The Book of Strange New Things(38)

‘You and I,’ said the Oasan. ‘Never before now.’ The vertical cleft in the middle of his face squirmed slightly as he formed the words. The foetuses rubbed knees, so to speak. Peter smiled but could not summon a response.

‘He means he hasn’t met you before,’ said Grainger. ‘In other words, he’s saying hello.’

‘Hello,’ said Peter. ‘I’m Peter.’

The Oasan nodded. ‘You are Pe???er. I will remember.’ He turned back to Grainger. ‘You bring medi??ine?’

‘A little.’

‘How li???le?’

‘I’ll show you,’ said Grainger, walking around to the back of the vehicle and lifting the hatch. She rummaged in the jumbled contents – bottles of water, toilet paper, canvas bags, tools, tarps – and extracted a plastic tub no bigger than a schoolchild’s lunch-box. The Oasan followed every movement, although Peter was still unable to work out which parts of the face were its eyes. His eyes, sorry.

‘This is all I could get from our pharmacy,’ said Grainger. ‘Today is not one of the official supply days, you understand? We’re here for a different reason. But I didn’t want to come with nothing. So this’ – she handed him the tub – ‘is extra. A gift.’

‘We are di??appoin???ful,’ said the Oasan. ‘And in the ??ame breath we are gra???eful.’

There was a pause. The Oasan stood holding his plastic tub; Grainger and Peter stood watching him hold it. A ray of sunlight found its way to the roof of the vehicle, making it glow.

‘So . . . uh . . . How are you?’ said Grainger. Sweat twinkled in her eyebrows and on her cheeks.

‘I alone?’ enquired the Oasan. ‘Or I and we ???ogether?’ He gestured vaguely at the settlement behind him.

‘All of you.’

The Oasan appeared to give this a great deal of thought. At last he said: ‘Good.’

There was another pause.

‘Is anyone else coming out today?’ asked Grainger. ‘To see us, I mean?’

Again, the Oasan mulled over the question as though it were immensely complex.

‘No,’ he concluded. ‘I ???oday am only one.’ He gestured solemnly at both Grainger and Peter, in acknowledgement, perhaps, of his regret for the 2:1 imbalance between number of visitors and welcoming party.

‘Peter here is a special guest of USIC,’ said Grainger. ‘He’s a . . . he’s a Christian missionary. He wants to . . . uh . . . live with you.’ She glanced at Peter for uneasy confirmation. ‘If I’ve got that right.’

‘Yes,’ said Peter, brightly. There was a glistening, champignon-like thing roughly halfway down the central cleft of the Oasan’s face that he’d decided was the Oasan’s eye, and he looked straight at that, doing his best to radiate friendliness. ‘I have good news to tell you. The best news you’ve ever heard.’

The Oasan cocked his head to one side. The two foetuses – no, not foetuses, his brow and cheeks, please! – blushed, revealing a spidery network of capillaries just beneath the skin. His voice, when it came, was even more asthmatic-sounding than before. ‘The Go??pel?’

The words hung in the whispering air for a second before Peter was able to take them in. He couldn’t believe he’d heard correctly. Then he noticed that the Oasan’s gloved hands had been pressed together in a steeple shape.

‘Yes!’ Peter cried, dizzy with elation. ‘Praise Jesus!’

The Oasan turned to Grainger again. His gloved hands were trembling against the tub he held. ‘We have wai???ed long for the man Pe???er,’ he said. ‘Thank you, Grainger.’ And without further explanation he hurried through the doorway, leaving the crystalline beads swinging in his wake.

‘Well I’ll be damned,’ said Grainger, yanking her scarf loose and wiping her face with it. ‘He never called me by name before.’

They stood waiting for twenty minutes or so. The sun continued to rise, a sliver of brilliant burning orange, like a great bubble of lava on the horizon. The walls of the buildings glowed as if each brick had a light inside.

At last, the Oasan returned, still clutching the plastic tub, which was now empty. He handed it back to Grainger, very slowly and carefully, only letting it go when her grip on it was secure.

‘Medi??ine have all gone,’ he said. ‘Gone in??ide the gra???eful.’

‘I’m sorry there wasn’t more,’ said Grainger. ‘There’ll be more next time.’

The Oasan nodded. ‘We abide.’

Grainger, stiff with unease, walked to the rear of the vehicle to stow the tub back in the trunk. As soon as her back was turned, the Oasan sidled up to Peter, bringing them face to face.

‘Have you the book?’

‘The book?’

‘The Book of ?????range New Thing??.’

Peter blinked and tried to breathe normally. Up close, the Oasan’s flesh smelled sweet: not the sweet of rot, but sweet like fresh fruit.

‘You mean the Bible,’ he said.

‘We ??peak never the name. Power of the book forbid. Flame give warmth . . . ’ With outstretched hands, he mimed the action of warming oneself on a fire, getting too close, and being burned.

‘But you mean the Word of God,’ said Peter. ‘The Gospel.’