Michel Faber - The Book of Strange New Things

‘NRC?’ Peter consulted his mental database of acronyms. ‘Not recommended for children?’

‘Not Real Coke.’

‘I don’t follow you.’

‘It’s our cute way of saying that it was made here, not back home. Probably contains monocycloparaffins or cyclohexyldodecanoic acid or some shit like that.’ The black man was half-smiling, but his eyes were serious. The polysyllabic chemical terms had rolled off his tongue with the ease of obscenities. Again, Peter was reminded that each and every member of this personnel must possess skills that amply justified the cost of his or her passage to Oasis. Every member except him.

The black man took a loud slurp of coffee.

Peter asked: ‘Do you never eat anything that’s been made here?’

‘My body is my temple, preacher, and you gotta keep it holy. The Bible says that.’

‘The Bible says a lot of things, Mooney,’ his pal remarked, and took a big bite out of his sandwich, which dripped grey sauce. Peter glanced across the room at BG. The butch-looking white woman was laughing, almost doubled up. She had one hand on BG’s knee, for balance. The piped music poked through a gap in the noise, revealing the chorus of a Broadway song from the mid-twentieth century, the sort of stuff Peter had always associated with provincial charity shops or the record collections of lonely old men.

‘How’s your sandwich?’ he enquired. ‘Looks pretty good.’

‘Mmf,’ nodded the fat white guy. ‘It is good.’

‘What’s in it?’

‘Whiteflower.’

‘Apart from the bread… ’

‘Whiteflower, preacher. Not white flour. White flower. Roast whiteflower.’

Mooney came to the rescue. ‘My friend Roussos is talking about a flower.’ He made an elegant hand-gesture, unfurling his plump fingers in imitation of an opening blossom. ‘A flower that grows here. Just about the only thing that grows here… ’

‘Tastes like the best pastrami you ever had in your life,’ said Roussos.

‘It’s very adaptable,’ Mooney conceded. ‘Depending on the flavours you put in, it can be made to taste like just about any damn thing. Chicken. Fudge. Beefsteak. Banana. Sweetcorn. Mushroom. Add water and it’s soup. Boil it down and it’s jelly. Grind and bake it and it’s bread. The universal food.’

‘You’re doing a very good job of selling it,’ said Peter, ‘for someone who refuses to eat it.’

‘Sure he eats it,’ said Roussos. ‘He loves the banana fritters!’

‘They’re OK,’ sniffed Mooney. ‘I don’t make a habit of it. Mainly I insist on the real deal.’

‘But isn’t it expensive,’ asked Peter, ‘if you only eat and drink… uh… imported stuff?’

‘You bet, preacher. At the rate I’m drinking real Coke, I estimate I owe USIC maybe in the region of… fifty thousand bucks.’

‘Easy,’ confirmed Roussos. ‘That, and the Twinkies.’

‘Hell yeah! The prices these sharks charge for a Twinkie! Or a Hershey bar. I tell ya, if I wasn’t the easy-going type… ’

Mooney slid his empty plate towards Peter.

‘If I hadn’t eaten it all, I could show ya something else,’ he said. ‘Vanilla ice-cream and chocolate sauce. The vanilla essence and the chocolate is imported, the sauce has maybe some whiteflower in it, but the ice cream… the ice cream is pure entomophagy, know what I’m saying?’

Peter reflected a moment. ‘No, Mooney, I don’t know what you’re saying.’

‘Bugs, man. Grubs. You scream, I scream, we all scream for … whipped bugs!’

‘Very funny,’ mumbled Roussos, and continued chewing his mouthful with less enthusiasm than before.

‘And they do a delicious rice dessert that uses — can you believe this? — it uses maggots.’

Roussos put down his sandwich. ‘Mooney, you’re my pal, I love you a lot, but… ’

‘Not dirty maggots, you understand,’ Mooney explained. ‘Clean, fresh, specially bred ones.’

Roussos had had enough. ‘Mooney, put a goddamn sock in it. There are some things it’s better for a person not to know.’

As if alerted by the sounds of dispute, BG abruptly hove into view.

‘Hey, Peter! How’s tricks, bro?’ The white woman was no longer at his side.

‘Excellent, BG. And you?’

‘On top of it, man, on top of it. We got the solar panels putting out two hundred and fifty per cent of our electric power now. We’re ready to pump the surplus into some seriously smart systems.’ He nodded towards an invisible location somewhere beyond the mess hall, on the opposite side from where Peter had explored. ‘You seen that new building out there?’

‘They all look new to me, BG.’

‘Yeah, well, this one is real new.’ BG’s face was serene with pride. ‘You go out there and look at it sometime, when you get the oppor toon ity. It’s a beautiful piece of engineering. Our new rain-collecting centrifuge.’

‘Otherwise known as the Big Brassiere,’ interjected Roussos, mopping up the sauce with a fragment of bread-crust.

‘Hey, we ain’t looking to win no architecture prizes,’ grinned BG. ‘Just figuring out how to catch that water.’

‘Actually,’ said Peter, ‘now that you mention it, it’s just occurred to me: Despite all the rain… I haven’t seen any rivers or lakes. Not even a pond.’

‘The ground is like a sponge. Anything that goes in, you don’t get back. But most of the rain evaporates in, like, five minutes. You can’t see it happening, it’s constant. Invisible steam. That’s a oxymoron, right?’

‘I suppose so,’ said Peter.

‘Anyway, we got to grab that rain before it disappears. That’s what me and the team been designing. Vacuum nets. Flow concentrators. Big, big toys. And what about you, bro? You got yourself a church yet?’

The question was asked lightly, as if churches were tools or other necessary supplies that could be requisitioned — which, on reflection, they were.

‘Not the physical building, BG,’ said Peter. ‘But that’s never been what a church is about. A church is made of hearts and minds.’

‘Low-budget construction,’ quipped Roussos.

‘Show some respect, asshole,’ said Mooney.

‘Actually, BG,’ said Peter, ‘I’m kind of in a state of shock — or happy astonishment would be a better word. Last night… uh… this morning… earlier today, Grainger took me to the Oasan settlement… ’

‘The what, bro?’

‘The Oasan settlement.’

The three men laughed. ‘You mean Freaktown,’ said Roussos.

‘C-2,’ corrected BG, abruptly serious. ‘We call it C-2.’

‘Anyway,’ Peter continued, ‘I got the most amazing welcome. These people are desperate to learn about God!’

‘Well, ain’t that a lick on the dick,’ said BG.

‘They already know about the Bible!’

‘This calls for celebration, bro. Lemme buy you a drink.’

‘I don’t drink, BG.’

BG raised one eyebrow. ‘I meant a coffee, bro. If you want alcohol, you’re gonna need to set up your church real fast.’

‘Sorry…?’

‘Donations, bro. Lotsa donations. One beer will set you back a loooong way.’

BG lumbered towards the coffee bar. Peter was left alone with the two fat guys, who took synchronised sips from their plastic mugs.

‘It’s extraordinary the way you can be driven through a landscape for hours and yet not notice the most striking thing about it,’ reflected Peter. ‘All that rain, and none of it collected in lakes or reservoirs… I wonder how the Oasans cope.’

‘No problem,’ said Roussos. ‘It rains every day. They get what they need when they need it. It’s like, on tap.’ He held up his plastic mug to an imagined sky.