"You can go a long time without food," says Ren. "They did fasts, at the Gardeners? You can go for days. Weeks." She leans over and reaches out, smoothing back Jimmy's hair. "I wish we could give him a shampoo," she says. "He's getting rank."
"I think he just said something," says Lotis Blue.
"It was only a mumble. We could sponge him off," says Ren. "Like, a sponge bath." She leans closer. "He looks a bit shrivelled. Poor Jimmy. I hope he doesn't die."
"I'm hydrating him," says Toby. "And there's the honey, I'm feeding him that." Why is she sounding like a head nurse? "We do wash him," she says defensively. "We do it every day."
"Well anyway, he's not so feverish," says Lotis Blue. "He's cooling down. Don't you think?"
Ren feels Jimmy's forehead. "I don't know," she says. "Jimmy, can you hear me?" They all watch: Jimmy doesn't twitch. "I'd say he's warm. Amanda? See what you think." She's trying to involve her, thinks Toby. Get her interested in something. Ren was always a kindly child.
If she is blue, the Lotis one, should we mate with her? No, we should not. Do not sing to them, do not pick flowers for them, do not wag your penis at them. These women scream with fright, they do not choose us even if we give them a flower, they do not like a wagging penis. We do not make them happy, we do not know why they scream. But sometimes they do not scream with fright, sometimes they ...
"I need to lie down," says Amanda. She stands up, walks unsteadily away towards the cobb house.
"I'm really worried about her," says Ren. "She threw up this morning, she couldn't eat any breakfast. That's extreme Fallow."
"Maybe it's a bug," says Lotis Blue. "Something she ate. We really need a better way of washing the dishes, I don't think the water is ..."
"Look," says Ren. "He blinked."
"He is hearing you," says the ivory woman. "He is hearing your voice, and now he is walking. He is happy, he wants to be with you."
"With me?" says Ren. "Really?"
"Yes. Look, he is smiling." There is indeed a smile, or the trace of a smile, thinks Toby. Though maybe it's only gas, as with babies.
The ivory woman waves away a mosquito that has settled on Jimmy's mouth. "Soon he will be awake," she says.
Zeb in the Dark
Zeb in the Dark
It's evening. Toby has dodged her storytime session with the Crakers. Those stories take a lot out of her. Not only does she have to put on the absurd red hat and eat the ritual fish, which isn't always what you'd call cooked, but there's so much she needs to invent. She doesn't like to tell lies, not deliberately, not lies as such, but she skirts the darker and more tangled corners of reality. It's like trying to keep toast from burning while still having it transform into toast.
"I'll come tomorrow," she told them. "Tonight I must do an important thing for Zeb."
"What is the important thing you must do, Oh Toby? We would like to be your helpers." At least they didn't ask what important means. They seem to have put together an idea of it: somewhere between dangerous and delicious.
"Thank you," she said. "But it is a thing that only I can do."
"Is it about the bad men?" asked little Blackbeard.
"No," Toby said. "We have not seen the bad men for many days. Maybe they have gone far away. But we must still be careful, and tell others if we see them."
One of the Mo'Hairs has gone missing, Crozier has told her privately - the red-headed one with the braids - but it may simply have strayed off while grazing. Or else a liobam got it.
Or something worse, thinks Toby: something human.
The day has been stifling. Even the afternoon thunderstorm hasn't cleared away the humidity. Under normal conditions - but what is normal? - lust should have been drained of its supercharge by this weather; muffled, as if under a damp mattress. She and Zeb should have been limp, enervated, exhausted. But instead they'd snuck away from the others even earlier than usual, slippery with longing, every pore avid, every capillary suffused, and thrashed around like newts in a puddle.
Now it's deep twilight. Purple darkness wells up from the earth, bats flit past like leathery butterflies, night flowers open, musking the air. They're sitting outside in the kitchen garden for the evening breeze, what there is of it. Their fingers are loosely entwined; Toby can feel, still, a small current of electricity moving between them. Tiny iridescent moths are shimmering around their heads. What do we smell like to them? she wonders. Like mushrooms? Like crushed petals? Like dew?
"Help me out here," says Toby. "I need more to go on, for the Crakers. They're insatiable on the subject of you."
"Like what?"
"You're their hero. They want your life story. Your miraculous origins, your supernatural deeds, your favourite recipes. You're like royalty to them."
"Why me?" says Zeb. "I thought Crake did away with all that. They aren't supposed to be interested."
"Well, they are. They're obsessed with you. You're their rock star."
"Lord fuck a dog. Can't you just make up some piece of crap?"
"They cross-examine like lawyers," says Toby. "At the very least I need the basics. The raw material." Does she want to know about Zeb for the sake of the Crakers, or for herself? Both. But mostly for herself.
"I'm an open book," says Zeb.
"Don't be evasive."
Zeb sighs. "I hate going back to all that. I had to live it, I don't like reliving it. Who cares?"
"I do," says Toby. And so do you, she thinks. You still do care. "I'm listening."
"Persistent, aren't you?"
"I've got all night. So, you were born ..."
"Yeah, admitted." Another sigh. "Okay. First you need to understand: we got the wrong mothers."
"Wrong, how?" she says to the face she can barely see. A plane of cheekbone, a shadow, a glint of eye.
The Story of the Birth of Zeb
I have put on the red hat of Snowman. I have eaten the fish. I have listened to the shiny thing. Now I will tell the story of the birth of Zeb.
You don't have to sing.
Zeb did not come from Crake, not like Snowman. And he wasn't made by Oryx, not like rabbits. He was born, the same way you are born. He grew in a bone cave, just like you, and came out through a bone tunnel, just like you.
Because underneath our clothing skins, we are the same as you. Almost the same.
No, we do not turn blue. Though we might smell blue sometimes. But our bone cave is the same.
I don't think we need to discuss blue penises right now.
I know they are bigger. Thank you for pointing that out.
Yes, we do have breasts. The women do.
Yes, two.
Yes, on the front.
No, I will not show them to you right now.
Because this story is not about breasts. This story is about Zeb.
A very long time ago, in the days of the chaos - before Crake cleared it all away - Zeb lived in the bone cave of his mother. And Oryx took care of him there, as she takes care of all those who live in the bone caves. And then he travelled into this world through the bone tunnel. And then he was a baby, and then he grew.
And he had an older brother whose name was Adam. But Adam's mother was not the same mother as the mother of Zeb.
Because when Adam was very young, Adam's mother ran away from Adam's father.
Running away means she went very quickly to a different place. Though she may not have done any running as such. Perhaps she walked, or drove in a ... So Adam never saw her any more.
Yes, I'm sure it was sad for him.
Because she wanted to mate with more than one male, not only with Zeb's father. Or that is what Zeb's father told him.
Yes, it was a good thing to want, and she would have been happy if she could be living with you. She could mate with four males at once, like you. She would be very happy then!
But Zeb's father did not see it that way.
Because he had done a thing with her called marriage, and with marriage there was supposed to be one
male for each female and one female for each male. Although sometimes there were more. But there were not supposed to be.
Because it was the chaos. It was a thing of the chaos. That is why you can't understand it.
Marriage is gone now. Crake cleared it away because he thought it was stupid.
Stupid means things Crake didn't like. There were a lot of things Crake thought were stupid.
Yes, good, kind Crake. I will stop telling this story if you sing.
Because it makes me forget what I am telling.
Thank you.
So then Adam's father found a new woman to have marriage with, and Zeb was born. Now little Adam was not lonely, because he had a brother. And Adam and Zeb helped each other. But Zeb's father was sometimes hurtful to them.
I don't know why. He thought pain was good for children.
No, he was not as bad as the two bad men who were hurtful to Amanda. But he was not a kind person.
I don't know why some people then were not kind. It was a thing of the chaos.
And Zeb's mother was often taking a nap, or doing other things that interested her. She was not very interested in small children. And she said, "You will be the death of me."
Death of me is hard to explain. It meant she was displeased with the things they were doing.
No, Zeb did not kill his mother. Death of me is just a thing she said. She said it a lot.
Why did she say it if it wasn't true? It was ... those people talked that way. It wasn't true or not true. It was in between. It was a way of telling about a feeling you might have. It was a manner of speaking. A manner of speaking means ...
You are right. Zeb's mother was not a kind person either. Sometimes she helped Zeb's father lock Zeb up in a closet.
Lock up means ... closet means ... It was a very small room and it was dark in there, and Zeb couldn't get out. Or they thought he couldn't get out. But soon Zeb learned a lot about opening closed doors.
No. His mother couldn't sing. Not like your mothers. And your fathers. And you.
But Zeb could sing. That is one of the things he did when he was locked inside the closet. He sang.
The PetrOleum Brats
Zeb's mother, Trudy, was the goody-goody, and Adam's mother, Fenella, was the shag-anything trashbunny. Or that was the story told by Trudy and the Rev. Since the two of them claimed that Zeb was so freaking useless and they were so righteous, naturally he thought he'd been adopted, since he couldn't possibly have come from two such pristine sources of DNA as them.
He used to daydream that he'd been left behind by Fenella, who must have been his real, worthless mother. She'd been forced to flee in a hurry, and hadn't been able to tote him along when she was running away - she'd dropped him on the doorstep in a cardboard box, to be taken in and trodden underfoot by this Trudy person, who was unrelated to him and lying about it. Fenella - wherever she was - deeply regretted her abandonment of him, and was planning to come back and get him once she could manage it. Then they would go far, far away together, and do absolutely everything on the long list of things that were frowned upon by the Rev. He saw them sitting on a park bench together, eating licorice twists and happily picking their noses. Just for instance.
But that was when he was little. Once he figured out genetics, he decided that Trudy must've secretly had it off with some fix-it guy with a wrench who doubled as a housebreaker and petty thief. Or else a gardener: she used to snaffle illegal Tex-Mex guys with black hair, like Zeb's. She'd pay them not enough to wheelbarrow soil around, dig up shrubs, dump more rocks on her rock garden, which was the only thing that really held her attention in the way of nurturing and tending, as far as Zeb could tell. She was always out there with one of those little fork-tongued weeders or messing up ant nests with hot vinegar.
" 'Course I could have inherited the criminality from the Rev, he had the chromosomes for it," says Zeb. "He just tarted up his misdemeanours and made them look respectable, whereas I was the real raw deal. He was furtive and sly, I was right in the face."
"Don't be too down on yourself," says Toby.
"You don't get it, babe," says Zeb. "I'm bragging."
The Rev had his very own cult. That was the way to go in those days if you wanted to coin the megabucks and you had a facility for ranting and bullying, plus golden-tongued whip-'em-up preaching, and you lacked some other grey-area but highly marketable skill, such as derivatives trading. Tell people what they want to hear, call yourself a religion, put the squeeze on for contributions, run your own media outlets and use them for robocalls and slick online campaigns, befriend or threaten politicians, evade taxes. You had to give the guy some credit. He was twisted as a pretzel, he was a tinfoil-halo shit-nosed frogstomping king rat asshole, but he wasn't stupid.
As witness his success. By the time Zeb came along, the Rev had a megachurch, all glass slabbery and pretend oak pews and faux granite, out on the rolling plains. The Church of PetrOleum, affiliated with the somewhat more mainstream Petrobaptists. They were riding high for a while, about the time accessible oil became scarce and the price shot up and desperation among the pleebs set in. A lot of top Corps guys would turn up at the church as guest speakers. They'd thank the Almighty for blessing the world with fumes and toxins, cast their eyes upwards as if gasoline came from heaven, look pious as hell.
"Pious as hell," says Zeb. "I've always liked that phrase. In my humble view, pious and hell are the flip sides of the same coin."
"Humble view?" says Toby. "Since when?"
"Since I met you," says Zeb. "Just one glance at your fine ass, one of the miracles of creation, and I realize what a shoddy construction I am by comparison. Next you'll have me scrubbing the floor with my tongue. Give a guy a break or I might get shy."
"Okay, I'll allow one humble view," says Toby. "Tell on."
"Can I kiss your clavicle?"
"In a minute," says Toby. "After you get to the point." She's new to flirting, but she's enjoying it.
"You want my point? You talking dirty?"
"Rain check. You can't stop now," says Toby.
"Okay, deal."
The Rev had nailed together a theology to help him rake in the cash. Naturally he had a scriptural foundation for it. Matthew, Chapter 16, Verse 18: "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church."
"It didn't take a rocket-science genius, the Rev would say, to figure out that Peter is the Latin word for rock, and therefore the real, true meaning of 'Peter' refers to petroleum, or oil that comes from rock. 'So this verse, dear friends, is not only about Saint Peter: it is a prophecy, a vision of the Age of Oil, and the proof, dear friends, is right before your eyes, because look! What is more valued by us today than oil?' You have to give it to the rancid bugger."
"He really preached that?" says Toby. Is she supposed to laugh or not? From Zeb's tone she can't tell.
"Don't forget the Oleum part. It was even more important than the Peter half. The Rev could rave on about the Oleum for hours. 'My friends, as we all know, oleum is the Latin word for oil. And indeed, oil is holy throughout the Bible! What else is used for the anointing of priests and prophets and kings? Oil! It's the sign of special election, the consecrated chrism! What more proof do we need of the holiness of our very own oil, put in the earth by God for the special use of the faithful to multiply His works? His Oleum-extraction devices abound on this planet of our Dominion, and he spreads his Oleum bounty among us! Does it not say in the Bible that you should forbear to hide your light under a bushel? And what else can so reliably make the lights go on as oil? That's right! Oil, my friends! The Holy Oleum must not be hidden under a bushel - in other words, left underneath the rocks - for to do so is to flout the Word! Lift up your voices in song, and let the Oleum gush forth in ever stronger and all-blessed streams!' "
"That's an imitation?" says Toby.
"Fuckin' right. I could do the whole spiel standing on my head, I had to listen to it enough. Me and Adam both."
"You're good at it," say
s Toby.
"Adam was better. In the Rev's church - and around the Rev's dinner table too - we didn't pray for forgiveness or even for rain, though God knows we could have used some of each. We prayed for oil. Oh, and natural gas too - the Rev included that in his list of divine gifts for the chosen. Every time we said grace before meals the Rev would point out that it was oil that put the food on the table because it ran the tractors that plowed the fields and fuelled the trucks that delivered the food to the stores, and also the car our devoted mother, Trudy, drove to the store in to buy the food, and the power that made the heat that cooked the food. We might as well be eating and drinking oil - which was true in a way - so fall on your knees!
"Around this point in the speech Adam and me would start kicking each other under the table. The idea was to kick the other one so hard he would yelp or flinch, but not to give any sign yourself, because whoever made a noise would get whacked or have to drink piss. Or worse. But Adam was never a yelper. I admired him for that."
"Not literally?" says Toby. "The piss?"
"Cross my heart," says Zeb. "Now where'd I put that stone-cold heart thing of mine?"
"I thought you liked each other," says Toby. "You and Adam."
"We did. Kicking under the table is a guy thing."
"You were how old?"
"Too old," says Zeb. "Though Adam was older. Only a couple of years older, but he was what the Gardeners would call an old soul. He was wise, I was foolish. It was always like that."
Adam was a skinny little squirt. Though older, he wasn't nearly as strong as Zeb, once Zeb made it past the age of five. Adam was methodical: he contemplated, he thought things through. Zeb was impulsive: he shot from the hip, he let rage take him over. It got him into trouble and got him out of it in about equal measure.
But in combination the two of them were pretty effective. They were joined at the head: Zeb was the bad one who was good at bad things, Adam was the good one who was bad at good things. Or who used good things as a front for his bad things. Adam and Zebulon: bookends, as in the alphabet. That cute A-Z name symmetry was the Rev's idea: he liked to theme-park everything.
Adam was always being held up as an example. Why couldn't Zeb behave well, the way his brother did? Sit up straight, don't squirm, eat properly, your hand is not a fork, don't wipe your face on your shirt, do what your father says, say yes sir and no sir, and so on. That was how Trudy would talk, almost begging; all she wanted was peace and quiet, she didn't really enjoy the consequences of Zeb's pushbacks and sulkiness - the welts and bruises and scars. She wasn't a sadist as such, not like the Rev. But she was the centre of her own universe, big-time. She wanted the perks, and the Rev was the ever-flowing source of the cash that paid for them.