Oryx and Crake (MaddAddam, #1)(106)

“But none of that stuck with you.”

“Not so I noticed. I was the devil-kid, remember? That let me off the goodness hook. Adam depended on that: he never would have turned the Rev into a raspberry soda with his own two hands. He just put me in the way of it. Even so, he had some guilt issues: the Rev was his father, like it or not, and honour your parents, etcetera, even if one of them had buried the other one in the rock garden. He felt he should be forgiving. He beat himself up a lot, Adam did. It was worse after he lost Katrina WooWoo.”

“She went off with someone else?”

“Nothing so pleasant. The Corps decided to take over the sex trade: it was so lucrative. They bought a few politicians, got it legalized, set up SeksMart, forced everyone in the trade to roll in. Katrina played at first, but then they wanted to institute policies she found unacceptable. ‘Institute policies,’ that’s how they put it. She had scruples, so she became inconvenient. They got rid of the python too.”

“Oh,” says Toby. “I’m sorry.”

“So was I,” says Zeb. “Adam was more than sorry. He pined, he dwindled. Something went missing in him. I think he’d had a dream of installing Katrina in the Garden. Not that it would have worked out. Wrong wardrobe preferences.”

“That’s very sad,” says Toby.

“Yeah. It was. I should’ve been more understanding. Instead, I picked a fight.”

“Oh,” says Toby. “Only you?”

“Maybe both of us. But it was no holds barred. I said he was just like the Rev, really, only inside out, like a sock: neither one of them gave a shit about anyone else. It was always their way or zero. He said I’d always had criminal tendencies, and that was why I couldn’t understand pacifism and inner peace. I said that by doing nothing he was colluding with the powers that were f*cking the planet, especially the OilCorps and the Church of PetrOleum. He said I had no faith, and that the Creator would sort the earth out in good time, most likely very soon, and that those who were attuned and had a true love for the Creation would not perish. I said that was a selfish view. He said I listened to the whisperings of earthly power and I only wanted attention, the way I always had as a child when I pushed the boundaries.” He sighs again.

“Then what?” says Toby.

“Then I got mad. So I said something I wish I’d never said.” A pause. Toby waits. “I said he wasn’t really my brother, not genetically. He was no relation to me.” Another pause. “He didn’t believe me at first. I backed it up, I told him about the test Pilar had done. He just crumpled.”

“Oh,” says Toby. “I’m sorry.”

“I felt terrible right away, but I couldn’t unsay it. After that we tried to patch it up and paper it over. But things festered. We had to go our own ways.”

“Katuro went with you,” says Toby. She knows this for a fact. “Rebecca. Black Rhino. Shackleton, Crozier, and Oates.”

“Amanda, at first,” says Zeb. “She got out, though. Then new ones joined. Ivory Bill, Lotis Blue, White Sedge. All of them.”

“And Swift Fox,” says Toby.

“Yeah. And her. We thought Glenn – we thought Crake was our inside guy, feeding us stuff from the Corps through the MaddAddam chatroom. But all along, he was setting us up so he could drag us into the Paradice dome to do his people-splicing for him.”

“And his plague-virus-mixing?” says Toby.

“Not from what I hear,” says Zeb. “He did that on his own.”

“To make his perfect world,” says Toby.

“Not perfect,” says Zeb. “He wouldn’t claim that. More like a reboot. And he succeeded in his own way. Up to now.”

“He didn’t anticipate the Painballers,” says Toby.

“He should have. Or something like them,” says Zeb.


It’s very quiet, down there in the forest. A Craker child is singing a little in its sleep. Around the swimming pool the Pigoons are dreaming, emitting small grunts like puffs of smoke. Far away something cries: a bobkitten?

There’s a faint cool breeze; the leaves go about their business, which is rustling; the moon travels through the sky, moving towards its next phase, marking time.

“You should get some sleep,” says Zeb.

“Both of us should,” says Toby. “We’ll need our energy.”

“I’ll spell you – two on, two off. Wish I was twenty years younger,” says Zeb. “Not that those Painball guys are in great shape, you’d think. God knows what they’ve been eating.”

“The Pigoons are fit enough,” says Toby.

“They can’t pull triggers,” says Zeb. He pauses. “If we both come out of this tomorrow, maybe we should do the bonfire thing. With the green branches.”

Toby laughs. “I thought you said it was a meaningless empty symbol.”

“Even a meaningless empty symbol can mean something sometimes,” says Zeb. “You rejecting me?”

“No,” says Toby. “How could you even think it?”

“I fear the worst,” says Zeb.

“Would that be the worst? Me rejecting you?”

“Don’t push a guy when he’s feeling skinless.”

“I just have trouble believing you’re serious,” says Toby.