‘Yay, Peter!’ called BG, without interrupting the rhythm of his workout. His arms, as he flexed them to raise and lower the bags, were as thick as Peter’s legs, and the knots of muscle bulged as though inflated by a puffer. He wore baggy shorts that reached down to his calves and a skimpy cotton singlet through which his nipples poked like rivets.
‘That looks like hard work, BG,’ said Peter.
‘Work, play, it’s all the same to me,’ BG replied.
Moro didn’t acknowledge Peter’s arrival, but then the position she was in — flat on her back with her legs in the air, pedalling — might have made that problematic. She wore a white shalwar whose waistband had slipped under her hip-bones, and a sleeveless T-shirt that left her midriff bare. Sweat had saturated the fabric, rendering it semi-transparent; she breathed loudly and rhythmically. BG had an unimpeded view.
‘On top of it, man, on top of it,’ he exclaimed.
At first, Peter took this to be a bawdy pun. It would fit in with the sexualised banter on the ship and BG’s generally bullish air. But as he looked into BG’s face, he realised that the man was abstracted, gazing at no particular object, focused on his own exercise. Moro might or might not be registering on his consciousness as a blur of movement, but as a woman she was invisible to him.
There was another female here, too, a tall, sinewy Caucasian with sparse red hair pulled into a ponytail. Her legs dangled inches off the ground as she supported herself between two parallel bars. She smiled at Peter but it was a smile that said ‘Let’s be properly introduced someday when I’m not so busy.’ The two unknown men were similarly preoccupied. One stood on a low pedestal with a swivel base, his eyes fixed on his own feet as he gyrated his hips. The other sat on a spider-like structure with many rungs, and was touching his cheeks to his knees. His hands were interlocked behind his head, as tightly as the metal rungs in which he’d hooked his feet. He was a closed circuit of exertion. He heaved himself forward, and one of his knotty vertebrae seemed to pop out of his skin and fly into the air. Actually, it was an insect. The gazebo was a harbour for grasshopper-like bugs which settled calmly on the humans here and there, but mostly just crawled on the canvas, green against the yellow.
The gazebo area contained enough equipment for a dozen people. Peter wondered if it was bad form not to join in. Maybe he should pick a gadget and do a small workout, just a few minutes — enough to be able to walk away without seeming to have come here solely to spectate. But he’d never been a formal-exercise kind of guy and he would feel foolish pretending. Anyway, he was a newbie and surely people could understand that he needed to check the place out.
‘Nice day,’ remarked Moro. She’d stopped pedalling and was taking a breather.
‘More than nice. Beautiful,’ said Peter.
‘Sure is,’ said Moro, and swigged some water from a bottle. One of the green insects had attached itself to her top, between the breasts, like a brooch. She paid it no mind.
‘Did the coffee come out?’ said Peter.
She looked at him uncomprehendingly. ‘Coffee?’
‘The coffee I made you spill.’
‘Oh, that.’ Her expression implied she’d engaged with a dozen challenges and activities since then, and could hardly be expected to remember an event so trivial. ‘It wasn’t coffee.’
‘Whiteflower?’
‘Chicory and rye extract. And yeah, just a bit of whiteflower. To give it body.’
‘I must try it sometime.’
‘It’s worth trying. Don’t expect the most wonderful thing on earth and you won’t be disappointed.’
‘A sound philosophy as a general rule,’ he said.
Again she looked at him as if he was talking gibberish. He smiled, waved and walked away. There were some people you would never click with, no matter how many times you tried, no matter how many shared experiences came your way, and maybe Moro was one of those. But it didn’t matter. As the USIC interviewers had reminded him at every opportunity, he wasn’t here for her.
Reluctant to go back inside just yet, Peter strayed further and further from the USIC base. He would be in trouble, he supposed, if he got suddenly tired or unwell, but it was a risk he was willing to take. His health and endurance would be tested to the limit soon enough anyway, when he delivered himself to the Oasan settlement with no supplies apart from a Bible and the clothes he stood up in.
Stark against the horizon towered two silos or chimneys, he wasn’t sure which. Obviously not the Big Brassiere, judging from the shape, but what it was he couldn’t guess. No smoke coming out, so maybe they were silos after all. Might this be one of the many things that Grainger had explained to him, as she escorted him off the ship? The conversation they were supposed to have had, which he had so embarrassingly forgotten, threatened to grow to mythical proportions: a grand tour of everything, with scripted commentary answering all conceivable questions. He should bear in mind that there was a limit to how much she could have passed on to him at first sight.
He walked towards the silos for ten, twenty minutes, but they didn’t get any closer. A trick of perspective. In cities, the buildings and streets gave you a more accurate sense of how far or near the horizon was. In natural, unspoiled landscapes, you didn’t have a clue. What looked like a mile or two might be several days’ journey.
He should conserve his energy. He should turn around and make his way back to the base. Just as he’d made this decision, however, a vehicle drove into view, coming from the direction of the silos. It was a jeep identical to Grainger’s, but as it came closer he could see it wasn’t Grainger at the wheel. It was the big, butch-looking woman who’d been talking to BG in the mess hall earlier on. She smoothed the car to a standstill right nearby and wound down the window.
‘Running away from home?’
He smiled. ‘Just exploring.’
She gave him the once-over.
‘You done?’
He laughed. ‘Yes.’
She tipped her head in a get-in gesture and he complied. The interior of the vehicle was messy — there wouldn’t have been room for him in the back — and humid, without air conditioning. Unlike Grainger, this woman evidently didn’t feel the need to exclude the Oasan atmosphere. Her skin was shiny with sweat and the spiky tips of her bleached hair drooped with moisture.
‘Time for lunch,’ she said.
‘Seems we just had lunch,’ he said. ‘Or was that breakfast?’
‘I’m a growing girl,’ she said. Her tone tipped him off that she was aware she was hefty but couldn’t care less. Her arms were well-muscled and her bosom, encased in a bra whose underwiring pushed against the fabric of her white T-shirt, was matronly.
‘I was wondering what those are,’ said Peter, indicating the silos.
She glanced up at the rear-view mirror as they got under way. ‘Them? They’re oil.’
‘Petroleum?’
‘Not exactly. Something like it.’
‘But you can convert it into fuel?’
She sighed ruefully. ‘Well now, that’s a question that’s got other questions hanging off of it. I mean, which way do you go? Design new engines to work with the new fuel or monkey around with the fuel so it works with the old engines? We’ve had some… discussions about that, over the years.’ The way she pronounced the word ‘discussions’ suggested a personal stake in the matter, and a degree of exasperation.
‘And who won?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘The chemistry guys. They figured out how to adapt the fuel. It’s like… changing the design of the butt so the butt fits the chair. But hey, who am I to argue.’
They drove past the yellow gazebo. Moro had left, but the other four were still hard at it.