Margaret Atwood - MaddAddam

“Where we used to go to school?” says Ren.

“Quite fresh,” says Black Rhino. Which means, thinks Toby, that at least some of the missing Gardeners survived the first wave of the plague.

“None of the others?” she says. “Nobody else? Was it the … was he sick?”

“No sign of them,” says Zeb. “But I’m guessing they’re still out there. Adam could be. Food handy? I could eat a bear.” Which means he doesn’t want to answer Toby right now.

“He eats a bear!” the Crakers say to one another. “Yes! It is as Crozier told us!” “Zeb eats a bear!”

Zeb nods towards the Crakers, who are gazing at him uncertainly. “I see we’ve got company.”

“This is Zeb,” Toby tells the Crakers. “He is our friend.”

“We are pleased, Oh Zeb. Greetings.”

“He is the one, he is the one! Crozier told us.” “He eats a bear!” “Yes. We are pleased.” Tentative smiles. “What is a bear , Oh Zeb — this bear you eat?” “Is it a fish?” “Does it have a smelly bone?”

“They came with us,” says Toby. “From the shore. We couldn’t stop them, they wanted to be with Jimmy. With Snowman. That’s what they call Jimmy.”

“Crake’s buddy?” says Zeb. “From the Paradice Project?”

“Long story,” says Toby. “You should eat.”

There’s some leftover stew; Manatee goes to get it. The Crakers withdraw to a safe distance; they don’t like to be too close to the odours of carnivore cookery. Shackleton wolfs down his stew and moves off to sit with Ren and Amanda and Crozier and Lotis Blue. Black Rhino has two helpings, then goes to take a shower. Katuro says he’ll help Rebecca sort out the contents of the packs: they’ve gleaned more soydines and some duct tape, and a few packs of freeze-dried ChickieNobs, and some Joltbars, and another package of Oreo cookies. A miracle, says Rebecca. It’s hard to find any packaged cookies unchewed by rodents.

“Let’s check out the garden,” Zeb says to Toby. Toby’s heart sinks: there must be bad news he wants to break privately.

The fireflies are coming out. The lavender and thyme are in bloom, releasing their airborne flavours. A few self-seeded lumiroses glimmer along the edges of the fence; several of the shimmering green rabbits are nibbling at their bottom leaves. Giant grey moths drift like blown ash.

“It wasn’t the plague that killed Philo,” says Zeb. “Someone cut his throat.”

“Oh,” says Toby. “I see.”

“Then we saw the Painballers,” says Zeb. “The same ones that grabbed Amanda. They were gutting one of those giant pigs. We took a few shots, but they ran off. So we stopped looking for Adam and got back here as fast as we could, because they might be anywhere around here.”

“I’m sorry,” says Toby.

“About what?” says Zeb.

“We caught them, night before last,” she says. “We tied them to a tree. But I didn’t kill them. It was Saint Julian’s, I just couldn’t. They got away, they took their spraygun.”

She’s crying now. This is pathetic, like baby mice, blind and pink and whimpering. It’s not what she does. But she’s doing it.

“Hey,” says Zeb. “It’ll be fine.”

“No,” says Toby. “It won’t be fine.” She turns away to leave: if she’s going to snivel, she should do it alone. Alone is how she feels, alone is how she’ll always be. You’re used to solitude, she tells herself. Be a stoic.

Then she’s enfolded.

She’d waited so long, she’d given up waiting. She’d longed for this, and denied it was possible. But now how easy it is, like coming home must have been once, for those who’d had homes. Walking through the doorway into the familiar, the place that knows you, opens to you, allows you in. Tells you the stories you’ve needed to hear. Stories of the hands as well, and of the mouth.

I’ve missed you . Who said that?

A shape against the night window, glint of an eye. Dark heartbeat.

Yes. At last. It’s you .

And so Crake poured away the chaos, to make a safe place where you could live. And then …

We know the story of Crake. We know it many times. Now tell us the story of Zeb, Oh Toby.

The story of how Zeb ate a bear!

Yes! Ate a bear! A bear! What is a bear ?

We want to hear the story of Zeb. And the bear. The bear he ate.

Crake wants us to hear it. If Snowman-the-Jimmy was awake, he would tell us that story.

Well then. Let me listen to the shiny thing of Snowman-the-Jimmy. Then I can hear the words.

I am listening very hard. It doesn’t help me to listen when you are singing.

So. This is the story of Zeb and the bear. Only Zeb is in the story at first. He is all alone. The bear comes later. Maybe tomorrow the bear will come. For bears to come, you must be patient.

Zeb was lost. He sat down under a tree. The tree was in a big open space, wide and flat, like the beach except there was no sand and no sea, only some chilly pools and a lot of moss. All around but quite far away, there were mountains.

How did he get there? He flew there, in a … never mind. That part is in a different story. No, he cannot fly like a bird. Not any more.

Mountains? Mountains are very large and high rocks. No, those are not mountains, those are buildings. Buildings fall down, and then they make a crash. Mountains fall down too, but they do it very slowly. No, the mountains did not fall down on Zeb.

So Zeb looked at the mountains that were all around him but quite far away, and he thought, How will I get through these mountains? They are so large and high.

He needed to get through the mountains because the people were on the other side. He wanted to be with the people. He didn’t want to be all alone. Nobody wants to be all alone, do they?

No, they were not people like you. They had clothes on. A lot of clothes, because it was cold there. Yes, it was in the time of the chaos, before Crake poured it all away.

So Zeb looked at the mountains and the pools and the moss, and he thought, What will I eat? And then he thought, Those mountains have a lot of bears living in them.

A bear is a very big, fur-covered animal with big claws and many sharp teeth. Bigger than a bobkitten. Bigger than a wolvog. Bigger than a pigoon. This big.

It speaks with a growl. It gets very hungry. It tears things apart.

Yes, bears are the Children of Oryx. I don’t know why she made them so big, with very sharp teeth.

Yes, we must be kind to them. The best way of being kind to bears is not to be very close to them.

I don’t think there are any bears very close to us right now.

And Zeb thought, Maybe a bear has smelled me, and maybe it is coming right now, because it is hungry, it is starving, and it wants to eat me. And I will have to fight the bear, and all I have is this quite small knife, and this stick that can make holes in things. And I will have to win the fight, and kill the bear, and then I will have to eat it.

The bear will come into the story quite soon.

Yes, Zeb will win the fight. Zeb always wins the fight. Because that’s what happens.

Yes, he knew Oryx would be sad. Zeb felt sorry for the bear. He didn’t want to hurt it. But he didn’t want to be eaten by it. You don’t want to be eaten by a bear, do you? Neither do I.

Because bears can’t eat only leaves. Because it would make them sick.

Anyway, if Zeb didn’t eat the bear he would have died, and then he wouldn’t be here with us right now. And that would be a sad thing too, wouldn’t it?

If you don’t stop crying I can’t go on with the story.