‘I hope there is,’ he answered Flores, a little too late. He was pretty sure the word ‘luck’ appeared nowhere in the Bible, but that didn’t mean there was no such thing. Grainger had called him a lucky guy. And, with Bea at his side, for the best part of his life, he truly had been.
When he got back to his quarters, there was, finally, a message from Bea.
It said,
Peter, I love you. But please, don’t come home. I beg you. Stay where you are.
28. Amen
‘What I like about this place,’ said Moro, making brisk progress on her treadmill, ‘is that every day there’s something a little bit different, but also it’s the same.’
She, BG and Peter were exercising in the gazebo. It was just another day on Oasis, another scheduled break in the task at hand, a few hours of R&R before work resumed on the great project. The canopy was shading them from the sun, but the light was so intense at this stage of the afternoon that it penetrated the canvas, casting a yellow tinge over their flesh.
Moro had worked up a big sweat already; the fabric of her shalwar was sculpted to her thighs as she paced, and her bare midriff glistened. She had announced three hundred steps as her goal and must be about halfway through by now, never letting the rhythm slacken. She swivelled her wrists on the treadmill’s handle-bars, as if revving the throttle grip of a motorcycle.
‘You should try it with just your legs, no holding on,’ advised BG, resting between bouts of press-ups. ‘Better for your quads, your tibs, everything.’
‘I see it as exercise for my hands, too,’ said Moro. ‘People who lose a finger often let the hand get sloppy. I made a decision: not me.’
Peter was lifting a sandbag on a pulley, or trying to. His arms had become quite strong and wiry from working in the whiteflower fields, but the muscles he’d toughened must be a different set from the ones he was straining now.
‘Don’t bust a gut on the lifting,’ advised BG. ‘The lowering’s just as good. Do it slow. Slow as you can.’
‘It’s still too heavy for me, I think,’ said Peter. ‘What’s the bag filled with? Not sand, surely?’ He couldn’t imagine USIC approving the shipment of a sack of sand when, for the same cost-weight ratio, they could transport a sack of sugar or a person.
‘Earth,’ said BG, gesturing at the bare acres around the exercise yard. He removed his singlet and wrung it out in his fists. An arc of puckered scars came to life near his left armpit, marring the smooth swell of his pectoral. He put his singlet back on.
‘I don’t suppose we could let some of the soil out?’ said Peter.
‘I don’t suppose so, bro,’ said BG. His facial expression was unsmilingly serious, but he was amused. Human beings could be read quite easily once you got to know them a bit. It was all in the tone, the cadences, the twinkle in the eyes, so many subtle factors that defied scientific description but which you could, if you wished, build a lifelong friendship on.
Peter tried to lift the sandbag again. This time, he barely raised it above knee-level before his biceps began to hurt.
‘Part of your problem there,’ said BG, coming over, ‘is you need more of a balanced approach.’ He unhooked the sandbag from the pulley, hoisted it without much effort to his chest, then cradled it in one arm. ‘Most important muscle is your brain. You gotta plan what you’re gonna do, warm up to it. Find an exercise that pushes you to the limit but not beyond it. With this sandbag, I suggest a straight carry.’
‘Sorry?’
BG stood close to Peter, transferred the sack from his own arms into Peter’s, carefully as if it was a sleeping baby.
‘Just hug it to your chest,’ he said. ‘Wrap your arms around it and walk. From one end of the gazebo to the other, and again, and again, as many times as you can until you can’t do it no more. Then lower it to the ground nice and easy.’
Peter did as he was told. BG watched. So did Moro, who had finished her three hundred steps and was drinking from a bottle of pale green liquid, possibly rainwater, possibly a small fortune’s-worth of carbonated soft drink from a faraway multinational corporation. Peter hurried past them with the sack in his arms, back and forth, back and forth. He performed reasonably well with the carrying part, but when he reached his limit, the lowering part was clumsy.
‘I need more practice,’ he said, panting.
‘Well,’ sighed BG, ‘you ain’t gonna get it, are you?’ It was the first time he’d alluded to Peter’s imminent departure.
‘I might,’ said Peter, sitting down on a low wooden pedestal whose purpose he couldn’t guess. ‘Nothing to stop me carrying a sandbag when I’m back home. Actually, I might have to, if there’s a flood. There’s been a lot of flooding lately.’
‘They need to put more thought into their sorry-ass water management systems,’ BG remarked.
Moro stood up and smoothed her clothing. Her exercise break was over and duty called. ‘Maybe you should do what you have to and then come straight back,’ she said.
‘Not without my wife,’ said Peter.
‘Well, maybe she can come too.’
‘USIC decided she couldn’t, apparently.’
Moro shrugged, and a flash of defiance animated her normally passionless face. ‘USIC schmusic. What’s USIC anyway? We’re USIC. Us, here. Maybe it’s time the eligibility tests got loosened up a little.’
‘Yeah, they’re tough,’ agreed BG, in a wistful tone, half-proud of himself for having made the grade, half-rueful for all the potential brothers and sisters who hadn’t made it. ‘Eye of a goddamn needle. That’s in the Bible, ain’t it?’
Almost as a reflex, Peter girded himself to craft a diplomatic answer, then realised he didn’t have to. ‘Yes, BG, it is. Matthew, chapter 19, verse 24.’
‘I’ll remember that,’ said BG, then grinned broadly, to signal that he knew very well he wouldn’t.
‘Husband and wife team,’ said Moro, stowing the bottle in her tote bag. ‘I think that would be kind of romantic.’ She spoke in a wistful tone, as though romance was something exotic and strange that might be observed in a tribe of monkeys or snow geese, not in anyone she’d ever known.
Peter closed his eyes. Bea’s final message, and his reply, were imprinted there, as clear as any verse of Scripture:
Peter, I love you, she’d written. But please, don’t come home. I beg you. Stay where you are. It’s safer and I want you safe.
This is the last message I’ll be able to send you, I’m not going to be able to stay in this house. I will be living with other people, strangers. I don’t know where exactly. We’ll be moving around. I can’t explain, just take it from me that it’s best. Nothing here is as it was when you left. Things can change so fast. It’s irresponsible for me to bring a baby into this rotten world but the alternative is killing it and I just don’t have the courage to do that. I expect things will end badly anyway, and it will be much kinder on you not to be here to see it. If you love me, don’t make me watch you suffer.
It’s funny, all those years ago when we first met, people warned me what a hardened, devious exploiter you were, always manipulating people to fall for you, but I know you’re just an innocent little kid at heart. This planet’s too cruel for you now. I’ll take comfort from thinking of you in a safe place, with some chance of a happy life.
Beatrice
To which he had replied, without pause for doubt or deliberation, just this:
Safe or unsafe, happy or unhappy, my place is by your side. Don’t give up. I will find you.
‘You take care of yourself, OK?’ said BG. ‘You’re goin’ to a baaaaad place. Stay strong. Keep focused. You promise me that?’