Michel Faber - The Book of Strange New Things

He took another slice of raisin bread. It was losing its appeal, but he was hungry.

‘I wouldn’t have thought,’ he remarked, ‘that eggs could survive the Jump intact. I certainly felt a bit scrambled myself, when I went through it.’

‘Egg powder,’ said Grainger. ‘We use egg powder.’

‘Of course.’

Through the side window, he spotted a single swirl of rain in an otherwise vacant sky: a curved glitter of water-drops about the size of a Ferris wheel, making its way across the land. It was travelling at a different tangent from their own, so Grainger would have to detour in order to drive through it. He considered asking her if they could do so, for the fun of it, like children chasing a rotating garden sprinkler. But she was intent on her navigation, staring out at the non-road ahead, both hands clamped on the steering wheel. The shimmering rain-swirl dimmed as the headlight beams passed it by, and then was swept into the darkness of their wake.

‘So,’ said Peter. ‘Tell me what you know.’

‘About what?’ Her relaxed demeanour was gone in a flash.

‘About the people we’re going to see.’

‘They’re not people.’

‘Well… ’ He drew a deep breath. ‘Here’s an idea, Grainger. How about we agree to use the term “people” in its extended sense of “inhabitants”? The original Roman etymology isn’t clear, so who knows? — maybe it meant “inhabitants” anyway. Of course, we could use “creature” instead, but there are problems with that, don’t you think? I mean, personally, I’d love to use “creature”, if we could just take it back to its Latin origins: creatura : “created thing”. Because we’re all created things, aren’t we? But it’s suffered a bit of a decline, that word, through the centuries. To the point where “creature”, to most people, means “monster”, or at least “animal”. Which reminds me: wouldn’t it be nice to use “animal” for all beings that breathe? After all, the Greek word anima means “breath” or “soul”, which pretty much covers everything we’re looking for, doesn’t it?’

Silence settled in the cabin. Grainger drove, keeping her eyes straight on the headlight beam just as before. After thirty seconds or so, which seemed quite a long time in the circumstances, she said:

‘Well, it’s plain to see you’re not an uneducated holy roller from Hicksville.’

‘I never said I was.’

She glanced aside at him, caught him smiling, smiled back. ‘Tell me, Peter. What made you decide to come here , and do this ?’

‘I didn’t decide,’ he said. ‘God did.’

‘He sent you an email?’

‘Sure.’ He grinned wider. ‘You wake up in the morning, go to the inbox of your heart, check what’s loaded in. Sometimes there’s a message.’

‘That’s kind of a corny way of putting it.’

He stopped smiling, not because he was offended, but because the discussion was turning serious. ‘Most true things are kind of corny, don’t you think? But we make them more sophisticated out of sheer embarrassment. Simple truths with complicated clothes on. The only purpose of the linguistic dressing-up is so people won’t look at the contents of our naked hearts and minds and say “How naff”.’

She frowned. ‘“Naff”?’

‘It’s a British slang term, meaning trite or banal, but with an extra overtone of… uh… nerdishness. Uncoolness. Dorkishness.’

‘Wow. Did they teach American slang in your Bible School too?’

Peter took a few swigs from a water-bottle. ‘I never went to Bible School. I went to the University of Hard Drinking and Drug Abuse. Got my degree in Toilet Bowl Interior Decoration and… uh… Hospital Casualty Ward Occupancy.’

‘And then you found God?’

‘Then I found a woman called Beatrice. We fell in love.’

‘Guys don’t often put it that way.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Guys say “we got together” or “you can guess the rest” or something like that. Something that doesn’t sound quite so… ’

‘Naff?’

‘Exactly.’

‘Well, we fell in love,’ said Peter. ‘I quit the booze and drugs to impress her.’

‘I hope she was impressed.’

‘Yes.’ He took a last swig, screwed the top back on the bottle and slid it onto the floor between his feet. ‘Although she didn’t tell me so until years later. Addicts don’t handle praise well. The pressure of living up to it drives them back to drink and drugs.’

‘Yup.’

‘Have you had some experience of these things in your life?’

‘Yup.’

‘Do you want to talk about it?’

‘Not right now.’ She readjusted her posture in the seat, revved the engine, drove a little faster. The blush on her face made her look more feminine, although it accentuated the white scar under her hairline. She had pulled off her headscarf so that it hung loosely around her neck; her short crop of soft mousy hair fluttered in the air conditioning. ‘Your girlfriend sounds like a smart cookie.’

‘She’s my wife. And yes, she’s smart. Smarter — or at least wiser — than I am, that’s for sure.’

‘Then why was it you that got chosen for this mission?’

Peter rested his head against the seat. ‘I’ve wondered about that myself. I suppose God must have other plans for Beatrice at home.’

Grainger didn’t comment. Peter looked out the side window. The sky was a little lighter. Perhaps he was only imagining it. A particularly large clump of mushrooms trembled as they swept by.

‘You didn’t answer my question,’ he said.

‘I told you I didn’t want to talk about it,’ she said.

‘No, I meant my question about the people we’re going to see. What do you know about them?’

‘They’re… ah… ’ She struggled for several seconds to find the right words. ‘They like their privacy.’

‘I could’ve guessed that. Not a single photo in any of the brochures and reports USIC gave me. I was expecting at least one smiley picture of your top brass shaking hands with the locals.’

She chuckled. ‘That would be difficult to arrange.’

‘No hands?’

‘Sure they have hands. They just don’t like to be touched.’

‘So: describe them.’

‘It’s difficult,’ she sighed. ‘I’m not good at descriptions. We’ll see them soon enough.’

‘Do try.’ He batted his eyelashes. ‘I’d appreciate it.’

‘Well… they wear long robes and hoods. Like monks, I guess.’

‘So they’re human in shape?’

‘I guess. It’s kind of hard to tell.’

‘But they have two arms, two legs, a torso… ’

‘Sure.’

He shook his head. ‘That surprises me. All along, I’ve been telling myself I mustn’t assume the human design is some sort of universal standard. So I was trying to imagine… uh… big spider-like things, or eyes on stalks, or giant hairless possums… ’

‘Giant hairless possums?’ She beamed. ‘I love it. Very sci-fi.’

‘But why should they have human form, Grainger, of all the forms they might conceivably have? Isn’t that exactly what you’d expect from sci-fi?’

‘Yeah, I guess… Or religion, maybe. Didn’t God create man in his own image?’

‘I wouldn’t use the word “man”. The Hebrew is ha-adam , which I would argue encompasses both sexes.’

‘Pleased to hear it,’ she said, deadpan.

Again, they drove on for a couple of minutes in silence. On the horizon, Peter was certain he could see the beginnings of a glow. A subtle haze of illumination, turning the junction of sky and earth from dark aquamarine-against-black to green-against-brown. If you stared at it too long, you began to wonder whether it was just an optical illusion, a hallucination, a frustrated yearning for the end of night.