MaddAddam 03 - MaddAddam

by Margaret Atwood

  Better to concentrate on the task at hand. Don’t brood or mope. Take one day at a time.

  Saint Bob Hunter and the Feast of Rainbow Warriors, Toby writes. This may not be accurate, time-wise – she’s probably out by a day or two – but it will have to do because how can she check? There’s no central authority any more for days of the month. But Rebecca might know. There were special recipes for the Festivals and Feasts. Maybe she’s memorized them; maybe she’s kept track.

  Moon: Waxing gibbous. Weather: Nothing unusual. Noteworthy occurrences: Group pig aggression displayed. Painballer evidence sighted by Zeb’s expedition: piglet shot and partly butchered. Discovery of a tire tread sandal, possible clue to Adam. No definite sign of Adam One and the Gardeners.

  She thinks a minute, then adds: Jimmy is conscious and improving. Crakers continue friendly.

  “What are you making, Oh Toby?” It’s little Blackbeard: she didn’t hear him come in. “What are those lines?”

  “Come over here,” she says. “I won’t bite you. Look. I’m doing writing: that is what these lines are. I’ll show you.”

  She runs through the basics. This is paper, it is made from trees.

  Does it hurt the tree? No, because the tree is dead by the time the paper is made – a tiny lie, but no matter. And this is a pen. It has a black liquid in it, it is called ink, but you do not need to have a pen to do writing. Just as well, she thinks: those rollerballs will run out soon.

  You can use many things to make writing. You can use the juice of elderberries for the ink, you can use the feather of a bird for the pen, you can use a stick and some wet sand to write on. All of these things can be used to make writing.

  “Now,” she says, “you have to draw the letters. Each letter means a sound. And when you put the letters together they make words. And the words stay where you’ve put them on the paper, and then other people can see them on the paper and hear the words.”

  Blackbeard looks at her, squinting with puzzlement and unbelief. “Oh Toby, but it can’t talk,” he says. “I see the marks you have put there. But it is not saying anything.”

  “You need to be the voice of the writing,” she says. “When you read it. Reading is when you turn these marks back into sounds. Look, I will write your name.”

  She tears a page carefully from the back of the notebook, prints on it: BLACKBEARD. Then she sounds out each letter for him. “See?” she says. “It means you. Your name.” She puts the pen in his hand, curls his fingers around it, guides the hand and the pen: the letter B.

  “This is how your name begins,” she says. “B. Like bees. It’s the same sound.” Why is she telling him this? What use will he ever have for it?

  “That is not me,” says Blackbeard, frowning. “It is not bees either. It is only some marks.”

  “Take this paper to Ren,” says Toby, smiling. “Ask her to read it, then come back and tell me if she says your name.”

  Blackbeard stares at her. He doesn’t trust what she’s told him, but he takes the piece of paper anyway, holding it gingerly as if it’s coated with invisible poison. “Will you stay here?” he says. “Until I come back?”

  “Yes,” she says. “I’ll be right here.” He backs out the doorway as he always does, keeping his eyes on her until he turns the corner.

  She turns back to her journal. What else to write, besides the bare-facts daily chronicle she’s begun? What kind of story – what kind of history will be of any use at all, to people she can’t know will exist, in the future she can’t foresee?

  Zeb and the Bear, she writes. Zeb and MaddAddam. Zeb and Crake. All of these stories could be set down. But why, but for whom? Only for herself because it gives her a chance to dwell upon Zeb?

  Zeb and Toby, she writes. But surely that will be only a footnote.

  Don’t jump to conclusions, she tells herself. He came to the garden, bringing gifts. You could be misinterpreting, about Swift Fox. And even if not, so what? Take what the moment offers. Don’t close doors. Be thankful.

  Blackbeard slips into the room again. He’s carrying the sheet of paper, holding it in front of him like a hot shield. His face is radiant.

  “It did, Oh Toby,” he says. “It said my name! It told my name to Ren!”

  “There,” she says. “That is writing.”

  Blackbeard nods: now he’s grasping the possibilities. “I can keep this?” he says.

  “Of course,” says Toby.

  “Show me again. With the black thing.”

  Later – after it’s rained, after the rain has stopped – she finds him at the sandbox. He has a stick, and the paper. There’s his name in the sand. The other children are watching him. All of them are singing.

  Now what have I done? she thinks. What can of worms have I opened? They’re so quick, these children: they’ll pick this up and transmit it to all the others.

  What comes next? Rules, dogmas, laws? The Testament of Crake? How soon before there are ancient texts they feel they have to obey but have forgotten how to interpret? Have I ruined them?

  Swarm

  Breakfast is kudzu and other assorted forage greens, bacon, a strange flatbread with unidentified seeds in it, steamed burdock. Coffee from a blend of toasted roots: dandelion, chickory, something else. It has an undertaste of ashes.

  They’re running out of sugar, and there’s no honey. But there is Mo’Hair milk. Another of the ewes – a blue-haired one – has given birth to twins, a blonde and a brunette. There have been some jokes about lamb stew, but no one wants to go there: somehow it would be hard to slaughter and eat an animal with human hair; especially human hair that so closely resembles, in its sheen and stylability, the shampoo ads of yore. Every time one of those Mo’Hairs shakes itself it’s like watching the back view of a TV hair beauty: the shining mane, the flirtatious ripple and swirl. At any minute, thinks Toby, you expect them to come out with a product spiel. Every day a bad-hair day? My hair was driving me crazy, but then … I died.

  Don’t be so dark, Toby, it’s only hair. It’s not the end of the world.

  Over the coffee they discuss other food options. Protein variety is lacking, they’re all agreed on that. Rebecca says she’d kill for some live chickens because then they could keep them in a henhouse and have eggs; but where are such chickens to be found? There are seabird eggs on top of the derelict towers offshore, down by the beach – there must be, the birds are nesting there – but who is willing to make the perilous trip down to the seashore through the increasingly overgrown Heritage Park that may harbour the Painballers, not to mention a squadron or two of large, malevolent pigs? And they shouldn’t even think about climbing up the inner stairs of those towers, which must be very unstable by now.

  A debate follows. One side points to the fact that the Crakers wander back and forth at will, singing their polyphonic music. They visit their home base by the shore, a hollow jumble of cement blocks. They keep it protected from animals by peeing in a circle around it, a circle they believe the pigoons and wolvogs and bobkittens won’t cross. They spear the ritual fish to present to Toby so she will fulfill the functions of Snowman-the-Jimmy and tell them stories. No animal has molested the Crakers on their woodland walks, or not so far. As for the Painballers, they must be quite far away by now, judging from the location of the last known sign of them, which was the carcass of that recently killed piglet.

  The other side argues that the Crakers appear to have ways of keeping the wildlife at bay while in transit, apart from the pissing defence. Maybe it’s the singing? If so, and needless to point out, that won’t work for normal human beings, whose vocal cords aren’t made of organic glass or whatever it is that accounts for those digital-keyboard theremin sounds. As for the Painballers, they could easily have circled back by now, and might be lurking in ambush around the very next kudzu-smothered corner. You can never be too careful, and better safe than sorry, and they cannot afford to sacrifice one or two of their number for the sake of a few gull eggs, which are likely g
reen and taste like fish guts anyway.

  An egg is an egg, say the pro-eggers. Why not send a couple of human beings with the Crakers? That way the humans will be protected from wild animals via the Crakers, and the Crakers will be protected from the Painballers via the sprayguns toted by the MaddAddamites. No point in giving sprayguns to the Crakers, since you could never teach them about shooting and killing people. They just aren’t capable, not being human as such.

  Not so fast: that case has not yet been proven, says Ivory Bill. “If they can crossbreed with us, then case made. Same species. If not, then not.” He leans forward, peers into his coffee cup. “Any more?” he asks Rebecca.

  “Only half true,” says Manatee. “A horse plus a donkey gives you a mule, but it’s sterile. We wouldn’t know for sure until the next generation.”

  “I’ve only got enough for tomorrow,” says Rebecca. “We need to dig some dandelions. We’ve used up the ones around here.”

  “It would be an interesting experiment,” says Ivory Bill. “But of course we would need the co-operation of the ladies.” He inclines his head courteously towards Swift Fox, who’s wearing a winsome floral print sheet, with bouquets of pink and blue flowers tied with pink and blue bows.

  “You’ve seen those dicks of theirs?” says Swift Fox. “Too much of a good thing. If I find a dick in my mouth, I want to know it came in at the head end.” Ivory Bill turns away, visibly shocked, silently angry. Laughter from some, frowns from others. Swift Fox likes to potty-mouth the crowd, especially the men; to demonstrate that she isn’t just a pretty body, is Toby’s guess. She wants to have it both ways.

  Zeb is down at the other end of the table. He came late; he hasn’t been joining in the debate. He appears to be engrossed in the flatbread. Swift Fox tosses him a glance: is he her intended audience? He pays no attention; but then he wouldn’t, would he? That’s what those lovelife advisers blogging about office romances used to say: you can tell the guilty parties by the way in which they studiously avoid each other.

  “Those guys don’t need any co-operation,” says Crozier. “They jump anything with a c – Sorry, Toby. Anything with a skirt.”

  “A skirt!” says Swift Fox, laughing again, showing her white teeth. “Where’ve you been? You’ve seen any of us wearing skirts? Bedsheet wraps don’t count.” She twists her shoulders back and forth, as if on a fashion runway. “You like my skirt? It goes all the way up to my armpits!”

  “Leave him alone, he’s underage,” says Manatee. Crozier is making a strange face: anger? Embarrassment? Ren’s sitting beside him. He gives her a sheepish grin, puts his hand on her arm. She frowns at him like a spouse.

  “They’re the most fun, the underage ones,” says Swift Fox. “Frisky. They’re packed with endorphins, and their nucleotide sequences are to die for – miles of telomeres left.” Ren stares at her, stone-faced.

  “He’s not underage,” she says. Swift Fox smiles.

  Do the men at the table see it? Toby wonders. The silent mud-wrestle in the air? No, probably not. They’re not on the progesterone wavelength.

  “They only do that under the right conditions,” says Manatee. “The group copulation. The woman has to be in heat.”

  “That’s fine for their own women,” says Beluga. “They’ve got clear hormonal signals there, both visual and olfactory. But our women register to them as in heat all the time.”

  “Maybe they are,” says Manatee, grinning. “They just won’t admit it.”

  “Point being: two different species,” says Beluga.

  “Women aren’t dogs,” says White Sedge. “I am finding this exchange offensive. I don’t think you should refer to us like that.” Her voice is calm but her spine’s like a ramrod.

  “This is merely an objective scientific discussion,” says Zunzuncito.

  “Hey,” says Rebecca. “All I said is, it would be neat to have some eggs.”

  Morning worktime, the sun not yet too hot. Bright pink kudzu moths hang in the shade, flocks of butterflies in blue and magenta kite-fight in the air, golden honeybees flock on the polyberry flowers.

  Toby’s on garden duty again, weeding and deslugging. Her rifle leans against the inside of the fence: she prefers it within reach, wherever she is, because you never know. All around her the plants are growing, weeds and cultivars both. She can almost hear them pushing up through the soil, their rootlets sniffing for nutrients and crowding the rootlets of their neighbours, their leaves releasing clouds of airborne chemicals.

  Saint Vandana Shiva of Seeds, she wrote in her notebook this morning. Saint Nikolai Vavilov, Martyr. She added the traditional God’s Gardener invocation: May we be mindful of Saint Vandana and Saint Vavilov, fierce preservers of ancient seeds. Saint Vavilov, who collected the seeds and preserved them throughout the siege of Leningrad, only to fall victim to the tyrant Stalin; and Saint Vandana, tireless warrior against biopiracy, who gave of herself for the good of the Living Vegetable World in all its diversity and beauty. Lend us the purity of your Spirits and the strength of your resolve.

  Toby has a flash of memory: herself, back when she was Eve Six among the Gardeners, reciting this prayer along with old Pilar just before they set to work on the bean rows, doing their required stint of slug and snail relocation. Sometimes the homesickness for those days is so strong and also so unexpected that it knocks her down like a rogue wave. If she’d had a camera then, if she’d had a photo album, she’d be poring over the pictures. But the Gardeners didn’t believe in cameras, or in paper records; so all she has is the words.

  There would be no point in being a Gardener now: the enemies of God’s Natural Creation no longer exist, and the animals and birds – those that did not become extinct under the human domination of the planet – are thriving unchecked. Not to mention the plant life.

  Though maybe we could do with fewer of some plants, she thinks as she snips off the aggressive kudzu vines already climbing the garden fence. The stuff gets in everywhere. It’s tireless, it can grow a foot in twelve hours, it surges up and over anything in its way like a green tsunami. The grazing Mo’Hairs do a little to keep it down, and the Crakers munch away at it, and Rebecca serves it up like spinach, but that hardly makes a dent in it.

  She’s heard some of the men discussing a plan to make it into wine, but she has mixed feelings about that. She can’t imagine the taste – Pinot Grigio crossed with mashed lawn rakings? Pinot Vert with a whiff of compost pile? But apart from that, can their tiny group really afford to indulge in alcohol in any form? It dulls awareness, and they’re too vulnerable for that. Their little enclave is poorly defended. One drunken sentry, then infiltration, then carnage.

  “Found a swarm for you,” says Zeb’s voice. He’s come up behind her unseen: so much for her own alertness.

  She turns, smiling. Is it a real smile? Not entirely, because she still doesn’t know the truth about Swift Fox. Swift Fox and Zeb. Did they or didn’t they? And if he simply took the open door, so to speak – if he didn’t think twice about it – why should she? “A swarm?” she says. “Really? Where?”

  “Come into the forest with me,” he says, grinning like a fairy-tale wolf, holding out his paw of a hand. So of course she takes it, and forgives him everything. For the moment. Even though there may not be anything to forgive.

  They walk towards the tree edge, away from the cobb-house clearing. It does feel like a clearing now, though the MaddAddamites didn’t clear anything. But now that the vegetation is moving in they’re working to keep it clear, so maybe that counts.

  It’s cooler under the trees. Also more ominous: the green cross-hatching of leaves and branches blocks the sight lines. There’s a trail, indicated by bent twigs, showing the way Zeb must have come earlier.

  “Are you sure this is safe?” Toby says. She’s lowered her voice without even thinking about it. In the open you look, because a predator will be seen before it’s heard. But among the trees you have to listen, because it will be heard before it’s seen.
r />   “I was just back here, I checked it out,” says Zeb, too confidently for Toby.

  There’s the swarm, a large bee ball the size of a watermelon, hanging in the lower branches of a young sycamore. It’s buzzing softly; the surface of the ball is rippling, like golden fur in a breeze.

  “Thank you,” says Toby. She ought to go back to the cobb-house enclave, find a container, and scoop the centre of the swarm into it to capture the queen. Then the rest of the swarm will follow. She won’t even need to smoke the bees: they won’t sting because they aren’t defending a nest. She’ll explain to them first that she means them well, and that she hopes they will be her messengers to the land of the dead. Pilar, her bee teacher at the Gardeners, told her this speech was necessary when persuading a swarm of wild bees to come with you.

  “Maybe I should get a bag or something,” she says. “They’re already scouting for a good nest site. They’ll be flying soon.”

  “You want me to babysit them?” asks Zeb.

  “It’s okay,” she says. She’d like him to come back to the cobb house with her: she doesn’t want to walk through the forest alone. “But could you just not listen to me for a minute? And look the other way?”

  “You need to take a leak?” says Zeb. “Don’t mind me.”

  “You know how this goes. You were a Gardener yourself,” she says. “I need to talk to the bees.” It’s one of the Gardener practises that, viewed by an outsider, must seem weird; and it still does seem weird to her because part of her remains an outsider.

  “Sure,” says Zeb. “Hey. Do your stuff.” He turns sideways, gazes into the forest.

  Toby feels herself blushing. But she pulls the end of her bedsheet up to cover her head – essential, old Pilar said, or the bees would feel disrespected – and speaks in a whisper to the buzzing furball. “Oh Bees,” she says. “I send greetings to your Queen. I wish to be her friend, and to prepare a safe home for her, and for you who are her daughters, and to tell you the news every day. May you carry messages from the land of the living to all souls who dwell in the land of shadows. Please tell me now whether you accept my offer.”