As soon as his back sank into the upholstery he felt exhausted and he knew that if he didn’t get up again quite soon he would fall asleep. He leaned towards the magazines, taking a quick mental inventory of the selection. Cosmopolitan, Retro Gamer, Men’s Health, Your Dog, Vogue, Vintage Aircraft, Dirty Sperm Whores, House & Garden, Innate Immunity, Autosport, Science Digest, Super Food Ideas… Pretty much the full range. Well-thumbed and only slightly out of date.
‘Hey, preacher!’
He turned in his chair. The two black men sharing the table had shut their book, finished with it for the night. One of them was holding aloft a foil-wrapped object the size of a tennis ball, wiggling it demonstratively. As soon as he had Peter’s attention, he tossed the object across the room. Peter caught it easily, without even a hint of a fumble. He had always been an excellent catcher. The two black men raised a friendly fist each, congratulating him. He unwrapped the foil, found a hunk of blueberry muffin.
‘Thank you!’ His voice sounded strange in the acoustics of the mess hall, competing with the DJ, who had resumed his exegesis of Patsy Cline. By this stage of the narrative, Patsy had perished in a plane crash.
‘… personal belongings left behind after the sale of her home. The tape passed from hand to hand, unrecognised for the treasure it was, before finally ending up stored in the closet of a jeweller for several years. Imagine it, friends! Those divine sounds you just heard, dormant inside an unassuming reel of magnetic tape, locked up in a dark closet, perhaps never to see the light of day. But we can be eternally grateful that the jeweller eventually woke up and negotiated a deal with MCA Records… ’
The blueberry muffin was delicious; among the best things Peter had ever tasted. And how sweet it was, too, to know that he was in not altogether hostile territory.
‘Welcome to Heaven, preacher!’ called one his benefactors, and everyone except the sleeping Asian laughed.
Peter turned to face them, beamed them a smile. ‘Well, things are certainly looking up from what they were a few minutes ago.’
‘Onwards and upwards, preach! That’s the USIC motto, more or less.’
‘So,’ said Peter, ‘do you guys like it here?’
The black man who’d thrown the muffin went pensive, considering the question seriously. ‘It’s OK, man. As good as anywhere.’
‘Cool weather,’ his companion chipped in.
‘He means nice warm weather.’
‘Which is cool, man, is what I’m saying.’
‘You know, I haven’t even been outside yet,’ said Peter.
‘Oh, you should go,’ said the first man, as though acknowledging the possibility that Peter might prefer to spend his entire Oasis sojourn inside his quarters. ‘Check it out before the light comes up.’
Peter stood up. ‘I’d like that. Where’s… uh… the nearest door?’
The coffee bar attendant pointed a long, bony finger past an illuminated plastic sign that said ENJOY! in large letters and, underneath in smaller print, EAT AND DRINK RESPONSIBLY. REMEMBER THAT BOTTLED WATER, CARBONATED SOFT DRINKS, CAKES, CONFECTIONERY AND YELLOW-STICKERED ITEMS ARE NOT INCLUDED IN THE FOOD AND DRINK ALLOWANCE AND WILL BE DEDUCTED FROM YOUR EARNINGS.
‘Thanks for the tip,’ said Peter, as he was leaving. ‘And the food!’
‘Have a good one, bro.’
The last thing he heard was Patsy Cline’s voice, this time in a celebrity duet recorded, through the miracle of modern technology, decades after her death.
Peter stepped through the sliding door into the air of Oasis and, contrary to his apprehensions, he did not instantly die, get sucked into an airless vortex, or shrivel up like a scrap of fat on a griddle. Instead, he was enveloped in a moist, warm breeze, a swirling balm that felt like steam except that it didn’t make his throat catch. He strolled into the dark, his way unlit except by several distant lamps. In the dreary environs of the USIC airport, there was nothing much to see anyway, just acres of wet black bitumen, but he’d wanted to walk outside, and so here he was, walking, outside.
The sky was dark, dark aquamarine. Aquamareeeeeen, as BG might say. There were only a few dozen stars visible, far fewer than he was used to, but each one shone brightly, without any flicker, and with a pale green aura. There was no moon.
The rain had stopped now, but the atmosphere still seemed substantially composed of water. If he closed his eyes, he could almost imagine he’d waded into a warm swimming pool. The air lapped against his cheeks, tickled his ears, flowed over his lips and hands. It penetrated his clothing, breathing into the collar of his shirt and down his backbone, making his shoulderblades and chest dewy, making his shirtcuffs adhere to his wrists. The warmth — it was extreme warmth rather than heat — caused his skin to prickle with sweat, making him intimately aware of his armpit hair, the clefts of his groin, the shape of his toes inside their humid footwear.
He was dressed all wrong. Those USIC guys with their loose Arabic duds had it sussed, didn’t they? He would have to emulate them as soon as possible.
As he walked, he tried to sort out which unusual phenomena were occurring inside of him and which were external realities. His heart was beating a little faster than usual; he put that down to excitement. His gait was a little wonky, as though skewed by alcohol; he wondered if he was merely suffering the after-effects of the Jump, jetlag, and general exhaustion. His feet seemed to bounce slightly with every step, as though the bitumen was rubberised. He knelt and rapped on the ground with his knuckles. It was hard, unyielding. Whatever it was made of — presumably some combination of the local earth and imported chemicals — it had an asphalt-like consistency. He stood up, and the action of standing was perhaps easier than it should be. An ever-so-slight trampoline effect. But this was counterbalanced by the watery density of the air. He lifted his hand, pushed his palm forward into space, testing for resistance. There was none, and yet the air swirled around his wrist and up his forearm, tickling him. He didn’t know whether he liked it, or found it creepy. Atmosphere, in his experience, had always been an absence. The air here was a presence, a presence so palpable that he was tempted to believe he could let himself fall and the air would simply catch him like a pillow. It wouldn’t, of course. But as it nuzzled against his skin, it almost promised that it would.
He took a deep breath, concentrating on the texture of it as it went in. It felt and tasted no different from normal air. He knew from the USIC brochures that the composition was much the same mix of nitrogen and oxygen he’d been breathing all his life, with a bit less carbon dioxide and a bit more ozone and a few trace elements he might not have had before. The brochures hadn’t mentioned the water vapour, although Oasis’s climate had been described as ‘tropical’, so maybe that covered it.
Something tickled his left ear and, as a reflex, he brushed at it. Something squishy, like a wet cornflake or a rotting leaf, passed across his fingers but fell off before he could hold it up to his eyes and examine it. His fingers were streaked with a sticky fluid. Blood? No, not blood. Or if it was, it wasn’t his. It was green as spinach.
He turned around and looked at the building he’d emerged from. It was monumentally ugly, like all architecture not built by religious devotees or mad eccentrics. Its only redeeming feature was the transparency of the mess hall’s window, lit up like a video screen in the dark. Although he’d walked quite a long way, he could still recognise the coffee bar and the magazine rack, and even fancied he could make out the Asian man still slumped on one of the chairs. At this distance, these details looked like a neat assortment of items stored inside a coin-operated dispenser. A luminous little box, surrounded by a great sea of strange air; and above it, a trillion miles of darkness.