The Year of the Flood

  Toby wrapped it in gauze from the Wellness Clinic as she'd seen Pilar do, and lowered the bundle over the edge of the rooftop on a string. In a couple of days, after the flies had laid their eggs and the eggs had had time to hatch, they'd haul it up again and harvest the maggots, because where there was rotting flesh, maggots were sure to follow. Pilar kept a supply of maggots always on hand for therapeutic use in case of need, but Toby had never seen them in action.

  According to Pilar, maggot therapy was very ancient. It had been discarded as out of date along with leeches and bleeding, but during the First World War the doctors had noticed that soldiers' wounds healed much faster if maggots were present. Not only did the helpful creatures eat the decaying flesh, they killed necrotic bacteria, and were thus a great help in preventing gangrene.

  The maggots created a pleasant sensation, said Pilar -- a gentle nibbling, as of minnows -- but they needed to be watched carefully, because if they ran out of decay and began to invade the living flesh there would be pain and bleeding. Otherwise, the wound would heal cleanly.

  Pilar and Katuro sponged Zeb's cuts with vinegar, then rubbed on honey. Zeb was no longer bleeding, though he was pale. Toby got him a drink of Sumac.

  Katuro said that pleebland street-fight glass was notoriously septic, so they should apply the maggots right away to avoid blood poisoning. Pilar used tweezers to place her stored maggots inside a fold of gauze, taping the gauze to Zeb. By the time the maggots had chewed through the gauze, Zeb would surely be festering enough to be attractive to them.

  "Someone has to stay on maggot watch," said Pilar. "Twenty-four hours a day. In case the maggots start to eat our dear Zeb."

  "Or in case I start to eat them," said Zeb. "Land shrimp. Same body plan. Very nice fried. Great source of lipids." He was keeping up a good front, but his voice was weak.

  Toby took the first five hours. Adam One had heard about Zeb's accident and came to visit. "Discretion is the better part of valour," he said mildly.

  "Yeah, well, there were too many of them," said Zeb. "Anyway I put three of them in the hospital."

  "Not a thing to be proud of," said Adam One. Zeb frowned.

  "Foot soldiers use their feet," he said. "That's why I wear boots."

  "We'll discuss this later, when you're feeling better," said Adam One.

  "I'm feeling fine," Zeb growled.

  Nuala bustled in to take over from Toby. "Have you made him some Willow?" she said. "Oh dear, I hate those maggots! Here, let me prop you up! Can't we raise the screening? We need a breeze through! Zeb, is this what you mean by Urban Bloodshed Limitation? You are so naughty!" She was twittering, and Toby felt like kicking her.

  Lucerne arrived next, blotting tears. "This is terrible! What's happened, who did ..."

  "Oh, he's been so bad!" said Nuala conspiratorially. "Haven't you, Zeb? Fighting with the pleeblanders," she whispered delightedly.

  "Toby," said Lucerne, ignoring Nuala, "how serious is it? Will he ... is he ..." She sounded like some old-time TV actress playing a deathbed scene.

  "I'm fine," said Zeb. "Now buzz off and leave me alone!"

  He didn't want anyone fiddling with him, he said. Except Pilar. And Katuro, if absolutely necessary. And Toby, because at least she was silent. Lucerne went away, weeping angrily, but there was nothing Toby could do about that.

  Rumour was the daily news among the Gardeners. The older boys heard quickly about Zeb's battle -- it had now become a battle -- and the next afternoon Shackleton and Crozier came to see him. He was asleep -- Toby had slipped some Poppy into his Willow tea -- so they tiptoed around him, speaking in low voices and trying for a peek at his wound.

  "He ate a bear once," said Shackleton. "When he was flying for Bearlift, that time they were trying to save the polar bears. His plane crashed and he walked out -- it took months!" The older boys had many such heroic tales about Zeb. "He said bears look just like a man when they're skinned."

  "He ate the co-pilot. After he was dead, though," Crozier said.

  "Can we see the maggots?"

  "Has he got gangrene?"

  "Gang! Grene!" shouted little Oates, who'd tagged along after his brothers.

  "Shut up, Oatie!"

  "Ow! You meat-breath!"

  "Off you go now," said Toby. "Zeb -- Adam Seven needs his rest."

  Adam One persisted in thinking that Shackleton and Crozier and young Oates would turn out just fine, but Toby had her doubts. Philo the Fog was supposed to be their stand-in father, but he wasn't always mentally available.

  Pilar took the night watches: she didn't sleep much at night anyway, she said. Nuala volunteered for the mornings. Toby took over during the afternoons. She checked the maggots every hour. Zeb had no temperature, and there was no fresh blood.

  Once he began healing he was restless, so Toby played dominoes with him, then cribbage, and finally chess. The chess set was Pilar's: black was ants, white was bees; she'd carved it herself. "They used to think the queen of the bees was a king," Pilar said. "Since if you killed that bee, the rest lost their purpose. That's why the chess king doesn't move around much on the board -- it's because the queen bee always stays inside the hive." Toby wasn't sure this was true: did the queen bee always stay inside the hive? Except for swarming, of course, and for nuptial flights ... She stared at the board, trying to see the pattern. From outside the Fallows Recovery Hut came the sound of Nuala's voice mingling with the chirping of the smaller children. "The five senses, through which the world comes to us ... seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling, tasting ... what do we use for tasting? That's right ... Oates, there is no need for you to lick Melissa. Now pop your tongues back into your tongue containers and close the lids." Toby had an image -- no, a taste. She could taste the skin of Zeb's arm, the salt on it ...

  "Checkmate," said Zeb. "Ants win again." Zeb always played Ants, to give Toby an opening advantage.

  "Oh," said Toby. "I didn't see that." Now she was wondering -- unworthy thought -- whether there was something going on between Nuala and Zeb. Though overblown, Nuala was lush, and oddly babyish. Some men found that quality alluring.

  Zeb swept the pieces from the board and began to set them up again. "Do me a favour?" he said. He didn't wait for a yes.

  Lucerne was having a lot of headaches, he said. His voice was neutral, but there was an edge to it, by which Toby understood that the headaches might not be real; or else that they were real enough, but Zeb found them boring anyway.

  Could Toby stop by with some of her bottles the next time Lucerne had a migraine, he said, and see what she could manage? Because he himself sure as hell couldn't do anything for Lucerne's hormones, if that's what it was. "She's been giving me a lot of grief," he said. "For being away too much. Makes her jealous." He grinned like a shark. "Maybe she'll hear sense, from you."

  So. The bloom is off the rose, thought Toby. And the rose doesn't like it.

  22

  Saint Allan Sparrow of Clean Air: not a Day that had so far lived up to its name. Toby picked her way through the crowded pleebland streets, carrying her bag of dried herbals and bottled medicinals hidden under her loose coverall. The afternoon thunderstorm had cleared the fumes and particulate somewhat, but she was wearing a black nose cone anyway, in honour of Saint Sparrow. As was the custom.

  She felt safer on the street since Blanco had been put into Painball; still, she never strolled or loitered, but -- remembering Zeb's instructions -- also she didn't run. It was best to look purposeful, as if you were on a mission. She ignored the passing stares, the anti-Gardener slurs, but she was alert to sudden movement or to anyone coming too close. A pleebrat gang had once grabbed her mushrooms; luckily for them, she hadn't been carrying anything lethal that time.

  She was heading towards the Cheese Factory building to fulfil Zeb's request. This was the third time she'd gone. If Lucerne's headaches were real and not just a bid for attention, an over-the-counter double-strength painkiller/soporific from HelthWyzer could have handled the probl
em, either by curing her or killing her. But Corps pills were taboo among the Gardeners, so she'd been using extract of Willow, followed by Valerian, with some Poppy mixed in; though not too much Poppy, as it could be addictive.

  "What's in this?" Lucerne would say each time Toby had treated her. "It tastes better when Pilar makes it."

  Toby would refrain from saying that Pilar had in fact made it, and would urge Lucerne to swallow the dose. Then she'd put a cold compress on her forehead and sit by her bedside, trying to tune out Lucerne's whining.

  The Gardeners were expected to avoid any broadcasting of their personal problems: foisting your mental junk on others was frowned on. For drinking Life there are two cups, Nuala taught the small children. What's in each of them might be exactly the same, but my, oh my, the taste is so different!

  The No Cup is bitter, the Yes Cup is yummy --

  Now, which one would you rather have in your tummy?

  This was a basic Gardener credo. But though Lucerne could mouth the slogans, she hadn't internalized the teachings: Toby could tell a sham when she saw one, being a sham herself. As soon as Toby was locked into the ministering position, everything that was festering inside Lucerne would come roiling out. Toby would nod and say nothing, hoping to convey the impression of sympathy, though in reality she'd be considering how many drops of Poppy it would take to knock Lucerne unconscious before she, Toby, gave in to her worst impulses and throttled her.

  As she quick-stepped through the streets, Toby anticipated Lucerne's complaints. If true to pattern, they'd be about Zeb: why was he never there when Lucerne needed him? How had she ended up in this unsanitary septic tank with this clutch of dreamers -- I don't mean you, Toby, you've got some sense -- who didn't understand the first thing about how the world really worked? She was buried alive here with a monster of egotism, with a man who cared only about his own needs. Talking to him was like talking to a potato -- no, to a stone. He didn't hear you, he never told you what he was thinking, he was hard as flint.

  Not that Lucerne hadn't tried. She wanted to be a responsible person, she really did believe that Adam One was right about so many things, and nobody loved animals more than she did, but really there was a limit and she did not believe for one instant that slugs had any central nervous system, and to say they had souls was to make a mockery of the whole idea of souls, and she resented that, because nobody had more respect for souls than she did, she'd always been a very spiritual person. As for saving the world, nobody wanted to save the world as much as she did, but no matter how much the Gardeners deprived themselves of proper food and clothing and even proper showers, for heaven's sake, and felt more high and mighty and virtuous than everyone else, it wouldn't really change anything. They were just like those people who used to whip themselves during the Middle Ages -- those flagrants.

  "Flagellants," Toby had said, the first time this came up.

  Then Lucerne had said she didn't mean it about the Gardeners, she was just feeling gloomy because of the headache. Also because they looked down on her for coming from a Corps, and for ditching her husband and running away with Zeb. They didn't trust her. They thought she was a slut. They made dirty jokes about her behind her back. Or the children did -- didn't they?

  "The children make dirty jokes about everyone," Toby had said. "Including me."

  "You?" Lucerne had said, opening her large eyes with their dark lashes. "Why would they make dirty jokes about you?" Nothing sexual about you, was what she meant. Flat as a board, back and front. Worker bee.

  There was a plus to that: at least Lucerne wasn't jealous of her. In that respect, Toby stood alone among the Gardener women.

  "They don't look down on you," Toby had said. "They don't think you're a slut. Now just relax and close your eyes and picture the Willow moving through your body, up to your head, where the pain is."

  It was true that the Gardeners didn't look down on Lucerne, or not for the reasons she thought they did. They might resent the way she slacked off on chores and could never learn how to chop a carrot, they might be scornful of the messiness of her living space and her pathetic attempt at windowsill tomato-growing and the amount of time she spent in bed, but they didn't care about her infidelity, or her adultery, or whatever it had once been called.

  That was because the Gardeners didn't bother with marriage certificates. They endorsed fidelity as long as a pair-bonding was current but there was no record of the first Adam and the first Eve going through a wedding, so in their eyes neither the clergymen of other religions nor any secular official had the power to marry people. As for the CorpSeCorps, they favoured official marriages only as a means for capturing your iris image, your fingerscans, and your DNA, all the better to track you with. Or so the Gardeners claimed, and this was one claim of theirs that Toby could believe without reservation.

  Among the Gardeners, weddings were simple affairs. Both parties had to proclaim in front of witnesses that they loved each other. They exchanged green leaves to symbolize growth and fertility and jumped over a bonfire to symbolize the energy of the universe, then declared themselves married and went to bed. For divorces they did the whole thing in reverse: a public statement of non-love and separation, the exchange of dead twigs, and a swift hop over a heap of cold ashes.

  A standing complaint of Lucerne's -- which was sure to come up if Toby wasn't quick enough with the Poppy -- was that Zeb had never invited her to do the green-leaf and bonfire-leaping ceremony with him. "Not that I think it means anything," she'd say. "But he must think it does, because he's one of them, right? So by not doing it, he's refusing commitment. Don't you agree?"

  "I never know what anyone thinks," Toby would say.

  "But if it was you, wouldn't you feel he was shirking his responsibility?"

  "Why don't you ask him?" Toby would say. "Ask why he hasn't ..." Was proposed the right word?

  "He'd just get angry." Lucerne would sigh. "He was so different when I first knew him!"

  Then Toby would be treated to the story of Lucerne and Zeb -- a story Lucerne never tired of telling.

  23

  The story went like this. Lucerne met Zeb at the AnooYoo Spa-in-the-Park -- did Toby know the AnooYoo? Oh. Well, it was a fantastic place to unwind and get yourself resurfaced. This was right after it was built and they were still putting in the landscaping. The fountains, the lawns, the gardens, the bushes. The lumiroses. Didn't Toby just love lumiroses? She'd never seen them? Oh. Well, maybe sometime ...

  Lucerne loved to get up at dawn, she was an early riser then, she liked to watch the sunrise; it was because she'd always been so sensitive to colour and light, she'd paid so much attention to the aesthetic values in her homes -- the homes she'd decorated. She loved to include at least one room in sunrise colours -- the sunrise room, she would think of that room.

  Also she was restless in those days. She was really very restless, because her husband was cold as a crypt, and they never made love any more because he was too busy with his career. And she was a sensual person, she always had been, and her sensual nature was being starved to death. Which was bad for the health, and especially for the immune system. She'd read the studies on that!

  So there she was, prowling around at dawn in her pink kimono and crying a little, and contemplating a divorce from her HelthWyzer Corp husband, or a separation at least, though she realized it would not be the best thing for Ren, so young then and fond of her father, not that he paid enough attention to Ren either. And suddenly there was Zeb, in the rising light, like a -- well, like a vision, all by himself, planting a lumirose bush. One of those roses that glow in the dark, the scent was so divine -- had Toby ever smelled them? -- she didn't suppose so because the Gardeners were death on anything new, but those roses were really pretty.

  So there was a man, in the dawn, kneeling on the ground and looking as if he was holding a bouquet of live coals.

  What restless woman can resist a man with a shovel in one hand and a glowing rose bush in the other, and a m
oderately crazed glitter in his eyes that might be mistaken for love? thought Toby. On Zeb's part there must have been something to be said for an attractive woman in a pink kimono, a loosely tied pink kimono, on a lawn in a pearly sunrise, especially when tearful. Because Lucerne was attractive. Simply from a visual point of view, she was very attractive. Even if whining, which was the way Toby saw her mostly.

  Lucerne had wafted across the lawn, aware of her bare feet on the damp cool grass, aware of the brush of fabric across her thighs, aware of the tightness around her waist and the looseness below her collarbone. Billowing, like waves. She'd stopped in front of Zeb, who'd been watching her come towards him as if he'd been a sailor dumped into the ocean by mistake and she'd been either a mermaid or a shark. (Toby supplied these images: Lucerne said Fate.) They were both just so aware, she told Toby; she'd always been aware of other peoples' awareness, she was like a cat, or, or ... she had that talent, or was it a curse -- that was how she knew. So she could feel from the inside what Zeb was feeling as he watched her. That was overwhelming!

  It was impossible to explain this in words, she'd say, as if nothing of the sort could ever have happened to Toby herself.

  Anyway, there they stood, though they'd already foreseen what was about to happen -- what had to happen. Fear and lust pushed them together and held them apart, equally.

  Lucerne did not call it lust. She called it longing.

  At this point, Toby would have an image of the set of salt and pepper shakers that used to be on the kitchen table in her long-ago childhood home: a little china hen, a little china rooster. The hen had been the salt, the rooster had been the pepper. Salty Lucerne had stood there in front of peppery Zeb, smiling and looking up, and she'd asked him a simple question -- how many rose bushes would there be or something, she couldn't remember, so mesmerized was she by Zeb's ... (Here Toby would turn off her attention because she didn't want to hear about the biceps, triceps, and other muscular attractions of Zeb. Was she herself immune to them? No. Was she therefore jealous of this part of the story? Yes. We must be mindful of our own animal-nature tendencies and biases at all times, said Adam One.)