’re skin and bone. And yeah, I know I’m blaspheming. But look at you.’

He stared down at his wrists, which had always been bony, he thought. Well, maybe not that bony. The thick bandage made his arm look more emaciated somehow. How angry was Grainger? Just a bit exasperated? Furious? The distance between the medical centre and his quarters would take several minutes to cover, which was a long time when you were in the hands of someone who was upset with you. Weakened by the analgesics and the shock of Bea’s message — which returned to his mind over and over like a wave of nausea — he was suddenly overcome by a belief that other men had often described to him when he’d given them pastoral counselling — a deep, despondent conviction that no matter what they did, no matter how good their intentions, they were doomed to bitterly disappoint women.