"We'll do our best," says Toby.
This seems to puzzle them. "What is 'best'?" says the man.
We step out from under the trees, into the open sunlight and the sound of the waves, and walk over the soft dry sand, down to the hard wet strip above the water's edge. The water slides up, then falls back with a gentle hiss, like a big snake breathing. Bright junk litters the shore: shards of plastic, empty cans, broken glass.
"I thought they were going to jump me," I say.
"They smelled you," says Toby. "They smelled the estrogen. They thought you were in season. They only mate when they turn blue. It's like baboons."
"How do you know all that?" I say. Croze told me about the blue penises but not about the estrogen.
"From Ivory Bill," says Toby. "The MaddAddams helped to design that feature. It was supposed to make life simpler. Facilitate mate selection. Eliminate romantic pain. Now we should keep very quiet."
Romantic pain, I think. I wonder what Toby knows about that?
There's a line of deserted high-rises standing in the offshore water: I remember them from our Gardener trips to the Heritage Park beach. It was dry land out there before the sea levels rose so much, and all the hurricanes: we'd learned that in school. Gulls are soaring and settling on the flat roofs.
We can get eggs there, I think. And fish. Jacklight, Zeb taught us, if you're desperate. Make a torch, the fish will swim to the light. There's a few crab holes in the sand, small ones. Nettles growing farther up the beach. You can eat seaweed too. All those Saint Euell things.
I'm wishing again: planning lunch, when in the back of my head is just plain fear. We can never do it. We'll never get Amanda back. We'll be killed.
Toby's found some tracks in the wet sand -- several people with shoes or boots, and the place where they took the shoes off, maybe to wash their feet, and then where they put the shoes back on and headed up towards the trees.
They could be in among those trees right now, looking out. They could be watching us. They could be aiming.
On top of those tracks is another set. Barefoot. "Someone limping," whispers Toby, and I think, It must be Snowman. The crazy man who lives in a tree.
We slip our packsacks off and leave them where the sand ends and the grass and weeds begin, under the first trees. Toby says we don't need them weighing us down: we need our arms free.
75
TOBY. SAINT TERRY AND ALL WAYFARERS
YEAR TWENTY-FIVE
So, God, thinks Toby. What's Your view? Supposing You exist. Tell me now, please, because this may be the end of it: once we tangle with the Painballers, we don't have a cat's chance in a bonfire, the way I see it.
Are the new people Your idea of an improved model? Is this what the first Adam was supposed to be? Will they replace us? Or do You intend to shrug your shoulders and carry on with the present human race? If so, you've chosen some odd marbles: a clutch of one-time scientists, a handful of renegade Gardeners, two psychotics on the loose with a nearly dead woman. It's hardly the survival of the fittest, except for Zeb; but even Zeb's tired.
Then there's Ren. Couldn't you have picked someone less fragile? Less innocent? A little tougher? If she were an animal, what would she be? Mouse? Thrush? Deer in the headlights? She'll fall apart at the crucial moment: I should have left her back there on the beach. But that would prolong the inevitable, because if I go down, so will she. Even if she runs, it's too far back to the cobb house: she'll never make it, and even if she outruns them she'll get lost. And who's going to protect her from the dogs and pigs, in the wild woods? Not the blue folks back there. Not if the Painballers have a spraygun that works. Much worse for her if she doesn't die immediately.
The Human moral keyboard is limited, Adam One used to say: there's nothing you can play on it that hasn't been played before. And, my dear Friends, I am sorry to say this, but it has its lower notes.
She stops, checks the rifle. Safety off.
Left foot, right foot, quietly along. The faint sounds of her feet on the fallen leaves hit her ears like shouts. How visible, how audible I am, she thinks. Everything in the forest is watching. They're waiting for blood, they can smell it, they can hear it running through my veins, katoush. Above her head, clustering in the treetops, the crows are treacherous: Hawhawhaw! They want her eyes, those crows.
Yet each flower, each twig, each pebble, shines as though illuminated from within, as once before, on her first day in the Garden. It's the stress, it's the adrenalin, it's a chemical effect: she knows this well enough. But why is it built in? she thinks. Why are we designed to see the world as supremely beautiful just as we're about to be snuffed? Do rabbits feel the same as the fox teeth bite down on their necks? Is it mercy?
She pauses, turns, smiles at Ren. Do I look reassuring? she wonders. Calm and in control? Do I look as if I know what the hell I'm doing? I'm not up to this. I'm not fast enough, I'm too old, I'm rusty, I don't have the whiplash reflexes, I'm weighed down with scruples. Forgive me, Ren. I'm leading you to doom. I pray that if I miss we both die quickly. No bees to save us this time.
What Saint should I call upon? Who has the resolution and the skill? The ruthlessness. The judgment. The accuracy.
Dear Leopard, dear Wolf, dear Liobam: lend me your Spirits now.
76
REN. SAINT TERRY AND ALL WAYFARERS
YEAR TWENTY-FIVE
As soon as we hear voices we go forward very silently. Heel on the ground, said Toby, then roll forward on the foot, other heel on the ground. That way nothing dry snaps.
The voices are men. We can smell the smoke from their fire, and another smell: charred meat. I realize how hungry I am: I can feel myself drooling. I try to think about this hunger instead of being scared.
We peer through the leaves. It's them all right: the one with the longer dark beard, the one with the light stubbly beard and the shaved head that's growing in. I remember everything about them, and I feel like throwing up. It's hate and fear grabbing at my stomach and sending tendrils through my whole body.
But now I see Amanda, and I feel so light all of a sudden. As if I could fly.
Her hands are free, but there's a rope around her neck, with the other end tied to the leg of the dark-bearded guy. She's still wearing her khaki desert-girl outfit, though it's filthier than ever. Her face is smudged with dirt, her hair is dull and stringy. She has a purple bruise under one eye, and there are other bruises on the bare parts of her arms. She still has some of the orange nail polish on her fingers from Scales. Seeing it makes me want to cry.
She's only skin and bones. But the two of them don't look so fat themselves.
I feel myself breathing fast. Toby takes hold of my arm and gives it a squeeze. That means Keep calm. She turns her brown face towards me and smiles a shrunken-head smile; the edges of her teeth glint through her lips, the muscles of her jaws tighten, and all of a sudden I feel sorry for those two men. Then she lets go of my arm and lifts the rifle, very slowly.
The two men are sitting cross-legged, broiling chunks of meat on sticks over the coals. Rakunk meat. The black-and-white-striped tail is on the ground, over to the side. There's a spraygun on the ground too. Toby must have seen it. I can hear her thinking: If I shoot one of them, will I have time to shoot the other one before he can shoot me?
"Maybe it's some fuckin' savages thing," the dark-bearded one is saying. "Blue paint."
"Nah. Tattoos," says the shorthair.
"Who'd get their dick tattooed?" says the bearded one.
"Savages will tattoo anything," says the other. "It's some cannibal thing."
"You been watching too many dumb movies."
"Bet they'd human-sacrifice her in about two minutes," says the bearded one. "After they all had sex with her." They look over at Amanda, but she's staring at the ground. The bearded one jerks the rope. "We're talkin' to you, bitch," he says. Amanda raises her head.
"A sex toy you can eat," says the shorthair, and the two of them laugh. "You see the
bimplants on those bitches, though?"
"Not bimplants, they were real. Way to find out, cut them open. The fake ones've got, like, some kind of gel in them. Maybe we could go back there, do a trade," says the bearded one. "With the savages. They get this one, they seem to want her so much, stick their blue dicks into her, and we get some of those hot babes of theirs. Fuckin' good deal!"
I see Amanda as they see her: used up, worn out. Worthless.
"Why trade?" says the shorthair. "Why not just go back and shoot the fuckers?"
"Not enough juice in this thing to shoot all of them. Cellpack's really low. They'd figure that out, they'd rush us. Tear us apart and eat us."
"We got to get farther away," says the shorthair, alarmed now. "Thirty of them, two of us. What if they sneak up on us in the dark?"
There's a pause while they think about this. My skin is crawling all over, I hate them so much. I wonder why Toby's waiting. Why doesn't she just kill them? Then I think, she's old Gardener -- she can't do it, not in cold blood. It's against her religion.
"Not too bad," says the bearded one, lifting a skewer from the coals. "We can bag another one of these tasty little suckers tomorrow."
"We gonna feed her?" says the shorthair. He's licking his fingers.
"Give her some of yours," says the bearded one. "She's no use to us dead."
"No use to me dead," says the shorthair. "You're such a pervert you'd plank a fuckin' corpse."
"Speaking of which, your turn first. Get the pump primed. I hate a dry fuck."
"It was me first yesterday."
"So, we arm-wrestle?"
Then suddenly there's a fourth person in the clearing -- a naked man, but not one of the green-eyed beautiful ones. This one is emaciated and scabby. He has a long scraggly beard, and he looks very crazy. But I know him. Or I think I know him. Is it Jimmy?
He's carrying a spraygun, and he has it aimed it at the two men. He's going to shoot them. He has that kind of maniac focus.
But he'll shoot Amanda too, because the dark-bearded guy sees him and scrambles up onto his knees and pulls Amanda in front of him, one arm around her neck. The shorthair ducks in behind them. Jimmy hesitates, but he doesn't lower the spraygun.
"Jimmy!" I scream from inside the shrubbery. "Don't! That's Amanda!"
He must think the bushes are talking to him. His face turns. I come out from behind the leaves.
"Great! The other bimbo," says the bearded one. "Now we'll have one each!" He's grinning. The shorthair crouches forward, reaches for their spraygun.
Toby steps into the clearing. She has the rifle up and aimed. "Don't touch that," she says to the shorthair. Her voice is strong and clear but dead flat even. She must sound scary to him, and look it too -- skinny, tattered, teeth bared. Like a TV banshee, like a walking skeleton; like someone with nothing to lose.
The shorthair freezes. The one holding Amanda doesn't know which way to turn: Jimmy's in front of him, but Toby's off to the side. "Back off! I'll break her neck," he says to all of us. His voice is very loud: that means he's afraid.
"I might care about that, but he doesn't," Toby says, meaning Jimmy. To me: "Get that spraygun. Don't let him grab you." To the shorthair: "Lie down." To me: "Watch your ankles." To the bearded one: "Let go of her."
This is very fast, but at the same time slowed down. The voices are coming from far away; the sun's so bright it hurts me; the light crackles on our faces; we glare and sparkle, as if electricity's running all over us like water. I can almost see into the bodies -- everyone's bodies. The veins, the tendons, the blood flowing. I can hear their hearts, like thunder coming nearer.
I think I might faint. But I can't, because I need to help Toby. I don't know how, but I run over. So close I can smell them. Rancid sweat, oily hair. Snatch up their spraygun.
"Around behind him," Toby tells me. To the Painballer: "Hands behind your head." To me: "Shoot him in the back if you don't see those hands quick." She's talking as if I know how to work this thing. To Jimmy, she says, "Easy now," as if he's a big frightened animal.
All this time Amanda has kept still, but when the dark-bearded one lets go of her she moves like a snake. She pulls the rope noose up and over her head and whips the guy across the face with it. Then she kicks him in the nuts. I can tell she doesn't have a lot of strength left, but she uses all she has, and when he doubles over on the ground she kicks the other one. Then she grabs a stone and whacks each of them over the head, and there's blood. Then she drops the stone and hobbles over to me. She's crying, big gulping sobs, and I know it must have been very terrible, those days when I wasn't there, because it takes more than a lot to make Amanda cry.
"Oh, Amanda," I say to her. "I'm so sorry."
Jimmy's swaying on his feet. "Are you real?" he says to Toby. He looks so bewildered. He rubs his eyes.
"As real as you," says Toby. "You'd better tie them up," she says to me. "Do a good job. When they come out of it they're going to be very angry."
Amanda wipes her face on her sleeve. Then we start knotting the two of them together, the hands behind the backs, a loop around each neck. We could use more rope, but it will do for now.
"Is it you?" says Jimmy. "I think I've seen you before."
I walk towards him, slowly and carefully because he still has his gun. "Jimmy," I say. "It's Ren. Remember me? You can put that down. It's okay now." It's how you'd say it to a child.
He lowers the spraygun and I wrap my arms around him and give him a long hug. He's shivering, but his skin's burning hot.
"Ren?" he says. "Are you dead?"
"No, Jimmy. I'm alive, and so are you." I smooth back his hair.
"I'm such a mess," he says. "Sometimes I think everyone's dead."
SAINT JULIAN AND ALL SOULS
SAINT JULIAN AND ALL SOULS
YEAR TWENTY-FIVE.
OF THE FRAGILITY OF THE UNIVERSE.
SPOKEN BY ADAM ONE.
My dear Friends, those few that now remain:
Only a little time is left to us. We have used some of that time to make our way up here, to the site of our once-flourishing Edencliff Rooftop Garden, where in a more hopeful era we spent such happy days together.
Let us take this opportunity to dwell, for one final moment, on the Light.
For the new moon is rising, signalling the beginning of Saint Julian and All Souls. All Souls is not restricted to Human Souls: among us, it encompasses the Souls of all the living Creatures that have passed through Life, and have undergone the Great Transformation, and have entered that state sometimes called Death, but more rightly known as Renewed Life. For in this our World, and in the eye of God, not a single atom that has ever existed is truly lost.
Dear Diplodocus, dear Pterosaur, dear Trilobite; dear Mastodon, dear Dodo, dear Great Auk, dear Passenger Pigeon; dear Panda, dear Whooping Crane; and all you countless others who have played in this our shared Garden in your day: be with us at this time of trial, and strengthen our resolve. Like you, we have enjoyed the air and the sunlight and the moonlight on the water; like you, we have heard the call of the seasons and have answered them. Like you, we have replenished the Earth. And like you, we must now witness the end of our Species, and pass from Earthly view.
As always on this day, the words of Saint Julian of Norwich, that compassionate fourteenth-century Saint, remind us of the fragility of our Cosmos -- a fragility affirmed anew by the physicists of the twentieth century, when Science discovered the vast spaces of emptiness that lie, not only within the atoms, but between the stars. What is our Cosmos but a snowflake? What is it but a piece of lace? As our dear Saint Julian so beautifully said, in words of tenderness that have echoed down through the centuries:
... He showed me a little thing, the quantity of a hazel nut, lying in the palm of my hand ... as round as any ball. I looked at it and thought, What may this be, and I was answered generally thus: It is all that is made. I marvelled how it might last. For I thought it might fall suddenly to nothing, for little caus
e; and I was answered in my understanding: It lasts and ever shall, for God loves it. And so has everything its being, through the love of God.
Do we deserve this Love by which God maintains our Cosmos? Do we deserve it as a Species? We have taken the World given to us and carelessly destroyed its fabric and its Creatures. Other religions have taught that this World is to be rolled up like a scroll and burnt to nothingness, and that a new Heaven and a new Earth will then appear. But why would God give us another Earth when we have mistreated this one so badly?
No, my Friends. It is not this Earth that is to be demolished: it is the Human Species. Perhaps God will create another, more compassionate race to take our place.
For the Waterless Flood has swept over us -- not as a vast hurricane, not as a barrage of comets, not as a cloud of poisonous gasses. No: as we suspected for so long, it is a plague -- a plague that infects no Species but our own, and that will leave all other Creatures untouched. Our cities are darkened, our lines of communication are no more. The blight and ruin of our Garden is now mirrored by the blight and ruin that have emptied the streets below. We need not fear discovery now: our old enemies cannot pursue us, occupied as they must be by the hideous torments of their own bodily dissolution, if they are not already dead.
We should not -- indeed we cannot -- rejoice at that. For yesterday the plague took three of us. Already I sense within myself those changes that I see reflected in your own eyes. We know only too well what awaits us.
But let our going out be brave and joyous! Let us end with a prayer for All Souls. Among these are the Souls of those who have persecuted us; those who have murdered God's Creatures, and extinguished His Species; those who have tortured in the name of Law; who have worshipped nothing but riches; and who, to gain wealth and worldly power, have inflicted pain and death.
Let us forgive the killers of the Elephant, and the exterminators of the Tiger; and those who slaughtered the Bear for its gall bladder, and the Shark for its cartilage, and the Rhinoceros for its horn. May we forgive them freely, as we may hope to be forgiven by God, who holds our frail Cosmos in His hand, and keeps it safe through His endless Love.