Oryx and Crake (MaddAddam, #1)(70)

She gazes at the clustered flowers, thinks, Pilar. The wizened old face, the brown hands, the gentle smile. All so real, once. Gone to ground.

I know you’re here, in your new body. I need your help.

There’s no voice, but there’s a space. A waiting.

Amanda. Will she die, will this baby kill her? What should I do?

Nothing. Toby feels abandoned. But really, what did she expect? There is no magic, there are no angels. It was always child’s play.

But she can’t help asking anyway. Send me a message. A signal. What would you do in my place?

“Watch it,” says the voice of Zeb. “Stay still. Look slowly. To the left.”

Toby turns her head. Crossing the path, within stone-throw, there’s one of the giant pigs. A sow, with farrow: five little piglets, all in a row. Soft gruntings from the mother, high screechy pipings from the young. How pink and brightly shining are their ears, how crystalline their hooves, how …

“I’ve got you covered,” Zeb says. He’s slowly lifting the rifle.

“Don’t shoot,” says Toby. Her own voice in her ears is distant, her mouth feels huge and numbed. Her heart’s becalmed.

The sow stops, turns sideways: a perfect target. She looks at Toby out of her eye. The five little ones gather in her shadow, under the nipples, which are all in a row too, like vest buttons. Her mouth upturns in a smile, but that’s only the way it’s made. Glint of light on a tooth.

Little Blackbeard moves forward. He’s golden in the sun, his green eyes lambent, his hands outstretched.

“Get back here,” says Zeb.

“Wait,” Toby says. Such enormous power. A bullet would never stop the sow, a spraygun burst would hardly make a dent. She could run them down like a tank. Life, life, life, life, life. Full to bursting, this minute. Second. Millisecond. Millennium. Eon.

The sow does not move. Her head remains up, her ears pricked forward. Huge ears, calla lilies. She gives no sign of charging. The piglets freeze in place, their eyes red-purple berries. Elderberry eyes.

Now there’s a sound. Where is it coming from? It’s like the wind in branches, like the sound hawks make when flying, no, like a songbird made of ice, no, like a … Shit, thinks Toby. I am so stoned.

It’s Blackbeard, singing. His thin boy’s voice. His Craker voice, not human.

The next moment, the sow and her young have vanished. Blackbeard turns to smile at Toby. “She was here,” he says. What does he mean?

“Crap,” says Shackleton. “There go the spareribs.”

So, thinks Toby. Go home, take a shower, sober up. You’ve had your vision.





Vector





The Story of how Crake got born


“Still a little buzzed, are you?” says Zeb as they walk towards the trees where Jimmy’s hammock was once strung up and where the Crakers are waiting. It’s the gloaming: deeper, thicker, more layered than usual, the moths more luminous, the scents of the evening flowers more intoxicating: the short-term Enhanced Meditation formula has that effect. Zeb’s hand in hers is rough velvet: like a cat’s tongue, warm and soft, delicate and raspy. It sometimes takes half a day for this stuff to wear off.

“I’m not sure buzzed is the appropriate word to use of a mystical quasi-religious experience,” says Toby.

“That’s what it was?”

“Possibly. Blackbeard’s telling people that Pilar appeared in the skin of a pig.”

“No shit! And her a vegetarian. How’d she get in there?”

“He says she put on the skin of the pig just the way you put on the skin of the bear. Except she didn’t kill and eat the pig.”

“What a waste.”

“Also she spoke to me, Blackbeard says. He says he heard her do it.”

“That what you think too?”

“Not exactly,” says Toby. “You know the Gardener way. I was communicating with my inner Pilar, which was externalized in visible form, connected with the help of a brain chemistry facilitator to the wavelengths of the Universe; a universe in which – rightly understood – there are no coincidences. And just because a sensory impression may be said to be ‘caused’ by an ingested mix of psychoactive substances does not mean it is an illusion. Doors are opened with keys, but does that mean that the things revealed when the doors are opened aren’t there?”

“Adam One really did a job on you, didn’t he? He could spout that crap for hours.”

“I can follow his line of reasoning, so I guess in that sense he did a job, yes. But when it comes to ‘belief,’ I’m not so sure. Though as he’d say, what is ‘belief’ but a willingness to suspend the negatives?”

“Yeah, right. I never knew myself how much of it he really believed himself, or believed so much that he’d stick his arm in the fire for it. He was such a slippery bugger.”

“He said that if you acted according to a belief, that was the same thing. As having the belief.”

“Wish I could find him,” says Zeb. “Even if he’s dead. I’d like to know what happened, either way.”

“They used to call that ‘closure,’ ” says Toby. “In some cultures, the spirit couldn’t be freed unless the person got a decent burial.”