MaddAddam

Floral Bedsheet

Sunlight wakes her, coming in through her cubicle window. Birdsong, the voices of Craker children, the bleating of Mo’Hairs. Nothing unhappy.

She pushes herself upright, tries to remember what day it is. The Feast of Cyanophyta? Thank you, Oh Lord, for creating the Cyanophyta, those lowly blue-green Algae so overlooked by many, for it is through them, so many millions of years ago — which timespan however is merely an eyeblink in Thy sight — that our oxygen-rich atmosphere came to be, without which we could not breathe, nor indeed could the other land-dwelling Zooforms, so various, so beautiful, so new each time we are able to see them, and intuit Your Grace through them …

But on the other hand it may be Saint Jane Goodall’s Day. Thank you, Oh Lord, for blessing the life of Saint Jane Goodall, fearless Friend of God’s Junglefolk, who braved many a risky situation and also biting Insect to reach out across the Species gap, and through her love for and labour with our close cousins the Chimpanzees, led us to understand the value of opposable thumbs and big toes, and also our own deep …

Our own deep what? Toby rummages for the next phrase. She’s slipping: she ought to write such things down. Keep a daily journal, as she did when she was alone at the AnooYoo Spa. She could go further, and record the ways and sayings of the now-vanished God’s Gardeners for the future; for generations yet unborn, as politicians used to say when they were fishing for extra votes. If there is anyone in the future, that is; and if they’ll be able to read; which, come to think of it, are two big ifs. And even if reading persists, will anyone in the future be interested in the doings of an obscure and then outlawed and then disbanded green religious cult?

Maybe acting as if she believes in such a future will help to create it, which is the kind of thing the Gardeners used to say. She doesn’t have any paper, but she could ask Zeb to bring some back on his next gleaning expedition; if he can find any that isn’t damp, or nibbled for mouse nests, or eaten by ants. Oh, and pencils too, she’ll add. Or pens. Or crayons. Then she could make a start.

Though it’s hard to concentrate on the idea of a future. She’s too immersed in the present: the present contains Zeb, and the future may not.

She longs for tonight, she longs to skip the day that’s just begun and plunge headlong into the night as if into a pool; a pool with the moon reflected in it. She longs to swim in liquid moonlight.

But it’s dangerous to live for the night. Daytime becomes irrelevant. You can get careless, you can overlook details, you can lose track. These days she’ll find herself upright, in the middle of the room, one sandal in her hand, wondering how she got there; or outside under a tree, watching the leaves riffle, then prodding herself: Move. Move now. Get moving. You need to … But what exactly is it that she needs to do?

It isn’t only her, and it isn’t only her nightlife that’s causing it. She’s noticed others slacking off as well. Standing still for no reason, listening though no one’s talking. Then jerking themselves back to the tangible, visibly making an effort. Busying themselves with the garden, the fence, the solar, the extension to the cobb house … It’s tempting to drift, as the Crakers seem to. They have no festivals, no calendars, no deadlines. No long-term goals.

She remembers this floating mood so well from the months that she spent holed up in the AnooYoo Spa, waiting out the plague virus that was killing everyone else. Then — after there was no more crying, no more pleading and pounding at the door, no more bodies collapsing on the lawn — just waiting. Waiting for a sign that there was someone else left alive. Waiting for meaningful time to resume.

She’d stuck to her daily routine: keeping herself fed and watered, filling up the hours with small activities, writing in her daily journal. Pushing back the voices that tried to get into her head, as such voices do when you’re solitary. Fending off the temptation to wander away, wander off into the woods, open the door to whatever was going to happen to her or, more honestly, to put an end to her. An ending.

It was like a trance, or sleepwalking. Give yourself up. Give up. Blend with the universe. You might as well. It was as if something or someone was whispering, enticing her into the darkness: Come in, come over here. Finish. It will be a relief. It will be completeness. It won’t hurt much.

She wonders if that sort of whispering is beginning in the ears of some of the others. Hermits in the desert heard those voices, and prisoners in dungeons. But maybe no one’s hearing them now: it’s not like the AnooYoo Spa here, it’s not an isolation cell; everyone has other people. Still, she’s conscious of counting heads each morning, making sure all the MaddAddamites and former Gardeners are still in place: that none among them has strayed away during the night, into the labyrinth of leaves and branches, of birdsong and windsong and silence.

There’s a tapping on the wall beside her door. “Are you inside, Oh Toby?” It’s little Blackbeard, come to check up on her. Perhaps on some level he shares her fears and doesn’t want her to vanish.

“Yes,” she says. “I’m here. You wait out there.” She hurries to put on her bedsheet of the day. Something less austere and geometrical than usual: more floral, more sensuous. Roses, full-blown. Vines, entwining. Is she being vain? No, it’s a celebration of renewed life, hers: that’s her excuse. Does she look ridiculous, mutton dressed as lamb? Hard to tell without a mirror. The main thing is to keep the shoulders back, stride forth with confidence. She pushes her hair behind her ears, twists it into a knot. There, no waving tendrils. Best to show some restraint.

“I will take you to Snowman-the-Jimmy,” Blackbeard says importantly, once she’s ready. “So you can help him. With the maggots.” He’s proud of having learned this word, so he says it again: “The maggots!” He smiles radiantly. “The maggots are good. Oryx made them. They will not hurt us.” A glance up at her, scanning her face to make sure he’s got it right, then another smile. “And soon Snowman-the-Jimmy will not be sick.” He takes her by the hand, tugs her forward. He knows the drill, he’s her little shadow, he’s absorbing everything.

If I’d had a child, thinks Toby, would he have been like this? No. He would not have been like this. Don’t repine.

Jimmy’s still asleep, but his colour is better and his high temperature is gone. She spoons some honey-and-water into him, along with the mushroom elixir. His foot is healing rapidly; soon he won’t need the maggots any more.

“Snowman-the-Jimmy is walking,” the Crakers tell her. Four of them are on duty this morning, three men and a woman. “He is walking very quickly, inside his head. Soon he will be here.”

“Today?” she asks them.

“Today, tomorrow,” they say. “Soon.” They smile at her. “Do not be worried, Oh Toby,” the woman says. “Snowman-the-Jimmy is safe now. Crake is sending him back to us.”

“And Oryx too,” says the tallest man: Abraham Lincoln, possibly. She really must try to sort out their names. “She, too, is sending him.”

“She told her Children not to harm him,” says the woman. Empress Josephine?

“Even though his piss is weak, and they did not understand at first that they could not eat him.”

“Our piss is strong. The piss of our men. The Children of Oryx understand such piss.”

“The Children with sharp teeth eat those with weak piss.”

“The Children with tusks eat them, sometimes.”

“The Children who are like a bear, big, with claws. We have not seen a bear. Zeb ate one, he knows what is a bear.”

“But Oryx told them not to.”

“Not to eat Snowman-the-Jimmy.”

“Crake sent Snowman-the-Jimmy to take care of us. And Oryx sent him too.”

“Yes, Oryx too,” the others agree. One of them begins to sing.

Girl Stuff

The breakfast table is lively this morning.

Ivory Bill, Manatee, Tamaraw, and Zunzuncito have cleared their plates and are deep into a discussion of epigenetics. How much of Craker behaviour is inherited, how much is cultural? Do they even have what you could call a culture, separate from the expression of their genes? Or are they more like ants? What about the singing? Granted, it must be some form of communication, but is it territorial, like the singing of birds, or might it be termed art? Surely not the latter, says Ivory Bill. Crake couldn’t account for it and didn’t like it, says Tamaraw, but the team hadn’t been able to eliminate it without producing affectless individuals who never went into heat and didn’t last long.

The mating cycle is genetic, obviously, says Zunzuncito, as are the changes in female abdominal and genital pigmentation that accompany estrus, and the male equivalent, leading to the polysexual acts. Which in a deer or a sheep you’d have to call rutting, says Ivory Bill, but in the Crakers, would these phenomena vary with circumstances? There’d been no chance to test it, back there in the Paradice dome, which was a pity, they all agree. They could have made some variations, run studies on them, says Manatee. But Crake ruled with an iron hand, says Tamaraw, and he was so dogmatic: he didn’t want to hear about any possible improvements apart from those he thought up himself. And he sure as hell didn’t want his prize experiment ruined via the introduction of possibly inferior segments, says Zunzuncito, because the Crakers were going to be a mega-money-spinner. Or that was his story, says Tamaraw.

“Of course he was bullshitting us all along,” said Zunzuncito.

“True, but he got results,” says Ivory Bill.

“For what they’re worth,” says Manatee. “The fucker.”

“The question is more why than how,” says Ivory Bill, gazing up at the sky as if Crake really is up there and could send down a thunderous answer. “Why did he do it? The lethal wipeout virus in the BlyssPluss pills? Why did he want the human race to go extinct?”

“Maybe he was just very, very messed up,” says Manatee.

“For the sake of argument, and to do him justice, he might have thought that everything else was,” says Tamaraw. “What with the biosphere being depleted and the temperature skyrocketing.”

“And if the Crakers were his solution, he’d have known he’d need to protect them from the likes of us, with our aggressive if not murderous ways,” says Ivory Bill.

“That’s what megalomaniac fuckers like him always think,” says Manatee.

“He’d have seen the Crakers as indigenous people, no doubt,” says Ivory Bill. “And Homo sapiens sapiens as the greedy, rapacious Conquistadors. And, in some respects …”

“Well, we came up with Beethoven,” says Manatee. “And, you know, the major world religions, and whatnot. Fat chance of anything like that with this bunch.”

White Sedge is beside them, gazing at them attentively but possibly not listening. If anyone’s hearing voices, thinks Toby, it might be her. She’s a pretty girl, perhaps the prettiest of the MaddAddamites. Yesterday she proposed that they start a morning yoga and meditation group, but there weren’t any takers. She’s wearing a grey bedsheet with white lilies on it; her black hair’s knotted into a chignon.

Amanda’s at the end of the table. She’s still pallid and listless; Lotis Blue and Ren are fussing over her, urging her to eat.

Rebecca’s having a cup of what they’ve all agreed to call coffee. She turns as Toby sits down.

“It’s ham again,” she says to Toby. “And kudzu pancakes. Oh, and if you want, there’s some Choco-Nutrino.”

“Choco-Nutrino?” says Toby. “Where’d you get that?” Choco-Nutrino had been a desperate stab at a palatable breakfast cereal for children after the world chocolate crop had failed. It was said to contain burnt soy.

“Zeb and Rhino and them gleaned it somewhere,” says Rebecca. “And Shackie. It’s not what you’d call fresh, don’t even ask about the sell-by date, so I figure we better eat it now.”

“You think so?” says Toby. The Choco-Nutrinos are in a bowl. They’re like tiny pebbles, brown and alien-looking, granules from Mars. People used to eat this kind of stuff all the time, she thinks. They took it for granted.

“Last-chance café,” says Rebecca. “Kind of a nostalgia trip. Yeah, I used to think it was disgusting too, but it’s not bad with Mo’Hair milk. Anyway it’s fortified with vitamins and minerals. Says so on the box. So we won’t have to eat mud for a while.”

“Mud?” says Toby.

“You know, for the trace elements,” says Rebecca. Sometimes Toby can’t tell if she’s joking.

Toby sticks with the ham and the kudzu pancakes. “Where are the others?” she asks, keeping her voice neutral. Rebecca counts them off: Crozier has already eaten and is taking the Mo’Hairs out to pasture. Beluga and Shackleton are with him, one spraygun between them, covering his back. Black Rhino and Katuro did sentry last night, so they are sleeping in.

“Swift Fox?” says Toby.

“Taking her time,” says Rebecca. “Having a doze. I heard her thrashing around in the bushes last night. With a gentleman caller or two.” Her smile says, Like you.

No Zeb yet. Toby tries not to peer around too obviously. Is he, too, having a doze?

As she’s finishing her bitter coffee, Swift Fox joins them. Today she’s wearing a pale gauzy shift, shorts, and a floppy hat, pastel green and pink. She’s done her hair in pigtails, with plastic Hello Kitty clips. It’s the schoolgirl look, and if it were former times she’d never get away with it, thinks Toby. She’d been a highly qualified gene artist, so she’d have feared ridicule and loss of status, and dressed like a grown-up to advertise her rank. But that kind of rank and status have peeled away, so what exactly is she advertising now?

Don’t be so hard on her, Toby tells herself. After all, she took a big risk: she was an undercover MaddAddamite informant before Crake hijacked her and made her a whitecoat brainiac serf inside the Paradice dome, along with the rest of the kidnapped MaddAddamites. He’d scooped most of them.

But not Zeb: Crake never managed to corner him. He’d covered his tracks too well.

“Hi, everyone,” Swift Fox says, stretching her arms up, lifting her breasts, aiming them at Ivory Bill. “Ooh, I could go right back to bed! Hope you slept well. I fucking didn’t! We need to do something about the bugs.”

“There’s spray,” says Rebecca. “We’ve still got some of that citrus stuff.”

“It wears off,” says Swift Fox. “Then they bite and you wake up, and then you can hear people talking and etcetera, like in one of those not-your-real-name motels with cardboard walls.” She smiles at Ivory Bill again, ignoring Manatee, who’s staring at her, his mouth tight. Is it disapproval or extreme lust? Toby wonders. With some men it’s hard to tell the difference.

“I think we should have a curfew on vocal cords,” Swift Fox continues, with a sideways glance at Toby. I heard you, that look says. If you must indulge in dusty, ridiculous middle-aged sex, at least put a sock in it. Toby feels herself blushing.

“Dear lady,” says Ivory Bill. “I trust our sometimes heated nocturnal discussions did not awaken you. Manatee and Tamaraw and I —”

“Oh, it wasn’t you, and it wasn’t a discussion,” says Swift Fox. “Are those Choco-Nutrinos? I threw up a whole bowlful of those once, back when I still got hangovers.”

Amanda stands up from the table, clamps her hand over her mouth, hurries away. Ren follows her.

“There’s something wrong with that girl,” says Swift Fox. “It’s like she’s pithed or something. Was she always such a dimwit?”

“You know what she went through,” says Rebecca, frowning a little.

“Yeah, sure, but it’s time for her to snap out of it. Do some work like the rest of us.”

Toby feels a rush of anger. Swift Fox is never the first to volunteer for chores, nor has she been within spitting distance of a Painballer: used like a prostibot, leashed like a dog, practically disembowelled. Amanda’s worth ten of her. But apart from that, Toby knows she’s resenting the snide innuendoes Swift Fox aimed at her earlier, not to mention the gauzy shift and the cute shorts. And the breast weaponry, and the girly-girl pigtails. They don’t go with your budding wrinkles, she feels like saying. Tanning takes a toll.

Swift Fox smiles again, but not at Toby: right past Toby. It’s a full-disclosure teeth display and dimple trigger. “Hey,” she says in a softer voice. Toby swivels: it’s Rhino and Katuro.

And Zeb. Of course, of course.

“Morning, everyone,” Zeb says evenly: nothing special for Swift Fox. Nor for Toby either: the night is the night, the day is the day. “Anybody want anything?” he says. “We’re doing a quick scan around the area, couple of hours, just checking. We’ll pass a few stores.” He doesn’t spell out his real object because he doesn’t have to: they all know he’ll be looking for signs of the Painballers. It’s a patrol.

“Baking soda,” says Rebecca. “Or baking powder, whichever. I don’t know what I’ll do when it runs out. If you’re going to a minisuper …”

“Did you know that baking soda comes from the trona deposits in Wyoming?” says Ivory Bill. “Or it used to come from there.”

“Oh, Ivory Bill,” says Swift Fox, favouring him with a smile. “With you around, who needs Wikipedia?” Ivory Bill gives a semi-grin: he thinks it’s a compliment.

“Yeast,” says Zunzuncito. “Wild yeast, if you still have the flour. You can make sourdough that way.”

“I guess,” says Rebecca.

“I’ll come too,” says Swift Fox to Zeb. “I need a drugstore.” There’s a pause. Everyone looks at her.

“Just tell us your list,” says Black Rhino. He’s scowling at her bare legs. “We’ll get it for you.”

“Girl stuff,” she says. “You wouldn’t know where to look.” She glances in the direction of Ren and Lotis Blue, who are over by the pump, sponging off Amanda. “I’m gleaning for all of us.”

Another pause. Menstrual wadding, thinks Toby. She has a point: the stash in the storeroom is dwindling. No one wants to fall back on torn-up bedsheets. Or moss. Though we’ll come to that sooner or later.

“Bad plan,” says Zeb. “Those two guys are still out there. They’ve got a spraygun. They’re third-time Painballers, there’s nothing left of their empathy circuits. You wouldn’t want them to grab you, they won’t bother with the formalities. You saw what happened with Amanda. She was lucky to escape with her kidneys.”

“I totally agree. It is in fact a very bad plan for you to leave the confines of our cozy little enclave here. I will go,” says Ivory Bill gallantly, “if you will trust me with your shopping list, and —”

“But you’ll be there with me,” says Swift Fox to Zeb. “As protection.” She lowers her eyelashes. “I’ll be so safe!”

Zeb says to Rebecca: “Got any coffee? Or whatever you call that crap?”

“It’s okay, I’ll change my outfit,” Swift Fox says, switching her tone to brisk. “I can keep up, I won’t be a drag. I know how to handle, you know, a spraygun,” she adds with a little drawl, letting her eyes drift downward. Then she resumes pertness. “Hey, we can pack a lunch! Have a picnic somewhere!”

“Get it together then,” says Zeb, “because we’re leaving right after we eat.”

Rhino starts to say something, stops. Katuro is gazing upwards. “I think it will not rain,” he says.

Rebecca looks over at Toby, lifts her eyebrows. Toby keeps her own face as flat as possible. Swift Fox is eyeing her sideways.

Fox by name, fox by nature, she thinks. Handle a spraygun, indeed.

Snowman’s Progress

“Oh Toby, come and see! Come now!” It’s little Blackbeard, tugging at her bedsheet.

“What is it?” says Toby, trying not to sound irritated. She wants to stay here, say goodbye to Zeb, even though he’s not going very far, or for long. Just a few hours. She wants to put some sort of mark on him, is that it? In front of Swift Fox. A kiss, a squeeze. Mine. Stay away.

Not that it would be any use. She would make a fool of herself.

“Oh Toby, Snowman-the-Jimmy is waking up! He is waking up now,” says Blackbeard. He sounds both anxious and supercharged, the way kids used to sound if it was a parade or a fireworks display — something brief and miraculous. She doesn’t want to disappoint him, so she allows herself to be piloted. She looks behind once: Zeb and Rhino and Katuro are sitting at the table, forking up their breakfasts. Swift Fox is hurrying away, to shed that stupid hat and the lookit-my-legs shorts and don some bottom-hugging camouflage.

Toby. Take charge of yourself. This is not high school, she tells herself. But in some ways, it more or less is.

Over at Jimmy’s hammock there’s a crowd. Most of the Crakers are gathered around, adults and children both, looking happy and as excited as they ever look. Some of them are already beginning to sing.

“He is with us! Snowman-the-Jimmy is with us once more!”

“He has come back!”

“He will bring the words of Crake!”

Toby makes her way to the hammock. Two of the Craker women are propping Jimmy up. His eyes are open; he looks dazed.

“Greet him, Oh Toby,” says the tall man called Abraham Lincoln. They’re all watching, they’re listening intently. “He has been with Crake. He will bring us words. He will bring a story.”

“Jimmy,” she says. “Snowman.” She puts her hand on his arm. “It’s me. Toby. I was there at the campfire, down near the beach. Remember? With Amanda, and the two men.”

Jimmy looks up at her. His eyes are surprisingly clear, the whites white, the pupils a little dilated. He blinks. There’s no recognition. “Crap,” he says.

“What is this word, Oh Toby?” says Abraham Lincoln. “Is it a word of Crake?”

“He’s tired,” says Toby. “No. Not this word.”

“Shit,” says Jimmy. “Where’s Oryx? She was here. She was in the fire.”

“You’ve been sick,” says Toby.

“Did I kill anyone? One of those … I think I had a nightmare.”

“No,” she says. “You didn’t kill anyone.”

“I think I killed Crake,” he says. “He had hold of Oryx, he had a knife, he cut … Oh God. There was blood all over the pink butterflies. And then I, then … I shot him.”

Toby’s alarmed. What does he mean? More importantly, what will the Crakers make of such a tale? Nothing, she hopes. It will make no sense to them, it will sound like gibberish, because Crake lives in the sky and cannot possibly be dead. “You’ve had a nightmare,” she says gently.

“No. I didn’t. Not about that. Oh fuck.” Jimmy lies back, closes his eyes. “Oh fuck.”

“Who is this Fuck?” says Abraham Lincoln. “Why is he talking to this Fuck? That is not the name of anyone here.”

It takes Toby a moment to figure it out. Because Jimmy said “Oh fuck” rather than plain “fuck,” they think it’s a term of address, like “Oh Toby.” How to explain to them what “Oh fuck” means? They would never believe that the word for copulation could mean something bad: an expression of disgust, an insult, a failure. To them, as far as she can tell, the act is pure joy.

“You can’t see him,” says Toby a little desperately. “Only Jimmy, only Snowman-the-Jimmy can see him. He’s —”

“Fuck is a friend of Crake’s?” asks Abraham Lincoln.

“Yes,” says Toby. “And a friend of Snowman-the-Jimmy.”

“This Fuck is helping him?” says one of the women.

“Yes,” says Toby. “When something goes wrong, Snowman-the-Jimmy calls on him for help.” Which is true, in a way.

“Fuck is in the sky!” says Blackbeard triumphantly. “With Crake!”

“We would like to hear the story of Fuck,” says Abraham Lincoln politely. “And of how he has helped Snowman-the-Jimmy.”

Jimmy opens his eyes again, squints. Now he’s looking at the quilt covering him, with its Hey-Diddle-Diddle motifs. He strokes the cat and the fiddle, the smiling moon. “What’s this? Fucking cow. Brain spaghetti.” He raises his hand to blot out the light.

“He would like you to move back a little,” says Toby. She leans in close, hoping she’ll block out whatever Jimmy says next.

“I fucked it up, didn’t I,” he says. Luckily he’s almost whispering. “Where’s Oryx? She was right here.”

“You need to sleep,” says Toby.

“Fucking pigoons almost ate me.”

“You’re safe now,” says Toby. It’s not uncommon for someone waking from a coma to hallucinate. But how to describe “hallucinate” to the Crakers? It’s when you see something that isn’t there. But if it isn’t there, Oh Toby, how can you see it?

“What almost ate you?” she says patiently.

“Pigoons,” says Jimmy. “The giant pigs. I think they did; sorry. It’s all spaghetti. Inside of my head. Who were those guys? The ones I didn’t shoot.”

“You don’t need to worry about anything right now,” says Toby. “Are you hungry?” They’ll have to start with small quantities, it’s best after a fast. If only there were some bananas.

“Fucking Crake. I let him fuck me over. I fucking fucked up. Shit.”

“It’s okay,” says Toby. “You did fine.”

“Fucking not,” says Jimmy. “Can I have a drink?”

The Crakers have been standing respectfully at a distance, but now they move forward. “We must purr, Oh Toby,” says Abraham Lincoln. “To make him strong. In his head there is something tangled.”

“You are right,” says Toby. “There is something tangled.”

“It is because of the dreaming. And the walking here,” says Abraham Lincoln. “We will purr now.”

“After that he will tell us the words of Crake,” says the ebony woman.

“And the words of Fuck,” says the ivory woman.

“We will sing to this Fuck.”

“And to Oryx.”

“And to Crake. Good, kind …”

“I’ll get him some fresh water,” says Toby. “And some honey.”

“Got any booze?” says Jimmy. “Crap. I feel like shit.”

Ren and Lotis Blue and Amanda are sitting on the low stone wall near the outdoor pump.

“How’s Jimmy?” says Ren.

“He’s awake,” says Toby. “But he’s not very lucid. That’s normal when you’ve been out so long.”

“What did he say?” says Ren. “Is he asking for me?”

“Do you think we could see him?” says Lotis Blue.

“He said the inside of his head feels like spaghetti,” says Toby.

“It was always like spaghetti anyway,” says Lotis Blue. She laughs.

“You knew him?” says Toby. She’s aware that there was a connection between Jimmy and Ren in the early days, and then between Jimmy and Amanda. But Lotis Blue?

“Yeah,” says Ren, “we figured it out. She did.”

“I was his lab partner at HelthWyzer High,” says Lotis Blue. “In Bio. Intro to Gene Splicing. Before I took the bullet train out west with my family, that time.”

“Wakulla Price. He told me,” says Ren, “that he had such a crush on you! He says you broke his heart. But you never came across for him, did you?”

“He was so full of bullshit,” says Lotis Blue. Her tone is fond, as if Jimmy is a naughty but adorable child.

“And then he broke my heart,” says Ren. “And God knows what he told Amanda, after he dumped me. Most likely he said that I broke his heart.”

“I’d say he had a commitment problem,” says Lotis Blue. “I knew guys like that.”

“He used to like spaghetti,” says Amanda: more words than Toby’s heard her speak since the night of the Painballers.

“At high school it was fish fingers,” says Ren.

“Twenty per cent real fish, remember?” says Lotis Blue. “Who knows what was really in them.” They both laugh.

“They weren’t all that bad, though,” says Ren.

“Labmeat goo,” says Lotis Blue. “But what did we know? Hey. We ate them.”

“I wouldn’t mind one of those right now,” says Ren. “And a Twinkie.” She sighs. “They were so retro-nouveau revival!”

“You felt like you were eating upholstery,” says Lotis Blue.

“I’m going over there,” says Amanda. She stands up, straightens her bedsheet, pushes back her hair. “We should say hello, see if he needs anything. He’s been through a lot.”

Finally, thinks Toby, a sign of the former Amanda, the girl she’d known at the Gardeners. Some of that energy, that resourcefulness: backbone, it used to be called. It was Amanda who’d been the initiator, the transgressor of boundaries. Even the larger boys had given her space, back then.

“We’ll come too,” says Lotis Blue.

“We’ll say, Surprise!” says Ren. The two of them giggle.

So much for broken hearts, thinks Toby: Ren’s doesn’t appear to have anything fractured about it any more, or not in connection with Jimmy. “Maybe you should wait a little,” she says. What will it do to Jimmy’s state of mind if he opens his eyes and sees three of his former beloveds bending over him like the three Fates? Demanding his everlasting love, his apologies, his blood in a cat food saucer? Or worse: the chance to baby him, play nursie, smother him with kindness? Though maybe he’d like that.

But she needn’t have worried, because when they get there Jimmy’s eyes are closed. Lulled by the purring, he’s gone back to sleep.

The gleaner team has moved off along the street, or what used to be a street. Zeb first, then Black Rhino, then Swift Fox, with Katuro bringing up the rear. They’re moving slowly, carefully, in and around the rubble. They’ll be scoping out possible ambushes, taking no chances.

Toby wants to run after them, like a left-behind kid — Wait! Wait! Let me come with you! I have a rifle! — but no point in that.

Zeb hadn’t asked if there was anything he could bring for her. If he had, what would she have said? A mirror? A floral bouquet? She should have requested at least the paper and the pencils. But somehow she couldn’t.

Now they’re out of sight.

The day moves on. The sun travels up and across the sky, the shadows flatten, food appears and is eaten, words are spoken; dining table objects are gathered together and washed. Sentries take turns. The cobb-house wall rises a little higher, the fence around it gains a coil of wire, weeds are removed from the garden, laundry is deployed. The shadows begin to stretch again, the afternoon clouds gather. Jimmy is carried inside, and the rain rains, with impressive thunder. Then the skies clear, the birds resume their contests, the clouds begin to redden in the west.

No Zeb.

The Mo’Hairs and their shepherds return, Crozier and Beluga and Shackleton, adding three hormonally charged males to the in-camp population mix. Crozier is dangling around Ren, Shackleton edging up to Amanda, Zunzuncito and Beluga are both eyeing Lotis Blue: the intrigues of love are unfolding as they do among the young, and as they do as well among the snails on the lettuce and the shiny green beetles that plague the kale. Murmurings, the shrug of a shoulder, the step forward, the step back.

Toby proceeds through her tasks as if in a monastery, steadily, dutifully, counting the hours.

Still no Zeb.

What could have happened to him? She blots out the pictures. Or she tries to blot them out. Animal, with teeth and claws involved. Vegetable, a falling tree. Mineral, cement, steel, broken glass. Or human.

Suppose he were suddenly not there. A vortex opens: she closes it. Never mind her own loss. What about the others? The other humans. Zeb has valuable skills, he has knowledge that can’t be replaced.

They’re so few in number, so necessary to one another. Sometimes this encampment feels like a vacation of sorts, but it isn’t. They aren’t escaping from daily life. This is where they live now.

She tells the Crakers there will be no story tonight, because Zeb has left the story of Zeb inside her head, but some of that story is hard to understand and she needs to put it in order before she can tell it to them. They ask her if a fish would help, but she says not now. Then she goes to sit by herself in the garden.

You’ve lost, she tells herself. You’ve lost Zeb. By now Swift Fox must already have him, firmly clamped in her arms and legs and whatever orifices appeal. He’s tossed Toby herself aside like an empty paper bag. Why not? No promises were given.

The breeze dies, damp heat rises from the earth, the shadows blend together. Mosquitoes whine. Here’s the moon, not so full any more. The hour of the moth comes round again.

No moving lights approach, no voices. Nothing and no one.

She spends the midnight watch with Jimmy in his cubicle, listening to him breathe. There’s a single candle. In its light the nursery-rhyme pictures on his quilt waver and swell. The cow grins, the dog laughs. The dish runs away with the spoon.

Drugstore Romance

In the morning Toby avoids the group at the breakfast table. She’s in no mood for lectures on epigenetics, or for curious glances, or for speculation about how she’s taking the defection of Zeb. He could have said a firm no to Swift Fox, but he didn’t. The message was clear.

She goes around to the cooking shed, helps herself to some cold pork and burdock root from yesterday that’s withering under an upside-down bowl: Rebecca doesn’t like to throw out food.

She sits down at the table, checks the neighbourhood. In the background the Mo’Hairs mill around, waiting for Crozier to let them out and lead them off to eat the weeds along the pathways. Here he comes now, in his biblical bedsheet getup, holding a long stick.

Over by the swing set Ren and Lotis Blue are walking Jimmy to and fro in an awkward six-legged assemblage. His muscle tone isn’t great, but he’ll build up his strength quickly enough: underneath the wear and tear he’s still young. Amanda’s there too, sitting on one of the swings; and several of the Crakers, nibbling on the ubiquitous kudzu vines and watching, puzzled but not frightened.

From a distance the scene is bucolic, though there are off-notes: the missing or escaped Mo’Hair is still escaped or missing, Amanda is apathetic and gazing down at the ground, and from the set of Crozier’s tight shoulders and the way he turns his back on Ren, he’s jealous of her Jimmy-pampering. Toby herself is an off-note, though she must appear calm to anyone watching. It’s best to look that way, and through long Gardener training she knows how to keep her face flat, her smile gentle.

But where is Zeb? Why isn’t he back yet? Has he found Adam One?

If Adam’s injured, he’ll need to be carried. That would slow them down. What’s happening out there in the ruined city, where she can’t see? If only the cellphones still worked. But the towers are down; even if there were still a power source, no one here would know how to repair the tech. There’s a hand-cranked radio, but it ceased to function.

We’ll have to learn smoke signals all over again, she thinks. One for he loves me, two for he loves me not. Three for smouldering anger.

She spends the day working in the garden, on the theory that it will be soothing. If only she had some beehives to care for. She could share the daily news with the bees, as she and old Pilar used to do, back on the God’s Gardeners’ rooftop garden before Pilar died. Ask them for advice. Request that they fly out and explore and then report back to her, as if they were cyberbees.

Today we honour Saint Jan Swammerdam, first to discover that the Queen Bee is not a King, and that all worker Bees in a hive are sisters; and Saint Zosima, eastern patron of Bees, who lived the selfless monastic life in the desert, as we, too, are doing in our own way; and Saint C. R. Ribbands, for his meticulous observations on Bee communication stratagems. And let us thank the Creator for the Bees themselves, for their gifts of Honey and Pollen, for their priceless work of fertilization among our Fruits and Nuts and our flowering Vegetables, yes, and for the comfort they bring to us in times of stress, with, as Tennyson once wrote, the murmuring of innumerable Bees …

Pilar had taught her to rub a little royal jelly into her skin before working with the bees: that way, they wouldn’t see her as a threat. They’d walk on her arms and face, their tiny feet touching as gently as eyelashes, as lightly as a cloud passing over. The bees are messengers, Pilar used to say. They carry the news back and forth between the seen world and the unseen one. If a loved one of yours has crossed the shadow threshold, they will tell you.

Suddenly, today, there are dozens of honeybees in the garden, busying themselves among the bean flowers. There must be a new wild swarm nearby. One bee alights on her hand, tastes the salt on it. Is Zeb dead? she asks it silently. Tell me now. But it lifts off again without signalling.

Had she believed all that? Old Pilar’s folklore? No, not really; or not exactly. Most likely Pilar hadn’t quite believed it either, but it was a reassuring story: that the dead were not entirely dead but were alive in a different way; a paler way admittedly, and somewhere darker. But still able to send messages, if only such messages could be recognized and deciphered. People need such stories, Pilar said once, because however dark, a darkness with voices in it is better than a silent void.

In the late afternoon, once the thunder is over, the gleaner team returns. Toby sees them walking down the street, weaving in and out among the abandoned trucks and solarcars, backlit in the declining sun, and counts their silhouettes even before she can identify them. Yes, there are four. Nobody’s missing. But also, no one’s been added.

As they approach the fence around the cobb house Ren and Lotis Blue run to meet them, with a posse of Craker children following. Amanda runs too, though not as fast as the others. Toby walks.

“It was intense!” Swift Fox is saying as she comes up. “But at least we made it to the drugstore.” She’s flushed, a little sweaty; smudged, jubilant. She sets down her pack, opening it. “Wait’ll you see what I got!”

Zeb and Black Rhino look wiped; Katuro less so.

“What happened?” Toby says to Zeb. She doesn’t say, “I was worried sick.” Surely he knows that.

“Long story,” Zeb says. “Tell you later. I need a shower. Any trouble?”

“Jimmy woke up,” she says. “He’s kind of weak. And thin.”

“Good,” says Zeb. “Let’s fatten him up and get him walking. We could use some more help around here.” Then he’s moving away from her, over towards the back of the cobb house.

Toby feels a blip of rage travelling through her body. Gone for almost two days and that’s all he has to say about it? She’s not a wife, she has no nagging rights, but she can’t stop the images: Zeb rolling around in the aisles of the deserted drugstore with Swift Fox, tearing off her camouflage outfit among the bottles of conditioner and shampoo-in colour, more than thirty exciting tints; or were they a couple of aisles over, near the condoms and sensation-enhancing gels? Maybe they’d squashed themselves in beside the cash register, or over by the baby products — finished off with a whole box of wet wipes. Something of the sort happened. It must have happened, to bring out that smug look on the face of Swift Fox.

“Nail polish, painkillers, toothbrushes! Look, tweezers!” she’s saying now.

“Looks like you cleaned the place out,” says Lotis Blue.

“There wasn’t that much left,” says Swift Fox. “Looters were through, looks like they were interested in the pharmaceuticals. The Oxy, the BlyssPluss pills, anything with codeine.”

“Not much use for the hair products?” says Lotis Blue.

“No. And the girl stuff — they didn’t take that,” says Swift Fox. She starts unloading the packages of Heavy Days and tampons and Slimlines. “I made the guys carry some in their own packs. They scored some beer too. Now that was a minor miracle.”

“Why did it take so long?” Toby asks. Swift Fox smiles at her, not snidely. Instead she’s too friendly, too guileless, like a teenager who’s broken curfew.

“We got kind of trapped,” she says. “We poked around and gathered stuff, but then in the afternoon, right before we were going to head back, there was a herd of those huge pigs — the ones that used to try raiding the garden before we shot some of them.

“At first they were just lurking along behind us, but when we’d finished in the drugstore and were coming out, we saw they were heading us off. So we ran back into the drugstore, but the front windows were smashed, so there was nothing to keep them out. We managed to get up onto the roof through a little trapdoor in the storeroom ceiling — they can’t climb.”

“Did they look hungry?” says Ren.

“How can you tell with a pig?” says Swift Fox.

They’re omnivorous, thinks Toby. They’ll eat anything. But hungry or not, they’d kill in spite. Or for revenge. We’ve been eating them.

“So then?” says Ren.

“We stayed up on the roof for a while,” says Swift Fox, “and then the pigs came out of the drugstore and saw we were up on the roof. They’d found a carton of potato chips, they dragged it outside and had a party, keeping an eye on us the whole time. They were flaunting those chips: they must’ve known we were hungry. Zeb said to count them in case they split up into groups, with some of them creating a distraction and the others waiting to ambush us. Then they went off to the west, not walking but trotting, as if they’d decided on a goal. And we looked, and there was something over there. There was smoke.”

Every once in a while something in the city catches fire. An electrical connection, still attached to a solar unit; a pile of damp organics, going up in a fit of spontaneous combustion; a cache of carbon garboil, heated by the sun. So smoke is not unheard of, and Toby says so.

“This was different,” says Swift Fox. “It was thinner, like a camping fire.”

“Why didn’t you shoot the pigs?” says Lotis Blue.

“Zeb said it would be a waste of time because there were too many of them. Also we didn’t want to run out of energy packs for the sprayguns. Zeb thought we should go over there and take a look, but it was getting dark. So we stayed at the drugstore for the night.”

“On the roof?” says Toby.

“In the storeroom,” says Swift Fox. “We barricaded the door with some of the boxes in there. But nothing happened, except rats; there were a lot of those. Then in the morning we went over to where we saw the fire. Zeb and Black Rhino figured it was the Painball guys.”

“Did you see them?” asks Amanda.

“We saw the remains of their fire,” says Swift Fox. “Burnt out. Pig tracks all over it. Also what was left of our Mo’Hair. The one with the red braids? They’d been eating it.”

“Oh no,” says Lotis Blue.

“The Painballers or the pigs?” says Amanda.

“Both,” says Swift Fox. “But we didn’t see any two guys. Zeb says the pigs must’ve chased them away. We did find a dead piglet, a little farther along: spraygun kill, Zeb said. A hind leg cut off. He says we should go back for it later because those pigs aren’t likely to throw themselves in our way again, not after one of their young has been killed, so we should make the most of any stray pork. But we heard some of those crazy vicious dog splices, so maybe we’ll have to fight them for it. It’s a zoo out there.”

“If it really was a zoo there’d be fences,” says Lotis Blue. “That Mo’Hair was stolen, right? It didn’t just wander off. Those two guys must’ve been quite close to us and nobody saw them.”

“That’s creepy,” says Ren.

Swift Fox isn’t listening. “Look what else I got,” she says. “Pregnancy tests, the kind where you pee on sticks. I figure we’ll all be needing them. Or some of us will.” She smiles, but she doesn’t look at Toby.

“Count me out,” says Ren. “Who’d bring a baby into this?” She sweeps her arm: the cobb house, the trees, the minimalism. “Without running water? I mean …”

“Not sure you’ll have that option,” says Swift Fox. “In the long run. Anyway, we owe it to the human race. Don’t you think?”

“Who’d be the dads?” says Lotis Blue with some interest.

“I’d say take your pick,” says Swift Fox. “The line forms to the left. Just choose the one with the longest tongue hanging out.”

“Guess you’ll be stuck with Ivory Bill then,” says Lotis Blue.

“Did I say longest tongue?” says Swift Fox. She and Lotis Blue giggle, Ren and Amanda do not.

“Let’s see those pee sticks,” says Ren.

Toby stares into the darkness. Should she follow Zeb? He must have finished his shower by now: the cobb-house showers are never long, unless it’s Swift Fox, using up all the sun-warmed water. But Zeb is not in evidence.

She stays awake in her cubicle, just in case. Moonlight silvering her eyes. Owls calling, in love with each other’s feathers. Nothing she wants.

Weeding

No Zeb all morning. No one mentions him. She doesn’t ask.

Lunch is soup, with meat of some kind — smoked dog? — and kudzu with garlic. Polyberries that could be riper. A salad of mixed greens. “We need to figure out how to get some vinegar,” says Rebecca. “Then I can do a proper dressing.”

“First we’d need to make the wine,” says Zunzuncito.

“I’m all for that,” says Rebecca. She’s put some arugula seeds into the salad, for a peppery effect. She has a plan for making a saltworks — an evaporating pan, down by the shore. Once the coast is clear, she says. Once the Painballers are accounted for.

After lunch there’s indoor time, undercover time. The sun’s high and burning, the storm clouds not yet building. The air is sticky with moisture.

Toby stays in her cubicle, trying to nap but sulking instead. No sulking allowed, she tells herself. No wound-licking. She can’t even be certain that there’s a wound to lick. Though she does feel wounded.

Late afternoon, after the rain. Nobody’s around, with the exception of Crozier and Manatee, standing sentinel. Toby’s kneeling in the garden, killing slugs. It’s an act that would once have made her feel guilty — For are not Slugs God’s creatures too, Adam One would say, with as much claim to breathe the air, as long as they do it somewhere else in a place that is more congenial for them than our Edencliff Rooftop Garden? But right now killing them serves as an outlet for her. An outlet for what? She doesn’t wish to ponder that.

Worse, she finds herself editorializing. Die, evil slug! She drops each plucked slug into a tin can with wood ash and water in the bottom. They’d used salt earlier, but there’s little of that to spare. Perhaps a swift blow with a flat rock would be kinder to the slugs — the wood ash must be painful — but she’s not in the mood to weigh the relative kindness of slug execution methods.

She yanks out a weed. How thoughtlessly we label and dismiss God’s Holy Weeds! But Weed is simply our name for a plant that annoys us by getting in the way of our Human plans. Consider how useful and indeed edible and delicious so many of them are!

Right. Not this one. Ragweed, from the look of it. She tosses it onto the pile of discards.

“Hey there, Death Squad,” says a voice. It’s Zeb, grinning down at her.

Toby scrambles to her feet. Her hands are dirty; she doesn’t know what to do with them. Has he been sleeping in until now, or what? She can’t ask what happened with Swift Fox, or if anything did: she refuses to sound like a shrew.

“I’m glad you came back safe,” she says. And she is glad, more glad than she can say, but even to herself her voice sounds fake.

“Me too,” he says. “Trip was more than I bargained for. Wiped me out, slept like a log, must be getting old.”

Is this a coverup? How suspicious can she get? “I missed you,” she says. There. Was that so hard?

He grins more. “Counted on that,” he says. “Brought you something.” It’s a compact, with a small round mirror.

“Thank you,” she says. She manages a smile. Is it a guilt gift, an apology? The roses for the wife after the husband’s furtive tumble with the office co-worker? But she’s not a wife.

“Got you some paper too. Couple of school notebooks, drugstore still carried them, I guess for pleeb kids who couldn’t afford the Wi-Fi tabs. Couple of rollerball pens, pencils. Felt markers.”

“How did you know I wanted those?” she says.

“I worked with a mind reader, once upon a time,” he says. “Cursive’s a Gardener skill, right? Figured you’d want to be keeping track of the days. Hey, what about a hug?”

“I’d get you all muddy,” she says, relenting, smiling.

“I’ve been dirtier.”

How could she not put her arms around him, despite her slug-slippery fingers?

And the sun is shining, and there are bees, among the yellow squash flowers. “You know what I really need?” she says to Zeb’s smoky beard. “Some reading glasses. And a hive.”

“Consider them yours.” There’s a pause. “I wanted you to look at this.”

From inside his sleeve he pulls out a shoe: a sandal. It’s handmade, with recycled materials: tire-tread sole, bicycle inner tube straps, silver duct tape accents. Although earth-stained, it’s not very worn. “Gardener,” Toby says. She remembers the fashion well, or rather the lack of it. Then she qualifies: “Or maybe it is. Not that other people didn’t make those, I guess.”

Already she has a picture in her head: Adam One and the surviving Gardeners, hunkered down in one of their Ararat hidey holes — the old mushroom-growing cellars, for instance — cobbling away by candlelight at their handcrafted sandals like a burrowful of elves, nibbling on their stores of honey and soybits while above their heads the cities flamed and collapsed and the human race melted away to nothingness. She wants so much to believe it that it can’t possibly be true.

“Where did you find it?” she asks.

“Near the piglet kill,” Zeb says. “I didn’t show the others.”

“You think it’s Adam. You think he’s still alive. You think he left this for you — or for someone — on purpose.” These aren’t questions.

“So do you,” says Zeb. “You think it too.”

“Don’t hope too much,” she says. “Hope can ruin you.”

“Okay. You’re right. But still.”

“If you’re right,” she says, “wouldn’t Adam be looking for you?”