Oryx and Crake

by Margaret Atwood

  Oryx said she had many chances to see that old carrot up close, because Jack wanted to do movie things with her when there were no movies. Then he would be sad and tell her he was sorry. That was puzzling.

  "You did it for nothing?" said Jimmy. "I thought you said everything has a price." He didn't feel he'd won the argument about money, he wanted another turn.

  Oryx paused, lifting the nail-polish brush. She looked at her hand. "I traded him," she said.

  "Traded him for what?" said Jimmy. "What did that pathetic prick of a loser have to offer?"

  "Why do you think he is bad?" said Oryx. "He never did anything with me that you don't do. Not nearly so many things!"

  "I don't do them against your will," said Jimmy. "Anyway you're grown up now."

  Oryx laughed. "What is my will?" she said. Then she must have seen his pained look, so she stopped laughing. "He taught me to read," she said quietly. "To speak English, and to read English words. Talking first, then reading, not so good at first, and I still don't talk so good but you always have to start somewhere, don't you think so, Jimmy?"

  "You talk perfectly," said Jimmy.

  "You don't need to tell lies to me. So that is how. It took a long time, but he was very patient. He had one book, I don't know where he got it but it was a book for children. It had a girl in it with long braids, and stockings - that was a hard word, stockings -- who jumped around and did whatever she liked. So this is what we read. It was a good trade, because, Jimmy, if I hadn't done it I couldn't be talking to you, no?"

  "Done what?" said Jimmy. He couldn't stand it. If he had this Jack, this piece of garbage, in the room right now he'd wring his neck like a wormy old sock. "What did you do for him? You sucked him off?"

  "Crake is right," said Oryx coldly. "You do not have an elegant mind."

  Elegant mind was just mathtalk, that patronizing jargon the math nerds used, but it hurt Jimmy anyway. No. What hurt was the thought of Oryx and Crake discussing him that way, behind his back.

  "I'm sorry," he said. He ought to know better than to speak so bluntly to her.

  "Now maybe I wouldn't do it, but I was a child then," said Oryx more softly. "Why are you so angry?"

  "I don't buy it," said Jimmy. Where was her rage, how far down was it buried, what did he have to do to dig it up?

  "You don't buy what?"

  "Your whole fucking story. All this sweetness and acceptance and crap."

  "If you don't want to buy that, Jimmy," said Oryx, looking at him tenderly, "what is it that you would like to buy instead?"

  Jack had a name for the building where the movies went on. He called it Pixieland. None of the children knew what that meant -- Pixieland - because it was an English word and an English idea, and Jack couldn't explain it. "All right, pixies, rise and shine," he'd say. "Candy time!" He brought candies for them as a treat, sometimes. "Want a candy, candy?" he'd say. That also was a joke, but they didn't know what it meant either.

  He let them see the movies of themselves if he felt like it, or if he'd just been doing drugs. They could tell when he'd been shooting or snorting, because he was happier then. He liked to play pop music while they were working, something with a bounce. Upbeat, he called it. Elvis Presley, things like that. He said he liked the golden oldies, from back when songs had words. "Call me sentimental," he said, causing puzzlement. He liked Frank Sinatra too, and Doris Day: Oryx knew all the words to "Love Me or Leave Me" before she had any idea what they meant. "Sing us some pixieland jazz," Jack would say, and so that was what Oryx would sing. He was always pleased.

  "What was this guy's name?" said Jimmy. What a jerk, this Jack. Jack the jerk, the jerkoff. Name-calling helped, thought Jimmy. He'd like to twist the guy's head off.

  "His name was Jack. I told you. He told us a poem about it, in English. Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack has got a big candlestick."

  "I mean his other name."

  "He didn't have another name."

  Working was what Jack called what they did. Working girls, he called them. He used to say, Whistle while you work. He used to say, Work harder. He used to say, Put some jazz into it. He used to say, Act like you mean it, or you want to get hurt? He used to say, Come on, sex midgets, you can do better. He used to say, You're only young once.

  "That's all," said Oryx.

  "What do you mean, that's all?"

  "That's all there was," she said. "That's all there was to it."

  "What about, did they ever ..."

  "Did they ever what?"

  "They didn't. Not when you were that young. They couldn't have."

  "Please, Jimmy, tell me what you are asking." Oh, very cool. He wanted to shake her.

  "Did they rape you?" He could barely squeeze it out. What answer was he expecting, what did he want?

  "Why do you want to talk about ugly things?" she said. Her voice was silvery, like a music box. She waved one hand in the air to dry the nails. "We should think only beautiful things, as much as we can. There is so much beautiful in the world if you look around. You are looking only at the dirt under your feet, Jimmy. It's not good for you."

  She would never tell him. Why did this drive him so crazy? "It wasn't real sex, was it?" he asked. "In the movies. It was only acting. Wasn't it?"

  "But Jimmy, you should know. All sex is real."

  7

  ~

  Sveltana

  ~

  Snowman opens his eyes, shuts them, opens them, keeps them open. He's had a terrible night. He doesn't know which is worse, a past he can't regain or a present that will destroy him if he looks at it too clearly. Then there's the future. Sheer vertigo.

  The sun is above the horizon, lifting steadily as if on a pulley; flattish clouds, pink and purple on top and golden underneath, stand still in the sky around it. The waves are waving, up down up down. The thought of them makes him queasy. He's violently thirsty, and he has a headache and a hollow cottony space between his ears. It takes him some moments to register the fact that he has a hangover.

  "It's your own fault," he tells himself. He behaved foolishly the night before: he guzzled, he yelled, he gibbered, he indulged in pointless repinings. Once he wouldn't have had a hangover after so little booze, but he's out of practice now, and out of shape.

  At least he didn't fall out of the tree. "Tomorrow is another day," he declaims to the pink and purple clouds. But if tomorrow is another day, what's today? The same day as it always is, except that he feels as if he has tongue fur all over his body.

  ~

  A long scrawl of birds unwinds from the empty towers - gulls, egrets, herons, heading off to fish along the shore. A mile or so to the south, a salt marsh is forming on a one-time landfill dotted with semi-flooded townhouses. That's where all the birds are going: minnow city. He watches them with resentment: everything is fine with them, not a care in the world. Eat, fuck, poop, screech, that's all they do. In a former life he might have snuck up on them, studied them through binoculars, wondering at their grace. No, he never would have done that, it hadn't been his style. Some grade-school teacher, a nature snoop - Sally Whatshername? - herding them along on what she called field trips. The Compound golf course and lily ponds had been their hunting grounds. Look! See the nice ducks? Those are called mallards! Snowman had found birds tedious even then, but he wouldn't have wished to harm them. Whereas right now he yearns for a big slingshot.

  He climbs down from the tree, more carefully than usual: he's still a bit dizzy. He checks his baseball cap, dumps out a butterfly - attracted by the salt, no doubt - and pisses on the grasshoppers, as usual. I have a daily routine, he thinks. Routines are good. His entire head is becoming one big stash of obsolete fridge magnets.

  Then he opens up his cement-block cache, puts on his one-eyed sunglasses, drinks water from a stored beer bottle. If only he had a real beer, or an aspirin, or more Scotch.

  "Hair of the dog," he says to the beer bottle. He mustn't drink too much water at a time, he'll throw up. He pours the
rest of the water over his head, gets himself a second bottle, and sits down with his back against the tree, waiting for his stomach to settle. He wishes he had something to read. To read, to view, to hear, to study, to compile. Rag ends of language are floating in his head: mephitic, metronome, mastitis, metatarsal, maudlin.

  "I used to be erudite," he says out loud. Erudite. A hopeless word. What are all those things he once thought he knew, and where have they gone?

  ~

  After a while he finds he's hungry. What's in the cache, foodwise? Shouldn't there be a mango? No, that was yesterday. All that's left of it is a sticky ant-covered plastic bag. There's the chocolate energy Joltbar, but he doesn't feel up to that, so he opens the can of Sveltana No-Meat Cocktail Sausages with his rusty can opener. He could use a better one of those. The sausages are a diet brand, beige and unpleasantly soft - babies' turds, he thinks - but he manages to get them down. Sveltanas are always better if you don't look.

  They're protein, but they're not enough for him. Not enough calories. He drinks the warm, bland sausage juice, which - he tells himself - must surely be full of vitamins. Or minerals, at least. Or something. He used to know. What's happening to his mind? He has a vision of the top of his neck, opening up into his head like a bathroom drain. Fragments of words are swirling down it, in a grey liquid he realizes is his dissolving brain.

  Time to face reality. Crudely put, he's slowly starving to death. A fish a week is all he can depend on, and the people take that literally: it can be a decent-sized fish or a very small one, all spikes and bones. He knows that if he doesn't balance out the protein with starches and that other stuff - carbohydrates, or are those the same as starches? - he'll start dissolving his own fat, what's left of it, and after that his own muscles. The heart is a muscle. He pictures his heart, shrivelling up until it's no bigger than a walnut.

  At first he'd been able to get fruit, not only from the cans of it he'd been able to scrounge, but also from the deserted arboretum an hour's walk to the north. He'd known how to find it, he'd had a map then, but it's long gone, blown away in a thunderstorm. Fruits of the World was the section he'd headed for. There'd been some bananas ripening in the Tropicals area, and several other things, round, green, and knobbly, that he hadn't wanted to eat because they might have been poisonous. There'd been some grapes too, on a trellis, in the Temperate zone. The solar air conditioning was still functioning, inside the greenhouse, though one of the panes was broken. There'd been some apricots as well, espaliered against a wall; though only a few, browning where the wasps had eaten into them and beginning to rot. He'd devoured them anyway; also some lemons. They'd been very sour, but he'd forced himself to drink the juice: he was familiar with scurvy from old seafaring movies. Bleeding gums, teeth coming out in handfuls. That hasn't happened to him yet.

  Fruits of the World is cleaned out now. How long till more fruits of the world appear and ripen? He has no clue. There ought to be some wild berries. He'll ask the kids about that, the next time they come poking around: they'll know about berries. But though he can hear them farther down the beach, laughing and calling to one another, they don't seem to be coming his way this morning. Maybe they're getting bored with him, tired of pestering him for answers he won't give or that make no sense to them. Maybe he's old hat, an outworn novelty, a mangy toy. Maybe he's lost his charisma, like some shoddy, balding pop star of yesteryear. He ought to welcome the possibility of being left alone, but he finds the thought dispiriting.

  If he had a boat he might row out to the tower blocks, climb up, rob nests, steal some eggs, if he had a ladder. No, bad idea: the towers are too unstable, even in the months he's been here several of them have come crashing down. He could walk to the area of the bungalows and trailers, hunt for rats, barbecue them over the glowing coals. It's something to consider. Or he could try going as far as the closest Module, better pickings than the trailers because the goodies there had been thicker on the ground. Or one of the retirement colonies, the gated communities, something like that. But he has no maps any more and he can't risk getting lost, wandering around at dusk with no cover and no suitable tree. The wolvogs would be after him for sure.

  He could trap a pigoon, bludgeon it to death, butcher it in secret. He'd have to hide the mess: he has a notion that the sight of full frontal blood and guts might take him over the threshold as far as the Children of Crake are concerned. But a pigoon feast would do him a world of good. Pigoons are fat, and fat is a carbohydrate. Or is it? He searches his mind for some lesson or long-lost chart that would tell him: he knew that stuff once, but it's no use, the file folders are empty.

  "Bring home the bacon," he says. He can almost smell it, that bacon, frying in a pan, with an egg, to be served up with toast and a cup of coffee ... Cream with that? whispers a woman's voice. Some naughty, nameless waitress, out of a white-aprons-and-feather-dusters porno farce. He finds himself salivating.

  Fat isn't a carbohydrate. Fat is a fat. He whacks his own forehead, lifts his shoulders, spreads his hands. "So, wise guy," he says. "Next question?"

  Do not overlook a plentiful source of nutrition that may be no farther away than your feet, says another voice, in an annoying, instructive tone he recognizes from a survival manual he once leafed through in someone else's bathroom. When jumping off a bridge, clench your bum so the water won't rush up your anus. When drowning in quicksand, take a ski pole. Great advice! This is the same guy who said you could catch an alligator with a pointed stick. Worms and grubs were what he recommended for a snack food. You could toast them if you wanted.

  Snowman can see himself turning over logs, but not just yet. There's something else he'll try first: he'll retrace his steps, go back to the RejoovenEsense Compound. It's a long hike, longer than any he's taken yet, but worth it if he can get there. He's sure there will still be a lot left, back there: not only canned goods, booze as well. Once they'd figured out what was going on, the Compound inhabitants had dropped everything and fled. They wouldn't have stayed long enough to clean out the supermarkets.

  What he really needs is a spraygun, though - with one of those, he could shoot pigoons, hold off the wolvogs - and, Idea! Light bulb over head! - he knows exactly where to find one. Crake's bubble-dome contains a whole arsenal, which ought to be right where he left it. Paradice, was what they'd named the place. He'd been one of the angels guarding the gate, in a manner of speaking, so he knows where everything is, he'll be able to lay his hands on the necessary items. A quick in and out, a snatch and grab. Then he'll be equipped for anything.

  But you don't want to go back there, do you? a soft voice whispers.

  "Not particularly."

  Because?

  "Because nothing."

  Go on, say it.

  "I forget."

  No, you don't. You've forgotten nothing.

  "I'm a sick man," he pleads. "I'm dying of scurvy! Go away!"

  What he needs to do is concentrate. Prioritize. Whittle things down to essentials. The essentials are: Unless you eat, you die. You can't get any more essential than that.

  The Rejoov Compound is too far away for a casual day trip: it's more like an expedition. He'll have to stay out overnight. He doesn't welcome that thought - where will he sleep? - but if he's careful he should be okay.

  With the can of Sveltana sausages inside him and a goal in sight, Snowman's beginning to feel almost normal. He has a mission: he's even looking forward to it. He might unearth all sorts of things. Cherries preserved in brandy; dry-roasted peanuts; a precious can of imitation Spam, if serendipity strikes. A truckload of booze. The Compounds hadn't stinted themselves, you could find the full range of goods and services there when there were shortages everywhere else.

  He gets to his feet, stretches, scratches around the old scabs on his back - they feel like misplaced toenails - then walks back along the path behind his tree, picking up the empty Scotch bottle he threw down at the wolvogs the night before. He gives it a wistful sniff, then tosses it and the Svelt
ana can onto his midden-heap of empty containers, where a whole crowd of debauched flies is making merry. Sometimes at night he can hear the rakunks pawing through this private dump of his, searching for a free meal among the leavings of catastrophe, as he himself has often done, and is about to do again.

  Then he sets about making his preparations. He reties his sheet, arranging it over his shoulders and pulling the extra up through his legs and tucking it in through the belt effect at the front, and knotting his last chocolate energy bar into a corner. He finds himself a stick, long and fairly straight. He decides to take only one bottle of water: most likely there'll be water along the way. If not, he can always catch the runoff from the afternoon storm.

  He'll have to tell the Children of Crake he's going. He doesn't want them to discover he's missing and set out looking for him. They could run into dangers, or get lost. Despite their irritating qualities - among which he counts their naive optimism, their open friendliness, their calmness, and their limited vocabularies - he feels protective towards them. Intentionally or not, they've been left in his care, and they simply have no idea. No idea, for instance, of how inadequate his care really is.

  Stick in hand, rehearsing the story he'll tell them, he goes along the path to their encampment. They call this path the Snowman Fish Path, because they carry his fish along it every week. It skirts the edge of the beach while keeping to the shade; nevertheless he finds it too bright, and tilts his baseball cap down to keep out the rays. He whistles as he approaches them, as he always does to let them know he's coming. He doesn't want to startle them, strain their politeness, cross their boundaries without being invited - loom up on them suddenly out of the shrubbery, like some grotesque flasher exposing himself to schoolkids.

  His whistle is like a leper's bell: all those bothered by cripples can get out of his way. Not that he's infectious: what he's got they'll never catch. They're immune from him.