Oryx and Crake (MaddAddam, #1)(39)

But the Rev wouldn’t be searching for them yet. He’d still be at the board lunch, gobbling down the labmeat hors d’oeuvres and the farmed tilapia.

Hackety-hack, railroad track,

Momma’s in the garden, so don’t look back,



Zeb hummed. He hoped Fenella’s death had been sudden, with none of the Rev’s more puke-making obsessions involved.

Beside him Adam was asleep, looking even whiter and thinner than he did when awake, and more like an idealistic statue of some annoying allegorical figure: Prudence. Sincerity. Faith.

Zeb was too high for sleep. Also jittery, despite himself: they’d crossed a big thick barbed-wire line, they’d robbed the ogre, they’d made off with his treasure. There would be fury. So he kept watch.

Who killed Fenella?

A really evil fella.

Hit her on the head,

Gave her quite a whack,

Everything went black,

Now she’s f*ckin’ dead.



Something was running down his face. He used his sleeve to wipe. No snivelling, he told himself. Don’t give him the satisfaction.


Once in San Francisco, Adam and Zeb decided to separate. “He won’t sit still for this,” Adam said. “He’s got a lot of contacts. He’ll put out a red alert, use his OilCorps networks. We’re overly noticeable together.”

True enough: they were too disparate. Dark and light, hefty and frail; anomalies like that were memorable. And the Rev’s description would be of the two of them, not one at a time.

Mutt and Jeff, Zeb hummed to himself. Mute and Theft. Cute and Deft.

“Don’t make that pseudo-musical noise,” said Adam. “It draws attention to us. Anyway you’re flat.” He did have a point. Two points.

In a pleebland grey-market hourly-rental morph-your-backstory kitshop, Zeb crafted identities for them – cardboard, wouldn’t stand up to scrutiny, time-sensitive, but good for the next stage of the trip. Adam went north, Zeb went south, each heading for camouflage.


He and Adam had agreed on a dropbox in space. It was the topmost rose being strewn by the zephyrs in a print of Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus, posted on a much-visited Italian tourism site. Zeb opted for the left tit nipple of Venus, but Adam overruled him: too obvious, he said. It would also be too obvious for them to attempt to contact each other for at least six months, he added: the Rev was vindictive, and by now he’d also be frightened.

Zeb pondered the likely consequences of this vindictiveness and fright. What would he himself do if two young wiseass descendants of his that he’d never liked anyway had made off with his foul secrets? The rage. The betrayal. After all he’d done for Adam. And for Zeb, because weren’t his physical chastisements in the best interests of the lad’s spiritual development? He was probably still deceiving himself with righteous barf like that.

Among other things, he’d hire some DORCS: digital online rapid capture specialists. They charged a lot but were said to produce results. They’d set up a search algorithm geared to detect likely profile matches online. So it was necessary to stay away from digital as much as possible. No surfing. No purchasing. No socializing. No wisecracking. No porn.

“Just don’t act like yourself,” was Adam’s parting advice.





Deeper into the Pleeblands


Zeb cut his hair in San Fran. He was growing a moustache, and he’d bought some coolish contact lenses on the dark-grey market that not only changed your eye colour but also gave you astigmatism and spurious iris features. But though these might get him through a casual scan, he didn’t want to risk closer scrutiny, and the Fickle Fingers of Fake fingerprint distorters he’d also bought were laughable in any professional sense, so it was better not to chance the bullet train again. Also, most of those riding it still believed in the legality of law and the orderliness of order, and might report anything suspicious, as they were constantly being nagged to do.

So he chanced the highways. He hitched south as far as San Jose, working the Truck-A-Pillar convoy stops for rides and trying to look older than he was. Some of the drivers hinted at blowjob payment, but he was too big for them to force it.

The other hazard was the quick-trick pros working the roadside bars. But the only sex he’d had so far had been online, via the haptic-feedback sites; he wasn’t ready for actual flesh on flesh. Plus, he was wary of making connections with other people, however brief: who knew how many of them might be trading information on the side? Some of those hustlers were suspiciously well dressed and did not look hungry.

Then there were the diseases. The last thing he needed was to be stuck in a hospital – supposing his ID passed inspection – or enduring a working over from some HospitalCorps security thug, supposing it didn’t pass, which was likely. Once the truth of who he was had been vise-gripped out of him, there would be a call to the Rev. Then disposal orders would be issued, or he’d be shipped back in plasticuffs to face the self-righteous music. I’ll teach you to respect me, I have been set in authority over you, God hates you, you are morally worthless, repent on your knees, drink what’s in the bucket, flat on the floor, hand me the two-by-four, you want it harder, I’ll make you howl, and so forth and so on, the familiar religio-sado heavy-metal perv litany. Pre-bedtime amusements.

When the Rev had finished with Zeb’s neurologically trashed, defenceless, quivering body, it would be into the rock garden with it, eventually; but not before he’d been scorched and zapped into betraying the digital pathway leading to Adam, and had been forced to plant some online lures and instructions for him, including the necessity of not going public with the Rev’s fiscal and sexual misdoings and the urgent need for a physical meetup at which all would be explained. Zeb had no illusions about his ability to withstand the kind of implementation the Rev and his helpers would be more than willing to inflict.