‘You are alive,’ he said.
‘I hope so,’ Peter said, and regretted it at once: the สีฐฉั didn’t do flippancy, and the quip only made it harder for Lover One to adjust to Peter’s miraculous recovery from his mortal wounds.
‘All the otherสี believe you are dead,’ said Lover One. ‘I believe you are alive. I alone have faith.’
Peter struggled to think of the appropriate response to that. An affectionate embrace was out. ‘Thank you,’ he said.
Behind the bead curtains in the doorways of the buildings, shadowy figures had gathered. ‘สีฐฐ ฐณ,’ called a voice. Peter knew enough of the language to know that this meant ‘The task is still asleep.’ Or, to paraphrase: Get on with it.
Lover One roused himself from his trance and accepted his official role. He turned towards the vehicle in anticipation of greeting the USIC envoy, the scarf-wearing woman Grainger who abhorred him and all his kind.
Nurse Flores stepped out of the vehicle. As she approached the Oasan, it was evident that there was not much difference between them in size. By chance, their garments — her uniform, his robes — were almost the same colour.
Lover One was visibly thrown by these unexpected parities. He appraised Flores quite a few seconds longer than politeness allowed, but she stared right back.
‘You and I,’ said the Lover One. ‘Never before now.’ And he reached forward and touched her gently on the wrist with his gloved fingertips.
‘He means, Hi, I haven’t met you before,’ explained Peter.
‘Glad to meet you,’ said Flores. While that may have been an overstatement, she seemed quite free of Grainger’s unease.
‘You bring mediสีine?’ said Lover One.
‘Of course,’ said Flores, and went to the rear of the vehicle to fetch it. Several other Oasans ventured out from hiding, then several more. That was unusuaclass="underline" two or three had been the maximum in Peter’s experience.
Flores carried the box in her sinewy arms. It looked bigger and fuller than last time, perhaps because she was smaller than Grainger. Still, she wielded it without effort and handed it to one of the Oasans with smooth confidence.
‘To whom shall I address the explanations?’ she said.
‘I underสีรี่and more,’ said Jesus Lover One.
‘To you, then,’ said Flores, in a friendly but businesslike manner.
The box, as always, was crammed with a mixture of branded and unbranded medicines. Flores extracted each little plastic bottle, cardboard packet and tube, held it aloft like an auction hammer while describing its function, and slotted it back into place.
‘I’m not a pharmacist,’ she said. ‘But it’s all written on the labels and the leaflets anyway. The main thing is for you to tell us what’s working and not working. Pardon me saying so, but there’s been too much mystery here. Let’s take the mystery out of it, try more of a scientific approach. Think you can do that?’
Lover One was silent for a few seconds, just focusing on the creature standing head-to-head with him. ‘We are graรี่eful for mediสีine,’ he said at last.
‘That’s nice,’ said Flores flatly. ‘But listen: this here is a packet of Sumycin. It’s an antibiotic. If you get an infection in your water-works or your guts, it could fix you. But if you’ve taken a lot of Sumycin in the past, it might not work so well. You might be better taking this one here, Amoxicillin. These two packets of Amoxicillin are generics… ’
‘Name from where all other name come,’ said Jesus Lover One.
‘That’s right. Now, Amoxicillin is fine if you’ve never had it before, but if your body has become resistant to it, you’re better with this purple one here, Augmentin, which has some extra stuff in it to overcome that resistance.’ Flores put the Augmentin back in the box and scratched her nose with a simian finger. ‘Listen, we could stand here all day talking about the pros and cons of each and every antibiotic in this box. But what we really need is to match up specific drugs with specific problems. For example, take you. Are you sick?’
‘Thank God no,’ said Lover One.
‘Well, bring out someone who is sick and let’s talk.’
There was a pause. ‘We are graรี่eful for mediสีine,’ said Lover One. ‘We have food for you.’ The tone was neutral, and yet there was stubbornness, even threat in it.
‘Great, thanks, we’ll get around to that in a minute,’ said Flores, unswayed. ‘But first, can I meet someone who thinks they need antibiotics? As I said, I’m not a pharmacist. I’m not a doctor. I would just prefer to get a little better acquainted with you folks.’
As the two of them stood their ground, more Oasans ventured out from shelter. Peter realised that they must always have been there, in the past, whenever these handovers were done, but had lacked the courage to emerge into view. What was it about Flores? Her smell, perhaps? Peter turned to Tuska. Tuska winked.
‘Obey the mighty Flores,’ he said wryly. ‘Or else.’
Once it had become clear that the handover was going to take some time, Peter excused himself and began to walk across the tundra to his church. It was quite a windy day, and his dishdasha flapped around his ankles, but the breeze was useful in reducing the humidity, promoting the illusion of fresher oxygen. Inside his sandals his feet were already slippery with sweat. He looked down at them as he walked, and recalled the sensation of stepping into crisp snow with thick-soled boots on a raw January morning in Richmond Park with his newly divorced father smoking a cigarette nearby. No sooner had he glimpsed the image than it was gone.
Every now and then as he crossed the plain to the temple that he and his flock had built, he looked over his shoulder, in case Lover One was following. But Lover One was not following, and Peter’s view of the tiny figures near the USIC vehicle grew indistinct through the blur of interlapping air currents.
When he reached his church, he extended his palms and swung open the doors, expecting to find the place empty. But no. There were fifty or sixty brightly coloured souls gathered inside, already seated in the pews, as if by firm pre-arrangement. Not the full congregation, but a healthy turnout — especially considering they’d gathered to worship on their own, with no pastor. Quite a few of them had been working in the whiteflower fields on the day of his downfall, and had witnessed the piercing of his flesh, had watched the vermin’s teeth mutilate him so badly that there could be no hope of survival, even with the Technique of Jesus. Maybe this gathering was a memorial service for Father Peรี่er, and here he was, gatecrashing it.
A murmur of wonder passed through the crowd. Then a swell of communal elation charged the air, taking up palpable space, pushing against the walls, threatening to lift the ceiling. If he’d wanted to, he could have done anything with them at this moment, taken them anywhere. They were his.
‘God bleสี our reunion, Father Peรี่er,’ they exclaimed, first one-by-one, then as a chorus. Each voice aggravated the grief in his chest a little more. Their faith had been buoyed up to the heavens, and he had come to let them down.
The doors thudded shut behind him, their well-oiled motion aided by the wind. Plentiful light beamed through the windows, illuminating the hooded heads of the Jesus Lovers so that they glowed like candle-flames in a votive rack. As he walked between the pews, the surreal montage of paintings on the ceiling hung heavy over him. Lover Twelve’s bright pink Jesus walking hand in hand with a glistening grey Lazarus, Lover Fourteen’s blue and yellow Nativity, Lover Twenty’s Mary Magdalene spewing forth ectoplasmic devils, Lover Sixty-Three’s Thomas the Doubter… and, of course, Lover Five’s painting of the risen Christ and his women, secure in its place, fastened with extra care after the accident that had maimed her. The scarecrow in the loincloth, so different from the kindly mensch of Christian tradition, had suddenly become terrifying. The blaze of light where His head should be and the eye-shaped holes in His starfish hands, which Peter had once taken as evidence that God could not be confined to the iconography of one race, now struck him as proof of an unbreachable gulf.