Oryx and Crake (MaddAddam, #1)(77)

“Deliver it to who?” said Zeb. “What’s in it, anyway? Who’s they?”

“Vectors,” said Pilar.

“In what sense?” said Zeb. “Like, math vectors?”

“Let’s say biological. Vectors for bioforms. And these vectors are inside some other vectors that look like vitamin pills: three kinds, white, red, and black. And the pills are inside another vector, the bishop. Which will be carried by another vector, you.”

“What’s the thing inside the pills?” Zeb asked. “Brain candy? Code chips?”

“Definitely not. Best not to ask,” said Pilar. “But whatever you do, don’t eat any of them. If you think anyone’s following you, shove the bishop down a drain.”

“What about Glenn?” said Zeb.

“Check and mate,” said Pilar, toppling his king. She stood up, smiling. “Glenn will make his way,” she said. “He doesn’t know they killed his father. He doesn’t know yet. Or not directly. But he’s very bright.”

“You mean he’ll figure it out,” said Zeb.

“Not too soon, I hope,” said Pilar. “He’s too young for that kind of bad news. He might not be able to pretend ignorance, unlike you.”

“Some of mine’s real,” said Zeb. “Like, right now, where do I switch identities? And how do I get the pass?”

“Go into the MaddAddam chatroom, there’s a full package waiting for you. Then scramble your present gateway. You can’t afford to leave your footprints on these computers.”

“Does any of this involve different facial hair?” Zeb asked, to lighten things up. “For my new identity? And dorky pants?”

Pilar smiled. “I’ve had my beeper switched off all this time,” she said. “We’re allowed to do that on barbecue days, as long as we’re in full view. I’m turning it back on now. Don’t say anything you don’t want overheard. Journey well.”





Scales and Tails


Zeb retrieved his thumbdrive from the desk drawer where he’d hidden it, removed the cough drops that were stuck to it like barnacles, activated Intestinal Parasites on his computer, then slipped through the voracious maw of the blind nightmare worm and thence by lilypad into the chatroom of MaddAddam. Sure enough, there was a how-to pack waiting for him, though no clue as to who had left it. He opened it, assimilated the contents, and scuttled backwards, whisking away his trail as he went. Then he ground the thumbdrive underfoot – or, more accurately, he placed it under one of his bed legs and then jumped on the bed, several times – and flushed the bits down several toilets. They wouldn’t have gone down easily by themselves, being metal and plastic, but if you embed …

“It’s okay,” says Toby. “I get the picture.”


Zeb’s new name was Hector. Hector the Vector, was what he figured. Someone had a reasonably foul sense of humour, but he didn’t think it was Pilar: she was not so much the humorous type.

But of course he’d only activate his new Hector identity once he was outside the walls and away from the security cameras of HelthWyzer West. Until then he was still Seth, a minor code-slave chained in the galleyship of data entry, in his geekwear with the brown corduroy pants. If anything, he was betting his change of identity would score him better pants. There was said to be an outfit waiting for him in the pleeblands, stashed in a dumpster he hoped no tramps or crazy people or sacked middle managers would be picking through before he could get to it.

The cover story for his Seth persona was that he was making a service call at a local branch of a beauty-and-mood-enhancing Corp called AnooYoo, which was a dubious affiliate of HelthWyzer. Health and Beauty, the two seductive twins joined at the navel, singing their eternal siren songs. A lot of people would pay through their nose jobs for either one.

HelthWyzer’s products – the vitamin supplements, the over-the-counter painkillers, the higher-end disease-specific pharmaceuticals, the erectile dysfunction treatments, and so on – went in for scientific descriptions and Latin names on the labels. AnooYoo, on the other hand, was mining arcane secrets from Wiccan moon-worshippers and from shamans deep in the assassin-bug-rich rainforests of Dontgothere. But Zeb could understand that there was an overlap of interests. If it hurts and you feel sick and it’s making you ugly, take this, from HelthWyzer; if you’re ugly and it hurts and you feel sick about it, take that, from AnooYoo.

Zeb readied himself for his mission by putting on a newly laundered pair of brown cords. He rearranged his face into his marginally shambolic Seth persona and winked at it in the bathroom mirror. “You’re doomed,” he said to it. He wouldn’t be sorry to part company with Seth, who’d been foisted on him by Adam in an act of older-brother I-know-better bossiness. He longed to see Adam in person, if only to berate him for that. “You got any f*cking idea of what those pants put me through?” he might say.

Time for Seth to go. He ambled in the direction of the front gate, exit pass in hand, humming to himself:

Hi ho, hi ho,

To jerkoff work I go,

With a hick hack here and a hick hack there,

Hi ho, hi ho, hi ho, hi ho!



Now to remember the cover story of Seth, junior code plumber. He was being sent to investigate the AnooYoo website, and to discover how it had been tampered with. Someone – maybe a jumped-up teenaged hacker like his own younger self – had altered the online images so that when you clicked on any of the mood-enhancing, complexion-improving products, a squad of puce and orange insect animations would nibble into them at hyperspeed and then explode, legs twitching, yellow fumes coming out. It was silly but graphic.