MaddAddam 03 - MaddAddam

by Margaret Atwood

  After leaving the meadow the procession takes the roadway to the north, cutting through the forest that borders the AnooYoo grounds and conceals its perimeter fence. The northern gatehouse is deserted: no sign of life in or around it, apart from a rakunk that’s sunning itself on the walkway. It stands up as they approach but doesn’t bother to run away. Overly friendly, those animals: in a harsher world they’d all be hats by now.

  The city streets that come next are harder to navigate. Crashed and deserted vehicles clog the pavement, which is littered with shattered glass and twists of metal. Already the kudzu vines are thrusting in, covering the broken shapes with a soft fledging of green. The Pigoons pick their way daintily, avoiding injury to their trotters; the humans have thick footgear. Still, they need to proceed carefully and glance down often.

  Toby has anticipated the problems Blackbeard might have on these streets, with their shards and cutting edges. True, his feet have an extra-thick layer of skin on them, and that’s fine for earth and sand and even pebbles; but, as a precaution, Toby has rummaged through the MaddAddamites’ stockpile of gleaned footgear and fitted Blackbeard with a pair of Hermes Trismegistus cross-trainers. At first he was very worried about putting such things on his feet – would they hurt, would they stick to him, would he ever be able to get them off? But Toby showed him how to put them on and then take them off again, and said that if his feet got cut by sharp things he wouldn’t be able to come any farther, and then who would be able to tell them what the Pigoons were thinking? So after several practice sessions he has agreed to wear them. The shoes have appliquéd green wings on them and lights that flash with every step he takes – the batteries haven’t run down yet – and he is now perhaps a little too delighted with them.

  He’s up at the front of the main body, listening to the intelligence reports of the Pigoon scouts, if you could call it listening: receiving them, in any case, however he does that. Evidently he hasn’t learned anything yet that’s important enough to pass along. He glances back now and then, keeping track of Zeb, and also of Toby. There’s that jaunty little wave of his hand again, which must mean All is well. Or maybe just I see you, or Here I am, or even, just possibly, Look at my cool shoes! His high, clear singing comes to her on the air in short bursts: the Morse code of Crakerdom.

  The Pigoons alongside tilt their heads to look up at their human allies from time to time, but their thoughts can only be guessed. Compared with them, humans on foot must seem like slowpokes. Are they irritated? Solicitous? Impatient? Glad of the artillery support? All of those, no doubt, since they have human brain tissue and can therefore juggle several contradictions at once.

  They appear to have assigned three guards to each of the gunbearers. The guards don’t crowd, they don’t herd or dictate, but they keep within a two-yard radius of their charges, their ears swivelling watchfully. The MaddAddamites without sprayguns have one Pigoon each. Jimmy, on the other hand, has five. Are they conscious of his fragility? So far he’s been keeping up, but he’s beginning to sweat.

  Toby drops back to check on him. She hands him her water bottle: he seems already to have emptied his own. All eight Pigoons – her three, his five – shift their positions to surround both of them.

  “The Great Wall of Pork,” says Jimmy. “The Bacon Brigade. The Hoplites of Ham.”

  “Hoplites?” says Toby.

  “It was a Greek thing,” says Jimmy. “Citizens’ army type of arrangement. A wall of interlocked shields. I read it in a book.” He’s a little short of breath.

  “Maybe it’s an honour guard,” says Toby. “Are you okay?”

  “These things make me nervous,” says Jimmy. “How do we know they aren’t leading us astray so they can ambush us and gobble our giblets?”

  “We don’t know that,” says Toby. “But I’d say the odds are against it. They’ve already had the opportunity.”

  “Occam’s razor,” says Jimmy. He coughs.

  “Pardon?” says Toby.

  “It was a Crake thing,” says Jimmy sadly. “Given two possibilities, you take the simplest. Crake would have said ‘the most elegant.’ The prick.”

  “Who was Occam?” says Toby. Is that a slight limp?

  “Some kind of a monk,” says Jimmy. “Or bishop. Or maybe a smart pig. Occ Ham.” He laughs. “Sorry. Bad joke.”

  They walk on for a block or two in silence. Then Jimmy says, “Sliding down the razor blade of life.”

  “Excuse me?” Toby says. She’d like to feel his forehead. Is he running a temperature?

  “It’s an old saying,” says Jimmy. “It means you’re on the edge. Plus, you may get your nuts sliced off.” He’s limping more visibly now.

  “Is your foot all right?” Toby asks. No answer: he stumps doggedly onward. “Maybe you should go back,” she says.

  “No fucking way,” says Jimmy.

  The street ahead is blocked by the rubble from a partially fallen condo. There’s been a fire in it – most likely caused by an electrical short, says Zeb, who has halted the march while the scouts reconnoitre a detour. The smell of burning is still in the air. The Pigoons don’t like it: several of them snort.

  Jimmy sits down on the ground.

  “What?” says Zeb to Toby.

  “His foot again,” says Toby. “Or something.”

  “So, we need to send him back to the Spa.”

  “He won’t go,” says Toby.

  Jimmy’s five Pigoons are snuffling at him, but from a respectful distance. One of them moves forward to sniff his foot. Now two of them nudge him, one on either arm.

  “Get away!” says Jimmy. “What do they want?”

  “Blackbeard, please,” says Toby, beckoning him over. He huddles with the Pigoons. There’s a silent interchange, followed by a few notes of music.

  “Snowman-the-Jimmy must ride,” says Blackbeard. “They say his …” There’s a word Toby can’t decipher, that sounds like a grunt and a rumble. “They say that part of him is strong. In the middle he is strong, but his feet are weak. They will carry him.”

  One of the Pigoons steps forward, not the fattest. She lowers herself beside Jimmy.

  “They want me to do what?” says Jimmy.

  “Please, Oh Snowman-the-Jimmy,” says Blackbeard. “They say you must lie down on the back and hold on to the ears. Two others will go beside you to keep you from falling off.”

  “This is dumb,” says Jimmy. “I’ll slide off!”

  “That’s your only option,” says Zeb. “Catch a ride, or else you stay here.”

  Once Jimmy is in position, Zeb says, “Got any of that rope? It might help a bit.”

  Jimmy is tied onto the Pigoon like a parcel, and they all set off once more. “So, its name is Dancer, or Prancer, or what?” says Jimmy. “Think I should pat it?”

  “Please, Oh Snowman-the-Jimmy, thank you,” says Blackbeard. “The Pig Ones are telling me that a scratching behind the ears is a good thing.”

  When reciting the story in later years, Toby liked to say that the Pigoon carrying Snowman-the-Jimmy flew like the wind. It was the sort of thing that should be said of a fallen comrade-in-arms, and especially one that performed such an important service – a service that resulted, not incidentally, in the saving of Toby’s own life. For if Snowman-the-Jimmy had not been transported by the Pigoon, would Toby be sitting here among them tonight, wearing the red hat and telling them this story? No, she would not. She would be composting under an elderberry bush, and assuming a different form. A very different form indeed, she would think to herself privately.

  So, in her story, the Pigoon in question flew like the wind.

  The telling was complicated by the fact that Toby could not pronounce the flying Pigoon’s name in any way that resembled the grunt-heavy original. But nobody in the Craker audience seemed to mind, though they laughed at her a little. The children made up a game in which one of them played the heroic Pigoon flying like the wind, wearing a determined expression, and a smaller one played Snowman-the
-Jimmy, also with a determined expression, clinging to its back.

  Her back. The Pigoons were not objects. She had to get that right. It was only respectful.

  At the time, things are somewhat different. The progress of the Jimmy-porting Pigoon is lumpy, and its back is rounded and slippery. Jimmy bumps up and down, and is in danger of sliding off, first on one side, then on the other. When this happens the flanking Pigoons give him a sharp upward nudge with their snouts, under the armpits, which causes him to yell maniacally because it tickles.

  “For fuck’s sake, can’t you get him to shut up?” says Zeb. “We might as well be playing the bagpipes.”

  “He can’t help it,” says Toby. “It’s a reflex.”

  “If I bonk him on the head, that’ll be a reflex too,” says Zeb.

  “They probably know we’re coming,” says Toby. “They may have seen the scouts.”

  They’re following the lead of the Pigoons, but it’s Jimmy who provides the verbal guidelines. “We’re still in the pleebs,” he says. “I remember this part.” Then: “We’re coming up to No Man’s Land, cleared buffer zone before the Compounds.”

  Then: “Main security perimeter coming up.” After a while: “Over there, CryoJeenyus. Next up, Genie-Gnomes. Look at that fucking light-up genie sign! The solar must still be working.”

  Then: “Here comes the biggie. The RejoovenEsense Compound.” Crows on the wall: four, no, five. One crow, sorrow, Pilar used to say; more, and they were protectors, or else tricksters, take your choice. Two of the crows lift off, circle overhead, sizing them up.

  The Rejoov gates stand open. Inside, dead houses, dead malls, dead labs, dead everything. Tatters of cloth, derelict solarcars.

  “Thank God for the pigs,” says Jimmy. “Without them, needle in a haystack. The place is a labyrinth.”

  But the Pigoons are sure of the trail. They trot steadily forward, not hesitating. A corner turned, another corner.

  “There it is,” says Jimmy. “Up ahead. The gates of Paradice.”

  Eggshell

  Crake had planned the Paradice Project himself. There was a tight security perimeter around it, in addition to the Rejoov barrier wall. Inside that was a park, a microclimate-modifying planting of mixed tropical splices, tolerant alike to drought and downpour. At the centre of it all was the Paradice dome, climate-controlled, airlocked, an impenetrable eggshell harbouring Crake’s treasure trove, his brave new humans. And at the very centre of the dome he’d placed the artificial ecosystem where the Crakers themselves in all their strange perfection had been brought into being and set to live and breathe.

  They reach the perimeter gate, stop to reconnoitre. No one in the gatehouses to either side, according to the Pigoons: their inactive tails and ears are semaphoring as much.

  Zeb signals a rest stop: they need to gather their energy. The humans resort to their water bottles and eat half a Joltbar each. The Pigoons have found an avomango tree and are gobbling down the windfalls, the orange ovals pulped by their jaws, the fatty seeds crushed. Fermented sweetness fills the air.

  I hope they aren’t getting drunk, thinks Toby. That wouldn’t be good, drunk Pigoons. “How are you doing?” she asks Jimmy.

  “I remember this place,” says Jimmy. “In every detail. Shit. I wish I didn’t.”

  Ahead of them is the roadway leading through the forest. Untrimmed branches reach into the corridor of light above it, opportunist weeds push into it from the margins, renegade vines overhang it. Out of the swelling foam of vegetation the curved dome rises like the white half-eye of a sedated patient. It must once have seemed so bright and shining, that dome; so much like a harvest moon, or like a hopeful sunrise, but without the burning rays. Now it looks barren. More than that, it looks like a trap: for who can tell what’s hidden in it, and what’s hiding?

  But that’s only because of what we know, thinks Toby. There’s nothing in the image itself that would signal death to an innocent observer.

  “Oh Toby!” says Blackbeard. “Look! It is the Egg! The Egg where Crake made us!”

  “Do you remember it?” says Toby.

  “I don’t know,” says Blackbeard. “Not very much. Trees were growing in it. It rained, but it did not thunder. Oryx came to visit us every day. She taught us many things. We were happy.”

  “It might not be the same any more,” says Toby.

  “Oryx is not there,” says Blackbeard. “She flew out because she wanted to help Snowman-the-Jimmy when he was sick, didn’t she?”

  “Yes, I’m sure she did,” says Toby.

  The young Pigoon scouts have been sent ahead to sniff out possible roadside ambushes. They’re racing back now, along the leaf-strewn asphalt. Their ears are back, their tails out straight behind them: cause for alarm.

  The elders leave their rooting party among the fallen avomangoes; Blackbeard runs over to them; there’s a quick huddle. The MaddAddamites gather around. “What’s up?” Zeb asks.

  “They say the bad ones are near the Egg,” says Blackbeard. “Three. One with ropes tied on. He has white feathers on his face.”

  “What’s he wearing?” Toby asks. Is it for instance a caftan, like those Adam One always wore? But how to ask that? She revises: “Does he have a second skin?”

  “Shit,” says Jimmy. “Keep them out of the emergency storeroom! They’ll get all the sprayguns, and then we’re toast!”

  “Yes, he has a second skin, like you,” says Blackbeard. “Only not pink. It is different colours. It is dirty. He has only one of these, on his foot. A shoe.”

  “How’ll we do that?” says Rhino. “We can’t move fast enough.”

  “We send some of the pigs,” says Zeb. “The faster ones. They can cut through the woods.”

  “Then what?” says Rhino. “They can’t hold the main door. Those guys have a spraygun. We don’t know how much of their cellpack is left.”

  “We can’t just let the Pigoons be shot down like rats in a barrel,” says Toby. “Jimmy. When you go through the Paradice entranceway, where’s the storeroom?”

  “There’s the two doors, the airlock door, the inner one. They’re both open, I left them open. You go down the hall to the left, take a right, another left. The fucking pigs need to get into that room and hold the door shut from the inside.”

  “Okay, how do we tell them this?” says Zeb. “Toby?”

  “Right and left could be a problem,” says Toby. “I don’t think the Crakers know about those.”

  “Think hard,” says Zeb. “Clock’s ticking.”

  “Blackbeard?” says Toby. “This is a picture of the Egg, if you were up at the top looking down at it.” She draws a round circle in the dirt, with a stick. “Do you see?”

  Blackbeard looks at it and nods, though not with much assurance. We hang by a thread, thinks Toby. “Good,” she says with false heartiness. “Can you say this to the Pig Ones? Tell them they need to run very fast. Five of them, through the trees. They need to go past the bad men, right into the Egg. Then they need to go here” – she traces with the stick – “and in here. That right?” she asks Jimmy.

  “Right enough,” says Jimmy.

  “They need to shut the door. They need to lean against it, to keep the bad ones from going into that room,” says Toby. “Can you tell them all of that?”

  Blackbeard looks puzzled. “Why do the men want to go into the Egg?” he asks. “The Egg is for making. They are already made.”

  “They want to find some killing things,” says Toby. “The sticks that make holes.”

  “But the Egg is good. It does not have killing things.”

  “It does now,” says Toby. “We have to hurry. Can you tell them?”

  “I will try,” says Blackbeard. He kneels on the ground. Two of the largest Pigoons lower their huge heads, one to either side of his face. There’s a white tusk right beside his neck. Toby shivers. He begins to sing while tracing over Toby’s marks in the sand with her stick. The Pigoons sniff at the diagram. Oh no, thinks Toby. Th
is isn’t going to work. They think it’s something to eat.

  But then the Pigoons lift their snouts and move to join the others. Low grunting, restless tail movements. Indecision?

  Five of the medium-sized ones detach from the group and head off at a canter, two to the left of the road, three to the right. The undergrowth swallows them up.

  “Looks like they got it,” says Rhino. Zeb grins.

  “Good,” he says to Toby. “Always knew you had potential.”

  “They are going to the Egg,” says Blackbeard. “They say they will not move too close to those men. They will be careful about the stick things, with blood coming out.”

  “Hope they make it,” says Zeb. “Let’s hike.”

  “It’s not far,” says Jimmy. “Anyway, they can’t shoot us from the windows because there aren’t any windows.” He laughs feebly.

  “Zeb?” says Toby as they move off down the road. “The third guy? I’m not sure. But I think it’s Adam One.”

  “Yeah, I know,” says Zeb. “I figured that for a while.”

  “What can we do to get him back?”

  “They’ll want to trade him,” says Zeb.

  “For what?”

  “Sprayguns, supposing the pigs block them out. Other stuff.”

  “Like, for instance?”

  “Like, for instance, you,” says Zeb. “In their place, it’s what I’d do.”

  Right, thinks Toby. They’ll want revenge.

  The Paradice dome lies in front of them. All is silent. The airlock door is open. Three shoats go through it, then come out again. “They are inside, the men,” says Blackbeard. “But far inside. Not near the door.”

  “I need to go in first,” says Jimmy. “Just for a minute.” Toby stays close behind him.

  There are two destroyed skeletons on the floor of the airlock. The bones have been gnawed and jumbled, no doubt by animals. Rags of mouldering cloth, a small pink and red sandal.

  Jimmy falls to his knees; his hands are over his face. Toby touches his shoulder. “We need to go now,” she says, but he says, “Leave me alone!”