The Book of Strange New Things(67)

‘But the quantity . . . Is it . . . Are you struggling to come up with that much food? Is it too much?’

‘We provide.’

‘But is it . . . If USIC wasn’t here, would your lives be easier?’

‘U??IC bring you to u??. We are gra???eful.’

‘But . . . uh . . . ’ He was determined to winkle out some insight into how those Oasans who weren’t Jesus Lovers regarded USIC’s presence. ‘Every one of you works to produce the food, is that right? The Jesus Lovers, and the . . . uh . . . others. You all work together.’

‘Many hand make brief work.’

‘OK. Sure. But is there anyone among you who says, “Why should we do this? Let the USIC people grow their own food”?’

‘All know the need for medi??ine.’

Peter chewed on this for a moment. ‘Does that mean you’re all . . . uh . . . Are all of you taking medicine?’

‘No. Only few. Few of few. All Je??u?? Lover here ???oday need no medi??ine, prai??e Je??u??.’

‘And what about the ones who don’t love Jesus? Are they more likely to be sick?’

This provoked some disagreement – a rare thing among Oasans. Some voices seemed to be saying yes, the non-Lovers were more susceptible to illness. Others seemed to be saying no, it was the same regardless of belief. The last word was given to Jesus Lover One, whose take was that everyone was missing the main point.

‘They will die,’ he said. ‘With medi??ine or with no medi??ine, they will die for ever.’

And then, all too soon, his time was over. Grainger arrived pretty much when she’d promised she would: three hundred and sixty-eight hours from when they’d last spoken. At least, he assumed it was Grainger.

She’d warned him that she would be driving a bigger vehicle next time, a proper supply truck rather than the jeep. Sure enough, a truck was what came into view, approaching C-2 from the shimmering obscurity of the horizon, camouflaged by the morning glare. Peter supposed that the settlement must strike Grainger as a ghost town, because, as usual, there was no outward sign of the sociable life that hummed within. To the Oasan mind, streets were nothing more than conduits from one house to another, not public spaces to be frequented.

The truck came to a halt outside the building with the star on it. Truck? It was more what you’d call a van, a vehicle of the kind that might scoot around a British town delivering milk or bread. The USIC logo on its side was small and discreet, a tattoo rather than a vainglorious trademark. USIC the florists. USIC the fishmongers. Hardly a display of megacorporate might.

Peter was working on the church grounds, stirring the mortar, when the vehicle came. He observed its arrival from a distance of several hundred metres. The Oasans, whose concentration on appointed tasks was unswervingly intense, whose vision was shortsighted, and whose hearing was difficult to gauge, failed to notice it. He wondered what would happen if he pretended he hadn’t noticed either, and simply carried on here with his congregation. Would Grainger eventually get out of the truck and walk over to meet them? Or drive the truck to the church grounds? Or lose patience and drive away?

He knew it was ungracious, even childish, of him to keep her waiting, but he wished she would come out of her metal shell and make proper contact with these people whom she refused to call ‘people’, these people who gave her ‘the creeps’. There was really nothing scary or distasteful about them at all. If you stared into their faces long enough, their physiognomy ceased to appear grisly, and the eyeless cleft was no different from a human nose or brow. He wished Grainger could understand that.

Just as he was about to announce to his co-workers that he must take his leave of them for a little while, he spotted a flash of movement in the doorway of the building marked with the star. An Oasan had emerged. It was no one he had met, as far as he knew. The Oasan’s robe was mouse-grey. The door of Grainger’s vehicle swung open and she stepped out, a vision in white.

Peter turned to make his announcement. But there was no need: his co-workers had noticed the arrival, and stopped working. Everyone put down whatever he or she was holding, carefully and quietly. Jesus Lover Fifty-Two – a female, in Peter’s arbitrary estimation – was halfway up the staircase, a brick in her hands. She paused, looked down at the brick, and up at the wall where the syrupy mortar would soon dry out. The choice between continuing and not continuing was plainly a difficult one for her, but after hesitating a few seconds more, she began to descend the staircase. It was as though she’d decided the gluing of the brick was too important a task to be attempted when there were such sensational distractions.

The other Oasans were talking amongst themselves, in their own language. The only word Peter could understand – the only word that evidently did not exist in their vocabulary – was ‘medi??ine’. Jesus Lover One approached Peter hesitantly.

‘Plea??e, Pe???er,’ he said. ‘If God will be no??? di??appoin???ful . . . If Je??u?? and Holy ??piri??? will be no??? di??appoin???ful . . . I will leave now the building of our ?ur?, and help delivery of medi??ine.’

‘Of course,’ said Peter. ‘Let’s go together.’

There was a palpable relief of tension, passing through the assembled Oasans like a communal shiver. Peter wondered if Kurtzberg had instilled fear of God’s displeasure into them, or if they were merely over-eager to please their new pastor. He made a mental note to speak to them at the earliest opportunity about God’s compassion and indulgence: My yoke is easy and my burden is light and all that sort of thing. Except he might have to find an alternative to the animal husbandry metaphor.