MaddAddam

The Story of how Crake got born

“Still a little buzzed, are you?” says Zeb as they walk towards the trees where Jimmy’s hammock was once strung up and where the Crakers are waiting. It’s the gloaming: deeper, thicker, more layered than usual, the moths more luminous, the scents of the evening flowers more intoxicating: the short-term Enhanced Meditation formula has that effect. Zeb’s hand in hers is rough velvet: like a cat’s tongue, warm and soft, delicate and raspy. It sometimes takes half a day for this stuff to wear off.

“I’m not sure buzzed is the appropriate word to use of a mystical quasi-religious experience,” says Toby.

“That’s what it was?”

“Possibly. Blackbeard’s telling people that Pilar appeared in the skin of a pig.”

“No shit! And her a vegetarian. How’d she get in there?”

“He says she put on the skin of the pig just the way you put on the skin of the bear. Except she didn’t kill and eat the pig.”

“What a waste.”

“Also she spoke to me, Blackbeard says. He says he heard her do it.”

“That what you think too?”

“Not exactly,” says Toby. “You know the Gardener way. I was communicating with my inner Pilar, which was externalized in visible form, connected with the help of a brain chemistry facilitator to the wavelengths of the Universe; a universe in which — rightly understood — there are no coincidences. And just because a sensory impression may be said to be ‘caused’ by an ingested mix of psychoactive substances does not mean it is an illusion. Doors are opened with keys, but does that mean that the things revealed when the doors are opened aren’t there?”

“Adam One really did a job on you, didn’t he? He could spout that crap for hours.”

“I can follow his line of reasoning, so I guess in that sense he did a job, yes. But when it comes to ‘belief,’ I’m not so sure. Though as he’d say, what is ‘belief’ but a willingness to suspend the negatives?”

“Yeah, right. I never knew myself how much of it he really believed himself, or believed so much that he’d stick his arm in the fire for it. He was such a slippery bugger.”

“He said that if you acted according to a belief, that was the same thing. As having the belief.”

“Wish I could find him,” says Zeb. “Even if he’s dead. I’d like to know what happened, either way.”

“They used to call that ‘closure,’ ” says Toby. “In some cultures, the spirit couldn’t be freed unless the person got a decent burial.”

“Funny old thing, the human race,” says Zeb. “Wasn’t it? So, here we are. Do your stuff, Story Lady.”

“I’m not sure I can. Not tonight. I’m still a little foggy.”

“Give it a try. At least turn up. You don’t want to start a riot.”

Thank you for the fish.

I will not eat it right now, because first I have something important to tell you.

Yesterday I listened to Crake on the shiny thing.

Please don’t sing.

And Crake said, It is best to cook the fish a little longer. Until it is hot all the way through. Never leave it out in the sun before you cook it. Or keep it overnight. Crake says that is the best way, with a fish, and it is the way Snowman-the-Jimmy always wanted it to be cooked. And Oryx says that if it is the turn of her Fish Children to be eaten, she wants them to be eaten in the best way. Which means cooked all the way through.

Yes, Snowman-the-Jimmy is feeling better, though right now he is sleeping inside, in his own room. His foot does not hurt much any more. It is very good you did so much purring on it. He can’t run fast yet, but he is practising his walking every day. And Ren and Lotis Blue are helping him.

Amanda can’t help him because she is too sad.

We don’t need to talk about why she is sad right now.

Tonight I will not tell a story, because of the fish. And the way it needs to be cooked. Also I am feeling a little … I am feeling tired. And that makes it harder for me to hear the story, when I put on the red hat of Snowman-the-Jimmy.

I know you are disappointed. But I will tell you a story tomorrow. What story would you like to hear?

About Zeb? And Crake too?

A story with both of them in it. Yes, I think there is a story like that. Maybe.

Was Crake ever born? Yes, I think he was. What do you think?

Well, I’m not sure. But he must have been born, because he looked like a — he looked like a person, once upon a time. Zeb knew him then. That’s how there can be a story with both of them in it. And Pilar is in that story too.

Blackbeard? You have something to say about Crake?

He wasn’t really born out of a bone cave, he only got inside the skin of a person? He put it on like clothes? But he was different inside? He was round and hard, like the shiny thing? I see.

Thank you, Blackbeard. Could you put on the red hat of Jimmy-the-Snowman, I mean Snowman-the-Jimmy, and tell us all of that story?

No, the hat won’t hurt you. It won’t turn you into someone else. No, you won’t grow an extra skin; you won’t grow clothes like mine. You can keep your very own skin.

It’s all right. You don’t have to put on the red hat. Please don’t cry.

“Well, that was a bit of a fiasco,” says Toby. “I didn’t know they were afraid of it — that old red baseball cap.”

“I was afraid of the Red Sox myself,” says Zeb. “When I was a kid. I was a gambler at heart even then.”

“It seems to be a sacred object to them. The hat. Sort of taboo. They can carry it around but they can’t put it on.”

“Cripes, can you blame them? That thing is filthy! Bet it has lice.”

“I’m trying to have an anthropological discussion here.”

“Have I told you recently you’ve got a fine ass?”

“Don’t be complex,” says Toby.

“Complex is another word for pathetic jerkoff?”

“No,” says Toby. “It’s just that …” Just that what? Just that she can’t believe he means it.

“Okay, it’s a compliment. Remember those? Guys give them to women. It’s a courtship move — now that’s anthropology. So just think of it as a bouquet. Deal?”

“Okay, deal,” says Toby.

“Let’s start again. I spotted that fine ass of yours way back when, on that day we composted Pilar. When you took off those baggy Gardener-lady clothes and put on the parkie overalls. Filled me with longing, it did. But you were inaccessible then.”

“I wasn’t really. I was …”

“Yeah, you kinda were. You were Miss Total God’s Gardener Purity, as far as I could tell. Adam One’s devoted altar girl. Wondered if he was having it off with you, to tell the truth. I was jealous of that.”

“Absolutely not,” says Toby. “He never, ever …”

“I believe you. Thousands wouldn’t. Anyway, I was hooked up with Lucerne at the time.”

“That stopped you? Mister Babe Magnet?”

A sigh. “I was magnetized to babes, naturally. Back when I was young. It’s a hormone thing, it comes with the hairy balls. Wonders of nature. But babes weren’t always magnetized to me.” A pause. “Anyway, I’m loyal. To whoever I’m with, if I’m really with them. A serial monogamist, you could say.”

Does Toby believe this? She isn’t sure.

“But then Lucerne left the Gardeners,” she says.

“And you were Eve Six. Talking to the bees, measuring out the head trips. You were like a Mother Superior. Figured you’d slap me down. Inaccessible Rail,” he says, using her old MaddAddam chatroom codename. “That was you.”

“And you were Spirit Bear,” says Toby. “Hard to find, but good luck if you happen to see one. That’s what the stories said, before those bears went extinct.” She starts to sniffle. The Meditation formula does that too: it melts the fortress walls.

“Hey. What? Did I say something bad?”

“No,” says Toby. “I’m just sentimental.”

All those years you were my lifeline, she wants to say. But doesn’t.

Young Crake

“Now I have to come up with something,” says Toby. “A story with Crake in it, and you as well. Crake did know Pilar when he was younger, I figured that out. But what am I going to say about you?”

“As it happens, that part’s actually true,” says Zeb. “I knew him before the Gardeners even got started. But he wasn’t Crake then, not even close. He was just a fucked-up kid named Glenn.”

Once Zeb was inside HelthWyzer West, he learned its memes and set about mimicking them as fast as he could. Displaying the right memes was the yellow brick road to blending in and thus surviving, so that when the giant Rev monster eye came looking for him via the giant Corps network, as it might at any moment, it would pass right over his head. Protective colouration, that’s what he needed.

The officially promoted view of HelthWyzer West was that it was one big happy family, dedicated to the pursuit of truth and the betterment of humankind. To dwell too much on the improvement in value for the shareholders was considered bad taste, but on the other hand there was an employee options package. All staff were expected to be unremittingly cheerful, to meet their assigned goals diligently, and — as in real families — not to ask too much about what was really going on.

Again like real families, there were no-go zones. Some were conceptual, but some were purely physical. The pleebland outside the HelthWyzer Compound was one of these, unless you had a pass and designated protection. The firewalls around IP had become thick and in some cases impenetrable, unless you had an inside track; so if you couldn’t hack the system, you grabbed the primary source material. Brainiacs from Corps of all kinds were being kidnapped and smuggled abroad, or — some said — into rival Corps Compounds — and then strip-mined for the gold and jewels their heads were assumed to contain.

This was a cause for serious concern at HelthWyzer West — which meant there was some fairly important stuff going on behind locked doors — and barriers had been put in place. The top biogeeks carried alarm beepers that registered their whereabouts, though these had sometimes been adroitly hacked and then used as a means of targeting their bearers and tracking them down. Here and there on the walls of hallways and meeting rooms, posters reminded the unwary of ever-present perils. FOLLOW THE SAFETY RULES AND KEEP YOUR HEAD! AND ITS CONTENTS! Or: YOUR MEMORY IS OUR IP, SO WE’LL PROTECT IT FOR YOU!

Or: BRAINS ARE LIKE MEADOWS: A CULTIVATED ONE IS WORTH MORE. On this last poster, someone had written with a Sharpie: Get more cultivated! Eat more shit! So, thought Zeb, there was at least some hidden dissent among the smiley faces.

As part of the happy family ethos, HelthWyzer West threw a barbecue every Thursday in the central parkette of the Compound. Adam had told Zeb that these affairs should not be missed, as they were prime territory for eavesdropping and figuring out the invisible power filaments. Those wearing the most casual clothing would most likely be the alphas. Adam also said that Zeb would find some of the recreational pursuits of interest, especially the board games; though he hadn’t said why.

So Zeb turned up at the HelthWyzer West barbecue on the first Thursday after his arrival. He sampled the eats: SoYummie ice cream for the kids, pork ribs for the carnivores, SoyOBoy products and quornburgers for the vegans. NevRBled Shish-K-Buddies for those who wanted to eat meat without killing animals — the cubes were lab-cultured from cells (“No Animal Suffered”), and he figured that with enough beer they wouldn’t taste too bad. But he intended to limit his drinking because he needed to stay alert, so he stuck with the ribs. You didn’t have to be half-cut to appreciate those.

Around the edges of the crowd, various geeky sports were in progress. Croquet and bocci in the sun, ping-pong and foosball under the awnings. Circle games for the under-sixes, variations of tag for the older ones. And for the serious and superintelligent and potentially Aspergerian child brainiacs, a row of umbrella-shaded computers where they could do obsessive-compulsive things online — within HelthWyzer firewalls, of course — and challenge each other to combat without making eye contact.

Zeb scoped out the games: Three-Dimensional Waco, Intestinal Parasites, Weather Challenge, Blood and Roses. Also Barbarian Stomp, a new one on him.

Here came Marjorie with the spaniel’s eyes, making a beeline towards him, her beseeching smile at the ready, enhanced by a smear of ketchup on the chin. Time to duck and cover: she had the look of a woman who’d already staked out a claim, and would go through a guy’s pants pockets while he was asleep in search of rivals, and would most likely read his email. Though maybe he was being paranoid. But best not to take chances.

“Want to go a round with me?” he said to the nearest youthful brainiac, a thin boy in a dark T-shirt with a stack of gnawed pork ribs on the paper plate beside him. Was that a cup of coffee? Since when was coffee allowable for a kid that age? Where were the parents?

The boy looked up at him with large, green, opaque but possibly mocking eyes. Even the children wore name tags to these barbecues, it seemed: Glenn, Zeb read.

“Sure,” said young Glenn. “Conventional chess?”

“As opposed to?” said Zeb.

“Three-dimensional,” said Glenn indifferently. If Zeb didn’t know that, then he couldn’t be a very good player. Blatantly obvious.

So that was how Zeb first met Crake.

“But like I said, he wasn’t Crake yet,” says Zeb. “He was just a kid then. Not too much bad stuff had happened to him, though ‘not too much’ is always a matter of taste.”

“Really?” says Toby. “That long ago?”

“Would I lie to you?” says Zeb.

Toby thinks about it. “Not about this,” she says.

Zeb generously and also patronizingly let Glenn play White, and Glenn walloped him, though Zeb put up an honourable fight. After that they did a round of Three-Dimensional Waco, and Zeb beat Glenn, who immediately wanted another game. This one ended in a tie. Glenn looked at Zeb with a small increase of respect and asked him where he’d come from.

Zeb then told a couple of lies, but they were entertaining lies: he put in Miss Direction and the Floating World, and some of the bears from Bearlift, though he changed the name and the location and left out anything about dead Chuck. Glenn had never been outside a Compound, or not that he could remember, so these tales must have had mythic dimensions for him. Though he made a point of not looking impressed.

In any case, Glenn started turning up in Zeb’s vicinity at the Thursday barbecue events and hanging around at lunchtimes. It wasn’t hero-worship, not exactly; nor did Glenn want Zeb to be his dad. More like an older brother, Zeb decided. There weren’t that many kids his age at HelthWyzer West for Glenn to play games with. Or not ones as smart as him. Not that Glenn thought Zeb was up to scratch, smarts-wise, but he was within range. Though there was a slight air of command performance about these proceedings: Glenn as the crown prince and Zeb as the somewhat dim courtier.

How old exactly was Glenn? Eight, nine, ten? It was hard for Zeb to tell because he didn’t like to remember what his own life had been like when he’d been eight or nine or ten. He’d spent too much time in the dark back then, one way or another. All of that needed to be forgotten, and he’d worked at forgetting it. Still, when he saw a boy of that age the first thing he wanted to say was, Run away! Run away very fast! And the second thing was, Grow bigger! Grow very big! If you could grow very big, then whoever they were would cease to have power over you. Or so much power. Though it hadn’t worked for whales, he reflected. Or tigers. Or elephants.

There must have been a they in the life of young Glenn, or maybe an it: something that was haunting him. He had that look about him, a look Zeb used to catch glimpses of when he saw himself unawares in the mirror: a wary, distrustful look, as if he didn’t know what bush or parking lot or piece of furniture was going to chasm suddenly to reveal the lurking enemy or the bottomless pit. Though Glenn had no scars, no bruises, and no difficulty eating his meals, or not that Zeb could see; so what was that haunting entity? Nothing definite, perhaps. More like a lack, a vacuum.

After several Thursdays and some close observation, Zeb concluded that neither of Glenn’s parents had a lot of time for him. Nor for each other: from the body language, they were well past the stage of irritation or even occasional dislike and were deep into active hatred. When they met in public they resorted to iceman stares and monosyllables, and to walking quickly away. There was a pot of boiling rage on a private stove behind their closed curtains: that bubbling cauldron was taking all their attention, with Glenn relegated to a footnote or else a trading card. Maybe the kid gravitated to Zeb for the same reason children like dinosaurs: when feeling abandoned in a world of forces beyond your control, it’s comforting to have a huge, scaly beast who is your friend.

Glenn’s mother was on the food admin staff, tracking supplies and devising meal plans. Glenn’s dad was a semi-top researcher — an expert in unusual microbes, wonky viruses, odd antigens, and offbeat variants of anaphylaxis biovectors. Ebola and Marburg were among his specialties, but right now he was working on a rare allergic reaction to red meat that was linked to tick bites. An agent in the salivary proteins of ticks caused it, said Glenn.

“So,” said Zeb, “a tick drools into you and then you can’t have steak any more without bursting out in hives and suffocating to death?”

“Bright side,” said Glenn. He was going through a phase: he’d say “bright side,” then add some gruesome sidebar. “Bright side, if they could spread it through the population — those tick saliva proteins embedded in, say, the common aspirin — then everyone would be allergic to red meat, which has a huge carbon footprint and causes the depletion of forests, because they’re cleared for cattle grazing; and then …”

“Not my idea of a bright side,” said Zeb. “For argument: we’re hunter-gatherers, we evolved to eat meat.”

“And to develop lethal allergies to tick saliva,” said Glenn.

“Only in those slated to be eliminated from the gene pool,” said Zeb. “Which is why it’s rare.”

Glenn grinned, not something he did often. “Point,” he said.

While Zeb and Glenn were playing onscreen games at the Thursday events, Glenn’s mother, Rhoda, would sometimes drift over to watch, leaning a little too close to Zeb’s shoulder, sometimes even touching it with — what? The business end of her tit? Felt like it: that nubbin shape. Certainly not a finger. Her breath, scented with beer, would riffle the fine hairs near his ear. She never touched Glenn, however. In fact, nobody ever touched Glenn. He somehow arranged it that way: he’d erected an invisible no-fly zone around himself.

“You guys,” Rhoda would say. “You should get out there and run around. Play some croquet.” Glenn didn’t acknowledge these motherly interventions, nor did Zeb: Glenn’s mother, although not wizened, was past the optimum freshness date as far as he was concerned, though if he’d been marooned on a liferaft with her.… But he wasn’t, so he ignored the nipple nudges and the breath-to-ear signals and concentrated on the Blood part of Blood and Roses: eradicating the population of ancient Carthage and sowing the land with salt, enslaving the Belgian Congo, and murdering firstborn Egyptian babies.

Though why stop at firstborns? Some atrocities turned up by the virtual Blood and Roses dictated that the babies be tossed into the air and skewered on swords; others, that they be thrown into furnaces; yet others, that their brains be dashed out against stone walls. “Trade you a thousand babies for the Palace of Versailles and the Lincoln Memorial,” he said to Glenn.

“No deal,” said Glenn. “Unless you throw in Hiroshima.”

“That’s outrageous! You want these babies to die in agony?”

“They aren’t real babies. It’s a game. So they die, and the Inca Empire gets preserved. With all that cool gold art.”

“Then kiss the babies goodbye,” said Zeb. “Heartless little bugger, aren’t you? Splat. There. Gone. And by the way, I’m cashing in my Wildcard Joker points to blow up the Lincoln Memorial.”

“Who cares?” said Glenn. “I’ve still got the Palace of Versailles, plus the Incas. Anyway, there’s too many babies. They make a huge carbon footprint.”

“You guys are awful,” said Rhoda, scratching herself. Zeb could hear the fingernails going behind his back, a sound like cat claws on felt. He wondered which part of herself she was scratching, then made an effort to stop wondering. Glenn had enough troubles without his one reliable friend making the double-backed beast with his unreliable mother.

Before he knew it, Zeb was giving young Glenn some extracurricular lessons in coding, which meant — practically speaking — in hacking as well. The kid was a natural, and he was finally impressed by some of the things Zeb knew and he didn’t, and he caught on like magic. How tempting was it to take that talent and hone it and polish it and pass on the keys to the kingdom — the Open Sesames, the back doors, the shortcuts? Very tempting. So that is what Zeb did. It was a lot of fun watching the kid soak it all up, and who was to foresee the consequences? Which is usually the way with fun.

In return for Zeb’s coding and hacking secrets, Glenn shared a few secrets of his own. For instance, he’d bugged his mother’s room with an audio earlet concealed in her bedside lamp, by which means it became known to Zeb that Rhoda was having it off with an upper-middle-management type called Pete, usually right before lunchtime.

“My dad doesn’t know,” said Glenn. He considered for a moment, fixing Zeb with his uncanny green eyes. “Think I should tell him?”

“Maybe you shoudn’t listen in on that shit,” said Zeb.

Glenn gave him a cool stare. “Why not?”

“Because those things are for grown-ups,” Zeb said, sounding prissy even to himself.

“You would, when you were my age,” Glenn said, and Zeb couldn’t deny that it was a thing he’d have done in a millisecond, given the opportunity and the tech. Avidly, gloatingly, without thinking twice.

On the other hand, maybe he wouldn’t have done it if it involved his own parents. Even now he can’t think about the Rev making umphing sounds while bobbing up and down on top of Trudy — who’d be slippery with perfumed lotion and lubricant, and would resemble an overstuffed pink satin pillow — without feeling queasy.

Grob’s Attack

“Here comes the part where I meet Pilar,” says Zeb.

“What on earth was Pilar doing at HelthWyzer West?” says Toby. “Working for a Corp, inside a Compound?”

But she knew the answer. A lot of the Gardeners had started out inside a Corp Compound, and a lot of the MaddAddamites had as well. Where else was a bioscience-trained person to work? If you wanted a job in research, you had to work for a Corp because that was where the money was. But you’d naturally be focused on projects that interested them, not on ones that interested you. And the ones that interested them had to have a profitable commercial application.

Zeb first met Pilar at one of the Thursday barbecues. He hadn’t seen her there before. Some of the more senior people didn’t attend the weekly ribfests: they were for younger people who might or might not be angling for a casual pickup or looking to exchange gossip and glean info, and Pilar was beyond that stage. As Zeb learned later, she was well up the seniority ladder.

But she was there that Thursday. All Zeb saw at first was a small, black-and-grey-haired older woman playing chess with Glenn, over on the sidelines. It was an odd combo — almost-old lady, uppity young kid — and odd combos intrigued him.

He sauntered up casually and loomed over Glenn’s shoulder. He watched the game for a while, trying not to kibbitz. Neither side had an obvious advantage. The old dame played relatively quickly, though without fluster, while Glenn pondered. She was making him work.

“Queen to h5,” Zeb said at last. Glenn was playing Black this time. Zeb wondered if he’d chosen it out of bravado or whether they’d flipped for White.

“Don’t think so,” said Glenn without looking up while moving his knight to block — Zeb now saw — a possible check. The older woman smiled at Zeb, one of those wrinkly-eyed brown-skinned gnome-in-the-woods smiles that could mean anything from I like you to Watch out.

“Who is your friend?” she said to Glenn.

Glenn frowned at Zeb, which meant he felt insecure about the game. “This is Seth,” he said. “This is Pilar. Your move.”

“Hey,” said Zeb, nodding.

“A pleasure,” said Pilar. “Good save,” she said to Glenn.

“Catch you later,” Zeb said to Glenn. He wandered off to eat some NevRBled Shish-K-Buddies — he was getting fond of them, despite their ersatz texture — topped off with a SoYummie cone, quasiraspberry flavour.

He sucked on the cone while looking over the field and ranking all the women he could see. It was a harmless pastime. The scale was one to ten. There were no tens (In a Minute!), a couple of eights (With Mild Reservations), a clutch of fives (If Nothing Else Available), some definite threes (You’d Have to Pay Me), and an unfortunate two (Pay Me a Lot!) — when he felt a touch on his arm.

“Don’t act surprised, Seth,” said a low voice. He looked down: it was tiny, walnut-faced Pilar. Was she making a move on him? Surely not, but if so it could be a delicate moment, politeness-wise: how to say no in an acceptable manner?

“Your shoelaces are untied,” she said.

Zeb stared at her. His shoes didn’t have laces. They were slip-ons.

“Welcome to MaddAddam, Zeb,” she said, smiling.

Zeb coughed out a chunk of SoYummie cone. “Fuck!” he said, but he had the presence of mind to say it softly. Adam and his idiot shoelaces password. Who could have remembered?

“It’s all right,” said Pilar. “I know your brother. I helped bring you here. Look bored, as if we’re making small talk.” She smiled at him again. “I’ll see you at the next Thursday barbecue. We should arrange to play a game of chess.” Then she wafted serenely away towards the croquet game. She had excellent posture: Zeb sensed a yoga aficionado. Posture like that made him feel personally sloppy.

He longed to go online, zigzag into the Extinctathon MaddAddam chatroom, and ask Adam about this woman, but he knew that wouldn’t be prudent. The least said the better online, even if you thought your space was secure. The net had always been just that — a net, full of holes, all the better to trap you with; and it still was, despite the fixes they claimed to be adding constantly, with the impenetrable algorithms and the passwords and thumb scans.

But what else did they expect? With code serfs like him in charge of the security keys, of course the thing was going to leak. The pay was too low, so the temptation to pilfer, snoop, snitch, and sell for high rewards was great. But the penalties were getting more extreme, which was a counterbalance of sorts. Online thieves were increasingly professional, like the outfits he’d worked with in Rio. Few were hacking for the pure lulz of it any more, or even to register protests, as they had in the golden years of legend that middle-aged guys wearing retro Anonymous masks got all nostalgic about in the dim, cobwebby, irrelevant corners of the web.

What good would registering a protest do you any more? The Corps were moving to set up their own private secret-service outfits and seize control of the artillery; not a month passed without the arrival of some new weapons law pretending to safeguard the public. Old-style demonstration politics were dead. You could get back at individual targets such as the Rev using underhanded means, but any kind of public action involving crowds and sign-waving and then storefront smashing would be shot off at the knees. Increasingly, everyone knew that.

He finished his SoYummie cone, fended off snub-nosed Marjorie, who wanted him to join a game of croquet and acted hurt when he said he was awkward with wooden balls, then meandered over to where Glenn was still sitting, staring at the chessboard. He’d set it up again and was playing against himself. “Who won?” Zeb asked.

“I almost did,” said Glenn. “She pulled a Grob’s Attack on me. It caught me off-guard.”

“What exactly does she do here?” Zeb asked. “Is she in charge of something?”

Glenn smiled. He liked knowing things Zeb didn’t know. “Mushrooms. Funguses. Mould. Want to play me?”

“Tomorrow,” said Zeb. “Ate too much, it’s dulling my brain.”

Glenn grinned up at him. “Chickenshit,” he said.

“Maybe just lazy. How come you know her?” said Zeb.

Glenn looked at him a little too long, a little too hard: green cat eyes. “I already said. She works with my dad. He’s on her team. Anyway, she’s in the chess club. Been playing her since I was five. She’s not too stupid.”

Which, in the high-praise area, was about as far as he went.

Vector

At the next Thursday barbecue, Glenn wasn’t there. Nor had he been in evidence for a couple of days. He hadn’t been mooching around the cafeteria, or asking Zeb to show him a few more hack moves on the computer. He’d become invisible.

Was he sick? Had he run away? Those were the only two possibilities that Zeb could think of, and he ruled out running away: the kid was surely too young for that, and it was too difficult to get out of HelthWyzer West without a pass. Though with Glenn’s newfound robinhooding cryptic skills he could probably fake one.

There was another possibility: the little smartass had been colouring outside the digital lines. He’d broken into some sacrosanct Corps database or other and helped himself, just for the heck of it, because he couldn’t possibly be into shady trading with the Chinese grey market, or worse — the Albanians, they were incandescent at the moment — and he’d got himself caught. In which case he’d be in a debriefing room somewhere having his brain pumped out. A person could come out of such affairs with nothing but a year-old dishrag north of the eyes. Would they do such a thing to a mere child? Yes. They would.

He really hoped it wasn’t that: if it was, he himself would feel very guilty, because it would mean he’d been a bad teacher. “Rule Number One,” he’d emphasized. “Don’t get caught.” But that was sometimes easier said than done. Had he been sloppy about the coding fretwork? Had he shown the kid a past-sell-by-date shortcut? Had he missed a few Detour signs, a few spoor marks that meant that he and Glenn were not the only ones on what he’d thought was his very own self-created poacher’s jungle trail?

Though he was more than concerned, Zeb didn’t want to start asking the teachers or even Glenn’s lax and neglectful parents about him. He needed to keep his profile low, not draw attention.

Zeb scanned the barbecue crowd again. Still no Glenn. But Pilar was there, over to the side, under a tree. She was sitting in front of a chessboard, which she appeared to be studying. He assumed his casual saunter and made his way over there, hoping he looked random.

“Up for a game?” he said.

Pilar glanced up. “Certainly,” she said with a smile. Zeb sat down.

“We’ll toss for White,” said Pilar.

“I like to play Black,” said Zeb.

“So I’ve been told,” said Pilar. “Very well.”

She opened with a standard queen’s pawn, and Zeb decided to opt for a queen’s Indian defence. “Where’s Glenn?” he asked.

“Things are not good,” she answered. “Concentrate on the game. Glenn’s father is dead. Glenn is naturally upset. The CorpSeCorps officers told him it was a suicide.”

“No shit,” said Zeb. “When did that happen?”

“Two days ago,” said Pilar, moving her queen’s knight. Zeb moved his bishop, pinning it down. Now she’d have a job developing her centre. “It’s not when, however, it’s how. He was pushed off an overpass.”

“By his wife?” Zeb asked, remembering Rhoda’s tit pressing against his back, and also the earlet concealed in her bedside lamp. It was a jokey kind of question — he should have been ashamed of himself. Sometimes that kind of thing shot out of his mouth like popcorn. But it was a serious question, as well: Glenn’s dad could have found out about Rhoda’s lunchtime interludes, they could have gone for a walk to discuss it, outside the walls of HelthWyzer for more privacy, and decided to stroll along the overpass, for the view of the oncoming traffic, and then they could have had a fight, and Glenn’s mother could have upended his dad over the railing, a move he’d been unable to defend himself against …

Pilar was looking at him. Waiting for him to come to his senses, most likely.

“Okay, I take it back,” he said. “It wasn’t her.”

“He found out something they’re doing, inside HelthWyzer,” said Pilar. “He felt this practice was not only unethical but dangerous to public health, and therefore immoral. He threatened to make this knowledge public; or, well, not public as such, since the press probably wouldn’t have touched it. But if he’d gone to a rival Corp, especially one outside the country, they’d have made damaging use of the information.”

“He was on your research team, wasn’t he?” said Zeb. He was trying to follow what she was saying, thus losing control of his game.

“Affiliated,” said Pilar, dispatching one of his pawns. “He confided in me. And now I’m confiding in you.”

“Why?” said Zeb.

“I’m being reassigned,” said Pilar. “To the HelthWyzer headquarters, out east. Or that’s where I hope I’m going, though it may be worse. They may think I’m lacking in enthusiasm, or suspect my loyalty. You’ll have to leave here. I can’t keep you safe once I’ve been transferred. Take my bishop with your knight.”

“That’s a bad move,” said Zeb. “It opens the way to …”

“Just take it,” she said calmly. “Then keep it in your hand. I have another one, I’ll replace it in the box. No one will know there’s a bishop missing.”

Zeb palmed the bishop. He’d learned how to do that from Slaight of Hand, back in his Floating World days. Deftly he slid it up his sleeve.

“What am I supposed to do with it?” he said. With Pilar gone, he’d be isolated.

“Just deliver it,” she said. “I’ll fake you a day pass, with a cover story attached; they’ll want to know your business in the pleeblands. Once you’re outside the HelthWyzer West Compound, there’ll be a new identity waiting. Take the bishop with you. There’s a sex club franchise called Scales and Tails, you can look it up on the net. Go to the nearest branch. The password is oleaginous. They’ll let you in. You’ll be leaving the bishop there. It’s a container, they’ll know how to open it.”

“Deliver it to who?” said Zeb. “What’s in it, anyway? Who’s they?”

“Vectors,” said Pilar.

“In what sense?” said Zeb. “Like, math vectors?”

“Let’s say biological. Vectors for bioforms. And these vectors are inside some other vectors that look like vitamin pills: three kinds, white, red, and black. And the pills are inside another vector, the bishop. Which will be carried by another vector, you.”

“What’s the thing inside the pills?” Zeb asked. “Brain candy? Code chips?”

“Definitely not. Best not to ask,” said Pilar. “But whatever you do, don’t eat any of them. If you think anyone’s following you, shove the bishop down a drain.”

“What about Glenn?” said Zeb.

“Check and mate,” said Pilar, toppling his king. She stood up, smiling. “Glenn will make his way,” she said. “He doesn’t know they killed his father. He doesn’t know yet. Or not directly. But he’s very bright.”

“You mean he’ll figure it out,” said Zeb.

“Not too soon, I hope,” said Pilar. “He’s too young for that kind of bad news. He might not be able to pretend ignorance, unlike you.”

“Some of mine’s real,” said Zeb. “Like, right now, where do I switch identities? And how do I get the pass?”

“Go into the MaddAddam chatroom, there’s a full package waiting for you. Then scramble your present gateway. You can’t afford to leave your footprints on these computers.”

“Does any of this involve different facial hair?” Zeb asked, to lighten things up. “For my new identity? And dorky pants?”

Pilar smiled. “I’ve had my beeper switched off all this time,” she said. “We’re allowed to do that on barbecue days, as long as we’re in full view. I’m turning it back on now. Don’t say anything you don’t want overheard. Journey well.”

Scales and Tails

Zeb retrieved his thumbdrive from the desk drawer where he’d hidden it, removed the cough drops that were stuck to it like barnacles, activated Intestinal Parasites on his computer, then slipped through the voracious maw of the blind nightmare worm and thence by lilypad into the chatroom of MaddAddam. Sure enough, there was a how-to pack waiting for him, though no clue as to who had left it. He opened it, assimilated the contents, and scuttled backwards, whisking away his trail as he went. Then he ground the thumbdrive underfoot — or, more accurately, he placed it under one of his bed legs and then jumped on the bed, several times — and flushed the bits down several toilets. They wouldn’t have gone down easily by themselves, being metal and plastic, but if you embed …

“It’s okay,” says Toby. “I get the picture.”

Zeb’s new name was Hector. Hector the Vector, was what he figured. Someone had a reasonably foul sense of humour, but he didn’t think it was Pilar: she was not so much the humorous type.

But of course he’d only activate his new Hector identity once he was outside the walls and away from the security cameras of HelthWyzer West. Until then he was still Seth, a minor code-slave chained in the galleyship of data entry, in his geekwear with the brown corduroy pants. If anything, he was betting his change of identity would score him better pants. There was said to be an outfit waiting for him in the pleeblands, stashed in a dumpster he hoped no tramps or crazy people or sacked middle managers would be picking through before he could get to it.

The cover story for his Seth persona was that he was making a service call at a local branch of a beauty-and-mood-enhancing Corp called AnooYoo, which was a dubious affiliate of HelthWyzer. Health and Beauty, the two seductive twins joined at the navel, singing their eternal siren songs. A lot of people would pay through their nose jobs for either one.

HelthWyzer’s products — the vitamin supplements, the over-the-counter painkillers, the higher-end disease-specific pharmaceuticals, the erectile dysfunction treatments, and so on — went in for scientific descriptions and Latin names on the labels. AnooYoo, on the other hand, was mining arcane secrets from Wiccan moon-worshippers and from shamans deep in the assassin-bug-rich rainforests of Dontgothere. But Zeb could understand that there was an overlap of interests. If it hurts and you feel sick and it’s making you ugly, take this, from HelthWyzer; if you’re ugly and it hurts and you feel sick about it, take that, from AnooYoo.

Zeb readied himself for his mission by putting on a newly laundered pair of brown cords. He rearranged his face into his marginally shambolic Seth persona and winked at it in the bathroom mirror. “You’re doomed,” he said to it. He wouldn’t be sorry to part company with Seth, who’d been foisted on him by Adam in an act of older-brother I-know-better bossiness. He longed to see Adam in person, if only to berate him for that. “You got any fucking idea of what those pants put me through?” he might say.

Time for Seth to go. He ambled in the direction of the front gate, exit pass in hand, humming to himself:

Hi ho, hi ho,

To jerkoff work I go,

With a hick hack here and a hick hack there,

Hi ho, hi ho, hi ho, hi ho!

Now to remember the cover story of Seth, junior code plumber. He was being sent to investigate the AnooYoo website, and to discover how it had been tampered with. Someone — maybe a jumped-up teenaged hacker like his own younger self — had altered the online images so that when you clicked on any of the mood-enhancing, complexion-improving products, a squad of puce and orange insect animations would nibble into them at hyperspeed and then explode, legs twitching, yellow fumes coming out. It was silly but graphic.

HelthWyzer West didn’t want anyone working on the problem from inside their own systems, naturally: the thing, simpleminded though it looked, could be a trap, with its planners hoping for just such an intervention so they could ram in through HelthWyzer’s firewalls and filch its valuable IP. Therefore someone had to go to AnooYoo in person: someone minor and — since the gang-riddled pleebs were hazardous — someone expendable. That would be Seth, though at least they were providing a HelthWyzer car, with a driver. Nobody would likely go to the trouble of grabbing Seth for brain excavation: he wasn’t inner circle. But still.

AnooYoo didn’t want to find out who’d done the hack job, or why: that would be too expensive. They just wanted their firewall repaired. Their own guys hadn’t been able to do it, ran the cover story, which wasn’t — to Zeb — ultra plausible. But then, AnooYoo was a cheap operation — this was before its plusher days, when it set up the Spa-in-the-Park — so its IT bunch wasn’t the A team, and maybe not even the B or C team: ultrabrights got snapped up by richer Corps. They were more like the F team. Obviously, since they’d failed.

But they were going to have a long wait, thought Zeb, because within the hour he would morph into Hector, and Seth would be no more. He had the chess bishop; it was in his baggy corduroy pants pocket, where he was also keeping his left hand just in case, and if anyone was looking they might conclude he was engaged in an act of self-abuse. Which he simulated in a restrained way, in case the car was equipped with spyware, as was likely. Better a wanker than a defector, and a contraband smuggler to boot.

AnooYoo was located in a seedy piece of real estate on the edge of a grey-market pleeb. So it wasn’t alien to the streetscape to find an overturned SecretBurgers stand blocking the way, with a full-scale red-sauce fracas going on and a corona of yelling and honking surrounding it, plus flying squadrons of airborne meat patties. Zeb’s own driver leaned on the horn, though he knew better than to roll down the window to yell.

But before you could say prestidigitation, the car was mobbed by a dozen Asian Fusions. One of them must’ve had a digilock popper keyed with the HelthWyzer car’s passcode because up shot the lock buttons. In about one second the Fusion thugs had winkled out the thrashing, yelping driver and were going for his shoes and shucking him out of his clothing as if he was a cob of corn. Those pleeb gangs were fast and professional, you had to hand it to them. They’d get hold of the car keys, reverse, and be off like a shot, to sell the vehicle whole or strip it for parts, whichever paid more.

This was Zeb’s moment. It had been paid for in advance: the Asian Fusions were dirty but they were also cheap, and happy to take small jobs. Checking first to make sure the driver’s sightlines were blocked — they had to be, his entire head was now covered in red sauce — Zeb dove out the back door and frog-marched himself down the adjacent alleyway and around the corner, then around another corner, and then a third, where he kept his rendezvous with the designated dumpster.

The brown corduroy pants went into it, good riddance, and some well-aged jeans came out, with accessories to match. Black pleather jacket, black T that read ORGAN DONOR, TRY MINE FREE, reflector shades, baseball cap with a modestly sized red skull on the front. Gold clip-on tooth cap, fake ’stache, newly minted smirk, and Hector the Vector was ready to saunter. He’d taken care to keep the chess bishop safely to hand, and now he zipped it into the inside pocket of the pleather.

Off he went, in a hurry but not in any way looking it: best to seem unemployed. Also best to seem up to no good, in non-specific ways.

The Scales and Tails where he was heading was deeper into the pleeb. If he’d gone there in his geekwear he’d probably have had to defend his personal territory beginning with scalp, nose, and balls, but as it was he attracted not much more than a few narrow-eyed assessments. Worth taking on? Not, was the verdict. So his sauntering went unimpeded.

There it was, up ahead: ADULT ENTERTAINMENT in neon, For Discerning Gentlemen in subscript. Pics of reptilian lovelies in skintight green scales, most of them with impressive bimplants, some in contorted poses that suggested they had no backbones. A woman who could hook her legs around her own neck had something to offer in the way of novelty, though exactly what was unclear. And there was March the python, looped around the shoulders of a red-hot cobra lady who was swinging from a trapeze, and who greatly resembled Katrina WooWoo, the lovely snake trainer from the Floating World he’d so often helped to saw in half.

Not even very much older. So she was still keeping her hand in. As it were.

It was daytime: no customer traffic inbound. He reminded himself of the ludicrous password he’d been saddled with. Oleaginous. How to use it in a plausible sentence? “You’re looking very oleaginous today?” That might get him a slap or a punch, depending on who he said it to. “Oleaginous weather we’re having.” “Turn off that oleaginous music.” “Stop being so fucking oleaginous!” None of them sounded right.

He rang the doorbell. The door looked thick as a bank vault, with a lot of metal on it. An eye peered at him through the peephole. Locks clicked, the portal opened, and there was a bouncer as big as himself, only black. Shorn head, dark suit, shades. “What?” he said.

“Hear you’ve got some oleaginous girls,” said Zeb. “Ones that butter you up.”

The guy stared at him from inside his shades. “Say that again?” he said, so Zeb did. “Oleaginous girls,” said the guy, rolling the phrase around in his mouth as if it was a doughnut hole. “Butter you up.” His mouth upended at the corners. “Good one. Right. Inside.” He checked the street before shutting the door. More locks clicking. “You want to see her,” he said.

Down the hallway, purple-carpeted. Up the stairs: smell of a pleasure factory in the off hours, so sad. That moppet-shop smell that meant false raunchiness, that meant loneliness, that meant you got loved only if you paid.

The guy said something into his earpiece, which must have been very small because Zeb couldn’t see it. Maybe it was inside a tooth: some were using those now, though if the tooth got knocked out and you swallowed the thing you might end up talking out your ass. An inner door marked HEAD OFFICE, BODY OFFICE TOO, with a shiny green winking-snake logo and the motto “We’re Flexible.”

“In,” said the big guy once more — not a large vocabulary, him — and in Zeb went.

The room was an office of sorts, equipped with a lot of video screens and some expensive overstuffed furniture that was making a muffled statement, and a mini-bar. Zeb eyed the bar longingly — maybe there was a beer, all this running around and pretense had made him thirsty — but this was not the time.

There were two people in the room, each deep in a chair. One was Katrina WooWoo. She wasn’t in her snake outfit: only an oversized sweatshirt that said BITCH #3, tight black jeans, and a pair of silver stilettos that would cripple a stilt dancer. She smiled at Zeb, one of those stage smiles she could always maintain while hissing. “Long time,” she said.

“Not that long,” said Zeb. “You still look easy to pick up and hard to put down.”

She smiled. Zeb had to admit he longed to wend his way into her scaly underthings — that boyish yen hadn’t faded — but he couldn’t concentrate on such goals right then because the other person in the room was Adam. He was wearing a dorky caftan affair that looked as if it was put together by spastic ragpickers for a stage play about leprosy.

“Fuck,” said Zeb. “Where’d you get that pixie nightshirt?” It was best not to show surprise: it would give Adam an advantage he didn’t, at the moment, deserve.

“I note your tasteful T-shirt,” said Adam. “It suits you. Nice motto, baby brother.”

“Is this place bugged?” said Zeb. One more baby brother quip and he’d deck Adam. No, he wouldn’t. He never could bear to hit the guy, not full-out: Adam was too ethereal.

“Of course,” said Katrina WooWoo. “But we’ve turned everything off, courtesy of the house.”

“I’m supposed to believe that?”

“She actually has turned it off,” said Adam. “Think about it. She doesn’t want any of our footprints on her establishment. She’s doing us a big favour. Thanks,” he said to Katrina. “We won’t be long.” She stilt-walked out of the room, teetering a little, casting them a smile over her shoulder: not a hissy smile this time. She was evidently keen on Adam, despite the caftan. “There’s some food later, if you want it,” she said. “In the girls’ caf. I need to get changed, showtime coming up.”

Adam waited until she’d closed the door. “You made it,” he said. “Good.”

“No thanks to you,” said Zeb. “I might’ve been lynched because of those nerdy brown pants.” He was in fact very pleased to know that Adam was still alive, but he wasn’t going to straight-out admit it. “I looked like a fucking fuckwit in those fucking things,” he added, piling on the profanity.

Adam ignored that part. “Have you got it?” he said.

“I take it you mean this fucking chess piece,” Zeb said. He handed it over. Adam twisted the head, and off it came. He turned the bishop upside down: out slid the six pills: red, white, black, two of each colour. Adam looked at them, then put them back into the bishop and reattached the head.

“Thank you,” he said. “We have to think of somewhere very safe for this.”

“What is it?” said Zeb.

“Pure evil,” said Adam. “If Pilar’s right. But valuable pure evil. And very secret. Which is why Glenn’s father is dead.”

“What do they do?” said Zeb. “Supersex pills or what?”

“Cleverer than that,” said Adam. “They’re using their vitamin supplement pills and over-the-counter painkillers as vectors for diseases — ones for which they control the drug treatments. Whatever’s in the white ones is in actual deployment. Random distribution, so no one will suspect a specific location of being ground zero. They make money all ways: on the vitamins, then on the drugs, and finally on the hospitalization when the illness takes firm hold. As it does, because the treatment drugs are loaded too. A very good plan for siphoning the victims’ money into Corps pockets.”

“So those are the white ones. What about the reds and the blacks?”

“We don’t know,” said Adam. “They’re experimental. Possibly other diseases, possibly a faster-acting formula. We aren’t even sure how to find out in any safe way.”

Zeb took this in. “This is large,” he said. “I wonder how many brainiacs it took to think that up.”

“It’s a small, designated group within HelthWyzer,” said Adam. “Directed from the top. Glenn’s father was being used by them. He thought he was working on a targeted cancer-treatment vector. When he realized the nature of it, the full scope, he couldn’t go along with it. He slipped these to Pilar, before …”

“Shit,” said Zeb. “They killed her too?”

“No,” said Adam. “They don’t even know she knows, or so we hope. She’s just been transferred to HelthWyzer Central, on the east coast.”

“Mind if I have a beer?” said Zeb. He didn’t wait for an answer. “So now that you have this stuff,” he said after the first refreshing swallow, “what next? You going to sell these things on the grey market? Foreign Corps would pay a lot.”

“No,” said Adam. “We couldn’t do that. It would be firmly against our principles. All we can do in this world, now, is to learn what to avoid. We’ll warn others about the vitamin supplements if we can, but if we were to try going public with this information we wouldn’t be believed. We’d only sound paranoid, and after that we would have unfortunate accidents. The press is Corps-controlled, as you know, and any independent regulation is independent in name only. So we will keep the pills hidden until they can be analyzed without danger.”

“Who’s this we?” said Zeb.

“If you don’t know, you can’t tell,” said Adam. “Safer for everyone, including you.”

The Story of Zeb and the Snake Women

“How do I explain all of that to them?” says Toby. “The Scales and Tails girls, dressed up like snakes?”

“You could just leave it out.”

“I don’t think so. It needs to be in. It seems appropriate, a woman who is also a snake. It goes along with the Meditation, and whatever happened with that animal. With that sow. It … She really seemed to be communicating with me. And with Blackbeard.”

“You think that thing is part human? A Pig Woman? You really drank the Kool-Aid.” A chuckle.

“No, not exactly, but …”

“Too many peyote buttons in that mix of yours. Or whatever you put in.”

“Maybe. No doubt you’re right.”

The story tells itself inside Toby’s head. She doesn’t seem to be thinking about the story, or directing it. She has no control over it; she just listens. Amazing what a few plant molecules will do to your brain, and how long that lasts.

This is the story of Zeb and the Snake Women. The Snake Women do not come into the story at first, they come in later. Important things often come into stories later, but also at the beginning. And in the middle as well.

But I have already told the beginning, so right now it’s the middle. And Zeb is in the middle of the story about Zeb. He is in the middle of his own story.

I am not in this part of the story; it hasn’t come to the part with me. But I’m waiting, far off in the future. I’m waiting for the story of Zeb to join up with mine. The story of Toby. The story I am in right now, with you.

Pilar, who lives in the elderberry bush and talks to us through the bees, was once in the form of an old woman. She gave Zeb a special important thing and told him he had to take care of it — a little thing, like a seed. And the seed would make you sick if you ate it. But some bad people from the chaos were telling all the other people that this seed would make them happy. And only Pilar and Zeb and a small number of other people knew the truth.

Why were the bad people doing that? Because of Money. Money was invisible, like Fuck. They thought that Money was their helper; they thought he was a better helper than Fuck. But they were wrong about that. Money was not their helper. Money goes away just when you need it. But Fuck is very loyal.

So Zeb took the seed, and he went out through the door, because if the bad men knew he had it they would chase him and take it away from him, and then do something very hurtful to him. And he was hurrying without seeming to hurry, and he said, Oh Fuck, and Fuck came flying through the air, very fast, as he always does when you call him; and he showed Zeb how to get to the house of the Snake Women. And the Snake Women opened their door, and took him in.

The Snake Women are … You have seen a snake, and you have seen women. The Snake Women were both. And they lived with several Bird Women and Flower Women. And they hid Zeb inside a giant … Inside a great big … A clam shell. No, a sofa. Or maybe they hid him inside a great big, an enormous … A flower. A very bright flower with lights on it.

Yes, a light-up flower. No one would look for Zeb inside a flower.

And Zeb’s brother, Adam, was inside the flower too. That was nice. They were very happy to see each other, because Adam was the helper of Zeb and Zeb was the helper of Adam.

The Snake Women sometimes bit people, but they didn’t bite Zeb. They liked him. They made him a special drink, called a Champagne Cocktail, and then they did a special dance for him. It was a twisty dance, because after all they were snakes.

They were very kind. Because that is how Oryx made them. And they were her Children, because they were part snake. So they had nothing to do with Crake. Or not much.

And the Snake Women let Zeb sleep in a great big bed, a bed that was shiny and green. They said Fuck could sleep in there as well, because there was lots of room.

And Zeb said, Thank you, because the Snake Women were being so kind to him, and also to his invisible helper. And they made him feel much better.

No, they did not purr over him. Snakes can’t purr. But they … they twined. Yes, that is what they did: some twining. And some constriction, they did that too. Snakes have very good muscles for constriction.

And Zeb was really, really tired, so he went to sleep at once. And the Snake Women and the Bird Women and the Flower Women took care of him, and made sure nothing bad would happen to him while he slept. They said they would protect him and hide him even if the bad men came there.

And the bad men did come. But that is in the next part of the story.

And now I am really, really tired too. And I am going to sleep.

Good night.

That is what she’ll say when it’s time for the next story.