Free The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber

the curvature of the rainfall. Peering out into the dark, he made an effort to focus on the hazes of light around the lamp-posts. Inside these halo-like spheres of illumination, the raindrops were picked out bright as tinfoil confetti. Their sensuous, undulating pattern could not be clearer.
    Peter stepped back from the window. His reflection was ghostly, criss-crossed by the unearthly rain. His normally rosy-cheeked, cheerful face had a haunted look, and the tungsten glow of a distant lamppost blazed inside his abdomen. His genitals had the sculptured, alabaster appearance of Greek statuary. He raised his hand, to break the spell, to reorient himself to his own familiar humanity. But it might as well have been a stranger waving back.
    My dear Beatrice,
    No word from you. I feel as though I’m literally suspended – as though I can’t let out my breath until I have proof that we can communicate with each other. I once read a Science Fiction story in which a young man travelled to an alien planet, leaving his wife behind. He was only away for a few weeks and then he returned to Earth. But the punchline of the story was that Time passed at a different rate for her than it did for him. So when he got back home, he discovered that 75 earth years had sped by, and his wife had died the week before. He arrived just in time to attend the funeral, and all the old folks were wondering who this distraught young man might be. It was a cheesy, run-of-the-mill Sci-Fi tale but I read it when I was at an impressionable age and it really got to me. And of course now I’m scared it will come true. BG, Severin and Tuska have all been to Oasis & back several times over the years and I suppose I should take that as proof that you’re not wrinkling up like a prune! (Although I would still love you if you did!)
    As you can probably tell from my babbling, I’m still horribly jetlagged. Slept well but nowhere near enough. It’s still dark here, smack dab in the middle of the three-day night. I haven’t been outside yet, but I’ve seen the rain. The rain here is amazing. It sways backwards and forwards, like one of those bead curtains.
    There’s a well-appointed bathroom here and I’ve just had a shower. The water is green! Safe to drink, apparently. Wonderful to have a proper wash at last, even though I still smell odd (I’m sure you’d laugh to see me sitting here, sniffing my own armpits with a frown on my face) and my urine is a weird colour.
    Well, that’s not the note I wanted to end on, but I can’t think of anything else to say right now. I just need to hear from you. Are you there? Please speak!
    Love,
    Peter
    Having sent this missive, Peter loitered around his quarters, at a loss for what to do next. The USIC representative who’d escorted him off the ship had made all the correct noises about being available for him if he needed anything. But she hadn’t specified how this availability would work. Had she even divulged her name? Peter couldn’t recall. There certainly wasn’t any note left lying on the table, to welcome him, give him a few pointers and tell him how to get in touch. There was a red button on the wall labelled EMERGENCY , but no button labelled BEWILDERMENT . He spent quite a while searching for the key to his quarters, mindful that it might not look like a conventional key but might be a plastic card of the sort issued by hotels. He found nothing that even vaguely resembled a key. Eventually, he opened his door and examined the lock, or rather the place where a lock would be if there’d been one. There was only an old-fashioned swivel handle, as though Peter’s quarters were a bedroom within an unusually large home. In my father’s house are many mansions . USIC evidently wasn’t concerned about security or privacy. OK, maybe its personnel had nothing to steal and nothing to hide, but even so . . . Odd. Peter looked up and down the corridor; it was vacant and his was the only door in view.
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