‘We’re not in the world now,’ said Severin with a lugubrious grin. He cracked open a can of Coke and a frothing jet of brown liquid sprayed up towards the ceiling.
‘Jee-sus,’ exclaimed Tuska, falling half off his chair. BG just chuckled.
‘I’ll take care of it, I’ll take care of it,’ said Severin, snatching a handful of paper towels from a dispenser. Peter helped him mop the sticky liquid from the tabletop.
‘I do that every goddamn time,’ muttered Severin, dabbing at his chest, his forearm, the chairs, the coolbox from which the Cokes had come. He bent down to dab at the floor, whose carpet was fortuitously already brown.
‘How many times have you made this trip?’ asked Peter.
‘Three. Swore I wouldn’t go back each time.’
‘Why?’
‘Oasis drives people crazy.’
BG grunted. ‘You’re crazy already, bro.’
‘Mr Severin and Mr Graham are both seriously unbalanced individuals, Pete,’ said Tuska, magistrate-solemn. ‘I’ve known ’em for years. Oasis is the most suitable place for guys like them. Keeps ’em off the streets.’ He tossed his empty noodle tub into a garbage bin. ‘Also, they’re extremely good at what they do. The best. That’s why USIC keeps spending the money on ’em.’
‘What about you, bro?’ BG asked Peter. ‘Are you the best?’
‘The best what?’
‘The best preacher.’
‘I don’t really think of myself as a preacher.’
‘What do you think of yourself as, bro?’
Peter swallowed hard, stumped. His brain was still residually affected by the same violent forces that had shaken up the cans of Coke. He wished Beatrice was here with him, to parry the questions, change the nature of this all-male atmosphere, deflect the conversation onto more fruitful paths.
‘I’m just someone who loves people and wants to help them, whatever shape they’re in.’
Another big grin spread across BG’s massive face, as though he was about to unleash another wisecrack. Then he abruptly turned serious. ‘You really mean that? No shit?’
Peter stared him straight in the eyes. ‘No shit.’
BG nodded. Peter sensed that in the big man’s consideration, he had passed some sort of test. Reclassified. Not exactly ‘one of the boys’, but no longer an exotic animal that might be a major annoyance.
‘Hey, Severin!’ BG called. ‘I never asked you: what religion are you, man?’
‘Me? I’m nothing,’ said Severin. ‘And that’s the way it’s staying.’
Severin had finished the Coca-Cola clean-up and was wiping blue detergent gel off his fingers with paper towels.
‘Fingers are still sticky,’ he complained. ‘I’m gonna be driven crazy until I get soap and water.’
The computer cabinet started beeping gently.
‘Looks like your prayer has been answered, Severin,’ remarked Tuska, turning his attention to one of the monitors. ‘The system has just figured out where we are.’
All four men were silent as Tuska scrolled through the details. It was as though they were giving him the opportunity to check for emails or bid in an internet auction. He was, in fact, ascertaining whether they would live or die. The ship had not yet begun the piloted phase of its journey; it had merely been catapulted through time and space by the physics-defying technology of the Jump. Now they were spinning aimlessly, somewhere in the general vicinity of where they needed to be, a ship in the shape of a swollen tick: big belly of fuel, tiny head. And inside that head, four men were breathing from a limited supply of nitrogen, oxygen and argon. They were breathing faster than necessary. Unspoken, but hanging in the filtered air, was the fear that the Jump might have slung them too far wide of the mark, and that there might be insufficient fuel for the final part of the journey. A margin for error that was almost unmeasurably small at the beginning of the Jump could have grown into a fatal enormity at the other end.
Tuska studied the numbers, tickled the keyboard with nimble stubby fingers, scrolled through geometrical designs that were, in fact, maps of the unmappable.
‘Good news, people,’ he said at last. ‘Looks like practice makes perfect.’
‘Meaning?’ said Severin.
‘Meaning we should send a prayer of thanks to the tech-heads in Florida.’
‘Meaning what, exactly, for us, here?’
‘Meaning that when we divide the fuel over the distance we’ve got to travel, we’ve got lots of juice. We can use it up like it’s beer at a frat party.’
‘Meaning how many days, Tuska?’
‘Days?’ Tuska paused for effect. ‘Twenty-eight hours, tops.’
BG leapt to his feet and punched the air. ‘Whooo-hoo!’
From this moment onwards, the atmosphere in the control room was triumphal, slightly hysterical. BG paced around restlessly, pumping his arms, doing the locomotion. Severin grinned, revealing teeth discoloured by nicotine, and drummed on his knees to a tune only he could hear. To simulate the cymbal-clashes, he flicked his fist periodically into empty air and winced as though buffeted by joyful noise. Tuska went off to change his clothes — maybe because he’d got a noodle stain on his sweater, or maybe because he felt his imminent piloting duties warranted a ceremonial gesture. Freshly decked out in a crisp white shirt and grey trousers, he took his seat at the keyboard on which their trajectory to Oasis would be typed.
‘Just do it, Tuska,’ said Severin. ‘What do you want, a brass band? Cheerleaders?’
Tuska blew a kiss, then made a decisive keystroke. ‘Gentlemen and crew sluts,’ he declared, in a mockingly oratorical tone. ‘Welcome onboard the USIC shuttle service to Oasis. Please give your full attention to the safety demonstration even if you are a frequent flyer. The seatbelt is fastened and unfastened as shown. No seatbelt on your seat? Hey, live with it.’
He jabbed another key. The floor began to vibrate.
‘In the event of a loss of cabin pressure, oxygen will be provided. It will be pumped straight into the mouth of the pilot. The rest of you just hold your breath and sit tight.’ (Laughter from BG and Severin.) ‘In the event of a collision, low-level lighting will guide you to an exit, where you will be sucked instantly to your death. Please remember that the nearest usable planet may be three billion miles behind you.’
He jabbed another key. A graph on the computer screen began to rise and fall like waves. ‘This craft is equipped with one emergency escape pod: one at the front, none in the middle and none at the rear. There’s room for the pilot and five really hot chicks.’ (Guffaws from BG; snickering from Severin.) ‘Take your high heels off, girls, before using the escape pod. Hell, take it all off. Blow on my tube if it fails to inflate. There is a light and a whistle for attracting attention, but don’t worry, I’ll get around to all of you in turn. Please consult the instruction card which shows you the position you must adopt if you hear the command “Suck, suck”. We recommend you keep your head down at all times.’
He made one more keystroke, then held a fist up in the air. ‘We appreciate that you had no choice of airlines today, and so we would like to thank you for choosing USIC.’
Severin and BG applauded and whooped. Peter put his hands together shyly, but made no noise with them. He hoped he could stand by unobtrusively, part of the gathering but not subject to scrutiny. It was, he knew, not a very impressive start to his mission to win the hearts and souls of an entire population. But he hoped he could be forgiven. He was far from home, his head ached and buzzed, the beef noodles sat in his stomach like a stone, he kept hallucinating that his body parts had been disassembled and put back together slightly wrong, and all he wanted to do was crawl into bed with Beatrice and Joshua and go to sleep. The grand adventure could surely wait.