Werner looked pensive. ‘So they say.’
‘Not you?’
‘I was fostered. To a German military couple based in Chengdu. Then when I was fourteen they moved to Singapore.’ He paused; then, in case there might be doubt, he added: ‘With me.’
‘That must be a very unusual story for China.’
‘I couldn’t give you stats. But, yeah. Very unusual, I’m sure. Nice folks, too.’
‘How do they feel about you being here?’
‘They died,’ said Werner, with no change of expression. ‘Not long before I was selected.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
Werner nodded, to confirm agreement that his step-parents’ demise was, in the final analysis, a regrettable event. ‘They were good folks. Supportive. A lot of the guys here didn’t have that. I had that. Lucky.’
‘Are you in touch with anyone else back home?’
‘There’s a lot of folks I’d like to touch base with. Fine people.’
‘Any one special person?’
Werner shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t rate them one over the other. All unique, you know. Talented. Some of them, I really owe. Like, they helped me. Gave me pointers, introduced me to… opportunities.’ His eyes went glassy as he reconnected, momentarily, with a distant past.
‘When do you go back?’ said Peter.
‘Go back?’ Werner took a second or two to decode the question, as though Peter had voiced it in an impenetrably thick accent. ‘Nothing scheduled for the foreseeable. Some guys, like Severin for instance, have been back and forth, back and forth, every few years. I’m like, why? It takes you three, four years to hit your stride. Acclimatisation-wise, expertise-wise, focus-wise. It’s a big project. After a while you get to the point where you can see how everything joins up with everything else. How the work of an engineer ties in with the work of a plumber and an electrician and a cook and a… a horticulturalist.’ His pudgy hands cupped an invisible sphere, to indicate some sort of holistic concept.
Suddenly, Werner’s hands appeared to swell in size, each finger ballooning to the thickness of a baby’s arm. His face changed shape, too, sprouting multiple eyes and mouths that swarmed loose from the flesh and swirled around the room. Then something hit Peter smack on the forehead. It was the floor.
A few seconds or minutes later, strong hands hooked under his shoulders and heaved him onto his back.
‘Are you OK?’ said Stanko, strangely unfazed by the delirious see-sawing of the walls and ceiling all around him. Werner, whose face and hands were back to normal, was likewise unaware of any problem — except the problem of a sweat-soaked, foolishly overdressed missionary sprawled insensible on the floor. ‘Are you with us, bro?’
Peter blinked hard. The room turned slower. ‘I’m with you.’
‘You need to be in bed,’ said Stanko.
‘I think you’re right,’ said Peter. ‘But I… I don’t know where… ’
‘It’ll be in the directory,’ said Stanko, and went off to check.
Within sixty seconds, Peter was being carried out of the mess hall and into the dim blue corridor by Stanko and Werner. Neither man was as strong as BG so they made slow and lurching progress, pausing every few metres to adjust their grip. Stanko’s bony fingers dug into Peter’s armpits and shoulders, sure to leave bruises, while Werner had the easy job, the ankles.
‘I can walk, I can walk,’ said Peter, but he wasn’t sure if that was true and his two Samaritans ignored him anyway. In any case, his quarters weren’t far from the mess hall. Before he knew it, he was being laid down — or rather, dumped — on his bed.
‘Nice talking with you,’ said Werner, panting slightly. ‘Good luck with… whatever.’
‘Just close your eyes and relax, bro,’ advised Stanko, already halfway to the door. ‘Sleep it off.’
Sleep it off. These were words he’d heard many times before in his life. He had even heard them spoken by men who’d scooped him off a floor and carried him away — although usually to a dumping-place much less pleasant than a bed. On occasion, the guys who’d lugged him out of the nightclubs and other drinking-holes where he’d disgraced himself had given him a few kicks in the ribs before hoisting him up. Once, they’d tossed him into a back street and a delivery van had passed right over him, its tyres miraculously missing his head and limbs, just tearing off a hunk of his hair. That was in the days before he was ready to admit there was a higher power keeping him alive.
Uncanny how similar the after-effects of the Jump were to extremes of alcohol abuse. But worse. Like the mother of all hangovers combined with a dose of magic mushrooms. Neither BG nor Severin had mentioned hallucinations, but maybe these guys were simply more robust than him. Or maybe they were both fast asleep right now, quietly recuperating instead of making fools of themselves.
He waited for the room to become a geometric space of fixed angles anchored in gravity, and then he got up. He checked the Shoot for messages. Still no word from Bea. Perhaps he should have asked Grainger to come to his room to check his machine, make sure he was using it correctly. But it was night and she was a woman and he barely knew her. Nor would their relationship have got off to an auspicious start if he’d hallucinated that she was sprouting multiple eyes and mouths and then collapsed at her feet.
Besides, the Shoot was so simple to operate that he couldn’t imagine how anyone — even a technophobe like himself — might misunderstand it. The thing sent and received messages: that was all. It didn’t play movies, make noises, offer to sell him products, inform him about the plight of mistreated donkeys or the Brazilian rainforest. It didn’t offer him the opportunity to check the weather in southern England or the current number of Christians in China or the names and dates of dynasties. It just confirmed that his messages had been sent, and that there was no reply.
Abruptly he glimpsed — not on the matt grey screen of the Shoot, but in his own mind — a picture of tangled wreckage on an English motorway, at night, garishly lit by the headlights of emergency vehicles. Bea, dead, somewhere on the road between Heathrow and home. Loose pearls scattered across the asphalt, black slicks of blood. A month ago already. History. Such things could happen. One person embarks on an outrageously hazardous journey and arrives unscathed; another goes for a short, routine drive and gets killed. ‘God’s sick sense of humour,’ as one grieving parent (soon to leave the church) had once put it. For a few seconds, the nightmarish vision of Beatrice lying dead on the road was real to Peter, and a nauseous thrill of terror passed through his guts.
But no. He mustn’t let himself be deluded by imaginary horrors. God was never cruel. Life could be cruel, but not God. In a universe made dangerous by the gift of free will, God could be relied upon for support no matter what happened, and He appreciated the potentials and limitations of each of His children. Peter knew that if anything awful happened to Bea, there was no way he’d be able to function here. The mission would be over before it began. And if there was one thing that had become clear in all the months of thought and prayer leading up to his journey to Oasis, it was that God really wanted him here. He was safe in God’s hands, and so was Bea. She must be.
As for the Shoot, there was one easy way of checking whether he was using it correctly. He located the USIC icon — a stylised green scarab — on the screen, and clicked open the menu behind it. It wasn’t much of a menu, just three items: Maintenance (repairs), Admin and Graigner, obviously set up in haste by Grainger herself. If he wanted a more substantial list of correspondents, it was up to him to organise it.