Grainger shook her head. ‘That’s bullshit,’ she said softly. Tenderly, even. ‘Take it from me, Peter, her heart swells up when you talk about that dress. She would be devastated if she thought you’d forgotten about that dress. Can’t you see that? Everybody’s sentimental, everybody. There’s only about fifty people in the whole damn world who aren’t sentimental. And they’re all working here.’
They both laughed. ‘We should try once more to get back,’ said Peter.
‘OK,’ she said, and hauled herself to her feet. Her movements were stiffer than before. His too. They were carbon-based life forms, running low on fuel. An hour or so later, with the USIC base still eluding them, they found a structure of a different kind. It had shimmered in their sights for the longest time, and while heading for it they discussed the possibility that it was a mirage. But it proved real enough: the skeletal remains of a large camping tent. The metal struts were intact, staking out the shape of a house, the kind of house a child would draw. The canvas hung in tatters.
Inside the tent, nothing. No provisions, no bedding, no implements. A square of ground, a blank panel for the imagination to fill.
Behind the tent, planted in the ground and only slightly tilted, a cross. A wooden one, of very modest scale, about knee-height. Where had the wood come from? Not from this world, that’s for sure. It must have been transported, stashed in a ship along with the medicines and the engineering magazines and the raisins and the humans, billions of miles from its point of origin. Just two pine slats, never intended to be nailed together in this manner, two sturdy slices of tree varnished to resemble antique oak. Two nails were driven through the crux: one to join the two pieces of wood together, and another, crudely hammered and bent, to secure two small circlets of metal. Gold. Kurtzberg’s wedding ring, and the wedding ring of the wife he’d lost in another galaxy long, long ago.
On the horizontal slat of the cross, the minister had carved a message, then painstakingly blackened each letter with the flame of a cigarette lighter or some similar tool. Peter expected a motto in Latin or an allusion to faith or Christ or the Afterlife.
FOR ALL THAT I’VE HAD AND SEEN, I AM TRULY THANKFUL, the inscription said.
They stood and looked at that cross for several minutes, while the ragged remains of the tent flapped in the breeze.
‘I’m going home,’ announced Grainger, in a voice shaky with tears, ‘to find my dad.’
Peter put his arm around her shoulders. This was the moment when he was called upon to say the right thing; nothing less than the right thing would do. As a man or as a minister of God, his challenge was the same: to reconcile them both to their fate. There would be no going home; there was no dad to be reunited with; they were lost and soon they would be dead. Lightning had struck them, and they had failed to understand its message.
‘Grainger . . . ’ he began, his mind blank, trusting that inspiration would lend words to his tongue.
But before he could continue, the dull thrum which they’d both imagined was the wind agitating the canvas shreds of the tent grew suddenly louder, and an olive-green military jeep drove past them, slowed to a stop, and reversed.
A brown head with white eyes and white teeth poked out of the window.
‘Are you guys finished here?’ hollered BG, revving the engine. ‘’Cause some of us have work to do.’
26
He only knew that thanks were due
All the way back, Peter could hear – only hear, not see – the weeping and the laboured breathing and the outbursts of anxiety and anger, sometimes incoherent, sometimes lucid. He was in the front passenger seat next to BG, almost shoulder to shoulder with the big man, although his own shoulder looked emaciated in comparison with BG’s bulge of meat and muscle. Invisible in the space behind them, Alexandra Grainger was going through hell.
BG drove in silence. His normally benign face was a grim mask, frozen under the sheen of sweat, as he concentrated, or pretended to concentrate, on the road ahead – the road that was no road at all. Only his eyes betrayed any stress.
‘They’d better not try to stop me,’ Grainger was saying. ‘They can’t keep me here. I don’t care how much it costs. What are they gonna do? Sue me? Kill me? I’ve got to go home. They can keep my salary. Four years for free. That makes us even, right? They’ve got to let me go. My dad is still alive. I know he is. I feel it.’
BG glanced up at the rear-view mirror. Maybe from his angle he could see more than Peter. All Peter could see was a narrow rectangle of black upholstery which, through the distorted veil of the air currents trapped in the cabin, appeared to be pulsing and throbbing.
‘Four years as a pharmacist,’ Grainger ranted on, ‘handing out drugs to those creepy little freaks: what’s that worth, BG? Worth a ride on a ship?’
BG grimaced. Crises of confidence were not what he was accustomed to dealing with. ‘Chill out, Grainger, is my advice to you,’ he said pensively. ‘The cost ain’t an issue. I been back, Severin went back a couple times, a few other guys took a break too. Nobody slapped them with a bill. If you need to go, you need to go. No big deal.’
‘You really think so?’ Her voice was tremulous, the voice of a farm girl from Illinois who was deeply ashamed to waste millions of dollars of someone else’s money to indulge her own pain.
‘Money don’t mean shit,’ said BG. ‘We play this little game: ten bucks for a bar of chocolate, fifty bucks for a bottle of Pepsi, deducted from your salary, blah blah blah. It’s just a Friday-night card game, Grainger, it’s Monopoly, it’s Go Fish, it’s kids gambling for peanuts. The salary’s a game too. Where we gonna spend this cash? We ain’t goin’ nowhere.’
‘But you did go home,’ said Grainger. ‘Not that long ago. Why?’
BG’s mouth set hard. He clearly didn’t want to discuss it. ‘Unfinished business.’
‘Family?’
BG shook his head. ‘Call it . . . loose ends. A guy in my line of work needs his mind clear. So I did some stuff and cleared it. Came back to the job a new man.’
This silenced Grainger for a few seconds. Then she was anxious again. ‘But that’s it, that’s the whole point – you came back, you didn’t quit. I’ve got to quit, you understand? I’ve got to leave and never come back. No way, never.’
BG jutted out his chin. ‘Never say never, Grainger. Never say never. That’s in the Bible somewhere, ain’t that right, Peter?’
‘I’m not sure,’ Peter mumbled. He knew perfectly well that the Bible said nothing of the sort.
‘It’s gotta be right there in Chapter One,’ affirmed BG. ‘God’s advice to Moses and the whole crew: Seize the day! Get on top of it, people!’
Peter watched BG’s right hand rise up from the steering wheel and form a triumphal fist in the air. Long ago, in a previous life, BG had no doubt stood among other dark-skinned creatures in his Nation of Islam brotherhood, all raising their fists likewise. Now, their slogans had mingled in BG’s mind with a thousand windblown leaves from the Qur’an, the Bible, assorted self-help books, magazines and TV programmes, combining into a mulch. A mulch from which his self-esteem grew healthy and strong.
The Bible stored inside Peter was pure and unadulterated, not a word of it confused with anything else. And yet, for the first time, he was ashamed of it. The holy book he’d spent so much of his life preaching from had one cruel flaw: it was not very good at offering encouragement or hope to those who weren’t religious. With God, nothing shall be impossible, proclaimed Luke, and that message, which Peter had always thought was the most joyously positive reassurance you could wish for, now turned itself over like a dying insect, and became Without God, everything shall be impossible. What use was that to Grainger? What use was that to Bea? The way things had turned out, they might need to manage without a saviour; they might need to forage and scrabble for whatever future they could get on their own. And the thing about the Bible was, once you asked for a future without faith, the Scriptures washed their hands of you. Vanity,
all is vanity.
‘What was it like, BG?’ said Grainger. ‘Come on, tell me, what’s happening back home?’
‘This is my home now,’ BG cautioned her, tapping his chest with his fingers. Maybe, rather than referring to Oasis, the home he meant was his own body, wherever in space it might be located.
‘OK, fine, fine,’ said Grainger, barely controlling her annoyance, ‘but tell me anyway, damn it. It’s been so long since I left. There must have been big changes. Don’t spare me, BG, skip the pep talks, give it to me straight. What’s it like?’
BG hesitated, weighing up the wisdom of responding. ‘Same as always,’ he said.
‘That’s not true!’ yelled Grainger, instantly hysterical. ‘Don’t lie to me! Don’t patronise me! I know everything’s falling apart!’
Why not ask me? Peter thought. She was treating him as if he didn’t exist.
‘Everything’s always been falling apart,’ BG stated calmly. There was no defensiveness in his tone: the facts were too self-evident for dispute. ‘Planet Earth got fucked up a loooong time ago, excuse my French.’
‘That’s not what I mean,’ whined Grainger. ‘I mean . . . What about your old neighbourhood, where you grew up, your relatives, your house . . . ’
BG squinted through the windscreen at the expanses of nothingness, then glanced down at the navigation gadget on his dashboard.
‘Grainger, I got another wise old saying for you. Listen up: You can’t go home again.’
Thomas Wolfe, circa 1940, thought Peter helplessly.
‘Yeah? Well, just watch me,’ said Grainger, belligerent in her fear. ‘Just fucking watch me.’
BG was silent, obviously judging that Grainger was on too delicate a hair-trigger for more discussion. But the silence provoked her just as much. ‘You know what you are?’ she wheezed, her voice ugly as if soaked in alcohol. ‘You’re just a little boy. Running away from home. Big tough guy, but you can’t face reality. All you can do is pretend it’s not happening.’
BG blinked slowly. He did not lose his temper. He had no temper left to lose. That was his tragedy, and his mark of dignity too.
‘I faced all the reality I got to face, Grainger,’ he said, without raising his voice. ‘You don’t know what I’ve done and what I have not done; you don’t know where I came from and why I left; you don’t know who I’ve hurt and who’s hurt me; you ain’t seen my scorecard and I ain’t gonna show it to you. You want a juicy fact about my daddy? He died when he was the exact age I am now. A blood vessel in his heart got blocked up: bye-bye Billy Graham Senior. And all you need to know about me is, if I inherited that same blood vessel, and I die next week, well . . . I’m OK with it.’ BG changed gear, slowed the vehicle down. They were approaching the base. ‘In the meantime, Grainger, whenever you need a ride out of the desert, I’m your man.’
She was quiet after that. The vehicle’s wheels made the transition from earth to tarmac, giving the illusion of airborne cruising. BG parked in the shadow of the compound, right in front of the entrance nearest Grainger’s quarters, then scooted round and opened the car door for her: a perfect gentleman.
‘Thank you,’ she said. She had not acknowledged Peter’s presence for the duration of the drive. Peter twisted round in his seat to catch a glimpse of her as she was manoeuvring her stiff, weary body out of the car. BG’s arm was offered like a metal rung; she took hold of it and pulled herself up. The door slammed shut, and Peter continued to watch through the fogged window: two white-clad USIC personnel shimmering in and out of recognisability like degraded video images. He wondered if they would walk into the building side by side, arm in arm, but as soon as Grainger was on her feet, she broke free and was gone.
‘I figure it’s the lightning,’ said BG when he returned to the car. ‘Can’t be good for a person, being whammoed like that. Give her time, she’ll get over it.’
Peter nodded. He was unsure if he would get over it himself.
It was Dr Adkins who found Peter outside the intensive care unit, on his knees. ‘Found’ was the wrong word, perhaps: he almost tripped over him. Unfazed, the surgeon looked down at Peter’s body, assessing in a couple of seconds whether any part of it was in urgent need of medical intervention.
‘You OK?’ he said.
‘I’m trying to pray,’ said Peter.
‘Oh . . . OK,’ said Adkins, glancing over Peter’s shoulder to a place further down the corridor, as if to say, Could you try it somewhere where people won’t break their neck over you?
‘I’ve come to see Jesus Lover Five,’ said Peter, hauling himself off the floor. ‘You know about her?’
‘Of course. She’s my patient.’ The doctor smiled. ‘It’s nice to have a real patient for a change. Instead of a five-minute whambam-thank-you-ma’am with someone who’s got conjunctivitis or hit their thumb with a hammer.’
Peter stared into the doctor’s face, searching for evidence of empathy. ‘I got the impression Dr Austin didn’t really understand what’s happening to Lover Five. I got the impression he’s assuming you can make her better.’
‘We’ll do what we can,’ said Adkins inscrutably.
‘She’s going to die,’ said Peter.
‘Let’s not go there yet.’
Peter clenched one hand inside the other, and found that his strenuous attempts to pray had bruised the tender flesh between his knuckles. ‘These people don’t heal, you understand that?’ he said. ‘They can’t heal. Our bodies . . . your body, my body . . . we’re living inside a miracle. Forget religion, we’re a miracle of nature. We can hit our thumb with a hammer, we can tear a hole in our skin, we can get burnt, broken, swollen up with pus, and a little while later, it’s all fixed! Good as new! Unbelievable! Impossible! But true. That’s the gift we’re given. But the สีฐฉั – the Oasans – they never received this amazing gift. They get one chance . . . just one chance . . . the body they’re born with. They do their best to take care of it, but when it gets damaged, that’s . . . that’s it.’
Dr Adkins nodded. He was a kindly man, and not unintelligent. He laid a palm on Peter’s shoulder.
‘Let’s take it day by day with this . . . lady. She’ll lose her hand. That’s obvious. Beyond that . . . We’ll try our best to figure something out.’
Peter’s eyes stung with tears. He wanted so much to believe.
‘Listen,’ said Adkins, ‘remember when I was patching you up, I told you that medicine is just carpentry, plumbing and sewing. Which doesn’t apply in this lady’s case, I appreciate that. But I forgot to mention: there’s chemistry too. These people take pain-killers, they take cortisone, they take lots of other medicines from us. They wouldn’t take them, year after year, if nothing had any effect.’
Peter nodded, or tried to; it was more of a facial tremor, a shiver of the chin. The cynicism he’d thought he’d banished for ever was coursing through his system. Placebo, all is placebo. Swallow the pills and feel invigorated while the cells die inside you. Hallelujah, I can walk on these septic feet, the pain is gone, barely there, quite bearable, praise the Lord.
Adkins looked down at the palm that he’d laid on Peter’s shoulder a minute ago, briefly appraised that palm as if there was a vial of magic serum nestling in it. ‘This . . . Lover Five of yours: she’s our way in. We never had one of these people to study before. We’ll learn a lot and we’ll learn fast. Who knows, we may be able to save her. Or if we can’t save her, we may be able to save her children.’ He paused. ‘They do have children, don’t they?’
Peter’s mind re-played the vision of the calf-like newborn, the cheering crowd, the dressing ceremony, the eerie beauty of little สคฉ้รี่, clumsily dancing on his inaugural day of life, waving his tiny gloved hands.
‘Yes, they do,’ he said.
‘Well, there you go,’ said Adkins.
Lover Five, confined to bed in her brightly lit chamber of care, looked just as small and alone as before. If only there could have been a USIC worker laid up wit
h a broken leg in one of the other beds, or a few healthy สีฐฉั sitting nearby, conversing with her in their native tongue, it would have been less awful. Awful for who, though? Peter knew it was for his own sake as well as for hers that he yearned for the pathos to be less sharp. In his career as a minister, he’d visited many hospital wards, but never, until now, to confront a person whose impending death he felt responsible for.
‘God bleสี our reunion, Father Peรี่er,’ she said as he walked in. Since he’d last seen her, she’d gotten hold of a USIC bathtowel and deftly folded it around her head as an improvised hood. It lent her a more feminine appearance, like a hijab or a wig. She’d tucked the loose ends under the neckline of her hospital gown, and pulled the blankets up to her armpits. Her left hand was still naked; her right was snugly bound in its cotton sheath.
‘Lover Five, I’m so, so sorry,’ he said, his voice already cracking.
‘สีorry noรี่ neสีeสีary,’ she reassured him. The absolution cost her an absurd amount of effort to pronounce. Insult to injury.
‘The painting that fell on your hand . . . ’ he said, lowering himself onto the edge of the bed near the meagre hump of her knees. ‘If I hadn’t asked for . . . ’
With her free hand she did a surprising thing, a thing he’d never have imagined anyone of her kind doing: she silenced him by laying her fingers against his lips. It was the first time he had been touched by the naked flesh of an สีฐฉั, unmediated by the soft fabric of gloves. Her fingertips were smooth and warm and smelled like fruit.
‘Nothing fall if God have no plan for the falling.’
Gently he enclosed her hand in his. ‘I shouldn’t say this,’ he said, ‘but out of all your people . . . you’re the one I care about the most.’
‘I know,’ she said, with barely a heartbeat’s hesitation. ‘Buรี่ God have no favouriสีรี่. God care for all alike.’
Her constant allusions to God poked a spear into his soul. He had big confessions to make, confessions about his faith, confessions about what he intended to do next. ‘Lover Five . . . ’ he began. ‘I . . . I don’t want to lie to you. I . . . ’