The Book of Strange New Things(160)

There are rain clouds on the way, he thought of writing to Bea, and was hit with a double distress: the memory of the state Bea was in, and deep shame at how inadequate his letters to her were, how inadequate they’d been from the beginning. If he could have described what he’d experienced better, she might not have felt so separated from him. If only the tongue that God lent him when he was called upon to speak in public to strangers could have come to his aid when writing in private to his wife.

He sat at the Shoot and checked for a message. None.

The truth was as plain as a dull blank screen where words had once glowed: she saw no point in responding to him now. Or she was unable to respond – too busy, or too upset, or in trouble. Maybe he should write again regardless, not wait for an answer, just keep sending messages. The way she had done for him when he’d first got here, message after message which he’d left unanswered. He searched his mind for words that might give her hope, maybe something along the lines of ‘Hope is one of the strongest things in the universe. Empires can fall, civilisations can vanish into dust . . . ’ But no: the rhetoric of a sermon was one thing; his wife’s grim reality was another. Civilisations did not vanish smoothly and easefully; empires did not set like suns: empires collapsed in chaos and violence. Real people got pushed around, beaten up, robbed, made destitute. Real lives went down the toilet. Bea was scared and hurt, and she didn’t need his preaching.

Bea, I love you, he wrote. I;m so worried about you.

Was it right to spend five thousand dollars of USIC’s money to send those nine impotent little words through space? With barely a moment’s hesitation, he pressed the transmission button. The letters trembled on the screen for two, three, then four minutes, making Peter fear that his feelings had been judged, by some jaded shiftworker elsewhere in the building, to have failed a test, to have sinned against the USIC ethos, attempting to undermine the great mission. Staring at the screen, sweat forming on his brow, he belatedly noticed the typo – a semi-colon instead of an apostrophe. He lifted his hand to fix it, but the words evaporated.

APPROVED. TRANSMITTED, the screen said in a wink.

Thank God for that.

Outside the compound, a rumble of thunder.

Peter prayed.

In every Christian’s life there comes a time when he or she needs to know the precise circumstances under which God is willing to heal the sick. Peter had reached that pass now. Until today, he’d muddled through with the same hodgepodge of faith, medicine and common sense that everyone else in his church back in England was likely to rely on: Drive carefully, take the pills as stated on the package, pour cold water on a scald, get the cyst removed by a surgeon, be mindful that a Christian diabetic needs insulin just as much as an atheist diabetic does, regard a heart attack as a warning, remember that all human beings must die, but remember too that God is merciful and may snatch your life back from the jaws of death if . . . if what? If what?

A few hundred metres from here, confined in a metal cot, lay Lover Five, so small and helpless in that big empty space labelled Intensive Care. Nothing that USIC’s doctors had to offer could fix the rot in her flesh. Amputating her hand would be like cutting the rotten part out of an apple; it was just tidying up the fruit as it died.

But God . . . God could . . . God could what? God could cure cancer, that had been proven many times. An inoperable tumour could, through the power of prayer, miraculously shrink. Sentences of death could be commuted for years, and, although Peter disapproved of charlatan faith-healers, he had seen people wake from supposedly fatal comas, had seen hopelessly premature babies survive, had even seen a blind woman regain her sight. But why did God do it for some Christians and not for others? Such a basic question, too simpleminded for theologians to bother discussing at their synods. But what was the answer? To what extent did God feel bound to respect the laws of biology, letting calcifying bones crumble, poisoned livers succumb to cirrhosis, severed arteries gush blood? And if the laws of biology on Oasis were such that the ????? couldn’t heal, that the mechanism for healing didn’t even exist, was there any point in praying to God for help?

Dear God, please don’t let Lover Five die.

It was such an infantile prayer, the sort of prayer a five-year-old might pray.

But maybe those were the best kind.

What with the thunder in the skies outside and the rumble of worry in his own head, it was difficult for him to recognise the knocking at his door for what it was. Eventually he opened up.

‘How are you feeling?’ said Grainger, dressed for going out.

Like hell, he almost said. ‘I’m very upset and worried about my friend.’

‘But physically?’

‘Physically?’

‘Are you up for going out with me?’ Her voice was firm and dignified; she was wholly back to normal now. Her eyes were clear, no longer red-rimmed; she didn’t smell of alcohol. In fact, she was beautiful, more beautiful than he’d given her credit for before. As well as her usual driving shawl, she wore a white tunic top with loose sleeves that barely reached past her elbows, exposing the network of scars on her pale forearms to public view. Take me as I am, was the message.

‘We can’t leave Tartaglione to rot,’ she said. ‘We’ve got to bring him back.’

‘He doesn’t want to come back,’ said Peter. ‘He feels utter contempt for everybody here.’