Margaret Atwood - MaddAddam

But she needn’t have worried, because when they get there Jimmy’s eyes are closed. Lulled by the purring, he’s gone back to sleep.

The gleaner team has moved off along the street, or what used to be a street. Zeb first, then Black Rhino, then Swift Fox, with Katuro bringing up the rear. They’re moving slowly, carefully, in and around the rubble. They’ll be scoping out possible ambushes, taking no chances.

Toby wants to run after them, like a left-behind kid — Wait! Wait! Let me come with you! I have a rifle! — but no point in that.

Zeb hadn’t asked if there was anything he could bring for her. If he had, what would she have said? A mirror? A floral bouquet? She should have requested at least the paper and the pencils. But somehow she couldn’t.

Now they’re out of sight.

The day moves on. The sun travels up and across the sky, the shadows flatten, food appears and is eaten, words are spoken; dining table objects are gathered together and washed. Sentries take turns. The cobb-house wall rises a little higher, the fence around it gains a coil of wire, weeds are removed from the garden, laundry is deployed. The shadows begin to stretch again, the afternoon clouds gather. Jimmy is carried inside, and the rain rains, with impressive thunder. Then the skies clear, the birds resume their contests, the clouds begin to redden in the west.

No Zeb.

The Mo’Hairs and their shepherds return, Crozier and Beluga and Shackleton, adding three hormonally charged males to the in-camp population mix. Crozier is dangling around Ren, Shackleton edging up to Amanda, Zunzuncito and Beluga are both eyeing Lotis Blue: the intrigues of love are unfolding as they do among the young, and as they do as well among the snails on the lettuce and the shiny green beetles that plague the kale. Murmurings, the shrug of a shoulder, the step forward, the step back.

Toby proceeds through her tasks as if in a monastery, steadily, dutifully, counting the hours.

Still no Zeb.

What could have happened to him? She blots out the pictures. Or she tries to blot them out. Animal, with teeth and claws involved. Vegetable, a falling tree. Mineral, cement, steel, broken glass. Or human.

Suppose he were suddenly not there. A vortex opens: she closes it. Never mind her own loss. What about the others? The other humans. Zeb has valuable skills, he has knowledge that can’t be replaced.

They’re so few in number, so necessary to one another. Sometimes this encampment feels like a vacation of sorts, but it isn’t. They aren’t escaping from daily life. This is where they live now.

She tells the Crakers there will be no story tonight, because Zeb has left the story of Zeb inside her head, but some of that story is hard to understand and she needs to put it in order before she can tell it to them. They ask her if a fish would help, but she says not now. Then she goes to sit by herself in the garden.

You’ve lost, she tells herself. You’ve lost Zeb. By now Swift Fox must already have him, firmly clamped in her arms and legs and whatever orifices appeal. He’s tossed Toby herself aside like an empty paper bag. Why not? No promises were given.

The breeze dies, damp heat rises from the earth, the shadows blend together. Mosquitoes whine. Here’s the moon, not so full any more. The hour of the moth comes round again.

No moving lights approach, no voices. Nothing and no one.

She spends the midnight watch with Jimmy in his cubicle, listening to him breathe. There’s a single candle. In its light the nursery-rhyme pictures on his quilt waver and swell. The cow grins, the dog laughs. The dish runs away with the spoon.

In the morning Toby avoids the group at the breakfast table. She’s in no mood for lectures on epigenetics, or for curious glances, or for speculation about how she’s taking the defection of Zeb. He could have said a firm no to Swift Fox, but he didn’t. The message was clear.

She goes around to the cooking shed, helps herself to some cold pork and burdock root from yesterday that’s withering under an upside-down bowl: Rebecca doesn’t like to throw out food.

She sits down at the table, checks the neighbourhood. In the background the Mo’Hairs mill around, waiting for Crozier to let them out and lead them off to eat the weeds along the pathways. Here he comes now, in his biblical bedsheet getup, holding a long stick.

Over by the swing set Ren and Lotis Blue are walking Jimmy to and fro in an awkward six-legged assemblage. His muscle tone isn’t great, but he’ll build up his strength quickly enough: underneath the wear and tear he’s still young. Amanda’s there too, sitting on one of the swings; and several of the Crakers, nibbling on the ubiquitous kudzu vines and watching, puzzled but not frightened.

From a distance the scene is bucolic, though there are off-notes: the missing or escaped Mo’Hair is still escaped or missing, Amanda is apathetic and gazing down at the ground, and from the set of Crozier’s tight shoulders and the way he turns his back on Ren, he’s jealous of her Jimmy-pampering. Toby herself is an off-note, though she must appear calm to anyone watching. It’s best to look that way, and through long Gardener training she knows how to keep her face flat, her smile gentle.

But where is Zeb? Why isn’t he back yet? Has he found Adam One?

If Adam’s injured, he’ll need to be carried. That would slow them down. What’s happening out there in the ruined city, where she can’t see? If only the cellphones still worked. But the towers are down; even if there were still a power source, no one here would know how to repair the tech. There’s a hand-cranked radio, but it ceased to function.

We’ll have to learn smoke signals all over again, she thinks. One for he loves me, two for he loves me not. Three for smouldering anger.

She spends the day working in the garden, on the theory that it will be soothing. If only she had some beehives to care for. She could share the daily news with the bees, as she and old Pilar used to do, back on the God’s Gardeners’ rooftop garden before Pilar died. Ask them for advice. Request that they fly out and explore and then report back to her, as if they were cyberbees.

Today we honour Saint Jan Swammerdam, first to discover that the Queen Bee is not a King, and that all worker Bees in a hive are sisters; and Saint Zosima, eastern patron of Bees, who lived the selfless monastic life in the desert, as we, too, are doing in our own way; and Saint C. R. Ribbands, for his meticulous observations on Bee communication stratagems. And let us thank the Creator for the Bees themselves, for their gifts of Honey and Pollen, for their priceless work of fertilization among our Fruits and Nuts and our flowering Vegetables, yes, and for the comfort they bring to us in times of stress, with, as Tennyson once wrote, the murmuring of innumerable Bees …

Pilar had taught her to rub a little royal jelly into her skin before working with the bees: that way, they wouldn’t see her as a threat. They’d walk on her arms and face, their tiny feet touching as gently as eyelashes, as lightly as a cloud passing over. The bees are messengers, Pilar used to say. They carry the news back and forth between the seen world and the unseen one. If a loved one of yours has crossed the shadow threshold, they will tell you.

Suddenly, today, there are dozens of honeybees in the garden, busying themselves among the bean flowers. There must be a new wild swarm nearby. One bee alights on her hand, tastes the salt on it. Is Zeb dead? she asks it silently. Tell me now. But it lifts off again without signalling.

Had she believed all that? Old Pilar’s folklore? No, not really; or not exactly. Most likely Pilar hadn’t quite believed it either, but it was a reassuring story: that the dead were not entirely dead but were alive in a different way; a paler way admittedly, and somewhere darker. But still able to send messages, if only such messages could be recognized and deciphered. People need such stories, Pilar said once, because however dark, a darkness with voices in it is better than a silent void.