‘To you, then,’ said Flores, in a friendly but businesslike manner.
The box, as always, was crammed with a mixture of branded and unbranded medicines. Flores extracted each little plastic bottle, cardboard packet and tube, held it aloft like an auction hammer while describing its function, and slotted it back into place.
‘I’m not a pharmacist,’ she said. ‘But it’s all written on the labels and the leaflets anyway. The main thing is for you to tell us what’s working and not working. Pardon me saying so, but there’s been too much mystery here. Let’s take the mystery out of it, try more of a scientific approach. Think you can do that?’
Lover One was silent for a few seconds, just focusing on the creature standing head-to-head with him. ‘We are gra???eful for medi??ine,’ he said at last.
‘That’s nice,’ said Flores flatly. ‘But listen: this here is a packet of Sumycin. It’s an antibiotic. If you get an infection in your water-works or your guts, it could fix you. But if you’ve taken a lot of Sumycin in the past, it might not work so well. You might be better taking this one here, Amoxicillin. These two packets of Amoxicillin are generics . . . ’
‘Name from where all other name come,’ said Jesus Lover One.
‘That’s right. Now, Amoxicillin is fine if you’ve never had it before, but if your body has become resistant to it, you’re better with this purple one here, Augmentin, which has some extra stuff in it to overcome that resistance.’ Flores put the Augmentin back in the box and scratched her nose with a simian finger. ‘Listen, we could stand here all day talking about the pros and cons of each and every antibiotic in this box. But what we really need is to match up specific drugs with specific problems. For example, take you. Are you sick?’
‘Thank God no,’ said Lover One.
‘Well, bring out someone who is sick and let’s talk.’
There was a pause. ‘We are gra???eful for medi??ine,’ said Lover One. ‘We have food for you.’ The tone was neutral, and yet there was stubbornness, even threat in it.
‘Great, thanks, we’ll get around to that in a minute,’ said Flores, unswayed. ‘But first, can I meet someone who thinks they need antibiotics? As I said, I’m not a pharmacist. I’m not a doctor. I would just prefer to get a little better acquainted with you folks.’
As the two of them stood their ground, more Oasans ventured out from shelter. Peter realised that they must always have been there, in the past, whenever these handovers were done, but had lacked the courage to emerge into view. What was it about Flores? Her smell, perhaps? Peter turned to Tuska. Tuska winked.
‘Obey the mighty Flores,’ he said wryly. ‘Or else.’
Once it had become clear that the handover was going to take some time, Peter excused himself and began to walk across the tundra to his church. It was quite a windy day, and his dishdasha flapped around his ankles, but the breeze was useful in reducing the humidity, promoting the illusion of fresher oxygen. Inside his sandals his feet were already slippery with sweat. He looked down at them as he walked, and recalled the sensation of stepping into crisp snow with thick-soled boots on a raw January morning in Richmond Park with his newly divorced father smoking a cigarette nearby. No sooner had he glimpsed the image than it was gone.
Every now and then as he crossed the plain to the temple that he and his flock had built, he looked over his shoulder, in case Lover One was following. But Lover One was not following, and Peter’s view of the tiny figures near the USIC vehicle grew indistinct through the blur of interlapping air currents.
When he reached his church, he extended his palms and swung open the doors, expecting to find the place empty. But no. There were fifty or sixty brightly coloured souls gathered inside, already seated in the pews, as if by firm pre-arrangement. Not the full congregation, but a healthy turnout – especially considering they’d gathered to worship on their own, with no pastor. Quite a few of them had been working in the whiteflower fields on the day of his downfall, and had witnessed the piercing of his flesh, had watched the vermin’s teeth mutilate him so badly that there could be no hope of survival, even with the Technique of Jesus. Maybe this gathering was a memorial service for Father Pe???er, and here he was, gatecrashing it.
A murmur of wonder passed through the crowd. Then a swell of communal elation charged the air, taking up palpable space, pushing against the walls, threatening to lift the ceiling. If he’d wanted to, he could have done anything with them at this moment, taken them anywhere. They were his.
‘God ble?? our reunion, Father Pe???er,’ they exclaimed, first one-by-one, then as a chorus. Each voice aggravated the grief in his chest a little more. Their faith had been buoyed up to the heavens, and he had come to let them down.
The doors thudded shut behind him, their well-oiled motion aided by the wind. Plentiful light beamed through the windows, illuminating the hooded heads of the Jesus Lovers so that they glowed like candle-flames in a votive rack. As he walked between the pews, the surreal montage of paintings on the ceiling hung heavy over him. Lover Twelve’s bright pink Jesus walking hand in hand with a glistening grey Lazarus, Lover Fourteen’s blue and yellow Nativity, Lover Twenty’s Mary Magdalene spewing forth ectoplasmic devils, Lover Sixty-Three’s Thomas the Doubter . . . and, of course, Lover Five’s painting of the risen Christ and his women, secure in its place, fastened with extra care after the accident that had maimed her. The scarecrow in the loincloth, so different from the kindly mensch of Christian tradition, had suddenly become terrifying. The blaze of light where His head should be and the eye-shaped holes in His starfish hands, which Peter had once taken as evidence that God could not be confined to the iconography of one race, now struck him as proof of an unbreachable gulf.
He took his stand behind the pulpit. He noted that the ????? had tidied his bed, washed and dried and folded the linen, cleaned the boots that Lover Five had sewn for him, and placed a mislaid pencil on the pillow where it could be admired as a sacred relic by future generations. Now, blessed with his miraculous return, they sat in rapt attention, Bible booklets at their side, awaiting the call to sing the first hymn, which might, according to custom, be ‘In The Garden’ or ‘For God Be The Glory’. He cleared his throat. He trusted, against hope, that inspiration would come from somewhere, as it always had before.
‘????????,’ he said. ‘?ss??. ???? ??? ????????t ?ur? ???????s ???ss??????.’
Some of the congregation made the shoulder-trembling motions he’d always interpreted as laughter. He hoped it was laughter, elicited by his clumsy pronunciation, but maybe he’d never really known what those motions meant after all.
‘???ss?? ???t? ??ss??? ??? Jesus ??????s,’ he continued. He could sense their bemusement at his strained and childish speech, so unnecessary when they were only too willing to listen to the holy language of James the King. But he wanted to address them, just once, in a way that they could fully understand. He owed them that much: their dignity at the expense of his own. ‘???ss Jesus ?????t ????? ??? ??? ??.’
He finished his exact tally of the worshippers, begun as a habitual reflex: fifty-two. He would never know how many more souls were concealed in the settlement, never know how far away he’d been from bringing the entire community to Christ. He only knew that he recognised each and every person here, and not just by the colours of their robes.
‘??? ??????ss ?????? ?ur? ???,’ he said, ‘?????ss ???????? the Book of Strange New Things.’ He extracted the King James Bible from his bag, and, instead of thumbing the gilt-edged pages to a selected passage for reading aloud, he stepped out from behind the pulpit and carried the book to the Jesus Lovers in the front pew. With fastidious gentleness – not because of reverence for the book, but because of concern for the fragile flesh before him – he handed it to Lover Seventeen, who cradled it in her lap.
He returned to the pulpit. ‘??? ????? ??? ???,’ he said, ‘??? ?ss? ??ss????? God. ??? God ??? ??? ????ss ?????? ???ss ??????.’
A thrill of consternation was passing through his flock. Heads tilted, hands agitated. Lover Fifteen uttered a cry.
‘????? ????ss ???ss ?? God ??? ??? ????? ???ss,’ he pressed on. ‘??? t??? ??? ?????? ??? ??????? ? ?????? ?ss?????ss Jesus Lover Five . . . ’ His voice broke, and he had to grip the wings of his pulpit to keep himself from trembling. ‘Jesus Lover Five ????? ??? ???l ???i? ?????? ?????t ?????. ??? ???? ?????? ?????? USIC.’ He took a deep, shuddering breath. ??????t?????? ?????? ????????? ??? ??????t ?ur?. ?? ?? ????? ???????? ??? Bea. ???t? ??? ??ss . . . ’
And that was it: he could go no further: the word he needed, the most crucial word, was one he didn’t know in the ????? language. He bowed his head, and took refuge, at the last, in his own foreign tongue.
‘ . . . forgive.’
He left the pulpit, picked up the canary-yellow boots, one in each hand, and walked stiffly down the aisle, towards the exit. For the first few seconds, which felt like minutes, he walked in silence, alone. Then the Jesus Lovers rose from their seats and gathered all around him, touching him tenderly on the shoulders, the back, the abdomen, the buttocks, the thighs, anywhere they could reach, while saying, in clear, unhampered voices, ‘Forgive.’
‘Forgive.’
‘Forgive.’
‘Forgive.’
‘Forgive.’
‘Forgive,’ each in their turn, until he blundered through the doors into the harsh sunlight.