Michel Faber - The Book of Strange New Things

Filling in time before the appointed hour for his ride, Peter considered what, if anything, to take with him to the settlement. A stack of half-finished booklets lay on the table, next to some balls of wool. He picked up the nearest, a paraphrase of Revelation , Chapter 21. He’d reduced the number of ‘s’ sounds to four, and gotten rid of all the ‘t’s: that was probably as much as he could achieve.

And there I found a new heaven and a new earth, for the heaven and the earth from before were gone. And I heard a loud voice from heaven declaring, Behold, God will dwell with you, and you will be His very own people, and God will be your very own God. And there will be no more death, no more sorrow, no more pain. And God upon the throne said, Behold, I make everything new .

To avoid the need for explanations that might go nowhere, he’d omitted Jerusalem, the sea, the tabernacle, the apostle John, the bride and the husband, men, and a few other things. The God of this pamphlet no longer wiped tears from eyes, partly because those words were too difficult to pronounce, partly because, after all this time, it was still a mystery whether the สีฐฉั had eyes or wept. Peter reconnected with how long he’d sweated to think of an alternative word for ‘true’. All that labour, and for what? The only words he had to offer them now were ‘sorry’ and ‘goodbye’.

‘Beautiful day,’ said Tuska, and it was. The atmosphere was putting on a show for them, as if in honour of a momentous occasion. Two huge columns of unfallen rain, one to the west and the other to the east, had drifted towards each other and were now mingling in their topmost reaches, forming a glistering arch in the sky. It was a long way off yet, miles probably, but it conjured the illusion that they were about to pass under a colossal portal made of nothing more substantial than water droplets.

‘Gotta admit,’ said Tuska, ‘view-wise, that’s a nine out of ten.’

‘Rear windows are shut, I hope?’ said Flores. ‘Don’t want those drugs to get rained on.’

‘Yes, they’re shut,’ said Peter. Tuska and Flores, stationed in the front seats, had barely said a word to him since the jeep had left the compound. He felt like a child stashed in the back, allowed to come along for no better reason than that he couldn’t be left unattended, and with nothing to do on the journey but hope that his parents didn’t quarrel.

The hermetic seal of air conditioning that Grainger tried so diligently to maintain was not Tuska’s style. He kept the front windows open as he drove, allowing the air free access to the vehicle’s interior. The languid agitations of the atmosphere were joined by an artificial breeze from the speed of the vehicle.

‘Where’s Grainger?’ asked Peter.

‘Taking it easy,’ said Tuska, only his shoulder and driving arm visible to Peter.

‘Drunk and incapable,’ said Flores, wholly hidden.

‘She’s been a pretty good pharmacist all these years,’ said Tuska.

‘There are other pharmacists,’ Flores remarked.

‘Well, let’s see what Santa Claus brings, shall we?’ said Tuska, and Flores shut up.

The brilliant arch in the sky had drawn no nearer, so Peter looked out the passenger window instead. The landscape, which he’d grown to love, was still austerely beautiful, but today he saw its simplicity through different eyes, and it disturbed him. He could imagine a farm girl like Grainger scanning the terrain’s serene emptiness, searching in vain for wildlife, plant-life, or any kind of life, to remind her of her childhood habitat.

‘Grainger needs to go home,’ he said, the words springing out of his mouth before he even knew he’d formed them.

‘Yeah,’ said Tuska, ‘I think she does.’

‘Soon,’ said Peter, and recalled, for the first time in years, that Soon was the name of a Scripture pamphlet he and Bea had produced ages ago for the Jesus lovers of Arunachal Pradesh. In a flash, in his mind’s eye, he saw his hands and Bea’s moving near each other on the kitchen table: his hands folding the pamphlet in three, with the Soon letterhead facing out; Bea’s hands slipping the paper into an envelope, sealing it, addressing it to some mountain-dwelling Adivasi with an unpronounceable name. Cardboard boxes full of Soon pamphlets had been sent overseas at six-monthly intervals, an absurd expense in the electronic age, but not everybody in the world had a computer and, besides, there was something special about holding Bible verses in your hand.

How long ago it was. His hand holding a pamphlet called Soon , reaching across the table to Bea’s hand.

‘I forwarded her request too,’ Tuska was saying. ‘My guess is you’ll both go together.’ He yawned. ‘Two simultaneous bailouts from our little paradise! Do you guys know something I don’t? On second thoughts, don’t tell me.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with this place,’ said Peter, staring out the window again. ‘I’m sorry to let everybody down.’

‘Some people can take it, some can’t,’ said Tuska lightly. ‘Can’t re-use an EPFCG.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Explosively pumped flux compression generator.’

Those words, which to Peter were as weird and incomprehensible as any arcane Scripture would be to his hosts, were the last spoken for a long while. The illusion that they were about to pass under a vast, twinkling archway faded gradually, as the two columns of water drifted apart and morphed into different, unsymmetrical shapes. Rain splattered against the windscreen and roof, its rhythm strange as ever, determined by physics beyond human understanding. Then the shower passed and the windscreen wipers squeaked annoyingly against clear glass before Tuska switched them off. The caramel façades of Freaktown were only a few hundred metres away now, and Peter could already make out a tiny figure standing in the appointed spot.

‘When we arrive,’ he piped up from the back, ‘I just need a minute, two minutes alone with that person.’

‘OK,’ said Tuska, changing gear for the final stretch. ‘But no tongues.’

Jesus Lover One was waiting in front of the building with the white star painted on it. When he caught sight of Peter, his body jerked in surprise, but he managed to compose himself in the few seconds that elapsed between the revelation and Peter’s deposition from the jeep.

‘You are alive,’ he said.

‘I hope so,’ Peter said, and regretted it at once: the สีฐฉั didn’t do flippancy, and the quip only made it harder for Lover One to adjust to Peter’s miraculous recovery from his mortal wounds.

‘All the otherสี believe you are dead,’ said Lover One. ‘I believe you are alive. I alone have faith.’

Peter struggled to think of the appropriate response to that. An affectionate embrace was out. ‘Thank you,’ he said.

Behind the bead curtains in the doorways of the buildings, shadowy figures had gathered. ‘สีฐฐ ฐณ,’ called a voice. Peter knew enough of the language to know that this meant ‘The task is still asleep.’ Or, to paraphrase: Get on with it .

Lover One roused himself from his trance and accepted his official role. He turned towards the vehicle in anticipation of greeting the USIC envoy, the scarf-wearing woman Grainger who abhorred him and all his kind.

Nurse Flores stepped out of the vehicle. As she approached the Oasan, it was evident that there was not much difference between them in size. By chance, their garments — her uniform, his robes — were almost the same colour.

Lover One was visibly thrown by these unexpected parities. He appraised Flores quite a few seconds longer than politeness allowed, but she stared right back.