The Book of Strange New Things(13)

Peter smiled, unsure of whether BG meant this as a warning of what might happen or as an observation of what had already happened. The viscose swaddling of the crib felt damp and heavy, but it had felt that way even when the woman in the lab coat first wrapped him in it.

Another face swung into view. Sunburnt white, fiftyish, with thinning grey hair cut to a military bristle. Eyes as bloodshot as BG’s, but blue and full of painful childhood and messy divorce and violent upheavals in employment.

‘Severin,’ he said.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Artie Severin. We gotta get you out of there, pal. Sooner you start drinking, sooner you’ll feel like a human being.’

BG and Severin lifted him out of the crib as though they were extracting a newly purchased piece of equipment from its box: not exactly gently, but with sufficient care not to tear or break anything. His feet barely touched the floor as they carried him out of the room, down a short corridor and into a bathroom. There they stripped him of the gauzy loincloth he’d worn for the last month, sprayed him with blue foam from neck to ankles, and wiped him down with paper towels. A large transparent plastic waste bag got filled halfway to the top with blue and brown muck before they were finished.

‘Is there a shower?’ he asked, when it was over and he still felt sticky. ‘I mean, with water?’

‘Water is gold, bro,’ said BG. ‘Every drop we got, goes into here.’ He tapped his throat. ‘It don’t do nobody no good out there.’ And he nodded towards the wall, the outer shell of the ship, the barrier between them and the vast airless emptiness in which they were suspended.

‘Sorry,’ said Peter. ‘That was na?ve of me.’

‘Na?ve’s not a problem,’ said BG. ‘We all gotta ride the learning curve. I done this trip once before. First time I didn’t know shit.’

‘You’ll have all the water you want when we get to Oasis,’ said Severin. ‘Right now, you’d better drink some.’

Peter was handed a plastic bottle with a resealable nipple. He took a big swig and, ten seconds later, fainted.

His recovery from the Jump took him longer than he would have liked. He would have liked to spring up like a momentarily winded boxer, and impress the other men. But the other men shook off the effects of the Jump rapidly and got busy doing whatever it was that they were doing, while he lolled helpless in a bunk, occasionally managing a sip of water. Before take-off he’d been warned that he would feel as though he’d been disassembled and put back together again, which was not exactly how the Jump worked, scientifically speaking, but was indeed the way it felt.

He spent the afternoon . . . well, no, those words made no sense, did they? There was no such thing as afternoon, morning or night here. In the darkened room where BG and Severin had stowed him after cleaning him up, he woke occasionally from his woozy slumber and looked at his watch. The numbers were only symbols. Real time would not resume until he had ground underfoot, and there was a sun rising and setting.

Once he got to Oasis, there would be facilities for sending a message to Beatrice. ‘I’ll write to you every day,’ he’d promised. ‘Every single day, if God allows me.’ He tried to imagine what she might be doing at this moment, how she might be dressed, whether she would have her hair pinned up or hanging loose over her shoulders. That was what his watch was for, he realised: not to tell him anything useful about his own situation, but to allow him to imagine Beatrice existing in the same reality as himself.

He looked at his watch again. In England, it was 2.43 in the morning. Beatrice would be asleep, with Joshua stretched opportunistically on his side of the bed, legs spread. Joshua, that is, not Beatrice. She would be on her left side, one arm dangling over the edge, the other thrown up, elbow covering her ear, fingers so close to his pillow that he could kiss them from where he lay. Not now, of course.

Maybe Beatrice was awake. Maybe she was worrying about him. A month had passed without contact between them, and they were used to communicating every day.

‘What if my husband dies en route?’ she’d asked the USIC people.

‘He will not die en route,’ was the reply.

‘But what if he does?’

‘We would let you know immediately. In other words, no news is good news.’

Good news it was, then. But still . . . Bea had spent these last thirty days conscious of his absence, while he’d been oblivious to hers.

He pictured their bedroom, lit in subdued tones by the bedside lamp; he pictured Bea’s pale blue uniform slung over the chair, the jumble of shoes on the floor, the yellow duvet with Joshua’s fur all over it. Beatrice sitting up against the headboard, bare-legged but with a sweater on, reading and re-reading the uninformative info pack sent by USIC.

‘USIC cannot and does not guarantee the safety of any travellers on its craft or domiciled in its facilities or in the pursuit of any activities related to, or not related to, USIC activities. “Safety” is defined as health both physical and mental and includes, but is not restricted to, survival and/or return from Oasis, either within the time period specified by this agreement or beyond that period. USIC undertakes to minimise risk to any persons participating in its projects but signature of this document is deemed to constitute acknowledgement of understanding that USIC’s efforts in this regard (i.e., minimising risk) are subject to circumstances beyond USIC’s control. These circumstances, because unforeseen and unprecedented, cannot be detailed in advance of occurrence. They may include, but are not restricted to, disease, accident, mechanical failure, adverse weather, and any other events commonly categorised as Acts of God.’