Oryx and Crake

by Margaret Atwood

  won't go swimming. Snowman has wrinkles because he once lived underwater and it wrinkled up his skin. Snowman is sad because the others like him flew away over the sea, and now he is all alone.

  "I want feathers too," says the youngest. A vain hope: no beards on the men, among the Children of Crake. Crake himself had found beards irrational; also he'd been irritated by the task of shaving, so he'd abolished the need for it. Though not of course for Snowman: too late for him.

  Now they all begin at once. "Oh Snowman, oh Snowman, can we have feathers too, please?"

  "No," he says.

  "Why not, why not?" sing the two smallest ones.

  "Just a minute, I'll ask Crake." He holds his watch up to the sky, turns it around on his wrist, then puts it to his ear as if listening to it. They follow each motion, enthralled. "No," he says. "Crake says you can't. No feathers for you. Now piss off."

  "Piss off? Piss off?" They look at one another, then at him. He's made a mistake, he's said a new thing, one that's impossible to explain. Piss isn't something they'd find insulting. "What is piss off?"

  "Go away!" He flaps his sheet at them and they scatter, running along the beach. They're still not sure whether to be afraid of him, or how afraid. He hasn't been known to harm a child, but his nature is not fully understood. There's no telling what he might do.

  Voice

  ~

  "Now I'm alone," he says out loud. "All, all alone. Alone on a wide, wide sea." One more scrap from the burning scrapbook in his head.

  Revision: seashore.

  He feels the need to hear a human voice - a fully human voice, like his own. Sometimes he laughs like a hyena or roars like a lion - his idea of a hyena, his idea of a lion. He used to watch old DVDs of such creatures when he was a child: those animal-behaviour programs featuring copulation and growling and innards, and mothers licking their young. Why had he found them so reassuring?

  Or he grunts and squeals like a pigoon, or howls like a wolvog: Aroo! Aroo! Sometimes in the dusk he runs up and down on the sand, flinging stones at the ocean and screaming, Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit! He feels better afterwards.

  He stands up and raises his arms to stretch, and his sheet falls off. He looks down at his body with dismay: the grimy, bugbitten skin, the salt-and-pepper tufts of hair, the thickening yellow toenails. Naked as the day he was born, not that he can remember a thing about that. So many crucial events take place behind people's backs, when they aren't in a position to watch: birth and death, for instance. And the temporary oblivion of sex.

  "Don't even think about it," he tells himself. Sex is like drink, it's bad to start brooding about it too early in the day.

  He used to take good care of himself; he used to run, work out at the gym. Now he can see his own ribs: he's wasting away. Not enough animal protein. A woman's voice says caressingly in his ear, Nice buns! It isn't Oryx, it's some other woman. Oryx is no longer very talkative.

  "Say anything," he implores her. She can hear him, he needs to believe that, but she's giving him the silent treatment. "What can I do?" he asks her. "You know I ..."

  Oh, nice abs! comes the whisper, interrupting him. Honey, just lie back. Who is it? Some tart he once bought. Revision, professional sex-skills expert. A trapeze artist, rubber spine, spangles glued onto her like the scales of a fish. He hates these echoes. Saints used to hear them, crazed lice-infested hermits in their caves and deserts. Pretty soon he'll be seeing beautiful demons, beckoning to him, licking their lips, with red-hot nipples and flickering pink tongues. Mermaids will rise from the waves, out there beyond the crumbling towers, and he'll hear their lovely singing and swim out to them and be eaten by sharks. Creatures with the heads and breasts of women and the talons of eagles will swoop down on him, and he'll open his arms to them, and that will be the end. Brainfrizz.

  Or worse, some girl he knows, or knew, will come walking towards him through the trees, and she'll be happy to see him but she'll be made of air. He'd welcome even that, for the company.

  He scans the horizon, using his one sunglassed eye: nothing. The sea is hot metal, the sky a bleached blue, except for the hole burnt in it by the sun. Everything is so empty. Water, sand, sky, trees, fragments of past time. Nobody to hear him.

  "Crake!" he yells. "Asshole! Shit-for-brains!"

  He listens. The salt water is running down his face again. He never knows when that will happen and he can never stop it. His breath is coming in gasps, as if a giant hand is clenching around his chest - clench, release, clench. Senseless panic.

  "You did this!" he screams at the ocean.

  No answer, which isn't surprising. Only the waves, wish-wash, wish-wash. He wipes his fist across his face, across the grime and tears and snot and the derelict's whiskers and sticky mango juice. "Snowman, Snowman," he says. "Get a life."

  2

  ~

  Bonfire

  ~

  Once upon a time, Snowman wasn't Snowman. Instead he was Jimmy. He'd been a good boy then.

  Jimmy's earliest complete memory was of a huge bonfire. He must have been five, maybe six. He was wearing red rubber boots with a smiling duck's face on each toe; he remembers that, because after seeing the bonfire he had to walk through a pan of disinfectant in those boots. They'd said the disinfectant was poisonous and he shouldn't splash, and then he was worried that the poison would get into the eyes of the ducks and hurt them. He'd been told the ducks were only like pictures, they weren't real and had no feelings, but he didn't quite believe it.

  So let's say five and a half, thinks Snowman. That's about right.

  The month could have been October, or else November; the leaves still turned colour then, and they were orange and red. It was muddy underfoot - he must have been standing in a field - and it was drizzling. The bonfire was an enormous pile of cows and sheep and pigs. Their legs stuck out stiff and straight; gasoline had been poured onto them; the flames shot up and out, yellow and white and red and orange, and a smell of charred flesh filled the air. It was like the barbecue in the backyard when his father cooked things but a lot stronger, and mixed in with it was a gas-station smell, and the odour of burning hair.

  Jimmy knew what burning hair smelled like because he'd cut off some of his own hair with the manicure scissors and set fire to it with his mother's cigarette lighter. The hair had frizzled up, squiggling like a clutch of tiny black worms, so he'd cut off some more and done it again. By the time he was caught, his hair was ragged all along the front. When accused he'd said it was an experiment.

  His father had laughed then, but his mother hadn't. At least (his father said) Jimmy'd had the good sense to cut the hair off before torching it. His mother said it was lucky he hadn't burnt the house down. Then they'd had an argument about the cigarette lighter, which wouldn't have been there (said his father) if his mother didn't smoke. His mother said that all children were arsonists at heart, and if not for the lighter he'd have used matches.

  Once the fight got going Jimmy felt relieved, because he'd known then that he wouldn't be punished. All he had to do was say nothing and pretty soon they'd forget why they'd started arguing in the first place. But he also felt guilty, because look what he'd made them do. He knew it would end with a door being slammed. He scrunched down lower and lower in his chair with the words whizzing back and forth over his head, and finally there was the bang of the door - his mother this time - and the wind that came with it. There was always a wind when the door got slammed, a small puff - whuff! - right in his ears.

  "Never mind, old buddy," said his father. "Women always get hot under the collar. She'll cool down. Let's have some ice cream." So that's what they did, they had Raspberry Ripple in the cereal bowls with the blue and red birds on them that were handmade in Mexico so you shouldn't put them in the dishwasher, and Jimmy ate his all up to show his father that everything was okay.

  Women, and what went on under their collars. Hotness and coldness, coming and going in the strange musky flowery variable-weather country
inside their clothes - mysterious, important, uncontrollable. That was his father's take on things. But men's body temperatures were never dealt with; they were never even mentioned, not when he was little, except when his dad said, "Chill out." Why weren't they? Why nothing about the hot collars of men? Those smooth, sharp-edged collars with their dark, sulphurous, bristling undersides. He could have used a few theories on that.

  The next day his father took him to a haircut place where there was a picture of a pretty girl in the window with pouty lips and a black T-shirt pulled down off one shoulder, glaring out through smudgy charcoal eyes with a mean stare and her hair standing up stiff like quills. Inside, there was hair all over the tiled floor, in clumps and wisps; they were sweeping it up with a push broom. First Jimmy had a black cape put on him, only it was more like a bib, and Jimmy didn't want that, because it was babyish. The haircut man laughed and said it wasn't a bib, because who ever heard of a baby with a black bib on? So it was okay; and then Jimmy got a short all-over cut to even out the ragged places, which maybe was what he'd wanted in the first place - shorter hair. Then he had stuff out of a jar put on to make it spiky. It smelled like orange peels. He smiled at himself in the mirror, then scowled, thrusting down his eyebrows.

  "Tough guy," said the haircut man, nodding at Jimmy's father. "What a tiger." He whisked Jimmy's cut-off hair onto the floor with all the other hair, then removed the black cape with a flourish and lifted Jimmy down.

  ~

  At the bonfire Jimmy was anxious about the animals, because they were being burned and surely that would hurt them. No, his father told him. The animals were dead. They were like steaks and sausages, only they still had their skins on.

  And their heads, thought Jimmy. Steaks didn't have heads. The heads made a difference: he thought he could see the animals looking at him reproachfully out of their burning eyes. In some way all of this - the bonfire, the charred smell, but most of all the lit-up, suffering animals - was his fault, because he'd done nothing to rescue them. At the same time he found the bonfire a beautiful sight - luminous, like a Christmas tree, but a Christmas tree on fire. He hoped there might be an explosion, as on television.

  Jimmy's father was beside him, holding on to his hand. "Lift me up," said Jimmy. His father assumed he wanted to be comforted, which he did, and picked him up and hugged him. But also Jimmy wanted to see better.

  "This is where it ends up," said Jimmy's father, not to Jimmy but to a man standing with them. "Once things get going." Jimmy's father sounded angry; so did the man when he answered.

  "They say it was brought in on purpose."

  "I wouldn't be surprised," said Jimmy's father.

  "Can I have one of the cow horns?" said Jimmy. He didn't see why they should be wasted. He wanted to ask for two but that might be pushing it.

  "No," said his father. "Not this time, old buddy." He patted Jimmy's leg.

  "Drive up the prices," said the man. "Make a killing on their own stuff, that way."

  "It's a killing all right," said Jimmy's father in a disgusted tone. "But it could've been just a nutbar. Some cult thing, you never know."

  "Why not?" said Jimmy. Nobody else wanted the horns. But this time his father ignored him.

  "The question is, how did they do it?" he said. "I thought our people had us sealed up tight as a drum."

  "I thought they did too. We fork out enough. What were the guys doing? They're not paid to sleep."

  "It could've been bribery," said Jimmy's father. "They'll check out the bank transfers, though you'd have to be pretty dumb to stick that kind of money into a bank. Anyway, heads will roll."

  "Fine-tooth comb, and I wouldn't want to be them," said the man. "Who comes in from outside?"

  "Guys who repair things. Delivery vans."

  "They should bring all that in-house."

  "I hear that's the plan," said his father. "This bug is something new though. We've got the bioprint."

  "Two can play at that game," said the man.

  "Any number can play," said Jimmy's father.

  "Why were the cows and sheep on fire?" Jimmy asked his father the next day. They were having breakfast, all three of them together, so it must have been a Sunday. That was the day when his mother and his father were both there at breakfast.

  Jimmy's father was on his second cup of coffee. While he drank it, he was making notes on a page covered with numbers. "They had to be burned," he said, "to keep it from spreading." He didn't look up; he was fooling with his pocket calculator, jotting with his pencil.

  "What from spreading?"

  "The disease."

  "What's a disease?"

  "A disease is like when you have a cough," said his mother.

  "If I have a cough, will I be burned up?"

  "Most likely," said his father, turning over the page.

  Jimmy was frightened by this because he'd had a cough the week before. He might get another one at any moment: already there was something sticking in his throat. He could see his hair on fire, not just a strand or two on a saucer, but all of it, still attached to his head. He didn't want to be put in a heap with the cows and pigs. He began to cry.

  "How many times do I have to tell you?" said his mother. "He's too young."

  "Daddy's a monster once again," said Jimmy's father. "It was a joke, pal. You know - joke. Ha ha."

  "He doesn't understand those kinds of jokes."

  "Sure he does. Don't you, Jimmy?"

  "Yes," said Jimmy, sniffling.

  "Leave Daddy alone," said his mother. "Daddy is thinking. That's what they pay him for. He doesn't have time for you right now."

  His father threw down the pencil. "Cripes, can't you give it a rest?"

  His mother stuck her cigarette into her half-empty coffee cup. "Come on, Jimmy, let's go for a walk." She hauled Jimmy up by one wrist, closed the back door with exaggerated care behind them. She didn't even put their coats on. No coats, no hats. She was in her dressing gown and slippers.

  The sky was grey, the wind chilly; she walked head down, her hair blowing. Around the house they went, over the soggy lawn at a double-quick pace, hand in hand. Jimmy felt he was being dragged through deep water by something with an iron claw. He felt buffeted, as if everything was about to be wrenched apart and whirled away. At the same time he felt exhilarated. He watched his mother's slippers: already they were stained with damp earth. He'd get in big trouble if he did that to his own slippers.

  They slowed down, then stopped. Then his mother was talking to him in the quiet, nice-lady TV-teacher voice that meant she was furious. A disease, she said, was invisible, because it was so small. It could fly through the air or hide in the water, or on little boys' dirty fingers, which was why you shouldn't stick your fingers up your nose and then put them into your mouth, and why you should always wash your hands after you went to the bathroom, and why you shouldn't wipe ...

  "I know," said Jimmy. "Can I go inside? I'm cold."

  His mother acted as if she hadn't heard him. A disease, she continued in that calm, stretched voice, a disease got into you and changed things inside you. It rearranged you, cell by cell, and that made the cells sick. And since you were all made up of tiny cells, working together to make sure you stayed alive, and if enough of the cells got sick, then you ...

  "I could get a cough," said Jimmy. "I could get a cough, right now!" He made a coughing sound.

  "Oh, never mind," said his mother. She often tried to explain things to him; then she got discouraged. These were the worst moments, for both of them. He resisted her, he pretended he didn't understand even when he did, he acted stupid, but he didn't want her to give up on him. He wanted her to be brave, to try her best with him, to hammer away at the wall he'd put up against her, to keep on going.

  "I want to hear about the tiny cells," he said, whining as much as he dared. "I want to!"

  "Not today," she said. "Let's just go in."

  OrganInc Farms

  ~

  Jimmy's father
worked for OrganInc Farms. He was a genographer, one of the best in the field. He'd done some of the key studies on mapping the proteonome when he was still a post-grad, and then he'd helped engineer the Methuselah Mouse as part of Operation Immortality. After that, at OrganInc Farms, he'd been one of the foremost architects of the pigoon project, along with a team of transplant experts and the microbiologists who were splicing against infections. Pigoon was only a nickname: the official name was sus multiorganifer. But pigoon was what everyone said. Sometimes they said Organ-Oink Farms, but not as often. It wasn't really a farm anyway, not like the farms in pictures.

  The goal of the pigoon project was to grow an assortment of foolproof human-tissue organs in a transgenic knockout pig host - organs that would transplant smoothly and avoid rejection, but would also be able to fend off attacks by opportunistic microbes and viruses, of which there were more strains every year. A rapid-maturity gene was spliced in so the pigoon kidneys and livers and hearts would be ready sooner, and now they were perfecting a pigoon that could grow five or six kidneys at a time. Such a host animal could be reaped of its extra kidneys; then, rather than being destroyed, it could keep on living and grow more organs, much as a lobster could grow another claw to replace a missing one. That would be less wasteful, as it took a lot of food and care to grow a pigoon. A great deal of investment money had gone into OrganInc Farms.

  All of this was explained to Jimmy when he was old enough.

  Old enough, Snowman thinks as he scratches himself, around but not on top of the insect bites. Such a dumb concept. Old enough for what? To drink, to fuck, to know better? What fathead was in charge of making those decisions? For example, Snowman himself isn't old enough for this, this - what can it be called? This situation. He'll never be old enough, no sane human being could ever ...

  Each one of us must tread the path laid out before him, or her, says the voice in his head, a man's this time, the style bogus guru, and each path is unique. It is not the nature of the path itself that should concern the seeker, but the grace and strength and patience with which each and every one of us follows the sometimes challenging ...