The Book of Strange New Things(83)

‘What about Kurtzberg?’ said Peter quietly. ‘And Tartaglione? They didn’t go home, did they?’

‘No,’ conceded Tuska. ‘They went native.’

‘Isn’t that just a different way of adapting?’

‘You tell me,’ said Tuska with a hint of mischief. ‘You just came back from Freaktown and now you’re going again. What’s your hurry? Don’t you love us anymore?’

‘Yes, I love you,’ said Peter, aiming for a light, good-humoured tone that might simultaneously convey that he really did love everyone here. ‘But I wasn’t brought here . . . uh . . . USIC made it clear I shouldn’t expect . . . ’ He faltered, dismayed. His tone was neither bantering nor sincere; it was defensive.

‘We’re not your job,’ summarised Tuska. ‘I know that.’

Out of the corner of his eye, Peter noticed that Grainger had entered the mess hall, ready to drive him to the settlement. ‘I do care,’ he said, suppressing the urge to bring up Severin’s funeral, to remind Tuska how hard he’d tried to come up with something decent at short notice. ‘If you . . . if anyone actually . . . reached out to me, I’d be there for them.’

‘Sure you would,’ the pilot shrugged. Leaning back in his seat again, he noticed Grainger edging nearer, and gave her a casual salute.

‘Your chariot awaits,’ announced Grainger.

Rather than taking the cafeteria exit and walking round the building to where the vehicle was parked, Grainger escorted Peter through a maze of internal corridors, postponing when they’d have to wade into the muggy air. This route through the base took them past the USIC pharmacy, Grainger’s domain. It was shut and Peter would have walked right by without noticing it, if not for the bright green plastic cross mounted on its otherwise nondescript door. He paused for a proper look, and Grainger paused with him.

‘The serpent of Epidaurus,’ he murmured, surprised that whoever had made this cross had bothered to embellish it, in silver metallic inlay, with the ancient symbol of the snake encircling the staff.

‘Yeah?’ she said.

‘It symbolises wisdom. Immortality. Healing.’

‘And “Pharmacy”,’ she added.

He wondered if the door was unlocked. ‘What if someone shows up while we’re gone, wanting you?’

‘Unlikely,’ she said.

‘USIC doesn’t keep you that busy?’

‘I do lots of other things besides the drugs. I analyse all the food, to check we’re not poisoning ourselves. I do research. I pitch in.’

He hadn’t meant to make her justify her wage; he was only curious about that door. Having burgled quite a few pharmacies in his time, he struggled to believe that a storehouse of pharmaceutical goodies wouldn’t be a temptation for even one of the people here. ‘Is it locked?’

‘Of course it’s locked.’

‘The only door in the whole place that’s locked?’

She shot him a suspicious glance. He felt she’d peered straight into his conscience, eavesdropping on his guilty memory of trespassing in Kurtzberg’s quarters. What had possessed him to do that?

‘It’s not that I think anybody would steal anything,’ she said. ‘It’s just . . . procedure. Can we go now?’

They walked to the corridor’s end, where Grainger took a deep breath and opened the door to the outside. The cool, neutral air of the interior was sucked from behind them into the atmosphere beyond, exerting a tug on their bodies as they stepped out of the building. Then the flood of gaseous moisture enveloped them, a shock as always, until you got used to it.

‘I overheard you tell Tuska you love him,’ said Grainger as they approached the vehicle.

‘He was bantering,’ said Peter, ‘and I was . . . uh . . . bantering back.’ The air currents ruffled his hair, ran under his clothing, blurred his vision. Distracted, he almost blundered against Grainger, having followed her to the driver’s side before he remembered that he should be heading for the passenger’s side. ‘But on a deeper level,’ he said, as he backtracked, ‘yes, it’s true. I’m a Christian. I try to love everybody.’

They took their seats in the front of the van and slammed the doors shut, sealing themselves into the air-conditioned cabin. The short time they’d spent in the open air had been enough to dampen their skin all over, so that they both shivered at the same instant, a coincidence which made them smile.

‘Tuska isn’t very lovable,’ Grainger remarked.

‘He means well,’ said Peter.

‘Yeah?’ she said tartly. ‘I guess he’s more fun if you’re a guy.’ She dabbed her face dry with a hunk of her shawl and, peering up into a mirror, brushed her hair. ‘All that sex talk. You should hear him sometimes. Real locker room stuff. So much hot air.’

‘You wouldn’t want it to be more than hot air, would you?’

‘God forbid,’ she scoffed. ‘I can imagine why his wife left him.’

‘Maybe he left her,’ said Peter, wondering why she was drawing him into this peculiar conversation, and why they weren’t moving yet. ‘Or maybe it was a mutual decision.’

‘The end of a marriage is never a mutual decision,’ she said.