But a word of caution: we honour the Pollinating Insects, and in especial the Bees, but we are now informed that, in addition to the virus-resistant strain introduced after the recent honeybee die-off, the Corps have now developed a hybrid bee. It is not a genetic splice, my Friends. No: it is a greater abomination! Bees are seized while still in larval form, and micro-mechanical systems are inserted into them. Tissue grows around the insert, and when the full adult or "imago" emerges, it is a bee cyborg spy controllable by a CorpSeCorps operator, equipped to transmit, and thus to betray.
The ethical problems raised are troubling: Should we have recourse to insecticides? Is such a mechanized slave bee alive? If so, is it a true Creature of God or something else entirely? We must ponder the deeper implications, my Friends, and pray for guidance.
Let us sing.
THE PEACH OR PLUM
The Peach or Plum that spreads its boughs
Is beauteous at time of flower,
And Birds and Bees and Bats rejoice,
And sip its nectar hour by hour.
And Pollination then takes place:
For every Nut or Seed or Fruit,
A tiny golden particle
Has winged its way, and taken root.
Then swells the oval on the stem,
And slowly ripens, week by week --
Within it stored the nourishment
That Birds and Beasts and Men do seek.
And in each Seed or Fruit or Nut
Is coiled a silver infant Tree
That will arise if planted right,
Unfurling flowers, a joy to see.
When next you eat a golden Peach
And lightly throw away the pit,
Consider how it shines with Life --
God dwelling in the midst of it.
From The God's Gardeners Oral Hymnbook
49
REN
YEAR TWENTY-FIVE
Adam One used to say, If you can't stop the waves, go sailing. Or else, What can't be mended may still be tended. Or else, Without the light, no chance; without the dark, no dance. Which meant that even bad things did some good because they were a challenge and you didn't always know what good effects they might have. Not that the Gardeners ever did any dancing, as such.
So I decided to perform a Meditation, which would be one way of dealing with the fact that there was nothing to do inside the Sticky Zone. If nothing's the problem, work with nothing, Philo the Fog would say. Turn off your mind chatter. Open up your inner eye, your inner ear. See what you can see. Hear what you can hear. Back at the Gardeners, what I'd see would be the pigtails of the girl in front of me and what I'd hear would be the snoring of Philo, because when he was leading Meditation he always went to sleep.
I wasn't much more successful now. I could hear the thump, thump of the bass line coming from the Snakepit and the humming of the mini-fridge, I could see the lights of the street making blurry patterns through the glass bricks of the window, but none of this was spiritually enlightening. So I stopped doing the Meditation and turned on the news.
There was another minor epidemic, they were saying, but nothing to get alarmed about. Viruses and bacteria were always mutating, but I knew the Corporations could always invent treatments for them, and anyway whatever this bug was I didn't have it myself because I'd been in isolation with a double virus barrier protecting me. I was in the safest place I could be.
I switched back to the Snakepit. A fight had broken out. It must have been the Painballers -- the three who'd come in first and the other one.
As I watched, the CorpSeCorps minders moved in. They got one of the Painballers down on the floor, used their tasers on him. The bouncers were fighting now too -- one of them staggered backwards, clutching his eye; then another one hit the bar. It didn't usually take this long to get things under control. Savona and Crimson Petal were still up on the trapezes trying to carry on, but the pole girls were scurrying off the stage. Then they ran back onto it again: the exits behind must be blocked. Oh no, I thought. Then a bottle flew into the camera and smashed it.
I went to another camera, but my hands were shaking and I'd forgotten the key-in, and by the time I'd turned it on and got it focused the Snakepit was a lot emptier. The lights were still on and the music was playing, but the room was a shambles. The customers must have all run out. Savona was lying on the bar: I could tell it was her by the sparkly costume, even though it was half torn off. Her head was bent at a strange angle and there was blood all over her face. Crimson Petal was hanging from the trapeze; one of the ropes was around her neck, and between her legs was the glint of a bottle -- someone must have shoved it up her. Her frills and ruffles were ripped to shreds. She looked like a limp bouquet.
Where was Mordis?
A dark flailing bundle tumbled across the screen: a shadow dance, a kinky ballet. There was the bam! of a door slammed back, and then something that sounded like hooting. Then sirens, in the distance. Feet running.
Then there was shouting in the hallway outside the Sticky Zone and the videoscreen from outside my door lit up, and on it was Mordis, close up, staring in at me with one eye. The other one was closed. His face looked chewed.
"Your name," he whispered.
Then an arm grabbed him around the throat, pulled his head back. One of the Painballers. I could see his hand, holding a slice of bottle: red and blue veins. "Open the fucking door, asshole," he said. "Bitch in heat! Time to share!"
Mordis was howling. What they wanted from him was the door code. "The numbers, the numbers," they were saying.
I saw Mordis for one more instant. There was a gurgling, and he was gone. In his place was the Painballer -- a faceful of scars.
"Open up and we'll let your buddy live," he said. "We won't hurt you." But he was lying because Mordis was already dead.
Then there was more shouting, and then the CorpSeMen must have tasered him, because he howled in his turn and vanished from the screen, and there was a thudding sound like someone kicking a sack.
I went to the Snakepit camera: more CorpSeMen, in riot gear, a swarm of them. They were pushing and dragging the Painballers out the door -- one dead one, three still alive. It would be back to Painball for them -- they should never have been let out, not ever.
Then I realized what would happen. The Sticky Zone was a fortress. No one could get in without the door code, and nobody but Mordis knew that code. That's what he always said. And hadn't told it: he'd saved my life.
But now I was locked inside, with no one to let me out. Oh please, I thought. I don't want to be dead.
50
I told myself not to panic. SeksMart would send a cleaning crew, and they'd realize I was in there, and they'd get someone to work on the lock. They wouldn't leave me in there to starve and dry up like a mummy: when they reopened Scales they'd need me. It wouldn't be at all the same without Mordis -- already I missed him -- but at least I would have a function. I wasn't only a disposable, I was talent. That's what Mordis always said.
So it was just a matter of waiting it out.
I took a shower -- I felt dirty, as if those Painballers really had got in, or as if I had the blood of Mordis all over me.
Then I did another Meditation, a real one. Put Light around Mordis, I prayed. Let him go into the Universe. May his Spirit go in peace. I pictured him flying up out of his demolished body in the form of a small, brown beady-eyed bird.
The next day, two bad things happened. First, I turned on the news. The minor epidemic they'd been talking about earlier wasn't behaving in the usual way -- a local outbreak, one they could contain. Now it was an emergency. They showed a map of the world, with the hotspots lighting up in red -- Brazil, Taiwan, Saudi Arabia, Bombay, Paris, Berlin -- it was like watching the planet being spraygunned. It was an eruptive plague, they said, and the thing was spreading fast -- no, not even spreading, breaking out at the same time in cities far apart, which wasn't the normal pattern. Ordinarily the Corps would have called for lie
s and cover-ups, and we'd hear something like the real story only in rumours, so the fact that all this was right out there on the news showed how serious it was -- the Corps couldn't keep the lid on.
The news jockeys were trying to keep calm. The experts didn't know what the superbug was, but it was a pandemic for sure, and a lot of people were dying fast -- just sort of melting. As soon as they said, "No need for panic," in that eerie calm tone with those glued-on smiles, I could tell it was really serious.
The second bad thing was that some guys in biosuits came into the Snakepit and stuffed the dead people into body bags and took them out. But they didn't check out the second floor, although I screamed and screamed. I guess they couldn't hear me because the Sticky Zone walls were thick and the Snakepit music was still going and it must have drowned me out. That was lucky for me, because if I'd left the Sticky Zone right then I'd have caught what everyone else was catching. So it wasn't really a bad thing, but it felt like it at the time.
The next day the news was even worse. The plague was spreading, and there was rioting and looting and killing going on, and the CorpSeCorps had just more or less vanished: they must've been dying too.
And a few days after that, there wasn't any more news.
Now I was really scared. But I told myself that although I couldn't get out, nobody else could get in, and I'd be okay as long as the solar didn't break down. It would keep the water flowing and the minifridge running, and the freezer, and the air filters. Air filtering was a plus, because it would soon be smelling very bad out there. And I would take one day at a time and see what came of it.
I knew I'd have to be practical, or I'd lose hope and slide into a Fallow state and maybe never come out of it. So I opened the minifridge and the freezer and counted all the stuff inside -- the Joltbars and energy drinks and snacks, and the frozen ChickieNobs and the faux fish. If I ate only a third of every meal instead of half, and saved the rest instead of tossing it down the chute, I'd have enough for at least six weeks.
I'd been trying to call Amanda, but she hadn't answered. All I could do was leave text messages: CUM 2 SCLS. My hope was that she'd get the texts and realize something was wrong, and then she'd come to Scales and figure out how to unlock the door. I'd kept my cellphone turned on all the time in case she called, but now when I tried to phone or even text I got NO SERVICE. Once I did get a short message -- IM OK -- but the channels must have been jammed with frantic people trying to reach their families, because I didn't get anything more.
Then I guess the calling must have thinned out as people died, and I was able to get through. No picture, just her voice. "Where are you?" I said, and she said, "Nicked a solarcar. Ohio."
"Don't go into the cities," I said. "Don't let anyone touch you." I wanted to tell her what I'd been learning from the news, but she'd faded out. After that I couldn't even get a signal. The relay towers must have gone down.
You create your own reality, the horoscopes always said, and the Gardeners said that too. So I tried to create the reality of Amanda. Now she was in her khaki desert-girl outfit. Now she'd stopped to have a drink of water. Now she was digging up a root and eating it. Now she was walking again. She was coming towards me, hour by hour. She wouldn't get the sickness, and no one would kill her, because she was so smart and strong. She was smiling. Now she was singing. But I knew I was just making it up.
51
I hadn't seen Amanda except on the phone for such a long time, not since I'd started working at Scales. Before that, there had been a period when I hadn't even known where she was. I'd lost touch when Lucerne had thrown out my purple phone, back when I'd still been living inside the HelthWyzer Compound. At that time I thought I'd never see Amanda again -- that she was gone out of my life forever.
That was what I still believed as I sat on the bullet train on my way to the Martha Graham Academy. I was feeling very alone and sorry for myself: I hadn't lost only Amanda, I'd lost everything in my life that had any meaning. The Adams and the Eves, or some of them, such as Toby and Zeb. Amanda. But most of all, Jimmy. I was over the worst of the hurt he'd caused me, but there was a dull ache. He'd been so sweet to me, then he'd shut me out as if I wasn't really there. That was a cold and miserable feeling. I was so depressed that I'd even given up the idea that I might get together with Jimmy again, at Martha Graham: it seemed like a far-fetched daydream.
By the time I was on that bullet train it had been a long time since I'd been in love with Jimmy. No: it had been a long time since Jimmy had been in love with me -- when I was being honest and not only angry and sad, I knew that I was still in love with Jimmy. I'd slept with other boys, but I'd just been going through the motions. I was going to Martha Graham partly to get away from Lucerne, but also I had to do something so I might as well get an education. That's how they talked about it, as if an education was a thing that you got, like a dress. I didn't care what happened to me one way or the other, I just felt grey.
That was not at all the Gardener way of thinking. The Gardeners said the only real education was the education of the Spirit. But I'd forgotten what that meant.
Martha Graham was an artistic school named after a famous ancient dancer, so dance courses were featured at it. Since I had to take something I took Dance Calisthenics and Dramatic Expression -- you didn't need any background or math for those. I figured I could get a job in one of the Corps, leading the in-corp noon-hour exercise programs that the better ones had. Tone to Music, Yoga for Middle Management -- one of those.
The Martha Graham campus was like the Buenavista Condos -- it had been classy once, but now it was falling apart, and had mould issues, and the ceilings leaked. I couldn't eat the stuff in the cafeteria because who knew what was in it -- I still had a lot of trouble with animal protein, especially if it might be organs and noses. But I felt more at home there than I had in the HelthWyzer Compound, because at least Martha Graham wasn't so shiny and fake-looking and it didn't smell of chemical cleaning products. Or any cleaning products at all.
Every freshperson at Martha Graham had to share a suite. The roommate I was given was called Buddy the Third; I didn't see much of him. He was in Football, but the Martha Graham team always got pulverized and Buddy the Third was drunk or stoned a lot as a result. I'd lock the door on my side of our shared bathroom because the guys on the football team were known for date rape and I didn't think Buddy would even bother with the date part of it, but I could hear him in there throwing up in the mornings.
There was a Happicuppa franchise on campus, and I'd go there for breakfast because they had vegan muffins, I wouldn't have to listen to Buddy puking, and I could use their washroom, which stank less than mine. One day I was walking up to the Happicuppa, and there was Bernice. I recognized her right away. I was really startled to see her. It was shocking -- like a jolt of electricity. All the guilt I'd once felt about her but had more or less forgotten came flooding back.
She was wearing a green T-shirt with a big G on it and holding a sign that said, A HAPPICUPPA IS A CRAPPICUPPA. There were two other kids with the same T-shirt, but different signs: BREW OF EVIL, DON'T DRINK DEATH. I could see from the outfits and facial expressions that they were extreme fanatic ultra-greens, and they were picketing the place. This was the year when there were all the Happicuppa riots -- I'd seen them onscreen.
Bernice wasn't any prettier than she used to be. If anything, she was chunkier, and her scowling was fiercer. She didn't spot me, so I had a choice: I could have gone right past her and into the Happicuppa, pretending I hadn't seen her, or I could have turned around and slid away. But I found myself going right back into Gardener mode, remembering all those teachings about taking responsibility and if you killed a thing you had to eat it. And I had killed Burt, in a way. Or I felt I had.
So I didn't dodge it. Instead I went right up to her and said, "Bernice! It's me -- Ren!"
She jumped as if I'd kicked her. Then she focused on me. "So I see," she said in a sour voice.
"Let me buy
you a coffee," I said. I must've been really nervous to say that because why would Bernice want a coffee from a place she was picketing?
She must have thought I was making fun of her because she said, "Piss off."
"Sorry," I said. "I didn't mean it that way. How about a water, then? We could drink it over there, by the statue." The statue of Martha Graham was a sort of mascot: it showed her being Judith, holding up the head of her enemy Holofernes, and the students had painted the head's neck stump red and stuck steel wool under Martha's armpits. There was a flat base right underneath the Holofernes head where you could sit.
She gave me another scowl. "You are so backslidden," she said. "Bottled water is evil. Don't you know anything?"
I could have called her a bitch and just walked away from everything. But this was my one chance to put things right, at least with myself. "Bernice," I said, "I want to make you an apology. So just tell me what you can drink, and I'll get some of it, and we'll go someplace and drink it."
She was still grumpy -- no one could hold a grudge like her -- but after I'd said we needed to put Light around it, which must've triggered off the better Gardener part of her, she said there was this organic mix in a recyclable carton made of pressed kudzu leaves, you could get it at the campus supermarkette, and she still had some picketing to do, but by the time I came back with the stuff she could take a break.
We sat underneath the head of Holofernes with the two boxes of liquid mulch I'd bought, and the taste brought back my early days at the Gardeners -- how unhappy I'd been at first, and how Bernice had stuck up for me then. "Didn't you go to the West Coast?" I asked her. "After all that ..."
"Yeah," she said. "Well, I'm back here now." She said that Veena had backslidden and joined an entirely different religion called the Known Fruits, who claimed it was a mark of God's favour to be rich because By their fruits ye shall know them, and fruits meant bank accounts. Veena had gone into a HelthWyzer vitamin-supplements franchise, and had quickly expanded to five outlets, and was doing very well. Bernice said the West Coast was perfect for that because although they all did stuff like yoga and said it was Spiritual, they were really just twisted, fish-crunching, materialistic body-worshippers out there, with facelifts and bimplants and genework and totally warped values.