The Book of Strange New Things(36)

‘This atmosphere will do that to you,’ she said. ‘I hate the way it pushes. Right inside your ears, even. Never lets up. Sometimes you just wanna . . . ’ She didn’t pursue the thought, just puffed a mouthful of breath upwards, dislodging a damp lock of hair from her forehead. ‘There’s no point talking about it with the guys here. They’re used to it, they don’t have a problem with it, they don’t notice it anymore. Maybe they even enjoy it.’

‘Maybe they hate it but don’t complain.’

Her face went stiff. ‘OK, message received,’ she said.

Peter groaned inwardly. He should have thought the implications through before opening his mouth. What was wrong with him today? He was usually so tactful. Could it be the atmosphere, as Grainger said? He’d always imagined his brain as a wholly enclosed thing, safe inside a shell of bone, but maybe, in this strange new environment, the seal was more permeable and his brain was being infiltrated by insidious vapours. He wiped sweat off his eyelids and made an effort to be a hundred per cent alert, facing front and peering through the dirt-hazed windscreen. The terrain was looser, less stable, the closer they came to their destination. Particles of clammy soil were being thrown up by the tyres and enveloping the vehicle in a kind of halo of filth. The outline of the native settlement seemed grim and unwelcoming somehow.

Suddenly, the magnitude of the challenge hit home. Until now, it had been all about him and his ability to keep himself in one piece: to survive the journey, to recover from the Jump, to adjust to the strange new air and the shock of separation. But there was so much more to it than that. The scale of the unknown remained just as immense whether he was feeling well or unwell; he was approaching monolithic barriers of foreignness which existed oblivious to him, indifferent to how rested or unrested he was, how bleary-eyed or attentive, how keen or dull.

Psalm 139 came to his mind, as it so often did when he needed reassurance. But today, the reminder of God’s omniscience was no comfort; instead, it heightened his own sense of unease. How precious are thy thoughts unto me, O God! how great is the sum of them! If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand. Each and every mote of dirt flung up by the vehicle’s wheels was like a truth that he needed to learn, a ridiculously large number of truths which he had neither the time nor the wisdom to grasp. He was not God, and maybe only God could do what needed to be done here.

Grainger switched on the windscreen wipers once more. The view went smeary for a while, then the glass cleared and the native settlement was revealed afresh, lit up now by the rising sun. The sun made all the difference.

Yes, the mission was daunting and, yes, he wasn’t in the best shape. But here he was, on the threshold of meeting an entirely new kind of people, an encounter chosen for him by God. Whatever was fated to happen, it would surely be precious and amazing. His whole life – he understood that now, as the fa?ades of the unknown city loomed up before him, harbouring unimaginable wonders – his whole life had been leading up to this.





7


Approved, transmitted


‘Well,’ said Grainger, ‘here we are.’ Sometimes a statement of the bloody obvious was the only appropriate way forward. As if to give life ceremonious permission to proceed.

‘Are you OK?’ she asked.

‘Uh . . . yes,’ he said, swaying in his seat. The dizziness he’d felt back at the base had come over him again. ‘I’m probably over-excited. It’s my first time, after all.’

She gave him a look he recognised very well, a look he’d seen on thousands of faces during his years as a pastor, a look that said: Nothing is worth getting excited about; everything is a disappointment. He would have to try to do something about that look, if he could, later.

In the meantime, he had to admit that their surroundings were not exactly awesomely impressive. The Oasan settlement wasn’t what you’d call a city. More like a suburb, erected in the middle of a wasteland. There were no streets in the formal sense, no pavements, no signs, no vehicles, and – despite the dim light and broad shadows of early dawn – no lamps, or any evidence of electricity or fire. Just a community of buildings resting on bare ground. How many dwellings altogether? Peter couldn’t guess. Maybe five hundred. Maybe more. They were spread out in unruly clusters, ranging in scale from single-storey to three-floor blocks, all flat-roofed. The buildings were brick, obviously made of the same clay as the earth, but baked marble-smooth and caramel-coloured. There was not a soul to be seen. All the doors and windows were shut. Well, that wasn’t quite true: the doors weren’t made of wood nor the windows of glass; they were merely holes in the buildings, shrouded with bead curtains. The beads were crystalline, like extravagant strings of jewellery. They swayed gently in the breeze. But there was nobody parting those curtains to peek out, nobody walking through the doorways.

Grainger parked the vehicle right in front of a building which looked like all the others except that it was marked by a painted white star, the bottom point of which had trickled slightly and dried that way. Peter and Grainger stepped out and submitted to the atmosphere’s embrace. Grainger wrapped her scarf around her face, covering her mouth and nose, as though she considered the air impure. From a pocket of her slacks she removed a metal gadget which Peter assumed was a weapon. She pointed it at the vehicle and pressed the trigger twice. The engine switched off and a hatch in the back flipped open.