Michel Faber - The Book of Strange New Things

The chauffeur was keen to resume the drive: there was still a long way to go. Biting off a mouthful of banana, he took hold of Peter’s phone and examined it mistrustfully.

‘Has this got the right kinda card in it?’ he mumbled as he chewed. ‘For calling… ah… England?’

‘I think so,’ said Peter. ‘I believe so.’

The chauffeur handed it back, non-committal. ‘Looks like a healthy cellphone to me.’

Peter stepped under the shade of a metal canopy that overhung the fuel pumps. He tried once more to tap the correct sequence of symbols. This time, he was rewarded with a staccato melody: the international code followed by Bea’s number. He held the metal lozenge to his ear and stared out at the unfamiliarly blue sky and the sculpted trees surrounding the truckstop.

‘Hello?’

‘It’s me,’ he said.

‘… ello?’

‘Can you hear me?’ he said.

‘… hear you… ’ said Bea. Her voice was enveloped in a blizzard of static. Random words jumped out of the phone’s tiny amplifier like stray sparks.

‘I’m in Florida,’ he said.

‘… middle… night,’ she answered.

‘I’m sorry. Did I wake you?’

‘… love you… how are… know what…?’

‘I’m safe and sound,’ he said. Sweat was making the phone slippery in his fingers. ‘Sorry to be calling you now but I may not get another chance later. The plane was delayed and we’re in a big hurry.’

‘… e… o… in the… me… guy know anything about…?’

He walked further away from the vehicle, leaving the shade of the metal canopy. ‘This guy knows nothing about anything,’ he murmured, trusting that his words were being transmitted more clearly to her than hers were to him. ‘I’m not even sure if he works for USIC.’

‘… haven’t ask…?’

‘No, I haven’t asked yet. I will.’ He felt a bit sheepish. He’d spent twenty, thirty minutes in the car with this chauffeur already and hadn’t even established if he was an actual USIC employee or just a driver for hire. All he’d learned so far was that the photo of the little girl on the dashboard was the driver’s daughter, that the driver was newly divorced from the little girl’s mother, and that the mother’s mom was an attorney who was working hard to make the driver regret the day he was born. ‘It’s all very… hectic at the moment. And I didn’t sleep on the flight. I’ll write to you when I’m… you know, when I get to the other end. Then I’ll have plenty of time and I’ll put you in the picture. It’ll be just like we’re travelling together.’

There was a rush of static and he wasn’t sure if she had fallen silent or if her words were being swallowed up. He raised his voice: ‘How’s Joshua?’

‘… first few… he just… o… ink… side… ’

‘I’m sorry, you’re breaking up. And this guy wants me to stop talking. I have to go. I love you. I wish… I love you.’

‘… you too… ’

And she was gone.

‘That your wife?’ said the driver when Peter had settled back into the vehicle and they were pulling out of the truckstop.

Actually, no , Peter felt like saying, that was not my wife, that was a bunch of disassembled electronic noises coming out of a small metal device . ‘Yes,’ he said. His almost obsessional preference for face-to-face communication was too difficult to explain to a stranger. Even Beatrice had trouble understanding it sometimes.

‘And your kid’s called Joshua?’ The driver seemed unconcerned by any social taboo against eavesdropping.

‘Joshua’s our cat,’ said Peter. ‘We don’t have children.’

‘Saves a lot of drama,’ said the driver.

‘You’re the second person in two days who’s told me that. But I’m sure you love your daughter.’

‘No choice!’ The driver waved one hand towards the windscreen, to indicate the whole world of experience, destiny, whatever. ‘What does your wife do?’

‘She’s a nurse.’

‘That’s a good job. Better than an attorney anyways. Making people’s lives better instead of making them worse.’

‘Well, I hope being a minister achieves the same thing.’

‘Sure,’ said the driver breezily. He didn’t sound sure at all.

‘And what about you?’ said Peter. ‘Are you a USIC… uh… staff member, or do they just hire you for taxi jobs?’

‘Been a driver for USIC for nine, ten years,’ said the chauffeur. ‘Goods, mainly. Academics sometimes. USIC holds a lot of conferences. And then every now and then, there’s an astronaut.’

Peter nodded. For a second he imagined the driver picking up an astronaut from Orlando Airport, pictured a square-jawed hulk in a bulbous space suit lumbering through the arrivals hall towards the placard-wielding chauffeur. Then he twigged.

‘I’ve never thought of myself as an astronaut,’ he said.

‘It’s an old-fashioned word,’ conceded the chauffeur. ‘I use it out of respect for tradition, I guess. The world changes too fast. You take your eyes off something that’s always been there, and the next minute it’s just a memory.’

Peter looked out the window. The motorway looked much the same as a motorway in the UK, but there were giant metal signs informing him that splendid attractions like the Econlockhatchee River and the Hal Scott Regional Nature Preserve were somewhere nearby, hidden beyond the windbreaks. Stylised illustrations on billboards evoked the joys of camping and horseback riding.

‘One of the good things about USIC,’ said the driver, ‘is that they have some respect for tradition. Or maybe they just recognise the value of a brand. They bought Cape Canaveral, you know that? They own the whole place. Must have cost them a fortune, and they could’ve built their launch site somewhere else, there’s so much real estate up for grabs these days. But they wanted Cape Canaveral. I call that class.’

Peter made a vague noise of agreement. The classiness — or otherwise — of multinational corporations was not a subject on which he had strong opinions. One of the few things he knew about USIC was that it owned lots of formerly defunct factories in formerly destitute towns in sloughed-off parts of the former Soviet Union. He somehow doubted that ‘classy’ was the right word for what went on there. As for Cape Canaveral, the history of space travel had never been of the slightest interest to him, even as a kid. He’d not even noticed that NASA had ceased to exist. It was the sort of nugget of useless information that Beatrice was liable to unearth while reading the newspapers that would later be put underneath Joshua’s food bowls.

He missed Joshua already. Beatrice often left for work at dawn, when Joshua was still fast asleep on the bed. Even if he stirred and miaowed, she would hurry off and say, ‘Daddy will feed you.’ And sure enough, an hour or two later, Peter would be sitting in the kitchen, munching sweet cereal, while Joshua munched savoury cereal on the floor nearby. Then Joshua would jump on the kitchen table and lick the milk dregs from Peter’s bowl. Not something he was allowed to do when Mummy was around.

‘The training is tough, am I right?’ said the chauffeur.

Peter sensed he was expected to tell stories of military-style exercise regimens, Olympic tests of endurance. He had no such tales to tell. ‘There’s a physical,’ he conceded. ‘But most of the screening is… questions.’

‘Yeah?’ said the driver. A few moments later, he switched on the car radio. ‘… continues in Pakistan,’ an earnest voice began, ‘as anti-government forces… ’ The chauffeur switched to a music station, and the vintage sounds of A Flock of Seagulls warbled out.

Peter leaned back and recalled some of the questions in his screening interviews. These sessions, held in a boardroom on the tenth floor of a swanky London hotel, had gone on for hours at a time. One American woman was a constant presence: an elegant, tiny anorexic, who carried herself like a famous choreographer or retired ballet dancer. Bright-eyed and nasal-voiced, she nursed glass mugs of decaffeinated coffee as she worked, aided by a changeable team of other interrogators. Interrogators was the wrong word, perhaps, since everyone was friendly and there was an odd sense that they were rooting for him to succeed.