The Book of Strange New Things(161)

‘He’s just saying that,’ said Grainger, bristling with impatience. ‘I know him. We used to talk. He’s a real interesting guy, very smart and charming. And sociable. He’ll go insane out there.’

A naked bogey-man from medieval depictions of the damned leapt around in Peter’s memory. ‘He’s insane already.’

Grainger’s eyes narrowed. ‘That’s kinda . . . judgemental, wouldn’t you say?’

Peter looked away, too burdened with care to argue. Clumsily, he pretended to be distracted by the demands of unloading the washing machine.

‘Anyway,’ said Grainger, ‘I’ll talk to him, you don’t have to talk to him. Just get him to come out of hiding. Whatever you did last time, do it again.’

‘Well,’ Peter recalled, ‘I was stumbling around in pitch darkness, delirious, convinced I was dying, loudly reciting a paraphrase of Psalm 23. If that’s what it takes, I’m not sure I could . . . uh . . . replicate the conditions.’

She put her hands on her hips, provocatively. ‘So does that mean you’re not willing to give it a shot?’

And so they set off. Not in the delivery jeep Grainger preferred for her drug and food runs, but in the hearse-like station wagon Peter had commandeered, the one with the bed in the back. Grainger took a while to adjust to driving it, sniffing at its unfamiliar smells, fiddling with its unfamiliar controls, wriggling her buttocks on the unfamiliar shape of its seat. She was a creature of habit. All the USIC staff were creatures of habit, he realised now. There wasn’t a reckless adventurer among them: Ella Reinman’s vetting process made sure of that. Maybe he, Peter, was the closest thing to an adventurer they’d ever allowed to come here. Or maybe Tartaglione was the closest. And that’s why he’d gone insane.

‘I figure he’s more likely to show,’ Grainger explained, ‘if the vehicle’s the same. He probably saw you coming for ages.’

‘It was night.’

‘The vehicle would have lit itself up. He could’ve been watching it from a mile away.’

Peter thought this was unlikely. He was more inclined to believe that Tartaglione had been watching the twinkles in his vat of moonshine, watching musty memories slowly decay inside his own skull.

‘What if we don’t find him?’

‘We’ll find him,’ said Grainger, focusing her eyes on the featureless landscape.

‘But what if we don’t?’

She smiled. ‘You gotta have faith.’ The heavens rumbled.

A few minutes later, Peter said, ‘May I check the Shoot?’

Grainger fumbled on the dashboard, not sure where the Shoot was located in this vehicle. A drawer slid out like a tongue, offering two repulsive objects that looked like large mummified slugs but which, at second glance, were mouldy cigars. Another drawer revealed some sheets of printed paper that had turned rainbow colours and shrivelled to a fragile tissue resembling autumn leaves. Evidently, the USIC personnel had made little or no use of Kurtzberg’s hearse since his disappearance. Maybe they regarded it as cursed with bad luck, or maybe they’d made a conscious decision to leave it just as it was, in case the minister came back one day.

Grainger’s fingers found the Shoot at last, and swivelled it over Peter’s lap. He switched it on: everything looked and behaved as it should. He checked for messages from Bea. Nothing. Maybe this particular machine was not configured like the others. Maybe its promise of connection was an illusion. He checked again, reasoning that if Bea had sent a message, a few extra seconds could make all the difference between its not-yet-having-arrived and its arrival.

Nothing.

The sky continued to darken as they drove further. Not exactly black as sackcloth, but certainly ominous. Thunder boomed again.

‘I’ve never seen it like this,’ he said.

Grainger glanced cursorily out the side window. ‘I have,’ she said. Then, sensing his scepticism, she added: ‘I’ve been here longer than you.’ She shut her eyes and breathed deep. ‘Too long.’

‘What happens?’

‘Happens?’

‘When it goes dark like this?’

She sighed. ‘It rains. It just rains. What do you expect? This place is one big anti-climax.’

He opened his mouth to speak. To defend the awesome beauties of this planet, or else to make some comment about the USIC project, he would never know which, because as he opened his lips, a fork of lightning split the sky, the windows flared with a blinding flash, and the vehicle was struck from above as if by a colossal fist.

Shuddering from the bang, the car rolled to a standstill.

‘Jee-zus!’ cried Grainger. She was alive. They were both alive. And not just that: they were holding each other by the arm, squeezing tight. Animal instinct. Embarrassed, they unclasped.

No harm had come to them, not even a hair on their head was singed. The Shoot suspended over Peter’s lap had gone blank, its screen reflecting his own bone-white face. On the dashboard in front of him, all the glowing words and symbols were gone. Grainger reached forward to prompt the ignition and was exasperated to find that the engine failed to revive.

‘That’s not supposed to happen,’ she said. Her eyes were a little wild; she was possibly in shock. ‘Everything should still be working fine.’ She kept turning the ignition, to no avail. Fat raindrops began to splash against the windows.