He’d experienced moments like this before, on the planet that was supposed to be his home. Sleepless and wandering the streets of shabby British towns at two, three in the morning, he would find himself at a bus shelter in Stockport, a woebegone shopping mall in Reading, or the empty husks of Camden market in the hours before dawn — and it was at those times, in those places, that he was struck by a vision of human insignificance in all its unbearable pathos. People and their dwellings were such a thin dust on the surface of the globe, like invisible specks of bacteria on an orange, and the feeble lights of kebab shops and supermarkets failed utterly to register on the infinities of space above. If it weren’t for God, the almighty vacuum would be too crushing to endure, but once God was with you, it was a different story.
Peter turned again and kept walking. His vague hope was that if he walked far enough, the featureless tarmac of the airport environs would finally come to an end, and he would step over into the landscape of Oasis, the real Oasis.
His denim jacket was growing heavy with moisture and his flannel shirt was swollen with perspiration. His jeans made a comical whooping noise as he walked, rough wet cotton rubbing against itself. The waistband was starting to chafe against his hips; a rivulet of sweat ran into the cleft of his arse. He stopped to hitch up his trousers and to wipe his face. He pressed his fingertips to his ears, to clear them of a sibilant undertone he’d been attributing to his sinuses. But the noise was not from within. The atmosphere was full of rustling. Worldless whispering, the sound of agitated leaves, except that there was no vegetation anywhere to be seen. It was as though the air currents, so similar to water currents, could not move silently, but must churn and hiss like ocean waves.
He was sure he’d adjust, in time. It would be like living near a railway line, or, indeed, near the ocean. After a while you wouldn’t hear it anymore.
He walked further, resisting an impulse to remove his clothes and toss them on the ground for retrieval on his return. The tarmac showed no sign of ending. What could USIC possibly want with all this blank bitumen? Maybe there were plans to extend the accommodation wings, or build squash courts, or a shopping mall. Oasis was tipped, in ‘the very near future’, to become a ‘thriving community’. By which USIC meant a thriving community of foreign settlers, of course. This world’s indigenous inhabitants, thriving or otherwise, were scarcely mentioned in USIC’s literature, except for fastidious assurances that nothing was planned or implemented without their full and informed consent. USIC was ‘in partnership’ with the citizens of Oasis — whoever they might be.
Peter was certainly very much looking forward to meeting them. They were, after all, the whole reason he had come.
From one of his jacket pockets, he extracted a compact camera. He’d been warned by the preparatory literature that it was ‘not practicable’ to use a camera on Oasis, but he’d brought one anyway. ‘Not practicable’ — what did that mean? Was it a veiled threat? Might his camera get impounded by authorities of some sort? Well, he would cross that bridge when he came to it. Right now, he wanted to take some pictures. For Bea. When he returned to her, any photo he’d bothered to snap would be worth a thousand words. He raised the gadget and captured the eerie tarmac, the lonely buildings, the glow of light from the cafeteria. He even tried to capture the aquamarine sky, but a quick inspection of the stored image confirmed it was a rectangle of pure black.
He pocketed the camera and walked on. How long had he been walking? His watch was not the illuminated digital kind; it was an old-fashioned one with hands, a gift from his father. He held it close to his face, trying to angle it so that it caught the light from the nearest lamp. But the nearest lamp was at least a hundred metres away.
Something glittered on his forearm, near the wristwatch band. Something alive. A mosquito? No, it was too big for that. A dragonfly, or some creature resembling a dragonfly. A tiny, trembling matchstick body shrouded in translucent wings. Peter wiggled his wrist, and the creature fell off. Or maybe it jumped, or flew, or got sucked into the swirling atmosphere. Whatever: it was gone.
He suddenly became aware that the whispering of the air was supplemented by a new noise, a mechanical whir, behind him. A vehicle cruised into view. It was steely-grey and bullet-shaped, with large wheels and thick vulcanised tyres designed for rough terrain. The driver was difficult to make out through the tinted windscreen, but was humanoid in shape. The car slowed and came to a halt right next to him, its metal flank only a few inches from where he stood. Its headlights pierced the darkness he’d been heading for, revealing a wire-mesh perimeter fence that he would have reached in another minute or two of walking.
‘Howdy.’
A female voice, with an American accent.
‘Hi,’ he replied.
‘Let me give you a ride back.’
It was the USIC woman who’d met him upon his arrival, the one who’d escorted him to his quarters and told him she was available if he needed anything. She opened the passenger door for him and waited, piano-playing her fingers on the steering wheel.
‘I’d been hoping to walk a little further, actually,’ said Peter. ‘Maybe meet some of the local… uh… people.’
‘We’ll do that after sunrise,’ the woman said. ‘The settlement is about fifty miles away. You’ll need a vehicle. Do you drive?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. Have you discussed requisition of a vehicle?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘You don’t think so?’
‘Uh… my wife handled most of the practicalities with USIC. I don’t know if they covered that.’
There was a pause, then a good-natured laugh. ‘Please get in, or the air conditioning will get all messed up.’
He swung into the car and closed the door. The air was dry and cool, and immediately made him aware that he was drenched to the skin. His feet, relieved of the weight of his body, made a sucking sound inside his socks.
The woman was dressed in a white smock, thin white cotton slacks and a taupe headscarf that hung loose over her chest. Her face was bare of makeup, and she had a puckered scar on her forehead, just under the hairline. Her hair, a lustreless brown, was very short and she might have passed for a young male soldier were it not for her soft dark eyebrows, tiny ears and pretty mouth.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Peter. ‘I’ve forgotten your name. I was very tired… ’
‘Grainger,’ she said.
‘Grainger,’ he said.
‘Christian names aren’t a big thing among USIC employees, in case you haven’t noticed.’
‘I’ve noticed.’
‘It’s a bit like the army. Except we don’t harm people.’
‘I should hope not.’
She revved the engine and steered the car back towards the airport complex. As she drove, she leaned forward, frowning in concentration, and even though the inside of the cabin was poorly lit, he spotted the tell-tale edges of contact lenses on her eyeballs. Beatrice was a contact lens wearer: that’s how he knew.
‘Did you come out specially to fetch me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you watching my every move? Keeping tabs on my every half-muffin?’
The allusion was lost on her. ‘I just dropped by the mess hall, and one of the guys said you’d gone out walking.’
‘Does that worry you?’ He kept his tone light and amiable.
‘You’ve just arrived,’ she said, not taking her eyes off the wind-screen. ‘We wouldn’t want you to come to harm on your first foray out of doors.’