Excerpt from The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Bea shook her head. "These girls aren't rich," she said. "Rich people don't travel in packs. And rich females don't walk as if they're not used to high heels. These girls are just young and they enjoy shopping. They're having an adventure. They're showing off to each other, not to us. We're invisible to them."

Peter watched the girls stagger toward Starbucks. Their buttocks quivered inside their wrinkled skirts and their voices became raucous, betraying regional accents. Bea was right.

He sighed, squeezed her hand. What was he going to do without her, out in the field? How would he cope, not being able to discuss his perceptions? She was the one who stopped him coming out with claptrap, curbed his tendency to construct grand theories that encompassed everything. She brought him down to earth. Having her by his side on this mission would have been worth a million dollars.

But it was costing a great deal more than a million dollars to send him alone, and USIC was footing the bill.

"Are you hungry? Can I get you anything?"

"We ate at home."

"A chocolate bar or something?"

She smiled but looked tired. "I'm fine. Honestly."

"I feel so bad about letting you down."

"Letting me down?"

"You know . . . In the car. It feels unfair, unfinished, and today of all days . . . I hate to leave you like this."

"It'll be awful," she said. "But not because of that."

"The angle, the unfamiliar angle made me . . ."

"Please, Peter, there's no need for this. I'm not keeping a scorecard or a balance sheet. We made love. That's enough for me."

"I feel I've . . ."

She stopped his mouth with her finger, then kissed him. "You're the best man in the world." She kissed him again, on the forehead. "If you're going to do post-mortems, I'm sure there'll be much better reasons on this mission."

His brow furrowed against her lips. What did she mean by "post-mortems"? Was she just referring to the inevitability of encountering obstacles and setbacks? Or was she convinced that the mission as a whole would end in failure? In death?

He stood up; she stood up with him. They held each other tight. A large party of tourists poured into the hall, fresh from a coach and keen to travel to the sun. Surging toward their appointed gate, the babbling revelers split into two streams, flowing around Peter and Bea. When they'd all gone and the hall was relatively quiet again, a voice through the PA said: "Please keep your belongings with you at all times. Unattended items will be removed and may be destroyed."

"Do you have some sort of . . . instinct my mission will fail?" he asked her. She shook her head, bumping his jaw with her skull.

"You don't feel God's hand in this?" he persisted.

She nodded.

"Do you think He would send me all the way to—"

"Please, Peter. Don't talk." Her voice was husky. "We've covered all this ground so many times. It's pointless now. We've just got to have faith."

They sat back down, tried to make themselves comfortable in the chairs. She laid her head on his shoulder. He thought about history, the hidden human anxieties behind momentous events. The tiny trivial things that were probably bothering Einstein or Darwin or Newton as they formulated their theories: arguments with the landlady, maybe, or concern over a blocked fireplace. The pilots who bombed Dresden, fretting over a phrase in a letter from back home: What did she mean by that? Or what about Columbus, when he was sailing toward the New Land . . . who knows what was on his mind? The last words spoken to him by an old friend, perhaps, a person not even remembered in history books . . .

"Have you decided," said Bea, "what your first words will be?"

Excerpted from The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber. Copyright © 2014 by Michel Faber. Excerpted by permission of Hogarth Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.