The MaddAddam Trilogy (89 page)

Toby nods as if she understands all of this. Maybe she does. I can’t ever tell exactly what she understands.

“She smells blue,” says another man. “That woman with you.”
All the men are now sniffing in my direction, as if I’m a flower or maybe a cheese. A number of them have sprouted huge blue erections. Croze warned me about this, but I’ve never seen anything like it, even at Scales, where some of the clients went in for body paint and extenders. Several of these men are giving out a strange humming sound, like the kind you make by rubbing your finger around the rim of a crystal glass.

“But the other woman that came was frightened when we sang to her and offered her flowers, and signalled to her with our penises,” says the chief one.

“Yes. The two men were frightened also. They ran away.”

“How tall was she?” says Toby. “The woman. Taller than this one?” She points to me.

“Yes. Taller. She was not well. Also she was sad. We would have purred over her and made her better. Then we could have mated with her.”

It must be Amanda, I think. So she’s still alive, they haven’t killed her yet.
Hurry up!
I want to shout. But Toby’s not going anywhere yet.

“We wished her to choose which four of us she would copulate with,” says the main one. “Perhaps the woman with you will choose. She smells very blue!” At this, the men all smile – they have brilliantly white teeth – and their penises point at me and wag from side to side like the tails of happy dogs.

Four? All at once? I don’t want Toby to shoot any of these men – they seem so gentle, and they’re very good-looking – but also I don’t want those bright-blue penises anywhere near me.

“My friend isn’t really blue,” says Toby. “It’s just her extra skin. It was given to her by a blue person. That’s why she smells blue. Where did they go? These two men and the woman?”

“They went along the shore,” says the main one. “And then, this morning, Snowman went to find them.”

“We could look under her extra skin and see how blue she is.”

“Snowman has a hurt foot. We purred over it, but it needs more purring.”

“If Snowman was here, he would find out about the blue. He would tell us how we should act.”

“Blue should not be wasted. It is a gift from Crake.”

“We wanted to go with him. But he told us to stay here.”

“Snowman knows,” says one of the women. So far the women have been taking no part in the conversation, but now they all nod and smile.

“We must go now and help Snowman,” says Toby. “He is our friend.”

“We will come with you,” says another man – a shorter one, yellow in tone, with green eyes. “We will help Snowman too.” Now that I notice, they all have green eyes. They smell like citrus fruits.

“Snowman often needs our help,” says the tall man. “His smell is weak. It has no power. And this time he is sick. He is sick in his foot. He is limping.”

“If Snowman told you to stay here, you must stay here,” says Toby. They look at one another: something’s worrying them.

“We will stay here,” says the tall man. “But you must come back soon.”

“And bring Snowman,” says one of the women. “So we can help him. Then he can live in his tree again.”

“And give him a fish. A fish makes him happy.”

“He eats it,” says one of the children, making a face. “He chews it up. He swallows it. Crake said he has to.”

“Crake lives in the sky. He loves us,” says a short woman. They seem to think this Crake is God. Glenn as God, in a black T-shirt – that’s pretty funny, considering what he was really like. But I don’t laugh.

“We could give you a fish too,” says the woman. “Would you like a fish?”

“Yes. Bring Snowman,” says the tall man. “Then we will catch two fish. Three. One for you, one for Snowman, one for the woman who smells blue.”

“We’ll do our best,” says Toby.

This seems to puzzle them. “What is ‘best’?” says the man.

We step out from under the trees, into the open sunlight and the sound of the waves, and walk over the soft dry sand, down to the hard wet strip
above the water’s edge. The water slides up, then falls back with a gentle hiss, like a big snake breathing. Bright junk litters the shore: shards of plastic, empty cans, broken glass.

“I thought they were going to jump me,” I say.

“They smelled you,” says Toby. “They smelled the estrogen. They thought you were in season. They only mate when they turn blue. It’s like baboons.”

“How do you know all that?” I say. Croze told me about the blue penises but not about the estrogen.

“From Ivory Bill,” says Toby. “The MaddAddams helped to design that feature. It was supposed to make life simpler. Facilitate mate selection. Eliminate romantic pain. Now we should keep very quiet.”

Romantic pain, I think. I wonder what Toby knows about that?

There’s a line of deserted high-rises standing in the offshore water: I remember them from our Gardener trips to the Heritage Park beach. It was dry land out there before the sea levels rose so much, and all the hurricanes: we’d learned that in school. Gulls are soaring and settling on the flat roofs.

We can get eggs there, I think. And fish. Jacklight, Zeb taught us, if you’re desperate. Make a torch, the fish will swim to the light. There’s a few crab holes in the sand, small ones. Nettles growing farther up the beach. You can eat seaweed too. All those Saint Euell things.

I’m wishing again: planning lunch, when in the back of my head is just plain fear. We can never do it. We’ll never get Amanda back. We’ll be killed.

Toby’s found some tracks in the wet sand – several people with shoes or boots, and the place where they took the shoes off, maybe to wash their feet, and then where they put the shoes back on and headed up towards the trees.

They could be in among those trees right now, looking out. They could be watching us. They could be aiming.

On top of those tracks is another set. Barefoot. “Someone limping,” whispers Toby, and I think, It must be Snowman. The crazy man who lives in a tree.

We slip our packsacks off and leave them where the sand ends and the grass and weeds begin, under the first trees. Toby says we don’t need them weighing us down: we need our arms free.

So, God, thinks Toby. What’s Your view? Supposing You exist. Tell me now, please, because this may be the end of it: once we tangle with the Painballers, we don’t have a cat’s chance in a bonfire, the way I see it.

Are the new people Your idea of an improved model? Is this what the first Adam was supposed to be? Will they replace us? Or do You intend to shrug your shoulders and carry on with the present human race? If so, you’ve chosen some odd marbles: a clutch of one-time scientists, a handful of renegade Gardeners, two psychotics on the loose with a nearly dead woman. It’s hardly the survival of the fittest, except for Zeb; but even Zeb’s tired.

Then there’s Ren. Couldn’t you have picked someone less fragile? Less innocent? A little tougher? If she were an animal, what would she be? Mouse? Thrush? Deer in the headlights? She’ll fall apart at the crucial moment: I should have left her back there on the beach. But that would prolong the inevitable, because if I go down, so will she. Even if she runs, it’s too far back to the cobb house: she’ll never make it, and even if she outruns them she’ll get lost. And who’s going to protect her from the dogs and pigs, in the wild woods? Not the blue folks back there. Not if the Painballers have a spraygun that works. Much worse for her if she doesn’t die immediately.

The Human moral keyboard is limited, Adam One used to say: there’s nothing you can play on it that hasn’t been played before. And, my dear Friends, I am sorry to say this, but it has its lower notes.

She stops, checks the rifle. Safety off.

Left foot, right foot, quietly along. The faint sounds of her feet on the fallen leaves hit her ears like shouts. How visible, how audible I am, she thinks. Everything in the forest is watching. They’re waiting for blood, they can smell it, they can hear it running through my veins,
katoush
. Above her head, clustering in the treetops, the crows are treacherous:
Hawhawhaw!
They want her eyes, those crows.

Yet each flower, each twig, each pebble, shines as though illuminated from within, as once before, on her first day in the Garden. It’s the stress, it’s the adrenalin, it’s a chemical effect: she knows this well enough. But why is it built in? she thinks. Why are we designed to see the world as supremely beautiful just as we’re about to be snuffed? Do rabbits feel the same as the fox teeth bite down on their necks? Is it mercy?

She pauses, turns, smiles at Ren. Do I look reassuring? she wonders. Calm and in control? Do I look as if I know what the hell I’m doing? I’m not up to this. I’m not fast enough, I’m too old, I’m rusty, I don’t have the whiplash reflexes, I’m weighed down with scruples. Forgive me, Ren. I’m leading you to doom. I pray that if I miss we both die quickly. No bees to save us this time.

What Saint should I call upon? Who has the resolution and the skill? The ruthlessness. The judgment. The accuracy.

Dear Leopard, dear Wolf, dear Liobam: lend me your Spirits now.

As soon as we hear voices we go forward very silently. Heel on the ground, said Toby, then roll forward on the foot, other heel on the ground. That way nothing dry snaps.

The voices are men. We can smell the smoke from their fire, and another smell: charred meat. I realize how hungry I am: I can feel myself drooling. I try to think about this hunger instead of being scared.

We peer through the leaves. It’s them all right: the one with the longer dark beard, the one with the light stubbly beard and the shaved head that’s growing in. I remember everything about them, and I feel like throwing up. It’s hate and fear grabbing at my stomach and sending tendrils through my whole body.

But now I see Amanda, and I feel so light all of a sudden. As if I could fly.

Her hands are free, but there’s a rope around her neck, with the other end tied to the leg of the dark-bearded guy. She’s still wearing her khaki desert-girl outfit, though it’s filthier than ever. Her face is smudged with dirt, her hair is dull and stringy. She has a purple bruise under one eye, and there are other bruises on the bare parts of her arms. She still has some of the orange nail polish on her fingers from Scales. Seeing it makes me want to cry.

She’s only skin and bones. But the two of them don’t look so fat themselves.

I feel myself breathing fast. Toby takes hold of my arm and gives it a squeeze. That means
Keep calm
. She turns her brown face towards
me and smiles a shrunken-head smile; the edges of her teeth glint through her lips, the muscles of her jaws tighten, and all of a sudden I feel sorry for those two men. Then she lets go of my arm and lifts the rifle, very slowly.

The two men are sitting cross-legged, broiling chunks of meat on sticks over the coals. Rakunk meat. The black-and-white-striped tail is on the ground, over to the side. There’s a spraygun on the ground too. Toby must have seen it. I can hear her thinking: If I shoot one of them, will I have time to shoot the other one before he can shoot me?

“Maybe it’s some fuckin’ savages thing,” the dark-bearded one is saying. “Blue paint.”

“Nah. Tattoos,” says the shorthair.

“Who’d get their dick tattooed?” says the bearded one.

“Savages will tattoo anything,” says the other. “It’s some cannibal thing.”

“You been watching too many dumb movies.”

“Bet they’d human-sacrifice her in about two minutes,” says the bearded one. “After they all had sex with her.” They look over at Amanda, but she’s staring at the ground. The bearded one jerks the rope. “We’re talkin’ to you, bitch,” he says. Amanda raises her head.

“A sex toy you can eat,” says the shorthair, and the two of them laugh. “You see the bimplants on those bitches, though?”

“Not bimplants, they were real. Way to find out, cut them open. The fake ones’ve got, like, some kind of gel in them. Maybe we could go back there, do a trade,” says the bearded one. “With the savages. They get this one, they seem to want her so much, stick their blue dicks into her, and we get some of those hot babes of theirs. Fuckin’ good deal!”

I see Amanda as they see her: used up, worn out. Worthless.

“Why trade?” says the shorthair. “Why not just go back and shoot the fuckers?”

“Not enough juice in this thing to shoot all of them. Cellpack’s really low. They’d figure that out, they’d rush us. Tear us apart and eat us.”

“We got to get farther away,” says the shorthair, alarmed now. “Thirty of them, two of us. What if they sneak up on us in the dark?”

There’s a pause while they think about this. My skin is crawling all over, I hate them so much. I wonder why Toby’s waiting. Why doesn’t she just kill them? Then I think, she’s old Gardener – she can’t do it, not in cold blood. It’s against her religion.

“Not too bad,” says the bearded one, lifting a skewer from the coals. “We can bag another one of these tasty little suckers tomorrow.”