The MaddAddam Trilogy

by Margaret Atwood

  What if I crept up on her during the Fountain of Yooth Total Immersion and gunned the lasers? Toby wondered. Or shorted the heat lamp? She’d melt like a marshmallow. A nematode snack. The Earth would cheer.

  Dear Eve Six, said Adam One’s voice. Such fantasies are unworthy of you. What would Pilar think?

  One afternoon there was a knock at Toby’s office door. “Come in,” she said. It was a large man in a groundsman’s green denim overall. He was whistling – surely – a familiar tune.

  “I’m here to prune the lumiroses,” he said. Toby looked up, drew her breath in sharply. She knew better than to say anything: her office could be crawling with bugs.

  Zeb glanced back along the hallway, then stepped in and shut the door. He sat down at her computer, then took a Sharpie and wrote on her desk pad: Watch what I do.

  The Gardeners? Toby wrote. Adam One?

  Schism, Zeb wrote. Own group now. “Having any trouble with the plantings?” he said out loud.

  Shackleton and Crozier? Toby wrote. With you?

  Manner of speaking, Zeb replied. Oates. Katuro, Rebecca. New ones too.

  Amanda?

  Got out. Higher education. Art. Smart.

  He’d pulled up a site: EXTINCTATHON. Monitored by MaddAddam. Adam named the living animals, MaddAddam names the dead ones. Do you want to play?

  MaddAddam? Toby wrote on her desk pad. Your group? You’re plural? She was elated: Zeb was here, beside her, in the flesh. After she’d thought for so long that she’d never see him again.

  I contain multitudes, wrote Zeb. Pick a codename. Life form, extinct.

  Dodo, Toby wrote.

  Last fifty years, Zeb wrote. Not much time. Pruning team waiting. Ask about aphids.

  “There’s aphids on the lumiroses,” Toby said. She was riffling through the old Gardener lists in her head – animals, fish, birds, flowers, clams, lizards, recently extinct. Inaccessible Rail, she wrote. That bird had gone ten years ago. Can they hack this site?

  “We can take care of that,” Zeb said. “Though there’s supposed to be a built-in insecticidal deterrent … I’ll take some samples. There’s more than one way to skin a cat.” No, he wrote. Made our own virtual private networks. Quadrupally encrypted. Sorry about the cat-skinning ref. Here’s your number.

  He wrote her new codename and a pass number on the pad. Then he typed his own number and code into the log-in space provided. Welcome, Spirit Bear. Do you want to play a general game or do you want to play a Grandmaster? said the screen.

  Zeb clicked on Grandmaster. Good. Find your playroom. MaddAddam will meet you there.

  Watch, he wrote on her pad. He entered a site advertising Mo’Hair transplants, skipped through a pixel gateway on the eye of a magenta-haired sheep, entered the blue percolating stomach of an ad for a HelthWyzer antacid, which led to the avid open mouth of a SecretBurger customer caught in mid-chomp. Then a wide green landscape unfolded – trees in the distance, a lake in the foreground, a rhino and three lions drinking. A scene from the past.

  A line of type unscrolled across it: Welcome to MaddAddam’s playroom, Spirit Bear. You have a message.

  Deliver message, Zeb clicked.

  The liver is evil and must be punished.

  I hear you, Red-necked Crake, Zeb typed. All is well.

  Then he closed the site and stood up. “Call me if there are any aphid recurrences,” he said. “If you’d check our work from time to time and keep me informed, that would be good.” He wrote on her pad: The hair’s great, babe. Love the slanty eyes. Then he was gone.

  Toby gathered up all the desk-pad pages. Luckily she had some matches to burn them with; she’d been hoarding matches for her Ararat, storing them in a container labelled Lemon Meringue Facial.

  After Zeb’s visit she felt less isolated. She’d log in to Extinctathon at irregular intervals and trace the path to the MaddAddam Grandmaster chatroom. Codenames and messages flitted across the screen: Black Rhino to Spirit Bear: Newbies coming. Ivory Bill to Swift Fox: Fear no weevil. White Sedge and Lotis Blue: Micesplice a ten. Red-necked Crake to MaddAddam: Marshmallow hiways nice one! She had no idea what most of these messages meant, but at least she felt included.

  Sometimes there were e-bulletins that appeared to be CorpSeCorps classified information. Many of these were about strange outbreaks of new diseases, or peculiar infestations – the splice porcubeaver that was attacking the fan belts in cars, the bean weevil that was decimating Happicuppa coffee plantations, the asphalt-eating microbe that was melting highways.

  Then the Rarity restaurant chain was obliterated by a series of lethal bombings. She saw the regular news, where these events were blamed on unspecified eco-terrorists; but she also read a detailed analysis on MaddAddam. It was the Wolf Isaiahists who’d done the bombings, they said, because Rarity had introduced a new menu item – liobam, a sacred animal for the Wolf Isaiahists. MaddAddam had added a P.S.: Warning all God’s Gardeners: They’ll pin this on you. Go to ground.

  Shortly after that, Muffy came to the Spa unexpectedly. She was her usual elegant self; her manner gave nothing away. “Let’s walk on the lawn,” she said. When they were out in the open and away from any hidden mikes, she whispered, “I’m not here for a treatment. I just needed to tell you that we’re going away, I can’t say where. Don’t worry. It’s only urgent on the inside.”

  “Will you be all right?” Toby asked.

  “Time will tell,” said Muffy. “Good luck, dear Toby. Dear Tobiatha. Put Light around me.”

  She and her husband were listed as fatalities in an airship accident a week later. The CorpSeCorps were good at arranging high-class mishaps for highly placed suspects, Zeb had told her – people whose disappearance without a trace would cause a stir, up there among the Corps anointed.

  Toby didn’t go near the MaddAddam chatroom for months after that. She waited for the knock on the door, the shattering of glass, the zipzip of a spraygun. But nothing happened. When she finally screwed up the courage to enter MaddAddam again, there was a message for her:

  Inaccessible Rail from Spirit Bear: The Garden is destroyed. Adams and Eves gone dark. Watch and wait.

  POLLINATION DAY

  POLLINATION DAY

  YEAR TWENTY-ONE

  OF THE TREES, AND OF THE FRUITS IN THEIR SEASONS.

  SPOKEN BY ADAM ONE.

  Dear Friends and Fellow Mammals:

  Today is a Feast day, but sadly we have no feast. Our flight was rapid: our escape narrow. Now, true to their nature, our enemies have laid waste to our Rooftop. But surely one day we will return to Edencliff and restore that blissful site to its former glory. The CorpSeCorps may have destroyed our Garden, but they have not destroyed our Spirit. Eventually, we shall plant again.

  Why did the Corps strike? Alas, we were becoming too powerful for their liking. Many rooftops were blossoming as the rose; many hearts and minds were bent towards an Earth restored to balance. But in success lay the seeds of ruin, for those in power could no longer dismiss us as ineffectual faddists: they feared us, as prophets of the age to come. In short, we threatened their profit margins.

  In addition, they linked us to the bio-attacks made on their infrastructures by the schismatic and heretical group calling itself MaddAddam. Last week’s bombing attacks on the Rarity restaurant chain – though perpetrated by the Wolf Isaiahists alone – gave them an excuse to unleash a sweeping crackdown on all who have sided with God’s Created Earth.

  May they prove as blind in material vision as they have long been in Spiritual vision! For though our days of calling carnivores to open repentance on the pleebland streets are over, the lessons of Animal Camouflage have not been lost on us. Disguised to blend with the background, we thrive under the noses of our enemies. We have shed our plain vestments and swathed ourselves in mallway purchases. The monogrammed golf shirt, the lime green tank top, the striped pastel knit ensemble sported so courageously by Nuala – such is our defensive armour.

  Some of you have chosen to
allay suspicion by courageously eating the flesh of our fellow Creatures; but do not attempt feats beyond your strength, dear Friends. To bite into a SecretBurger and then choke on it will attract unwelcome scrutiny. If in doubts as to your limits, confine yourselves to a SoYummie ice cream. Such quasi-foods may be swallowed without undue strain.

  Let us give thanks to the Fernside Truffle cell, which has made this Street of Dreams refuge available to us. The sign on our door proclaims, GREEN GENES,which purports to be a firm of botanic splice designers. The second sign – the one that says, CLOSED FOR RENOVATIONS– is our protection. If asked, say we’ve been having trouble with the contractor. That is always a plausible explanation.

  Today is Pollination Day, on which we remember the contributions to forest preservation of Saint Suryamani Bhagat of India, Saint Stephen King of the Pureora Forest in New Zealand, and Saint Odigha of Nigeria, among so many others. This Festival is devoted to the mysteries of Plant Reproduction, especially that of those wondrous trees, the Angiosperms, with special emphasis upon the Drupes and the Pomaceous Fruits.

  Legends of such Fruits have come down to us from the Ancients – the Golden Apples of the Hesperides, the similarly golden Apple of Discord. Some say that the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was a fig, others prefer a date, yet others a pomegranate. It would have made sense for this foodstuff to have been truly evil – a meat object, such as a beefsteak. Why then a Fruit? Because our Ancestors were fruitivores, without a doubt, and only a Fruit would have tempted them.

  The Fruit remains a deeply meaningful symbol for us, embodying the notions of healthful harvest, of rich culmination, and of new beginning, for within every Fruit is a seed – a potential new life. The Fruit ripens and falls and returns to the soil; but the Seed takes root, and grows, and brings forth more Life. As the Human Words of God have said, “By their Fruits ye shall know them.” Let us pray that our Fruits be Fruits of Good, and not Fruits of Evil.

  But a word of caution: we honour the Pollinating Insects, and in especial the Bees, but we are now informed that, in addition to the virus-resistant strain introduced after the recent honeybee die-off, the Corps have now developed a hybrid bee. It is not a genetic splice, my Friends. No: it is a greater abomination! Bees are seized while still in larval form, and micro-mechanical systems are inserted into them. Tissue grows around the insert, and when the full adult or “imago” emerges, it is a bee cyborg spy controllable by a CorpSeCorps operator, equipped to transmit, and thus to betray.

  The ethical problems raised are troubling: Should we have recourse to insecticides? Is such a mechanized slave bee alive? If so, is it a true Creature of God or something else entirely? We must ponder the deeper implications, my Friends, and pray for guidance.

  Let us sing.

  THE PEACH OR PLUM

  The Peach or Plum that spreads its boughs

  Is beauteous at time of flower,

  And Birds and Bees and Bats rejoice,

  And sip its nectar hour by hour.

  And Pollination then takes place:

  For every Nut or Seed or Fruit,

  A tiny golden particle

  Has winged its way, and taken root.

  Then swells the oval on the stem,

  And slowly ripens, week by week –

  Within it stored the nourishment

  That Birds and Beasts and Men do seek.

  And in each Seed or Fruit or Nut

  Is coiled a silver infant Tree

  That will arise if planted right,

  Unfurling flowers, a joy to see.

  When next you eat a golden Peach

  And lightly throw away the pit,

  Consider how it shines with Life –

  God dwelling in the midst of it.

  From The God’s Gardeners Oral Hymnbook

  49

  REN

  YEAR TWENTY-FIVE

  Adam One used to say, If you can’t stop the waves, go sailing. Or else, What can’t be mended may still be tended. Or else, Without the light, no chance; without the dark, no dance. Which meant that even bad things did some good because they were a challenge and you didn’t always know what good effects they might have. Not that the Gardeners ever did any dancing, as such.

  So I decided to perform a Meditation, which would be one way of dealing with the fact that there was nothing to do inside the Sticky Zone. If nothing’s the problem, work with nothing, Philo the Fog would say. Turn off your mind chatter. Open up your inner eye, your inner ear. See what you can see. Hear what you can hear. Back at the Gardeners, what I’d see would be the pigtails of the girl in front of me and what I’d hear would be the snoring of Philo, because when he was leading Meditation he always went to sleep.

  I wasn’t much more successful now. I could hear the thump, thump of the bass line coming from the Snakepit and the humming of the minifridge, I could see the lights of the street making blurry patterns through the glass bricks of the window, but none of this was spiritually enlightening. So I stopped doing the Meditation and turned on the news.

  There was another minor epidemic, they were saying, but nothing to get alarmed about. Viruses and bacteria were always mutating, but I knew the Corporations could always invent treatments for them, and anyway whatever this bug was I didn’t have it myself because I’d been in isolation with a double virus barrier protecting me. I was in the safest place I could be.

  I switched back to the Snakepit. A fight had broken out. It must have been the Painballers – the three who’d come in first and the other one.

  As I watched, the CorpSeCorps minders moved in. They got one of the Painballers down on the floor, used their tasers on him. The bouncers were fighting now too – one of them staggered backwards, clutching his eye; then another one hit the bar. It didn’t usually take this long to get things under control. Savona and Crimson Petal were still up on the trapezes trying to carry on, but the pole girls were scurrying off the stage. Then they ran back onto it again: the exits behind must be blocked. Oh no, I thought. Then a bottle flew into the camera and smashed it.

  I went to another camera, but my hands were shaking and I’d forgotten the key-in, and by the time I’d turned it on and got it focused the Snakepit was a lot emptier. The lights were still on and the music was playing, but the room was a shambles. The customers must have all run out. Savona was lying on the bar: I could tell it was her by the sparkly costume, even though it was half torn off. Her head was bent at a strange angle and there was blood all over her face. Crimson Petal was hanging from the trapeze; one of the ropes was around her neck, and between her legs was the glint of a bottle – someone must have shoved it up her. Her frills and ruffles were ripped to shreds. She looked like a limp bouquet.

  Where was Mordis?

  A dark flailing bundle tumbled across the screen: a shadow dance, a kinky ballet. There was the bam! of a door slammed back, and then something that sounded like hooting. Then sirens, in the distance. Feet running.

  Then there was shouting in the hallway outside the Sticky Zone and the videoscreen from outside my door lit up, and on it was Mordis, close up, staring in at me with one eye. The other one was closed. His face looked chewed.

  “Your name,” he whispered.

  Then an arm grabbed him around the throat, pulled his head back. One of the Painballers. I could see his hand, holding a slice of bottle: red and blue veins. “Open the fucking door, asshole,” he said. “Bitch in heat! Time to share!”

  Mordis was howling. What they wanted from him was the door code. “The numbers, the numbers,” they were saying.

  I saw Mordis for one more instant. There was a gurgling, and he was gone. In his place was the Painballer – a faceful of scars.

  “Open up and we’ll let your buddy live,” he said. “We won’t hurt you.” But he was lying because Mordis was already dead.

  Then there was more shouting, and then the CorpSeMen must have tasered him, because he howled in his turn and vanished from the screen, and there was a thuddi
ng sound like someone kicking a sack.

  I went to the Snakepit camera: more CorpSeMen, in riot gear, a swarm of them. They were pushing and dragging the Painballers out the door – one dead one, three still alive. It would be back to Painball for them – they should never have been let out, not ever.

  Then I realized what would happen. The Sticky Zone was a fortress. No one could get in without the door code, and nobody but Mordis knew that code. That’s what he always said. And hadn’t told it: he’d saved my life.

  But now I was locked inside, with no one to let me out. Oh please, I thought. I don’t want to be dead.

  50

  I told myself not to panic. SeksMart would send a cleaning crew, and they’d realize I was in there, and they’d get someone to work on the lock. They wouldn’t leave me in there to starve and dry up like a mummy: when they reopened Scales they’d need me. It wouldn’t be at all the same without Mordis – already I missed him – but at least I would have a function. I wasn’t only a disposable, I was talent. That’s what Mordis always said.

  So it was just a matter of waiting it out.

  I took a shower – I felt dirty, as if those Painballers really had got in, or as if I had the blood of Mordis all over me.

  Then I did another Meditation, a real one. Put Light around Mordis, I prayed. Let him go into the Universe. May his Spirit go in peace. I pictured him flying up out of his demolished body in the form of a small, brown beady-eyed bird.

  The next day, two bad things happened. First, I turned on the news. The minor epidemic they’d been talking about earlier wasn’t behaving in the usual way – a local outbreak, one they could contain. Now it was an emergency. They showed a map of the world, with the hotspots lighting up in red – Brazil, Taiwan, Saudi Arabia, Bombay, Paris, Berlin – it was like watching the planet being spraygunned. It was an eruptive plague, they said, and the thing was spreading fast – no, not even spreading, breaking out at the same time in cities far apart, which wasn’t the normal pattern. Ordinarily the Corps would have called for lies and cover-ups, and we’d hear something like the real story only in rumours, so the fact that all this was right out there on the news showed how serious it was – the Corps couldn’t keep the lid on.