MaddAddam 03 - MaddAddam

by Margaret Atwood

  The walls inside the biolet are still covered with pleebland inscriptions: several generations of them, one layer on top of another. There’d been a time when those still devoted to some norm of propriety had tried to paint the words over, but a few kids bent on self-expressive anarchy could destroy in an hour a white surface it had taken a crew three days to blandify.

  To Daryn, Im ur bitch, ur my King,

  I <3 you more than anything

  Fk the Corps

  Loris a stuck up cunt

  I hope ur raped by 100000 pit bulls

  People who write on washroom walls, Shld roll their shit in little balls, And those who read these words of wit, Shld have to eat those balls of shit

  Call me/ Best for ur $/ Ull scream 24/7 & die in a pond of Cum

  STAY OUT MY WAY A HAT OR ILL KNIFE U

  And shyly, unfinished: Try love the World needs

  What to eat, where to shit, how to take shelter, who and what to kill: are these the basics? thinks Toby. Is this what we’ve come to, or come down to; or else come back to?

  And who do you love? And who loves you? And who loves you not? And, come to think of it, who seriously hates you.

  Blink

  Under the trees Jimmy is still slumbering. Toby checks his pulse – calmer; changes his maggots – the wound on his foot has stopped festering; and pours some mushroom elixir into him, mixed with a little Poppy.

  An oval of chairs is arranged around the hammock, as if Jimmy is the central offering at a feast: a giant salmon, a boar on a platter. Three Crakers are purring over him, taking turns: two men and a woman, gold, ivory, ebony. It’s a different three every few hours. Do they have only so much purring quotient, are they like batteries that have to be recharged? Naturally they need time off to graze and water themselves, but does the purring itself have a sort of electrical frequency?

  We’ll never know, thinks Toby, holding Jimmy’s nose to make him open his mouth: no way of wiring up their brains for scientific studies, not any more. Which is lucky for them. In the olden days they’d have been kidnapped from the Paradice Project dome by some rival Corp, then injected and jolted and probed and sliced apart to see how they were put together. What made them tick, what made them purr, what made them click. What, if anything, made them sick. They’d have ended up as slabs of DNA in a freezer.

  Jimmy swallows, sighs; his left hand twitches. “How has he been today?” Toby asks the three Crakers. “Has he been awake at all?”

  “No, Oh Toby,” says the gold-coloured man. “He is travelling.” This one has bright red hair, long slender limbs; despite the skin colour, he looks like something from a children’s storybook. An Irish folktale.

  “But now he has stopped,” says the ebony man. “He has climbed into a tree.”

  “Not his real tree,” says the ivory woman. “Not the tree he lives in.”

  “He has gone to sleep in this tree,” says the ebony man.

  “You mean, he’s sleeping inside his sleep?” says Toby. This seems wrong: it shouldn’t be possible. “In the tree in his dream?”

  “Yes, Oh Toby,” says the ivory woman. All three of them gaze at her with their lambent green eyes, as if she’s twirling a piece of string and they are bored cats.

  “Perhaps he will sleep for a long time,” says the golden man. “He is stuck there, in the tree. If he will not wake up and travel to here, he will not wake up at all.”

  “But he’s getting better!” says Toby.

  “He is afraid,” says the ivory woman in a matter-of-fact voice. “He is afraid of what is in this world. He is afraid of the bad men, he is afraid of the Pig Ones. He doesn’t want to be awake.”

  “Can you talk to him?” says Toby. “Can you tell him it’s better to be awake?” No harm in trying: maybe they have some form of inaudible communication that might reach Jimmy, wherever he is. A wavelength, a vibration.

  But now they aren’t looking at her. They’re looking at Ren and Lotis Blue, who are walking over with Amanda in tow, sheltering behind them.

  The three of them sit down on the empty chairs, Amanda hesitantly. Ren and Lotis Blue are muddy from their building activities, but Amanda is pristine. The other two give her a shower every morning, choose a fresh bedsheet for her, braid her hair.

  “We thought we’d take a break from the house,” says Ren. “See how Jimmy – see how Snowman-the-Jimmy is doing.”

  The ivory woman smiles widely at them, the two men smile less widely: the Craker men are nervous around the younger cobb-house women now. Ever since they’ve learned that rambunctious group copulation is not acceptable, they don’t know what’s expected of them. They begin conferring together in low voices, leaving the ivory woman as the sole purrer.

  Is she blue? One is blue. Two others were blue, we joined our blue to their blue but we did not make them happy. They are not like our women, they are not happy, they are broken. Did Crake make them? Why did he make them that way, so they are not happy? Oryx will take care of them. Will Oryx take care of them, if they are not like our women? When Snowman-the-Jimmy wakes up, we will ask him these things.

  I’d like to be a fly on the wall, thinks Toby. Listening to Jimmy justifying the ways of Crake towards men, or semi-men.

  “Will Jimmy – will Snowman-the-Jimmy be okay?” asks Lotis Blue.

  “I think so,” says Toby. “It will depend on his …” She doesn’t want to say “immune system” because the Crakers will hear. (What is an immune system? It is something you have inside yourself that helps you and makes you strong. Where can we find an immune system? Is it from Crake, will he send us an immune system?, and so on.) “It depends on his dreaming.” No comment from the Crakers: so far, so good. “But I’m sure he’ll wake up soon.”

  “He needs to eat,” says Lotis Blue. “He’s so thin! He can’t live on nothing.”

  “You can go a long time without food,” says Ren. “They did fasts, at the Gardeners? You can go for days. Weeks.” She leans over and reaches out, smoothing back Jimmy’s hair. “I wish we could give him a shampoo,” she says. “He’s getting rank.”

  “I think he just said something,” says Lotis Blue.

  “It was only a mumble. We could sponge him off,” says Ren. “Like, a sponge bath.” She leans closer. “He looks a bit shrivelled. Poor Jimmy. I hope he doesn’t die.”

  “I’m hydrating him,” says Toby. “And there’s the honey, I’m feeding him that.” Why is she sounding like a head nurse? “We do wash him,” she says defensively. “We do it every day.”

  “Well anyway, he’s not so feverish,” says Lotis Blue. “He’s cooling down. Don’t you think?”

  Ren feels Jimmy’s forehead. “I don’t know,” she says. “Jimmy, can you hear me?” They all watch: Jimmy doesn’t twitch. “I’d say he’s warm. Amanda? See what you think.” She’s trying to involve her, thinks Toby. Get her interested in something. Ren was always a kindly child.

  If she is blue, the Lotis one, should we mate with her? No, we should not. Do not sing to them, do not pick flowers for them, do not wag your penis at them. These women scream with fright, they do not choose us even if we give them a flower, they do not like a wagging penis. We do not make them happy, we do not know why they scream. But sometimes they do not scream with fright, sometimes they …

  “I need to lie down,” says Amanda. She stands up, walks unsteadily away towards the cobb house.

  “I’m really worried about her,” says Ren. “She threw up this morning, she couldn’t eat any breakfast. That’s extreme Fallow.”

  “Maybe it’s a bug,” says Lotis Blue. “Something she ate. We really need a better way of washing the dishes, I don’t think the water is …”

  “Look,” says Ren. “He blinked.”

  “He is hearing you,” says the ivory woman. “He is hearing your voice, and now he is walking. He is happy, he wants to be with you.”

  “With me?” says Ren. “Really?”

  “Yes. Look, he is smiling.” There is indeed a s
mile, or the trace of a smile, thinks Toby. Though maybe it’s only gas, as with babies.

  The ivory woman waves away a mosquito that has settled on Jimmy’s mouth. “Soon he will be awake,” she says.

  Zeb in the Dark

  Zeb in the Dark

  It’s evening. Toby has dodged her storytime session with the Crakers. Those stories take a lot out of her. Not only does she have to put on the absurd red hat and eat the ritual fish, which isn’t always what you’d call cooked, but there’s so much she needs to invent. She doesn’t like to tell lies, not deliberately, not lies as such, but she skirts the darker and more tangled corners of reality. It’s like trying to keep toast from burning while still having it transform into toast.

  “I’ll come tomorrow,” she told them. “Tonight I must do an important thing for Zeb.”

  “What is the important thing you must do, Oh Toby? We would like to be your helpers.” At least they didn’t ask what important means. They seem to have put together an idea of it: somewhere between dangerous and delicious.

  “Thank you,” she said. “But it is a thing that only I can do.”

  “Is it about the bad men?” asked little Blackbeard.

  “No,” Toby said. “We have not seen the bad men for many days. Maybe they have gone far away. But we must still be careful, and tell others if we see them.”

  One of the Mo’Hairs has gone missing, Crozier has told her privately – the red-headed one with the braids – but it may simply have strayed off while grazing. Or else a liobam got it.

  Or something worse, thinks Toby: something human.

  The day has been stifling. Even the afternoon thunderstorm hasn’t cleared away the humidity. Under normal conditions – but what is normal? – lust should have been drained of its supercharge by this weather; muffled, as if under a damp mattress. She and Zeb should have been limp, enervated, exhausted. But instead they’d snuck away from the others even earlier than usual, slippery with longing, every pore avid, every capillary suffused, and thrashed around like newts in a puddle.

  Now it’s deep twilight. Purple darkness wells up from the earth, bats flit past like leathery butterflies, night flowers open, musking the air. They’re sitting outside in the kitchen garden for the evening breeze, what there is of it. Their fingers are loosely entwined; Toby can feel, still, a small current of electricity moving between them. Tiny iridescent moths are shimmering around their heads. What do we smell like to them? she wonders. Like mushrooms? Like crushed petals? Like dew?

  “Help me out here,” says Toby. “I need more to go on, for the Crakers. They’re insatiable on the subject of you.”

  “Like what?”

  “You’re their hero. They want your life story. Your miraculous origins, your supernatural deeds, your favourite recipes. You’re like royalty to them.”

  “Why me?” says Zeb. “I thought Crake did away with all that. They aren’t supposed to be interested.”

  “Well, they are. They’re obsessed with you. You’re their rock star.”

  “Lord fuck a dog. Can’t you just make up some piece of crap?”

  “They cross-examine like lawyers,” says Toby. “At the very least I need the basics. The raw material.” Does she want to know about Zeb for the sake of the Crakers, or for herself? Both. But mostly for herself.

  “I’m an open book,” says Zeb.

  “Don’t be evasive.”

  Zeb sighs. “I hate going back to all that. I had to live it, I don’t like reliving it. Who cares?”

  “I do,” says Toby. And so do you, she thinks. You still do care. “I’m listening.”

  “Persistent, aren’t you?”

  “I’ve got all night. So, you were born …”

  “Yeah, admitted.” Another sigh. “Okay. First you need to understand: we got the wrong mothers.”

  “Wrong, how?” she says to the face she can barely see. A plane of cheekbone, a shadow, a glint of eye.

  The Story of the Birth of Zeb

  I have put on the red hat of Snowman. I have eaten the fish. I have listened to the shiny thing. Now I will tell the story of the birth of Zeb.

  You don’t have to sing.

  Zeb did not come from Crake, not like Snowman. And he wasn’t made by Oryx, not like rabbits. He was born, the same way you are born. He grew in a bone cave, just like you, and came out through a bone tunnel, just like you.

  Because underneath our clothing skins, we are the same as you. Almost the same.

  No, we do not turn blue. Though we might smell blue sometimes. But our bone cave is the same.

  I don’t think we need to discuss blue penises right now.

  I know they are bigger. Thank you for pointing that out.

  Yes, we do have breasts. The women do.

  Yes, two.

  Yes, on the front.

  No, I will not show them to you right now.

  Because this story is not about breasts. This story is about Zeb.

  A very long time ago, in the days of the chaos – before Crake cleared it all away – Zeb lived in the bone cave of his mother. And Oryx took care of him there, as she takes care of all those who live in the bone caves. And then he travelled into this world through the bone tunnel. And then he was a baby, and then he grew.

  And he had an older brother whose name was Adam. But Adam’s mother was not the same mother as the mother of Zeb.

  Because when Adam was very young, Adam’s mother ran away from Adam’s father.

  Running away means she went very quickly to a different place. Though she may not have done any running as such. Perhaps she walked, or drove in a … So Adam never saw her any more.

  Yes, I’m sure it was sad for him.

  Because she wanted to mate with more than one male, not only with Zeb’s father. Or that is what Zeb’s father told him.

  Yes, it was a good thing to want, and she would have been happy if she could be living with you. She could mate with four males at once, like you. She would be very happy then!

  But Zeb’s father did not see it that way.

  Because he had done a thing with her called marriage, and with marriage there was supposed to be one male for each female and one female for each male. Although sometimes there were more. But there were not supposed to be.

  Because it was the chaos. It was a thing of the chaos. That is why you can’t understand it.

  Marriage is gone now. Crake cleared it away because he thought it was stupid.

  Stupid means things Crake didn’t like. There were a lot of things Crake thought were stupid.

  Yes, good, kind Crake. I will stop telling this story if you sing.

  Because it makes me forget what I am telling.

  Thank you.

  So then Adam’s father found a new woman to have marriage with, and Zeb was born. Now little Adam was not lonely, because he had a brother. And Adam and Zeb helped each other. But Zeb’s father was sometimes hurtful to them.

  I don’t know why. He thought pain was good for children.

  No, he was not as bad as the two bad men who were hurtful to Amanda. But he was not a kind person.

  I don’t know why some people then were not kind. It was a thing of the chaos.

  And Zeb’s mother was often taking a nap, or doing other things that interested her. She was not very interested in small children. And she said, “You will be the death of me.”

  Death of me is hard to explain. It meant she was displeased with the things they were doing.

  No, Zeb did not kill his mother. Death of me is just a thing she said. She said it a lot.

  Why did she say it if it wasn’t true? It was … those people talked that way. It wasn’t true or not true. It was in between. It was a way of telling about a feeling you might have. It was a manner of speaking. A manner of speaking means …

  You are right. Zeb’s mother was not a kind person either. Sometimes she helped Zeb’s father lock Zeb up in a closet.

  Lock up means … closet means … It was a very small r
oom and it was dark in there, and Zeb couldn’t get out. Or they thought he couldn’t get out. But soon Zeb learned a lot about opening closed doors.

  No. His mother couldn’t sing. Not like your mothers. And your fathers. And you.

  But Zeb could sing. That is one of the things he did when he was locked inside the closet. He sang.

  The PetrOleum Brats

  Zeb’s mother, Trudy, was the goody-goody, and Adam’s mother, Fenella, was the shag-anything trashbunny. Or that was the story told by Trudy and the Rev. Since the two of them claimed that Zeb was so freaking useless and they were so righteous, naturally he thought he’d been adopted, since he couldn’t possibly have come from two such pristine sources of DNA as them.

  He used to daydream that he’d been left behind by Fenella, who must have been his real, worthless mother. She’d been forced to flee in a hurry, and hadn’t been able to tote him along when she was running away – she’d dropped him on the doorstep in a cardboard box, to be taken in and trodden underfoot by this Trudy person, who was unrelated to him and lying about it. Fenella – wherever she was – deeply regretted her abandonment of him, and was planning to come back and get him once she could manage it. Then they would go far, far away together, and do absolutely everything on the long list of things that were frowned upon by the Rev. He saw them sitting on a park bench together, eating licorice twists and happily picking their noses. Just for instance.

  But that was when he was little. Once he figured out genetics, he decided that Trudy must’ve secretly had it off with some fix-it guy with a wrench who doubled as a housebreaker and petty thief. Or else a gardener: she used to snaffle illegal Tex-Mex guys with black hair, like Zeb’s. She’d pay them not enough to wheelbarrow soil around, dig up shrubs, dump more rocks on her rock garden, which was the only thing that really held her attention in the way of nurturing and tending, as far as Zeb could tell. She was always out there with one of those little fork-tongued weeders or messing up ant nests with hot vinegar.