Oryx and Crake (MaddAddam, #1)(118)

The Cnidaria phylum contains the jellyfish, the corals, the sea anemones, and the hydra. The Gardeners had been thorough – no phylum or genus was left out of their list of feasts and festivals, if they could help it – though some celebrations had been odder than others. The Festival of Intestinal Parasites, for instance, had been memorable, though not what you would call delightful.

The Feast of Cnidaria, however, had been an especially beautiful one. There had been paper lanterns in the shapes of jellyfish, and many decorations fashioned from objects found in dumpsters. A creative use was made of spent balloons and inflated rubber gloves with trailing filaments of string, sea anemones were created from modified round dish-scrubbing brushes, and hydras crafted from transparent plastic sandwich bags.

The children would do a little jellyfish dance, festooned with streamers and waving their arms slowly, and one year they’d composed and performed an interminable play on the subject of the life cycle of the jellyfish, which was uneventful. First I was an egg, Then I grew and grew, Now I am a jellyfish, Green and pink and blue. Though when the Portuguese Man O’ War had made its entrance, drama had been possible: I drifted here, I drifted there, My tentacles so fine to view, But don’t get tangled up with me, Or I will put an end to you.

Had Ren helped with that play? Toby wonders. Had Amanda? The song, the grabbing of a smaller child playing a fish, the stinging to death – they had the earmarks of Amanda; or of the streetwise pleebrat Amanda of those days, who, since the disposal of the two malignant Painballers, appears to have been reborn.


“After the disposal of the two malignant Painballers,” she writes. Disposal makes them sound like garbage, as in garbage disposal. She wonders if this kind of name-calling is worthy of her one-time position as Eve Six, decides it’s not, leaves it anyway.

“After the disposal of the two malignant Painballers, Ren and Shackleton and Amanda and Crozier and I walked back along the AnooYoo forest path. We came to the tree where the Painballers had left poor Oates hanging with his throat slit. There wasn’t much left of him – the crows had been assimilating him, and God knows what else – but Shackleton shinnied up the tree and cut the rope, and he and Crozier gathered together the bones of their younger brother and tied them up in a bedsheet.

“Then it was time for the composting. The Pigoons wished to carry Adam and Jimmy to the site for us, as a sign of friendship and inter-species co-operation. They collected more flowers and ferns, which they piled on top of the bodies. Then we walked to the site in procession. The Crakers sang all the way.”

She adds, “… which was somewhat hard on the nerves.” But then, reflecting that Blackbeard is making so much progress in his writing that he might someday be able to read her entries, she scratches it out.

“Following a short discussion, the Pigoons understood that we did not wish to eat Adam and Jimmy, nor would we wish the Pigoons to do that. And they concurred. Their rules in such matters appear complex: dead farrow are eaten by pregnant mothers to provide more protein for growing infants, but adults, and especially adults of note, are contributed to the general ecosystem. All other species are, however, up for grabs.

“Amanda added that she did not see a transition through pigshit as an acceptable phase in Jimmy’s life cycle, but this remark was not translated by Blackbeard. There was not enough left of Oates for it to be an issue in his case.

“We buried all three of them near Pilar, and planted a tree on top of each. For Jimmy, Ren, Amanda, and Lotis Blue had made a trip to the Botanical Gardens, to the section called Fruits of the World – under the guidance of the Pigoons, who of course knew where it was, being fond of fruit – and had chosen a Kentucky coffeetree, which has heart-shaped leaves and produces berries that can be used as a coffee substitute. Many in our group will be pleased by that, as the roastedroot coffee is beginning to pall.

“For Oates, Crozier and Shackleton chose an oak tree, because it echoed his name. The Pigoons were delighted by that, as later on there would be acorns.

“For Adam One, Zeb as next of kin had the choice of tree. He selected a native crabapple, somewhat biblical – he said – and also fitting. Its apples would have the added virtue of making a good jelly, which would have pleased Adam: the Gardeners, though conscious of symbolism, were practical in such matters.

“The Pigoons had their own funeral rites. They did not bury the dead Pigoon, but set her down in a clearing near one of the park picnic tables. They heaped her with flowers and branches, and stood silently, tails drooping. Then the Crakers sang.”


“Oh Toby, what have you been writing?” says Blackbeard, who’s come into her cobb-house cubicle – unannounced, as usual – and is now standing at her elbow. He’s peering into her face with his large, green, luminous, uncanny eyes.

How had Crake devised those eyes? How do they light up from within like that? Or give the appearance of lighting up. It must be a luminosity feature, perhaps from a deep-sea bioform. She’s often wondered.

“I am writing the story,” she says. “The story of you, and me, and the Pigoons, and everyone. I am writing about how we put Snowman-the-Jimmy and Adam One into the ground, and Oates too, so that Oryx can change them into the form of a tree. And that is a happy thing, isn’t it?”

“Yes. It is a happy thing. What is wrong with your eyes, Oh Toby? Are you crying?” says Blackbeard. He touches her eyebrow.