Oryx and Crake (MaddAddam, #1)(105)

“The others agreed with Adam One. I thought it was a bad idea. What if the kid tried those things out on someone without knowing exactly what they’d do, the way I had?”

“He must have, later,” says Toby. “With some additions of his own. That must’ve been the core of the BlyssPluss pills: what you got after you’d experienced the bliss.”

“Yeah,” says Zeb. “I think you’re right.”

“Do you think Pilar knew what use he’d make of those microbes or viruses or whatever they were?” she asks. “Eventually?” She remembers Pilar’s wrinkled little face, her kindness, her serenity, her strength. But underneath, there had always been a hard resolve. You wouldn’t call it meanness or evil. Fatalism, perhaps.

“Let’s put it this way,” says Zeb. “All the real Gardeners believed the human race was overdue for a population crash. It would happen anyway, and maybe sooner was better.”

“But you weren’t a real Gardener.”

“Pilar thought I was, because of my Vigil. Part of the deal with Adam One was that I had to take on a title, that Adam Seven thing: he said it would confer the needed authority, as he put it. Status enhancer. To become one of those, you had to undergo a Vigil. See what was going on with your spirit animal.”

“I did that,” said Toby. “Talking tomato plants, in-depth stars.”

“Yeah, all of that. I don’t know what old Pilar mixed into the enhancer, but it was potent.”

“What did you see?”

A pause. “The bear. The one I killed and ate, when I was walking out of the Barrens.”

“Did it have a message for you?” says Toby. Her own spirit animal had been enigmatic.

“Not exactly. But it gave me to understand that it was living on in me. It wasn’t even pissed with me. It seemed quite friendly. Amazing what happens when you f*ck with your own neurons.”


Once he was Adam Seven, Zeb could install himself and Lucerne and little Ren as bona fide members of the God’s Gardeners. They didn’t meld very well. Ren was homesick for the Compound and her father, and Lucerne had too great an interest in nail polish to make it as a female Gardener. Her investment in vegetable preparation was nil, and she hated the required outfits – the dark, baggy dresses, the bib aprons. Zeb ought to have known she wasn’t going to stick with this arrangement, over time.

Zeb himself had no affinity for slug and snail relocation or soap-making or kitchen cleanup, so he and Adam came to an understanding about what his duties would be. He taught the kids survival skills, and Urban Bloodshed Limitation, which was street fighting viewed from a loftier perspective. As the Gardeners gathered members and expanded, and set up branch locations in different cities, he ran courier among the different groups. The Gardeners refused to use cellphones or technology of any kind; apart, that is, from the one secret souped-up computer that Zeb kept at his own disposal, and fitted out with spyware so he could snoop on the CorpSeCorps, and firewalled up the yin-yang.



Running courier for Adam had its advantages – he was away from home, so he didn’t have to listen to Lucerne’s complaints. But it also had its disadvantages – he was away from home, which gave Lucerne more to complain about. She liked to nag on about his commitment issues: why, for instance, had he never asked her to go through the God’s Gardeners Partnership ceremony with him?

“Where you jumped over a bonfire together and then traded green branches while everyone stood in a circle, and then they had some kind of pious banquet,” says Zeb. “She really wanted me to do that with her. I said as far as I was concerned it was a meaningless empty symbol. Then she’d accuse me of humiliating her.”

“If it was meaningless, why didn’t you do it?” says Toby. “It might have satisfied her. Made her happier.”

“Fat chance,” says Zeb. “I just didn’t want to. I hated being pushed.”

“She was right, you had commitment issues,” says Toby.

“Guess so. Anyway, she dumped me. Went back to the Compounds, took Ren with her. And then I wanted the Gardeners to get more activist, and everything unravelled.”

“I wasn’t there any more, by that time,” says Toby. “Blanco got out of Painball and went after me. I was a liability to the Gardeners. You helped me change my identity.”

“Years of practice.” He sighs. “After you left, things got severe. The God’s Gardeners was getting too big and successful for the CorpSeCorps. To them, it looked like a resistance movement in the making.

“Adam was using the Garden as a safe house for escapees from the BioCorps, and they were beginning to figure that out; so the CorpSemen were paying the pleebmobs to attack us. Being a pacifist, Adam One couldn’t bring himself to weaponize the Garden. I could’ve helped him turn a toy potato gun into an effective short-range shrapnel thrower, but he wouldn’t hear of it. It was too unsaintly for him.”

“You’re making fun,” says Toby.

“Just describing. No matter what was at stake, he couldn’t go on the offensive, not directly. Remember, he was the firstborn; the Rev got hold of him early, before either of us figured out what a fraud the murderous old bugger actually was. What stuck with Adam was that he had to be good. Gooder than good, so God would love him. Guess he was going to do the Rev thing himself, but do it right – everything the Rev had pretended to be, he would be in reality. It was a tall order.”