Oryx and Crake (MaddAddam, #1)(21)

But even if he’d managed to get hold of the needle, what then? Test it out on himself? Stick it in a lemming? “Still, I could have kept it in reserve, for emergencies,” says Zeb.

“Emergencies?” says Toby, smiling in the dark. “This wasn’t an emergency?”

“No, a real emergency,” says Zeb. “Like running into some other person out there. That would be an emergency. Stands to reason it would be a madman.”

“Was there any string?” says Toby. “In the pockets. You never know when string will come in handy. Or some rope.”

“String. Yeah, now that you mention it. And a roll of fishing line, we always carried that, with a few hooks. Fire-lighter. Mini-binocs. Compass. Bearlift gave us all that Boy Scout stuff, survival basics. I didn’t take Chuck’s compass though, I already had one. You don’t need two compasses.”

“Candy bar?” says Toby. “Energy rations?”

“Yeah, couple of shitty little Joltbars, faux nuts. Package of cough drops. I took those. Plus.” He pauses.

“Plus what?” says Toby. “Go on.”

“Okay, warning: this is gross. I took some of Chuck. Hacked it off with the pocketknife, kind of sawed it. Chuck had a fold-up waterproof jacket, so I wrapped it in that. Not much to eat up there in the Barrens, we all knew that, we’d had the Bearlift course. Rabbits, ground squirrels, mushrooms, but I wouldn’t have time to hunt for any of that. Anyway, you can die of eating nothing but rabbits. Rabbit starvation, they called it. No fat on those things. It’s like that whatchamacallit diet – the all-protein one. You start to dissolve your own muscles. Your heart gets very thin.”

“What part of Chuck did you take?” says Toby. She’s surprised she doesn’t feel squeamish; she might have, once, back when squeamish was an option.

“The fattest part,” says Zeb. “The boneless part. The part you’d have taken. Or any sane person.”

“Did you feel bad about it?” says Toby. “Stop patting my bum.”

“Why?” says Zeb. “Nah, I didn’t feel too bad. He’d have done the same. Maybe a stroking action, like this?”

“I’m too skinny,” says Toby.

“Yeah, you could use a little more padding. I’ll bring you a box of chocolates, if I can find any. Fatten you up.”

“Add some flowers,” says Toby. “Roll out the full courtship ritual. I bet you never did that in your life.”

“You’d be surprised,” says Zeb. “I’ve presented bouquets in my day. Of a kind.”

“Go on,” says Toby, who doesn’t want to think about Zeb’s bouquets or what kind they were, or who he may have given them to. “There you are. Mountains in the distance, part of Chuck lying on the ground and the rest in your pocket. What time was it?”

“Maybe three in the afternoon, maybe five, shit, maybe even eight, it would still have been light then,” says Zeb. “I’d lost track. It was mid-July, did I say that? Sun hardly sets at all then, up there. Just sort of dips below the horizon, makes a pretty red rim. Then in a few hours up it comes again. That place isn’t above the Arctic Circle, but it’s up so high it’s tundra: two-hundred-year-old willows like horizontal vines, and the wildflowers all bloom at once because the summer’s only a couple of weeks long. Not that I was noticing any wildflowers right then.”

He thought maybe he should get Chuck out of sight. He put Chuck’s pants back on and stuffed him under one of the ’thopter wings. Changed boots with him – Chuck’s were better anyway, and they more or less fit – and left a foot sticking out so anyone looking from a distance would think it was Zeb. He figured he might be safer dead, at least in the short-term.

When Bearlift Central saw they’d lost communication, they were bound to send somebody. Most likely it would be Repair. Once they discovered there was nothing left to repair and that nobody was sitting around setting off little flares and waving a white hanky, they’d go away. That was the ethos: don’t waste fuel on dead bodies. Let nature recycle them. The bears would take care of it, the wolves, the wolverines, the ravens, and so forth.

But the Bearlifters might not be the only ones who would come to have a look. For his brain-snatch caper, Chuck clearly wasn’t working with the Bearlifters: if he had been, he wouldn’t have hesitated to try something right at the base, and he would’ve had help. Zeb would already be a lobotomized shell parked in some zombie town, ex-mining, ex-oil, with a fake passport and no fingerprints. Not that they’d even bother going that far because who would ever miss him?

Chuck’s bosses had to be elsewhere, then: they were wherever it was they’d phoned from. But how close was that? Norman Wells, Whitehorse? Anywhere with an airstrip. Zeb needed to move away from the crash as fast as possible, find a place with cover. Which was not so easy on the next-to-bare-naked tundra.

Grolars and pizzlies could do it, though, and they were bigger. But also more experienced.





Bunkie


Zeb started hiking. The ’thopter had come down on a gentle hillside sloping to the west, and west was the direction he took. He had a rough map of the whole area in his head. Too bad he didn’t have the paper map, the one they always kept open on their knees when flying up there in case of digital failure.