He ventured out of the shade and she stepped aside, away from the vehicle, allowing him access to the trunk, which she’d swung open for him. The engine was purring in readiness.
‘You think they mean you harm?’ he said.
‘No, it’s just the sight of them,’ she said, turning her head towards the horizon. ‘You try and look at their face and it’s like staring into a pile of entrails.’
‘I thought of foetuses myself.’
She shuddered. ‘Puh-lease.’
‘Well,’ he said cheerily, stepping up to the vehicle, ‘that’s us off on the wrong foot again.’
Out of the corner of his eye, he observed Grainger sizing up his rucksack as he unhitched it from his shoulders. She did a slight double-take as she registered that it was his only luggage.
‘You look as if you’re going hill-walking. Your little knapsack on your back.’
He grinned as he tossed the bag into the trunk.
‘Val-de-reee!’ he sang in a mock-operatic baritone. ‘Val-de-raa! Val-de-reee! Val-de-ra-ha-ha-ha-ha… ’
‘Now you’re making fun of one of my idols,’ she said, placing her fists on her hips.
‘Sorry?’
‘Bing Crosby.’
Peter looked at her in bemusement. The sun was still quite near the horizon, and Grainger was silhouetted in front of it, the crooks of her arms framing triangles of rosy light. ‘Uh… ’ he said. ‘Did Bing Crosby sing “The Happy Wanderer” too?’
‘I thought it was his song,’ she said.
‘It’s an ancient German folk tune,’ he said.
‘I didn’t know that,’ she said. ‘I thought it was a Bing number. It was all over the airwaves last year.’
He scratched the back of his head, taking pleasure in the bizarreness of everything today: the endless sky with its outsize sun, the playground under the gazebo, his strange new parishioners waiting for another taste of the Gospel, and this dispute over the authorship of ‘The Happy Wanderer’. The air took advantage of his raised arm to find different entry points into his clothing. Tendrils of atmosphere licked him between his sweaty shoulderblades, twirled around his nipples, counted his ribs.
‘I didn’t know Bing Crosby was back in fashion,’ he said.
‘Those artists are beyond fashion,’ declared Grainger, with undisguised fervour. ‘Nobody wants mindless dance music anymore, or cheap, sleazy rock.’ She imitated an arrogant rock star striking a chord on his phallic guitar. Disdainful though the gesture was, Peter found it attractive: her thin arm, slamming against the invisible guitar strings, pushed her bosom out, reminding him how soft and malleable the flesh of a woman’s breast was. ‘People have had enough of all that,’ she said. ‘They want something with class, something that’s stood the test of time.’
‘I’m all for that,’ he said.
Once they were safely sealed inside the vehicle and driving into the wilderness, Peter raised the issue of communication again.
‘You wrote to my wife,’ he said.
‘Yes, I sent her a courtesy message. To let her know you’d arrived safely.’
‘Thank you. I’ve been writing to her myself, whenever I can.’
‘That’s sweet,’ she said. Her eyes were on the featureless brown horizon.
‘You’re sure there’s no possibility of organising a Shoot for me in the Oasan settlement?’
‘I told you, they don’t have electricity.’
‘Couldn’t a Shoot run on batteries?’
‘Sure it could. You can write on it anywhere. You can write a whole book if you want. But to actually send a message, you need more than a machine that lights up when you switch it on. You need a connection to the USIC system.’
‘Isn’t there a… I’m not sure what to call it… a relay? A signal tower?’ Even as he uttered the words they sounded foolish. The territory stretching into the distance ahead was stark and empty.
‘Nope,’ she replied. ‘We never needed anything like that. You’ve got to remember that the original settlement was right near the base.’
Peter sighed, leaned his head hard back against the seat. ‘I’m going to miss communicating with Bea,’ he said, half to himself.
‘Nobody’s insisting you go and live with these… people,’ Grainger reminded him. ‘That’s your choice.’
He kept silent, but his unspoken objection might as well have written itself on the windscreen in front of them in big red letters: GOD DECIDES THESE THINGS.
‘I enjoy driving,’ added Grainger after a minute or two. ‘It relaxes me. I could’ve driven you there and back every twelve hours, easy.’
He nodded.
‘You could’ve had daily contact with your wife,’ she carried on. ‘You could’ve had a shower, a meal… ’
‘I’m sure these people won’t let me starve or get filthy,’ he said. ‘The one who came out to meet us looked clean enough to me.’
‘Suit yourself,’ she said, and revved the accelerator. They jumped forwards with a gentle whiplash effect, and a quantity of damp earth was thrown up behind them.
‘I’m not suiting myself,’ he said. ‘Suiting myself would mean taking you up on your generous offer. I have to consider what’s best for these people.’
‘God knows,’ she muttered, then, realising what she’d just said, graced him with a big self-conscious smile.
The landscape was no more colourful or varied now that the sun had fully risen, but it had its own sober beauty, in common with all endless vistas of the same substance, whether it be sea, sky or desert. There were no mountains or hills, but the topography had gentle gradients, patterned with ripples similar to those in wind-swept deserts. The mushroom-like blossoms — whiteflower, he supposed — glowed brilliant.
‘It’s a lovely day,’ he said.
‘Uh-huh,’ said Grainger, matter-of-fact.
The sky’s colour was elusive; the gradations were too subtle for the eye to discern. There were no clouds, although occasionally a patch of air would shimmer and become slightly blurry for a few seconds, before shivering back into transparency. The first few times Peter observed this phenomenon, he stared intently, straining to understand it, or perhaps appreciate it. But it just made him feel as though his eyes were defective, and he quickly learned to shift his gaze elsewhere whenever the blurring began to occur. The roadless earth, dark and moist and sprinkled with pale blooms, was the most restful sight. Your eyes could just relax on it.
Overall, though, he had to admit that the scenery here was less beautiful than he’d seen in, well, quite a few other places. He had expected mind-boggling landscapes, canyons shrouded in swirling mists, tropical swamps teeming with exotic new wildlife. It suddenly occurred to him that this world might be quite a dowdy one compared to his own. And the poignancy of that thought made him feel a rush of love for the people who lived here and knew no better.
‘Hey, I’ve just realised!’ he said to Grainger. ‘I haven’t seen any animals. Just a few bugs.’
‘Yeah, it’s kind of… low diversity here,’ she said. ‘Not much scope for a zoo.’
‘It’s a big world. Maybe we’re just on a sparse little bit of it.’
She nodded. ‘Whenever I go to C-2, I could swear there’s more bugs there than at the base. Also, there’s supposed to be some birds. I’ve never seen them myself. But Tartaglione used to hang around C-2 all the time, and he told me he saw birds once. Maybe it was a hallucination. Living in the wilderness can do scary things to the brain.’
‘I’ll try to keep my brain in reasonable condition,’ he promised. ‘But seriously, what do you think really happened to him? And to Kurtzberg?’
‘No idea,’ she said. ‘Both of them just went AWOL.’