Oryx and Crake (MaddAddam, #1)(58)
“But you didn’t,” says Toby. “Fuck it up.”
“It was almost a f*ckup. But I was lucky,” says Zeb. “Look, here comes the moon. Some people would call that romantic.”
Sure enough, there it is, rising above the trees to the east, almost full, almost red.
Why is it always such a surprise? thinks Toby. The moon. Even though we know it’s coming. Every time we see it, it makes us pause, and hush.
Blacklight Headlamp
New New York was on the Jersey shore, or what was now the shore. Not many people lived in Old New York any more, though it was officially a no-go zone and thus a no-rent zone so a few denizens were still willing to take their chances in the disintegrating, waterlogged, derelict buildings. Not Zeb, though; he didn’t have webbed feet and a death wish, and New New York – though no paradise – had more people in it, and therefore more background and cover. More of a crowd to blend into.
Once arrived, he ducked into a shoddy soft-pretzel-infested net café and sent a checking-in message to Adam – Plan A Yay, What’s Plan B? – then cooled his heels while Adam took his time, wherever the f*ck he was, whatever the f*ck he was up to. His latest terse communication had read merely CU soon.
Zeb had gone to ground in an erstwhile high-life pool-enabled party-roomed condo complex called Starburst – after a firework, perhaps, but at present suggestive of charred interstellar debris. Starburst had reached its half-life some time ago: the once-expensive iron scrollwork gate served mainly as a dogwiddle station, and the mouldy, leaking buildings had been turned into divided-space unit rentals. These hosted a coral-reef ecosystem of dealers and addicts and pilotfish and drunks and hookers and pyramid scheme fly-by-nighters and jackals and shell-gamers and rent-gougers, all parasitizing one another.
Meanwhile the Starburst owners dodged the needed repairs and waited for the next spin cycle. First the low-rent artists would move in, full of piss and vinegar and resentment and the delusion that they could change the world. Then the startup designers and graphics companies, hoping a sheen of grubby cool would rub off on them. After that would come the questionable gene-peddler storefronts and the fashion pimps and pseudo galleries and latest-thing restaurant openings, with molecular-mix fusion involving dry ice and labmeat and quorn, and daring little garnishes of dwindling species: starling’s tongue paté had been a fad of late, in such places. The Starburst owners were most likely a bunch of guys who’d cashed in via some superCorp and wanted to fool around in real estate. Once the starling’s tongue paté phase had kicked in, they’d knock down the decaying unit rentals and erect a whole batch of new limited-shelf-life upmarket condos.
But Starburst was nowhere near that sweet spot yet, so Zeb was safe there as long as he minded his own business and shambled enough so anyone looking would think he was just another brain-damaged stoner. He stayed away from everyone and anything because he didn’t want to attract any Chuck-like infiltrators.
He knew from his dips into the news that although the Rev was awaiting trial, he was out on bail and issuing statements about his innocence: he was the victim of an anti-religion and anti-Oleum left-wing cabal that had kidnapped and murdered his saintly first wife, Fenella, and then had maliciously spread the rumour that she’d run away to partake of an immoral life; which, since the Rev had believed it, had been an ongoing torture to him. This dastardly cabal had then planted Fenella in the Rev’s yard for the sole purpose of casting dirt upon his name and of sullying the reputation of the Holy Oleum itself.
The Rev on bail would therefore be living in his house, and would thus have access to his Church of PetrOleum network – if not the true true believers, who were no doubt shunning him because of the embezzlement charges, then at least the more cynical wing, the ones who were in it for the money. And he’d be filled to the brim with cold, rancorous vengefulness because he would deeply suspect who was to blame for the tipoff about Fenella’s pitiful bones turning to plant nutrients in his rock garden.
Meanwhile, main-chance Trudy had sold an autobiographical plaint and was doing numerous online interviews. How deceived she’d been by the Rev, having been convinced when she married him that he was a grieving widower dedicated to the greater good, and she so much wanted to be a partner in his pious works, and a mother to Fenella’s son, little Adam. No wonder that young man could not be found, as he was very sensitive, and would hate the glare of publicity as much as she did. How shattering it had been to awaken to the truth of the Rev’s murderous nature! Since learning of it, she’d prayed for Fenella’s soul and begged her forgiveness, even though she’d had no idea at the time about what had really happened. Because, like everyone else, she, Trudy, had believed the story about Fenella running off with some trashy Tex-Mex or other. She is ashamed of herself for having been so falsely judgmental.
And now some of her very own church members – people she’d thought of as brothers and sisters – were refusing to speak to her, and had even accused her of having been in on the Rev’s gory and larcenous activities all along. Only her faith had seen her through this testing and trying ordeal; and she longed for just one glimpse of her beloved lost son, Zebulon, who had strayed from the path, and no wonder, considering what sort of a father he had. But she prayed for him, wherever he was.
That beloved lost son fully intended to stay lost; though the temptation to hack into one of Trudy’s online weepies and impersonate a ghostly spirit voice and denounce her was very great. A fine line of DNA he’d inherited: a psychopath of a con artist for a dad, a selfish liar of a mother with an obsessive love of pelf. He could only hope that in addition to her narcissism and greed, Trudy was secretly a skanky cheat who’d pulled a fast one on the Rev and had it off with a dark stranger in the garden tool shed. If so, it was possibly from his real, nameless father – an itinerant spade and sod artist prone to bonking the be-ringed and be-bangled wives of his upper-echelon clients – that Zeb had inherited his more dubious talents: babe-charming, the knack for sneaking in and out of windows both real and virtual, discretion as the better part of valour, and a not always reliable cloak of invisibility.