There’s a well-appointed bathroom here and I’ve just had a shower. The water is green! Safe to drink, apparently. Wonderful to have a proper wash at last, even though I still smell odd (I’m sure you’d laugh to see me sitting here, sniffing my own armpits with a frown on my face) and my urine is a weird colour.
Well, that’s not the note I wanted to end on, but I can’t think of anything else to say right now. I just need to hear from you. Are you there? Please speak!
Love,
Peter
Having sent this missive, Peter loitered around his quarters, at a loss for what to do next. The USIC representative who’d escorted him off the ship had made all the correct noises about being available for him if he needed anything. But she hadn’t specified how this availability would work. Had she even divulged her name? Peter couldn’t recall. There certainly wasn’t any note left lying on the table, to welcome him, give him a few pointers and tell him how to get in touch. There was a red button on the wall labelled EMERGENCY, but no button labelled BEWILDERMENT. He spent quite a while searching for the key to his quarters, mindful that it might not look like a conventional key but might be a plastic card of the sort issued by hotels. He found nothing that even vaguely resembled a key. Eventually, he opened his door and examined the lock, or rather the place where a lock would be if there’d been one. There was only an old-fashioned swivel handle, as though Peter’s quarters were a bedroom within an unusually large home. In my father’s house are many mansions. USIC evidently wasn’t concerned about security or privacy. OK, maybe its personnel had nothing to steal and nothing to hide, but even so… Odd. Peter looked up and down the corridor; it was vacant and his was the only door in view.
Back inside, he opened the fridge, verified that the empty ice cube tray was the only thing in it. An apple wouldn’t have been too much to expect, would it? Or perhaps it would. He kept forgetting how far from home he was.
It was time to go out and face that.
He got dressed in the clothes he’d worn yesterday — underpants, jeans, flannel shirt, denim jacket, socks, lace-up shoes. He combed his hair, had another drink of greenish water. His empty stomach gurgled and grunted, having processed and eliminated the noodles he’d eaten on the ship. He strode to the door; hesitated, sank to his knees, bowed his head in prayer. He had not yet thanked God for delivering him safely to his destination; he thanked Him now. He thanked Him for some other things, too, but then got the distinct feeling that Jesus was standing at his back, prodding him, good-humouredly accusing him of stalling. So he sprang to his feet and left at once.
The USIC mess hall was humming, not with human activity, but with recorded music. It was a large room, one wall of which consisted almost wholly of glass, and the music hung around it like a fog, piped from vents in the ceiling. Apart from a vague impression of watery glitter on the window, the rain outside was felt rather than seen; it added a sense of cosy, muffled enclosure to the hall.
‘I stopped to see a weeping willow
Crying on his pillow
Maybe he’s crying for me… ’ sang a ghostly female voice, seemingly channelled through miles of subterranean tunnels to emerge at last from an accidental aperture.
‘And as the skies turn gloomy,
Night blooms whisper to me,
I’m lonesome as I can be… ’
There were four USIC employees in the mess hall, all of them young men unknown to Peter. One, an overweight, crewcut Chinese, dozed in an armchair next to a well-stocked magazine rack, his face slumped on a fist. One was working at the coffee bar, his tall spindly body draped in an oversize T-shirt. He was intently fiddling with a touch-sensitive screen balanced on the counter, poking at it with a metal pencil. He chewed at his swollen lips with large white teeth. His hair was heavy with some sort of gelatinous haircare product. He looked Slavic. The other two men were black. They were seated at one of the tables, studying a book together. It was too large and slim to be a Bible; more likely a technical manual. At their elbows were large mugs of coffee and a couple of dessert plates, bare except for crumbs. Peter could smell no food in the room.
‘I go out walking after midnight,
Out in the starlight.
Just hoping you may be… ’
The three awake men noted his arrival with a nod of low-key welcome but did not otherwise interrupt what they were doing. The snoozing Asian and the two men with the book were all dressed the same: loose Middle Eastern-style shirt, loose cotton trousers, no socks, and chunky sports shoes. Islamic basketball players.
‘Hi, I’m Peter,’ said Peter, fronting up to the counter. ‘I’m new here. I’d love something to eat, if you’ve got it.’
The Slavic-looking young man shook his prognathous face slowly to and fro.
‘Too late, bro.’
‘Too late?’
‘Twenty-four-hourly stock appraisal, bro. Began an hour ago.’
‘I was told by the USIC people that food is provided whenever we need it.’
‘Correct, bro. You just gotta make sure you don’t need it at the wrong time.’
Peter digested this. The female voice on the PA system had come to the end of her song. A male announcement followed, sonorous and theatrically intimate.
‘You’re listening to Night Blooms, a documentary chronicle of Patsy Cline’s performances of ‘Walkin’ After Midnight’ from 1957 right through to the posthumous duets in 1999. Well, listeners, did you do what I asked? Did you hold in your memory the girlish shyness that radiated from Patsy’s voice in the version she performed for her debut on Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts? What a difference eleven months makes! The second version you’ve just heard was recorded on December 14, 1957, for the Grand Ole Opry. By then, she clearly had more of an inkling of the song’s uncanny power. But the aura of wisdom and unbearable sadness that you’ll hear in the next version owes something to personal tragedy, too. On June 14, 1961, Patsy was almost killed in a head-on car collision. Incredibly, only a few days after she left hospital, we find her performing ‘After Midnight’ at the Cimarron Ballroom in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Listen, people, listen closely, and you will hear the pain of that terrible auto accident, the grief she must have felt at the deep scars on her forehead, which never healed… ’
The ghostly female voice wafted across the ceiling once more.
‘I go out walking after midnight,
Out in the moonlight just like we used to do.
I’m always walking after midnight,
Searching for you… ’
‘When is the next food delivery?’ asked Peter.
‘Food’s already here, bro,’ said the Slavic man, patting the counter. ‘Released for consumption in six hours and… twenty-seven minutes.’
‘I’m sorry, I’m new here; I didn’t know about this system. And I really am very hungry. Couldn’t you… uh… release something early, and just mark it as having been served in six hours from now?’
The Slav narrowed his eyes.
‘That would be… committing an untruth, bro.’
Peter smiled and hung his head in defeat. Patsy Cline sang ‘Well, that’s just my way of saying I love you… ’ as he walked away from the counter and sat down in one of the armchairs near the magazine rack, directly behind the sleeping man.