The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber Read Free Book Online

allowed them to survive the Jump.
    ‘You gonna be the first one standing or am I?’
    ‘I’m up already, bro . . . see?’
    ‘You’re so full of shit, man. That ain’t standing, that’s leaning. Let go the bench.’
    Sound of a body falling to the floor; more laughter.
    ‘See you do better, bro . . . ’
    ‘Easy.’
    Sound of another body falling to the floor; dopey hysterics.
    ‘Forgot how bad it was, man.’
    ‘Nothing a half dozen cans of Coke won’t fix.’
    ‘Fuck that, man. A line of coke and you’re talkin’.’
    ‘If you want more drugs after this, you must be dumber than I thought.’
    ‘Just stronger, bro, just stronger.’
    And so it went on. The two men sparred with each other, expelling bravado into the atmosphere, biding for time, until they were both on their feet. They grunted and panted as they rummaged in plastic bags, mocked each other’s taste in clothing, put on shoes, tested their bipedalism by walking around. Peter lay in his crib, breathing shallowly, waiting for the room to stop moving. The ceiling had calmed down, at least.
    ‘Yo, bro.’
    A large face loomed into his range of view. For a second, Peter couldn’t recognise it as human: it seemed to be attached to the neck upside-down, with eyebrows on the chin and a beard at the top. But no: it was human, of course it was human, just very different from his own. Dark brown skin, a shapeless nose, small ears, beautiful brown eyes tinged with red. Neck muscles that could raise and lower an elevator in a twenty-storey shaft. And those eyebrow-like things on the chin? A beard. Not a full, furry beard, but one of those finely-sculpted fashion statements you could buy from a fancy barber. Years ago, it must have looked like a neat line drawn with a black felt-tip marker, but the man was middle-aged now, and the beard was patchy and speckled with grey. Advancing baldness had left him with just a few knobs of frizz on his head.
    ‘Pleased to meet you,’ croaked Peter. ‘I’m Peter.’
    ‘BG, bro,’ said the black man, extending a hand. ‘You want I pull you outta there?’
    ‘I . . . I might prefer to lie here a bit longer.’
    ‘Don’t wait too long, bro,’ said BG, with a radiant white grin. ‘You shit your pants, and it’s a small ship.’
    Peter smiled, unsure of whether BG meant this as a warning of what might happen or as an observation of what had already happened. The viscose swaddling of the crib felt damp and heavy, but it had felt that way even when the woman in the lab coat first wrapped him in it.
    Another face swung into view. Sunburnt white, fiftyish, with thinning grey hair cut to a military bristle. Eyes as bloodshot as BG’s, but blue and full of painful childhood and messy divorce and violent upheavals in employment.
    ‘Severin,’ he said.
    ‘I beg your pardon?’
    ‘Artie Severin. We gotta get you out of there, pal. Sooner you start drinking, sooner you’ll feel like a human being.’
    BG and Severin lifted him out of the crib as though they were extracting a newly purchased piece of equipment from its box: not exactly gently, but with sufficient care not to tear or break anything. His feet barely touched the floor as they carried him out of the room, down a short corridor and into a bathroom. There they stripped him of the gauzy loincloth he’d worn for the last month, sprayed him with blue foam from neck to ankles, and wiped him down with paper towels. A large transparent plastic waste bag got filled halfway to the top with blue and brown muck before they were finished.
    ‘Is there a shower?’ he asked, when it was over and he still felt sticky. ‘I mean, with water?’
    ‘Water is gold , bro,’ said BG. ‘Every drop we got, goes into here.’ He tapped his throat. ‘It don’t do nobody no good out there .’ And he nodded towards the wall, the outer shell of the ship, the barrier between them and the vast airless emptiness in which they were suspended.
    ‘Sorry,’ said Peter.