The rhetoric was neat, but something in Grainger’s tone of voice made Peter suspect that she didn’t quite believe it. He had a pretty good radar for the doubts that people hid beneath bravado.
‘But there must be someone,’ he insisted, ‘who takes responsibility for the project as a whole?’
‘Sure,’ she said. The car was picking up speed now and the lights of the compound rapidly receded into the gloom. ‘But they’re a long way away. Can’t expect them to hold our hands, can we?’
As they drove through the dark towards the invisible horizon, they munched on raisin bread. Grainger had positioned a big fresh loaf of it in the gap between the front seats, propped up against the gearstick, and they each helped themselves to slice after slice.
‘This is good,’ he said.
‘It’s made here,’ she said, with a hint of pride.
‘Including the raisins?’
‘No, not the raisins. Or the egg. But the flour and the shortening and the sweetener and the sodium bicarbonate are. And the loaves are baked here. We have a bakery.’
‘Very nice.’ He munched some more, swallowed. They’d left the base perimeter fifteen minutes ago. Nothing remarkable had happened yet. There was little to be seen in the vehicle’s headlight beam, which was the only light for miles around. Not for the first time, Peter thought about how much of our lives we spend sequestered inside small patches of electric brightness, blind to everything beyond the reach of those fragile bulbs.
‘When is sunrise?’ he asked.
‘In about three, four hours,’ she said. ‘Or maybe two, I’m not sure, don’t quote me. It’s a gradual process. Not so dramatic.’
They were driving straight over raw, uncultivated ground. There was no road or track or any evidence that anyone had ever driven or walked here before, although Grainger assured him that she made this trip regularly. In the absence of tracks or lights, it was sometimes difficult to believe they were moving, despite the gentle vibration of the vehicle’s chassis. The view in every direction was the same. Grainger would occasionally glance at the dashboard’s computerised navigation system, which kept her informed when they were about to stray from the correct course.
The landscape — what little Peter could see of it in the dark — was surprisingly bare given the climate. The earth was chocolate-brown, and so densely compacted that the tyres travelled smoothly across it with no jolts to the suspension. Here and there, the terrain was spotted with patches of white mushroom, or speckled with a haze of greenish stuff that might be moss. No trees, no bushes, not even any grass. A dark, moist tundra.
He took another slice of raisin bread. It was losing its appeal, but he was hungry.
‘I wouldn’t have thought,’ he remarked, ‘that eggs could survive the Jump intact. I certainly felt a bit scrambled myself, when I went through it.’
‘Egg powder,’ said Grainger. ‘We use egg powder.’
‘Of course.’
Through the side window, he spotted a single swirl of rain in an otherwise vacant sky: a curved glitter of water-drops about the size of a Ferris wheel, making its way across the land. It was travelling at a different tangent from their own, so Grainger would have to detour in order to drive through it. He considered asking her if they could do so, for the fun of it, like children chasing a rotating garden sprinkler. But she was intent on her navigation, staring out at the non-road ahead, both hands clamped on the steering wheel. The shimmering rain-swirl dimmed as the headlight beams passed it by, and then was swept into the darkness of their wake.
‘So,’ said Peter. ‘Tell me what you know.’
‘About what?’ Her relaxed demeanour was gone in a flash.
‘About the people we’re going to see.’
‘They’re not people.’
‘Well… ’ He drew a deep breath. ‘Here’s an idea, Grainger. How about we agree to use the term “people” in its extended sense of “inhabitants”? The original Roman etymology isn’t clear, so who knows? — maybe it meant “inhabitants” anyway. Of course, we could use “creature” instead, but there are problems with that, don’t you think? I mean, personally, I’d love to use “creature”, if we could just take it back to its Latin origins: creatura: “created thing”. Because we’re all created things, aren’t we? But it’s suffered a bit of a decline, that word, through the centuries. To the point where “creature”, to most people, means “monster”, or at least “animal”. Which reminds me: wouldn’t it be nice to use “animal” for all beings that breathe? After all, the Greek word anima means “breath” or “soul”, which pretty much covers everything we’re looking for, doesn’t it?’
Silence settled in the cabin. Grainger drove, keeping her eyes straight on the headlight beam just as before. After thirty seconds or so, which seemed quite a long time in the circumstances, she said:
‘Well, it’s plain to see you’re not an uneducated holy roller from Hicksville.’
‘I never said I was.’
She glanced aside at him, caught him smiling, smiled back. ‘Tell me, Peter. What made you decide to come here, and do this?’
‘I didn’t decide,’ he said. ‘God did.’
‘He sent you an email?’
‘Sure.’ He grinned wider. ‘You wake up in the morning, go to the inbox of your heart, check what’s loaded in. Sometimes there’s a message.’
‘That’s kind of a corny way of putting it.’
He stopped smiling, not because he was offended, but because the discussion was turning serious. ‘Most true things are kind of corny, don’t you think? But we make them more sophisticated out of sheer embarrassment. Simple truths with complicated clothes on. The only purpose of the linguistic dressing-up is so people won’t look at the contents of our naked hearts and minds and say “How naff”.’
She frowned. ‘“Naff”?’
‘It’s a British slang term, meaning trite or banal, but with an extra overtone of… uh… nerdishness. Uncoolness. Dorkishness.’
‘Wow. Did they teach American slang in your Bible School too?’
Peter took a few swigs from a water-bottle. ‘I never went to Bible School. I went to the University of Hard Drinking and Drug Abuse. Got my degree in Toilet Bowl Interior Decoration and… uh… Hospital Casualty Ward Occupancy.’
‘And then you found God?’
‘Then I found a woman called Beatrice. We fell in love.’
‘Guys don’t often put it that way.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Guys say “we got together” or “you can guess the rest” or something like that. Something that doesn’t sound quite so… ’
‘Naff?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Well, we fell in love,’ said Peter. ‘I quit the booze and drugs to impress her.’
‘I hope she was impressed.’
‘Yes.’ He took a last swig, screwed the top back on the bottle and slid it onto the floor between his feet. ‘Although she didn’t tell me so until years later. Addicts don’t handle praise well. The pressure of living up to it drives them back to drink and drugs.’
‘Yup.’
‘Have you had some experience of these things in your life?’
‘Yup.’
‘Do you want to talk about it?’
‘Not right now.’ She readjusted her posture in the seat, revved the engine, drove a little faster. The blush on her face made her look more feminine, although it accentuated the white scar under her hairline. She had pulled off her headscarf so that it hung loosely around her neck; her short crop of soft mousy hair fluttered in the air conditioning. ‘Your girlfriend sounds like a smart cookie.’