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

advance of occurrence. They may include, but are not restricted to, disease, accident, mechanical failure, adverse weather, and any other events commonly categorised as Acts of God.’
    The door of the dormitory cell swung open, silhouetting the massive body of BG.
    ‘Yo, bro.’
    ‘Hi.’ In Peter’s experience, it was better to speak in one’s own idiom than echo the idioms and accents of others. Rastafarians and cockney Pakistanis did not come to Christ through being patronised by evangelists making clownish attempts to talk like them, so there was no reason to suppose that black Americans might.
    ‘You wanna eat with us, you better get yourself out of bed, bro.’
    ‘Sounds fine to me,’ said Peter, swinging his legs out of the bunk. ‘I think I’m up for it.’
    BG’s massive arms were poised to lend assistance. ‘Noodles,’ he said. ‘Beef noodles.’
    ‘Sounds just fine.’ Still barefoot, dressed only in underpants and an unbuttoned shirt, Peter waddled out of the room. It was like being six again, when he was spaced out on liquid paracetamol and his mother fetched him out of bed to celebrate his birthday. The prospect of opening presents was not sufficiently adrenalising to dispel the effects of chickenpox.
    BG led him into a corridor whose walls were papered with floor-to-ceiling colour photographs of green meadows, the kind of adhesive enlargements he was more accustomed to seeing on the sides of buses. Some thoughtful designer must have decided that a vista of grass, spring flowers and an azure sky was just the thing to combat the claustrophobia of airless space.
    ‘You ain’t a vegetarian, are you, bro?’
    ‘Uh . . . no,’ said Peter.
    ‘Well, I am,’ declared BG, steering him round a corner, where the verdant if slightly blurry scenery was repeated. ‘But one thing you learn when you go on a trip like this, man, is you gotta relax your principles sometimes.’
    Dinner was served in the control room; that is, the room that contained the piloting and navigation hardware. Contrary to Peter’s expectations, he was not met with a breathtaking sight when he stepped inside. There was no giant window facing out onto a vast expanse of space, stars and nebulae. There was no window at all; no central focus of attention, just reinforced plastic walls punctuated by air conditioning vents, light switches, humidity adjustors, and a couple of laminated posters. Peter had seen the imagery before, on the USIC pamphlets when he’d first applied for this vacancy. The posters were glossy corporate productions, depicting a stylised ship, a stylised bird with a stylised twig in its beak, and a small amount of text extolling USIC’s high standards of business practice and unlimited potentials to benefit mankind.
    The ship’s controls were also less impressive than Peter had imagined: no giant rig of knobs and dials and meters and flashing lights, just a few compact keyboards, slimline monitors and one freestanding computer cabinet that resembled a snack dispenser or automatic bankteller machine. In all honesty, the control room was less a ship’s bridge than an office – a somewhat pokey office, at that. There was nothing here to do justice to the fact that they were floating in a foreign solar system, trillions of miles from home.
    Tuska the pilot had swivelled his chair away from the monitors and was staring into a small plastic tub held up near his face. Steam obscured his features. His legs, crossed casually over one another, were bare and hairy, clad only in oversize shorts and tennis shoes without socks.
    ‘Welcome back to the land of the living,’ he said, lowering the tub to rest against his rotund belly. ‘Sleep well?’
    ‘I don’t know if I was sleeping, really,’ said Peter. ‘More just waiting to feel human again.’
    ‘Takes a while,’ conceded Tuska, and raised the noodle tub to his face again. He had a mouse-coloured beard, and was obviously well-practised in the logistics of