MaddAddam 03 - MaddAddam

by Margaret Atwood

  Hard to choose a label, thinks Toby: three sessions in the once notorious Painball Arena have scraped all modifying labels away from them, bleached them of language. Triple Painball survivors have long been known to be not quite human.

  “I vote for all of the above,” says Zeb. “Now let’s get on with it.”

  White Sedge enters a halfhearted clemency plea. “We shouldn’t judge,” she says. “Surely their viciousness is a result of what was done to them earlier in their lives, by others. And considering the plasticity of the brain and how their behaviour was shaped by harsh experience, how are we to know that they had any control over what they did?”

  “Are you fucking serious?” says Shackleton. “They ate my little brother’s fucking kidneys! They butchered him like a Mo’Hair! I want to rip out all their teeth! Through their assholes,” he adds, perhaps unnecessarily.

  “Let’s not get too fired up,” says Zeb. “Hold the outrage. We all have cause. Though some more than others.” He looks older, thinks Toby. Older and grimmer. Finding Adam and then losing him again has dragged him down. We’re all in mourning: even the Pigoons. Their tails are drooping, their ears are limp; they nuzzle one another in a consoling way.

  “We shouldn’t fight over what should be a purely philosophical and practical decision,” says Ivory Bill. “The question is, do we have the facilities for correctional guardianship, or, on the other hand, the theoretical justification for …”

  “It’s not a time for hair-splitting,” says Zeb.

  “Taking life under any circumstances is reprehensible,” says White Sedge. “We shouldn’t let our own moral standards slip, just because —”

  “Just because most of the human race has been wiped out and the surviving remnant can hardly get enough solar going to run a light bulb?” says Shackleton. “So you want to let these two cesspools bash your brains out?”

  “I don’t know why you’re being so hostile,” says White Sedge. “Adam One would have advocated clemency.”

  “Maybe he’d have been wrong,” says Amanda. “You weren’t there, you don’t know what they did to us. Me and Ren. You don’t know what they’re like.”

  “Though, with so few true humans left,” says Ivory Bill, “perhaps we shouldn’t waste any increasingly rare human DNA. Even if the individuals in question must be eliminated, possibly their … their generative fluids should be, as it were, siphoned off, to provide genetic variety. An ingrown gene pool must be avoided.”

  “Avoid it yourself,” says Swift Fox. “Personally, the mere idea of having sex with those two festering bedsores just to capture their rancid DNA makes me nauseous.”

  “You wouldn’t need to have sex with them, as such,” says Ivory Bill. “We could use a turkey baster.”

  “Use it on your own self,” says Swift Fox rudely. “Men are always telling women what to do with their uteruses. Excuse me, their uteri.”

  “I’d rather slit my wrists than let any of their fucking generative fluids near me ever again,” says Amanda. “It’s bad enough as it is. How do I know my own kid won’t be one of theirs?”

  “Anyway, a child with such warped genes would be a monster,” says Ren. “The mother couldn’t love it. Oh, sorry,” she says to Amanda.

  “It’s okay,” says Amanda. “If it’s theirs, I’ll hand it over to White Sedge and she can love it. Or the Pigoons can eat the thing; they’d appreciate it.”

  “We could try rehabilitation,” says White Sedge serenely. “Incorporate them into the community, keep them in a safe place at night, let them help out. Sometimes, when people feel they can contribute, it makes for a genuine change in …”

  “Look around,” Zeb says. “See any social workers? See any jails?”

  “Contribute to what?” says Amanda. “You want to let them be in charge of the day care?”

  “They’d put everyone else at risk,” says Katuro.

  “There’s no safe place to store them except a hole in the ground,” says Shackleton.

  “The vote,” says Zeb.

  They use pebbles: black for death, white for mercy. It has an archeological feel. The old symbol systems follow us around, thinks Toby, as she collects the pebbles in Jimmy’s red hat. There’s only one white pebble.

  The Pigoons vote collectively, through their leader, with Blackbeard as their interpreter. “They all say dead,” he tells Toby. “But they will not eat those ones. They do not want those ones to be part of them.”

  The rest of the Crakers are puzzled. They clearly do not understand what vote means, or trial, or why pebbles should be put into the hat of Snowman-the-Jimmy. Toby tells them it is a thing of Crake.

  The Story of the Trial

  The two bad men were put in a room at night, with ropes tying them. We could feel that the rope was hurting them, and making them sad and also angry. But we did not untie the rope the way we did before. Toby told us not to, because it would only cause more killing. And we told the children not to go too close, because the bad ones might bite them.

  And then they were given soup, with a smelly bone.

  In the morning there was a Trial. You all saw it. It was at the table. Many words were said. The Pig Ones were also at the Trial.

  Perhaps we will understand it later, this Trial.

  And after the Trial, all the Pig Ones went down to the seashore. And Toby went with them, and she had her gun thing that we should not touch. And Zeb went. And Amanda went, and Ren. And Crozier and Shackleton. But we did not go, we Children of Crake, because Toby said it would be hurtful to us.

  And after a while they all came back, without the two bad ones. They looked tired. But they were more peaceful.

  Toby said that now we would be safe from the bad ones. And the Pig Ones said their babies were now safe too. And they said also that even though the Battle was over now, they would keep the pact they made with Toby, and with Zeb, and they would not hunt and eat any of the two-skinned ones, and they would also not dig up their garden any more. Or eat the honey of the bees.

  And Toby told me the words to say to them, which were: We agree to keep the pact. None of you, or your children, or your children’s children, will ever be a smelly bone in a soup. Or a ham, she added. Or a bacon.

  And Rebecca said, Worse luck.

  And Crozier said, What’re they saying, what the fuck is going on? And Toby said, Watch your language, it’s confusing for him.

  And I said that Crozier did not need to call Fuck right now because we were not in trouble and did not need his help. And Toby said, That’s right, he doesn’t like to be summoned on trivial matters. And Zeb coughed.

  After the Pig Ones had gone away, Toby told us that the two bad men had been washed away in the sea. They had been poured away, as Crake poured away the chaos. So everything was much cleaner now.

  Yes, good, kind Crake.

  Please don’t sing.

  Because when you sing I can’t hear the words that Crake is telling me to say, and also when we sing about him he can’t tell me any words of the story, because he has to listen to the singing.

  So that is the Story of the Trial. It is a thing from Crake. We do not have to have a Trial, among us. Only the two-skinned ones and the Pig Ones have to have a Trial.

  And that is a good thing, because I did not like the Trial.

  Thank you. Good night.

  Rites

  The Feast of Cnidaria, Toby writes. Waxing gibbous moon.

  The Cnidaria phylum contains the jellyfish, the corals, the sea anemones, and the hydra. The Gardeners had been thorough – no phylum or genus was left out of their list of feasts and festivals, if they could help it – though some celebrations had been odder than others. The Festival of Intestinal Parasites, for instance, had been memorable, though not what you would call delightful.

  The Feast of Cnidaria, however, had been an especially beautiful one. There had been paper lanterns in the shapes of jellyfish, and many decorations fashioned from objects found in dumpsters. A creative use wa
s made of spent balloons and inflated rubber gloves with trailing filaments of string, sea anemones were created from modified round dish-scrubbing brushes, and hydras crafted from transparent plastic sandwich bags.

  The children would do a little jellyfish dance, festooned with streamers and waving their arms slowly, and one year they’d composed and performed an interminable play on the subject of the life cycle of the jellyfish, which was uneventful. First I was an egg, Then I grew and grew, Now I am a jellyfish, Green and pink and blue. Though when the Portuguese Man O’ War had made its entrance, drama had been possible: I drifted here, I drifted there, My tentacles so fine to view, But don’t get tangled up with me, Or I will put an end to you.

  Had Ren helped with that play? Toby wonders. Had Amanda? The song, the grabbing of a smaller child playing a fish, the stinging to death – they had the earmarks of Amanda; or of the streetwise pleebrat Amanda of those days, who, since the disposal of the two malignant Painballers, appears to have been reborn.

  “After the disposal of the two malignant Painballers,” she writes. Disposal makes them sound like garbage, as in garbage disposal. She wonders if this kind of name-calling is worthy of her one-time position as Eve Six, decides it’s not, leaves it anyway.

  “After the disposal of the two malignant Painballers, Ren and Shackleton and Amanda and Crozier and I walked back along the AnooYoo forest path. We came to the tree where the Painballers had left poor Oates hanging with his throat slit. There wasn’t much left of him – the crows had been assimilating him, and God knows what else – but Shackleton shinnied up the tree and cut the rope, and he and Crozier gathered together the bones of their younger brother and tied them up in a bedsheet.

  “Then it was time for the composting. The Pigoons wished to carry Adam and Jimmy to the site for us, as a sign of friendship and inter-species co-operation. They collected more flowers and ferns, which they piled on top of the bodies. Then we walked to the site in procession. The Crakers sang all the way.”

  She adds, “… which was somewhat hard on the nerves.” But then, reflecting that Blackbeard is making so much progress in his writing that he might someday be able to read her entries, she scratches it out.

  “Following a short discussion, the Pigoons understood that we did not wish to eat Adam and Jimmy, nor would we wish the Pigoons to do that. And they concurred. Their rules in such matters appear complex: dead farrow are eaten by pregnant mothers to provide more protein for growing infants, but adults, and especially adults of note, are contributed to the general ecosystem. All other species are, however, up for grabs.

  “Amanda added that she did not see a transition through pigshit as an acceptable phase in Jimmy’s life cycle, but this remark was not translated by Blackbeard. There was not enough left of Oates for it to be an issue in his case.

  “We buried all three of them near Pilar, and planted a tree on top of each. For Jimmy, Ren, Amanda, and Lotis Blue had made a trip to the Botanical Gardens, to the section called Fruits of the World – under the guidance of the Pigoons, who of course knew where it was, being fond of fruit – and had chosen a Kentucky coffeetree, which has heart-shaped leaves and produces berries that can be used as a coffee substitute. Many in our group will be pleased by that, as the roastedroot coffee is beginning to pall.

  “For Oates, Crozier and Shackleton chose an oak tree, because it echoed his name. The Pigoons were delighted by that, as later on there would be acorns.

  “For Adam One, Zeb as next of kin had the choice of tree. He selected a native crabapple, somewhat biblical – he said – and also fitting. Its apples would have the added virtue of making a good jelly, which would have pleased Adam: the Gardeners, though conscious of symbolism, were practical in such matters.

  “The Pigoons had their own funeral rites. They did not bury the dead Pigoon, but set her down in a clearing near one of the park picnic tables. They heaped her with flowers and branches, and stood silently, tails drooping. Then the Crakers sang.”

  “Oh Toby, what have you been writing?” says Blackbeard, who’s come into her cobb-house cubicle – unannounced, as usual – and is now standing at her elbow. He’s peering into her face with his large, green, luminous, uncanny eyes.

  How had Crake devised those eyes? How do they light up from within like that? Or give the appearance of lighting up. It must be a luminosity feature, perhaps from a deep-sea bioform. She’s often wondered.

  “I am writing the story,” she says. “The story of you, and me, and the Pigoons, and everyone. I am writing about how we put Snowman-the-Jimmy and Adam One into the ground, and Oates too, so that Oryx can change them into the form of a tree. And that is a happy thing, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. It is a happy thing. What is wrong with your eyes, Oh Toby? Are you crying?” says Blackbeard. He touches her eyebrow.

  “I’m just a little tired,” says Toby. “And my eyes are tired as well. Writing makes them tired.”

  “I will purr on you,” says Blackbeard.

  Among the Crakers, the small children do not purr. Blackbeard is growing quickly – they do grow faster, these children – but is he big enough to purr? Apparently so: already his hands are on her forehead, and the mini-motor sound of Craker purring is filling the air. She’s never been purred on before: it’s very soothing, she has to admit.

  “There,” says Blackbeard. “Telling the story is hard, and writing the story must be more hard. Oh Toby, when you are too tired to do it, next time I will write the story. I will be your helper.”

  “Thank you,” says Toby. “That is kind.”

  Blackbeard smiles like daybreak.

  Moontime

  The Festival of Bryophyta-the-Moss. Waning crescent moon.

  I am Blackbeard, and this is my voice that I am writing down to help Toby. If you look at this writing I have made, you can hear me (I am Blackbord) talking to you, inside your head. That is what writing is. But the Pig Ones can do that without writing. And sometimes we can do it, the Children of Crake. The two-skinned ones cannot do it.

  Today Toby said Bryophyta is moss. I said if it is moss, then I must write moss. Toby says it has two names, like Snowman-the-Jimmy. So I am writing Bryophyta-the-Moss. Like this.

  Today we made the pictures of Snowman-the-Jimmy, and of Adam as well. We did not know Adam, but we made the picture for Zeb and Toby, and for the other ones who did know him. For Snowman-the-Jimmy we used a mop, from the beach, and we used a jar lid and some pebbles, and more things. But not the red hat, because we need to keep it for the stories.

  For Adam we used a cloth skin that we found, with two arms, and a white bag of plastic for the head, with feathers we took from a gull that did not need them any longer, and some blue glass from the beach, because his eyes were blue.

  We made a picture of Snowman-the-Jimmy once before, to call him back, and it did call him back. These pictures will not call Snowman-the-Jimmy and Adam back this time, but it will make Zeb and Toby and Ren and Amanda feel better. That is why we made the pictures. They like pictures.

  Thank you. Good night.

  The Feast of Saint Maude Barlow, of Fresh Water. New moon.

  Zeb has been recovering from the death of Adam. He and the others are working on an extension to the cobb house because they will soon need a nursery. The pregnancies are advancing much faster than is usual, and most of the women believe that all three of the babies will be Craker hybrids.

  The garden is progressing well. The Mo’Hair flock is increasing – there have been three new additions to it, one blue-haired, one a red-head, and one blond – though one of the lambs was lost to a liobam. The liobams, too, appear to be on the increase.

  “One of the Crakers reports seeing something that sounds like a bear,” Toby writes. “It wouldn’t be surprising. Perhaps we should set a guard for the beehives? There are two hives now, as another swarm was captured.

  “Deer are proliferating: they are an acceptable source of animal protein. They are much leaner than pork, though not as
tasty. Venison does not make top-quality bacon. But Rebecca says it is healthier.”

  The Festival of Gymnosperms. Full moon.

  Toby made the mistake of announcing to the others that this was the God’s Gardener Festival of Gymnosperms. Several bad jokes about gymnasts and sperms and even male Crakers were made, one of them by Zeb, which is a good sign. Perhaps his time of mourning is coming to an end.

  Three more functioning solar units have been installed. An existing one has gone out of commission. One of the violet biolets is malfunctioning. Shackleton and Crozier have experimented with making charcoal: the results have been mixed. Rhino, Katuro, and Manatee have gone fishing down by the shore. Ivory Bill is designing a coracle.

  Two young Pigoons – barely more than piglets – dug under the garden fence and were discovered eating the root vegetables, the carrots and beets in particular. The MaddAddamites had slacked off their vigilance as regards the Pigoons, thinking that their agreement would hold. And it is holding, with the adults; but juveniles of all kinds push the rules.

  A conference was called. The Pigoons sent a delegation of three adults, who seemed both embarrassed and cross, as adults put to shame by their young usually are. Blackbeard stood as interpreter.

  It would not happen again, said the Pigoons. The young offenders had been threatened with a sudden transition to a state of bacon and soup bones, which seems to have made the desired impression.

  The Festival of Saint Geyikli Baba of Deer. New moon.

  The bees are productive: the first honey harvest has taken place. White Sedge has begun a Meditation to Music group, which many of the Crakers enjoy. Beluga is helping her. Tamaraw has been experimenting with sheep cheese, both hard and soft; also yogurt. The nursery has been finished, just in time. Very soon now, the three babies will be born, though Swift Fox claims she is having twins. Cradles are being discussed.