MaddAddam 03 - MaddAddam

by Margaret Atwood

  Dinner is somewhat haphazard, though served in grand style on the round tables and pink tablecloths of the main dining room. A foraging posse has scoured the meadow, so there’s a hefty salad of wild greens. Rebecca has found a small unopened bottle of olive oil and made a classic French dressing. Steamed purslane, parboiled burdock root, wolvog jerky, Mo’Hair milk. There was a residual jar of sugar in the kitchen, so each of them has a teaspoonful of it for dessert. Toby isn’t used to sugar any more: the potent sweetness goes through her head like a blade.

  “I’ve got some news for you,” says Rebecca when they’re cleaning up. “Your pals caught a frog for you. They asked me to cook it.”

  “A frog?” says Toby.

  “Yeah. They couldn’t get a fish.”

  “Oh crap,” says Toby. The Crakers will be asking for their nighttime story. With any luck, they’ve forgotten to bring the red Snowman hat.

  It’s mellow evening now, the sun subsiding. Crickets trill, birds flock to roost, amphibians ribbet from the swimming pool or twang like rubber bands. Toby looks for something to wrap herself in while standing sentry: the rooftop can be cool.

  As she’s swaddling up in a pink bedspread, little Blackbeard sidles into her room. He spots himself in the mirror, smiles, waves at himself, does a tiny dance. Once that’s over, he delivers his message: “The Pig Ones are saying that the three bad men are over there.”

  “Over where?” says Toby, her heart quickening.

  “Across the flowers. Behind the trees. They can smell them.”

  “They shouldn’t go too close,” says Toby. “The bad men might have sprayguns. The sticks that make holes. With blood coming out.”

  “The Pig Ones know that,” says Blackbeard.

  Toby climbs the stairs to the rooftop, binoculars around her neck, rifle slung and ready. A number of the Crakers are already up there, waiting expectantly. Zeb is there too, leaning against the railing.

  “You’re very pink,” he says. “The colour suits you. The silhouette too. Michelin Tire Man?”

  “Are you being an asshole?”

  “Not on purpose,” he says. “Crows making a racket.” And they are making one. Caw caw caw over at the edge of the forest. Toby lifts the binoculars: nothing to be seen.

  “It could be an owl,” she says.

  “Could be,” says Zeb.

  “The Pigoons keep saying there are three men. Not two.”

  “I’d be surprised if they’re wrong,” says Zeb.

  “Do you think it might be Adam?” says Toby.

  “Remember what you said about hope?” says Zeb. “You said it can be bad for you. So I’m trying not to.”

  There’s a flicker of something light, over among the branches. Is it a face? Gone again.

  “The worst thing,” says Toby, “is the waiting.”

  Blackbeard tugs at her bedspread. “Oh Toby,” he says. “Come! It is time for us to hear the story that you will tell to us. We have brought the red hat.”

  The Train to CryoJeenyus

  The Story of the Two Eggs and Thinking

  Thank you. I am happy that you remembered to bring the red hat.

  And the fish. It is not a fish exactly, it is more like a frog. But you caught it in the water, and we are far from the ocean, so I am sure that Crake will understand, and will know that it was too far for you to go all the way to the ocean in order to catch a fish there.

  Thank you for cooking it. For asking Rebecca to cook it. Crake has told me that I do not have to eat all of it. A nibble will be enough.

  There.

  Yes, the frog … the fish has a bone in it. A smelly bone. That is why I spat it out. But we do not need to talk about the smelly bone right now.

  Tomorrow is a very important day. Tomorrow, all of us with two skins must finish the work that Crake began – the work of clearing away the chaos. That work was the Great Rearrangement, and it made the Great Emptiness.

  But that was only part of the work of Crake. The other part was when he made you. He made your bones out of the coral on the beach, which is white like bones but not smelly. And he made your flesh out of a mango, which is sweet and soft. He did all this inside the giant Egg, and he had some helpers there. And Snowman-the-Jimmy was his friend – he was inside the Egg as well.

  And Oryx was there too. Sometimes she was in the form of a woman with green eyes like yours, and sometimes she was in the form of an owl. And she laid two smaller owl eggs, inside the giant Egg. One smaller owl egg was full of animals and birds and fish – all her Children. Yes, and bees. And butterflies too. And ants, yes. And beetles – very many beetles. And snakes. And frogs. And maggots. And rakunks, and bobkittens, and Mo’Hairs, and Pigoons.

  Thank you, but I don’t think we need to list every one of them.

  Because we would be here all night.

  Let us just say that Oryx made very many Children. And each one was beautiful in its own special way.

  Yes, it was kind of her to make each and every one of them, inside the smaller owl egg that she laid. Except maybe the mosquitoes.

  The other egg she laid was full of words. But that egg hatched first, before the one with the animals in it, and you ate up many of the words, because you were hungry; which is why you have words inside you. And Crake thought that you had eaten all the words, so there were none left over for the animals, and that was why they could not speak. But he was wrong about that. Crake was not always right about everything.

  Because when he was not looking, some of the words fell out of the egg onto the ground, and some fell into the water, and some blew away in the air. And none of the people saw them. But the animals and the birds and the fish did see them, and ate them up. They were a different kind of word, so it was sometimes hard for people to understand the animals. They had chewed the words up too small.

  And the Pigoons – the Pig Ones – ate up more of the words than any of the other animals did. You know how they love to eat. So the Pig Ones can think very well.

  Then Oryx made a new kind of thing, called singing. And she gave it to you because she loved birds and she wanted you to be able to sing that way as well. But Crake did not want you to do the singing. It worried him. He thought that if you could sing like birds you would forget to talk like people, and then you would not remember him or understand his work – all the work that he had done to make you.

  And Oryx said, You will just have to suck it up. Because if these people cannot sing, they will be like … they will be like nothing. They will be like stones.

  Suck it up means … we will talk about that some other time.

  Now I will tell a different part of the story, which is about why Crake decided to make the Great Emptiness.

  For a long time, Crake thought. He thought and thought. He told no one about all his thoughts, though he told some of them to Snowman-the-Jimmy and some of them to Zeb and some of them to Pilar and some of them to Oryx.

  This is what he thought:

  The people in the chaos cannot learn. They cannot understand what they are doing to the sea and the sky and the plants and the animals. They cannot understand that they are killing them, and that they will end by killing themselves. And there are so many of them, and each one of them is doing part of the killing, whether they know it or not. And when you tell them to stop, they don’t hear you.

  So there is only one thing left to do. Either most of them must be cleared away while there is still an earth, with trees and flowers and birds and fish and so on, or all must die when there are none of those things left. Because if there are none of those things left, then there will be nothing at all. Not even any people.

  But shouldn’t you give those ones a second chance? he asked himself. No, he answered, because they have had a second chance. They have had many second chances. Now is the time.

  So Crake made some little seeds that tasted very good; and they made people very happy at first, when they ate them. But then those who ate the seeds would become very sick, and
would come to pieces, and would die. And he sprinkled the seeds over all the earth.

  And Oryx helped to sprinkle the seeds, because she could fly like an owl. And the Bird Women and the Snake Women and the Flower Women helped too. Though they did not understand about the dying part, only the happy part, because Crake had not told them all of his thoughts.

  And then the Great Rearrangement began to happen. And Oryx and Crake left the Egg and flew up into the sky. But Snowman-the-Jimmy stayed behind, to watch over you and to keep bad things away from you, and to help you, and to tell you the stories of Crake. And the stories of Oryx as well.

  You can do the singing later.

  That is the story of the two eggs.

  Now we must all go to sleep, because we must get up very early tomorrow. Some of us will go looking for the three bad men. Zeb will go, and Rhino, and Manatee, and Crozier, and Shackleton. And Snowman-the-Jimmy. Yes, the Pig Ones will go too, many of them. Not the little ones, or their mothers.

  But you will stay here, with Rebecca, and Amanda, and Ren. And Swift Fox. And Lotis Blue. And you must keep the door shut, and not let anyone in, no matter what they say. Unless it is ones you already know.

  Don’t be frightened.

  Yes, I will go out looking for the bad men too. And Blackbeard will go, to help us talk with the Pig Ones.

  Yes, we will come back. I hope we will come back.

  Hope is when you want something very much but you do not know if that thing you want will really happen.

  Now I will say good night.

  Good night.

  Shades

  “This is where I waited for you,” says Toby. “During the Waterless Flood. Up here on the rooftop. I kept expecting you’d stroll out of those woods at any moment.”

  The Crakers are all around them, sleeping peacefully. How trusting they are, thinks Toby. They’ve never learned real fear. Maybe they can’t learn it.

  “So you didn’t think I was dead?” says Zeb.

  “I was counting on you,” says Toby. “I thought, if anyone knew how to stay alive through all of that, it would be you. Some days I did tell myself you were dead, though. I called that ‘realism.’ But the rest of the time I was waiting.”

  “Worth it?” says Zeb. Invisible grin in the darkness.

  “You’re having a failure of confidence? You need to ask?”

  “Yeah, I kind of do,” says Zeb. “Used to think I was God’s gift, but that gets rubbed off a guy. From the first time I knew you, back at the Gardeners, I could see you were smarter than me, what with the mushrooms and the potions and all of that.”

  “But you were craftier,” says Toby.

  “Granted. Though I outcraftied myself sometimes. Now where was I?”

  “You were living with the Snake Women,” says Toby. “At Scales and Tails. Keeping yourself to yourself, your eyes open, your hands in your pockets, and your lip zipped.”

  “Right.”

  They made Zeb a bouncer. It was a fine disguise. He got the shaved head, the black suit, the shades, and the gold tooth that broadcast right into his mouth. Also the tasteful enamelled lapel pin in the shape of a snake eating its own tail: an ancient motif that meant regeneration, said Adam, though you could have fooled Zeb.

  He rearranged his face parsley in the deep-pleeb bouncer fuzzdo of the day, which involved a very narrow shaver used to carve a crisscross design into a light layer of stubble, with an effect like a hairy waffle. It was at that time, too, that he got his ears recontoured, at the suggestion of Adam. They were using ears more in identities, said Adam, and it would be as well if Zeb were to rearrange his own so they couldn’t be matched with some ear photo of yore, supposing anyone was looking. The actual plasti-cosmi job was courtesy of Katrina WooWoo, who had access to some Grade A flesh-and-fat sculptors. Zeb opted for a more pointy look at the top of the ear and a droopier blob of lobe.

  “Don’t look now,” he says. “I got them done a couple of times after that. But for a while there I was sort of a pixie Buddha.”

  “It’s how I think of you,” says Toby.

  Zeb’s job was to stand around the bar area, not smiling broadly but not actively threatening: just more or less looming. His partner was a large black guy called – at that moment – Jebediah, though when he joined MaddAddam he became Black Rhino. Zeb and Jeb was how Zeb linked the two of them in his head.

  Though he was not Zeb to those at Scales, nor was he Hector the Vector. He had yet another name, which was Smokey. Smokey the Bear, like the old mascot for the so-called Forest Service. It was a fitting name. “Only YOU can prevent wildfires,” had been the slogan, and that was what he was supposed to do: prevent wildfires.

  When there were signs of petulance among the clientele – glowering and scowling, verbal unpleasantness, unseemly grabbing and ripping of the feathery or scaly or petal-shaped fabrics decorating the floorshow, or the chimp-display shaking of beer cans that signalled an exchange of foam-streams followed by can-tossing, bottle-smashing, and punches – Zeb and Jeb would step in. They’d switch their passive looming to active surgical intervention, the goal being to take the aggressors out smoothly and cleanly without triggering an all-in brawl. So prompt action was a must, though of course you didn’t want to piss off the clients unnecessarily: a clobbered client was not often a repeat client.

  Also – increasingly – a lot of the customers were from the top layers of the Corps layer cake, and those guys liked to go slumming in the pleebs, though not in any life-endangering ways. Just enough so you could feel a little rebellious, a little cool, a little sexually functional. Scales and Tails was gaining a reputation as a sanitary and discreet place in which to get shitfaced and indiscreet, and you could take a prospective business partner there as a complicated form of bribery without fear of exposure.

  Thus the light touch was essential when it came to conflict resolution. The best way was to drape a companionable arm around the shoulders of the dickhead in question and to growl warmly into the ear: “House Special, just for you, sir. Compliments of the management.” Overjoyed to be getting something for free and doubtless already suffering from nano-brain-death due to what he’d already guzzled, the guy would be shepherded down a few hallways and around a few corners with his tongue hanging out a yard. He’d be ushered into a large room with feather decorations and a green satin bedspread, and invisible video surveillance. There he would be lovingly undressed by a couple of the Snake Women, those with the knack of making an actuarial report sound like hot porn, while Zeb or Jeb loomed in the middle distance just out of sight, to keep the guy civil.

  Then in would come a lurid mixture in a cocktail glass that might be orange or purple or blue depending on what had been ordered, topped with a green cherry that had a green plastic snake stuck into it. This would be hand-delivered by an orchid or a gardenia or a flamingo or a fluorescent blue skink on stilts, shimmering all over with sequins and tiny LED lights and scales or petals or feathers, with huge tits and a lip-licking smile. Itchy-kitchy-coo, this hallucination would say, or words to that effect. Drinkie-poo! What red-blooded hominid could say no? Down the hatch would go the mystery liquid, followed quickly by sweet dreams for Mr. Self-Styled Alpha Male, with minimal wear and tear on the hired help.

  The chosen one would awaken ten hours later, convinced that he’d just had the time of his life. Which he would have done, said Zeb, because all experience registered by the brain is real, no? Even if it didn’t happen in 3-D so-called real time.

  This act usually worked fine with Corp exec types, a naive and trusting bunch when it came to the duplicitous mores of the pleeblands. Zeb knew their kind from the Floating World: out for thrills during their night on the town, eager for something they mistook for experience. They led sheltered lives inside their Corp Compounds and the other guarded spaces where they hung out, such as courthouses, statehouses, and religious institutions, and they were gullible about anything outside their walls. It was touching how easily they drank the Kool-Aid on offer
, how rapidly they hit the hay or, in fact, the green satin bedspread, how softly they slept, and how cheerily they awoke.

  But a different sort of client was establishing a presence at Scales: a less agreeable type, not easily deflected from his own angers. Hate-fuelled, hardened in the fire, bent on carnage and broken glassware. These were rockier cases, and called for an all-points alert.

  “I speak of the Painballers, as you must’ve guessed,” says Zeb. “Painball had just begun back then.”

  Painball Arenas were at that time highly illegal, like cockfighting and the slaughter and eating of endangered species. But, like them, Painball existed and was expanding, hidden from public view. Spectator positions were reserved for the upper echelons, who liked to watch duels to the death involving skill, cunning, ruthlessness, and cannibalism: it was Corp life in graphic terms. A lot of money was already changing hands at Painball in the form of highroller betting. So the Corps paid indirectly for the infrastructure and the upkeep of the Painball players, and those providing the locations and the services paid directly if caught, and sometimes with their lives when there were turf wars.

  This arrangement suited the CorpSeCorps – in its adolescence then – as it provided ample blackmail material through which the CorpSeCorps men could tighten their hold on those considered to be the pillars of what still passed for society.

  If you were already locked up in an ordinary prison, you could elect the Painball option: fight your fellow prisoners, eliminate them, and win big prizes, such as getting out of jail free and landing a stint as a pleebland grey-market enforcer. Perks all round. Of course, once you’d elected to enter Painball, the alternative to winning was death. That was why it was so much fun to watch. Those who survived it did so through guile, the ability to wrongfoot their opponents, and superior murderousness: the eating of gouged-out eyes was a favourite party trick. In a word, you had to be prepared to knife and fillet your best friend.