The Book of Strange New Things(156)

For the usual several minutes his words trembled on the screen, waiting to be released. Then, superimposed on the text like a burn from a branding iron, a terse warning manifested in livid letters:

NOT APPROVED – SEEK ASSISTANCE.

He stood at Grainger’s door and knocked.

‘Grainger!’ he yelled. ‘Grainger! Open up, it’s me, Peter!’ No reply.

Without even looking up and down the corridor to check if anyone was watching, he opened the door and barged into Grainger’s quarters. He would drag her out of bed if she was asleep. Not violently, you understand. But she must help him.

The layout of her quarters was identical to his; her space equally Spartan. She wasn’t in it. Her bed was made, more or less. A white shawl hung on the clothesline, hitched up to the ceiling. A constellation of water-drops glimmered on the inside of the shower cubicle. A half-empty bottle of bourbon, labelled simply BOURBON in red block-letters on a white sticker, and priced at $650, stood on a table. Also displayed on the table was a framed photograph of a craggy-faced middle-aged man wearing heavy winter clothes, cradling a shotgun. Behind him, under an ominous grey sky, the Grainger family farm was covered in snow.

Ten minutes later, he found Charlie Grainger’s daughter in the pharmacy, a place where he ought not have been surprised to find her, since she was, after all, USIC’s pharmacist. She was seated at a counter, dressed as usual, her hair neat and still a little damp. When he walked in, she was writing in an old-fashioned ring-binder, with a pencil clutched awkwardly in her short fingers. Honeycombs of modular shelving, mostly vacant but punctuated here and there with petite plastic bottles and cardboard boxes, towered over her. She was calm, but her eyelids were raw from crying.

‘Hey, I wasn’t serious about the anti-delusional medication,’ she joked as he approached. Don’t mention what I said in the infirmary, her eyes pleaded.

‘I need your help,’ he said.

‘You’re not going anywhere,’ she said. ‘At least not with me.’

It was a moment before he realised she was referring to driving, to chauffeuring him somewhere that wasn’t good for his health.

‘I just tried to send a message to my wife,’ he said, ‘and it’s been blocked. I’ve got to get through. Please.’

She put down the pencil, closed the folder.

‘Don’t worry, Peter, I can fix it,’ she said. ‘Probably. Depends on how bad a boy you’ve been.’

She stood up, and he noted once again that she wasn’t very tall. Yet at this moment, he felt smaller still; he was the little boy who’d let his brand-new bicycle get stolen, he was the pitiful disgrace slumped on a vomit-stained sofa in the Salford Pentecost Powerhouse, he was the fumbling missionary who’d reached the end of his rope – and each of these Peters could only throw himself on the mercy of a long-suffering female, a mother who might reassure him that he was more valuable than any expensive gift, a wife who might reassure him that he could break a sacred promise and still be loved, a friend who might be able to pull him out of his latest crisis. When it came down to it, it was not Jesus but these women on whose mercy he threw himself, and who must decide if he’d finally gone too far.

His room, when they entered it together, was a mess. His knapsack, filthy from its trips to the field, lay in the middle of the floor, surrounded by loose balls of wool that had fallen off the chair. Loose pills were scattered across the table next to the upended medication bottle and Grainger’s note about what to take if needed, which was odd as he couldn’t remember opening the bottle. His bed was in a shameful state: the bedsheets were so tangled it looked as though he’d been wrestling in them.

Grainger ignored the chaos, sat in his chair and read the letter he’d written to Bea. Her face betrayed no emotion, although her lips twitched once or twice. Maybe she wasn’t a strong reader, and was tempted to mouth the words? He stood at her side, and waited.

‘I’ll need your permission to change this,’ she said when she’d finished.

‘Change it?’

‘Remove a few . . . problematic statements. To get it past Springer.’

‘Springer?’ Peter had assumed that whatever had blocked his message was automated, some sort of computer program which sifted language brainlessly. ‘You mean Springer has been reading all my letters?’

‘It’s his job,’ said Grainger. ‘One of his jobs. We multi-task here, as you may have noticed. There are several personnel who check the Shoots. I’m pretty sure right now it’s Springer.’

He stared down at her. There was no shame or guilt or defensiveness on her weary face. She was merely informing him of a detail from the USIC duty roster.

‘You take it in turns to read my private letters?’

Only now did it appear to register on her that there might, in some people’s universe, be anything odd about this arrangement. ‘Is that such a big deal?’ she brazened. ‘Doesn’t God read your thoughts?’

He opened his mouth to protest, but couldn’t speak.

‘Anyway,’ she continued, in a down-to-business tone. ‘You want this message sent. So let’s do it.’ She scrolled through his words. ‘The stuff about USIC censoring the magazines has to go,’ she said, pecking at the keyboard with her stubby nails. Letter by letter, the words ‘And even those are censored’, and the twenty after that, disappeared from the screen. ‘Ditto the stuff about the world ending.’ More pecks. She stared at the glowing text, evaluating her amendments. One or two more words caught her eye and she eliminated them. Her eyes were bloodshot and she seemed sad beyond her years. ‘No end of the world,’ she murmured, in a gently scolding tone. ‘Uh-uh.’