“Yeah, I’m not denying it,” says Jimmy. “I apologize. Though you’re good at it, according to them. Your choice; you can always tell them to piss off.”
“You realize we’re under attack, in a manner of speaking,” says Toby.
“The Painballers. Yeah. Ren told me,” he says more soberly.
“So we can’t let these people go wandering off on their own too much. They’d most likely be killed.”
Jimmy thinks about that. “So, then?”
“You need to help me,” says Toby. “We should get our stories straight. I’ve been flying in the dark.”
“Nowhere else to fly on the subject of Crake,” says Jimmy gloomily. “Welcome to my whirlwind. He cut her throat, did you know that? Good, kind Crake. She was so pretty, she was … Just thought I’d share that. But I shot the fucker.”
“Whose throat?” Toby asks. “Who did you shoot?” But Jimmy’s face is in his hands now, and his shoulders are shaking.
Piglet
Toby doesn’t know what to do. Is a comforting maternal hug in order, supposing she’s capable of giving one, or would Jimmy find that intrusive? How about a brisk, nurse-like Chin up or a feeble withdrawal, on tiptoe?
Before she can make up her mind, Blackbeard runs into the room. He’s unusually excited. “They’re coming! They’re coming!” he says. It’s almost a shout, which is rare for a Craker: even the kids aren’t shouters.
“Who is?” she asks. “Is it the bad men?” Now where did she leave her rifle? That’s the down side of Meditations: you forget how to be properly aggressive.
“They! Come! Come,” he says, tugging at her hand, then at her bedsheet. “The Pig Ones. Very many!”
Jimmy lifts his head. “Pigoons. Oh fuck,” he says.
Blackbeard is delighted. “Yes! Thank you for calling him, Snowman-the-Jimmy! We will need him, to help us,” he says. “The Pig Ones have a dead.”
“A dead what?” Toby asks him, but he’s out the door.
The MaddAddamites have dropped their various tasks and are moving in behind the cobb-house fence. Some have armed themselves with axes, and rakes, and shovels.
Crozier, who must have set out to pasture with his flock of Mo’Hairs, is hurrying back along the pathway. Manatee’s with him, carrying their spraygun.
“They’re coming from the west,” says Crozier. The Mo’Hairs surround him.
“They’re … It’s weird. They’re marching. It’s like a pig parade.”
The Crakers are gathering by the swing set. They don’t seem in any way frightened. They talk together in low voices, then the men begin to move west, as if to meet whatever’s coming down the path. Several women go with them: Marie Antoinette, Sojourner Truth, two others. The rest stay behind with the children, who clump together and stand silently, though no one has ordered them to do that.
“Make them come back!” says Jimmy, who has joined the MaddAddamite group. “Those things will rip them open!”
“You can’t make them do anything,” says Swift Fox, who is holding – somewhat awkwardly – a pitchfork from the garden.
“Rhino,” says Zeb, handing over another spraygun. “Don’t get trigger-happy,” he says to Manatee. “You could hit a Craker. As long as the pigs don’t charge us, don’t fire.”
“This is creepy,” says Ren timorously. She’s standing beside Jimmy now, holding on to his arm. “Where’s Amanda?”
“Sleeping,” says Lotis Blue, who’s on the other side of Jimmy now.
“More than creepy,” says Jimmy. “They’re sly, the pigoons. They’ve got tactics. They almost cornered me one time.”
“Toby. We’ll need your rifle,” says Zeb. “If they split into two groups, go around to the back. They can root under the fence fast if they’ve got us distracted out front. Then they’ll attack from both sides.”
Toby hurries to her cubicle. When she comes out carrying her old Ruger Deerfield, the herd of giant pigoons is already advancing into the clearing in front of the cobb-house fence.
There are fifty or so in all. Fifty adults, that is: several of the sows have litters of piglets, trotting along beside their mothers. In the centre of the group, two of the boars are moving side by side; there’s something lying crossways on their backs. It looks like a mound of flowers – flowers and foliage.
What? thinks Toby. Is it a peace offering? A pig wedding? An altar-piece?
The largest pigs are acting as outriders; they seem nervous, pointing the moist discs of their snouts this way and that, snuffing the air.
They’re glossy and greyish pink, rounded and plump and streamlined, like enormous nightmare slugs; but slugs with tusks, at least on the males. A sudden charge, an upward slash with those lethal scimitars, and you’d be gutted like a fish. And soon they’ll be so close to the Crakers that even a direct hit with a spraygun wouldn’t stop their momentum.
A low level of grunting is going on, from pig to pig. If they were people, Toby thinks, you’d say it was the murmuring of a crowd. It must be information exchange; but God knows what sort of information. Are they saying, “We’re scared?” Or “We hate them?” Or possibly just a simple “Yum, yum?”
Rhino and Manatee are stationed just inside the fence. They’ve lowered their sprayguns. Toby has thought it best to conceal her rifle; she’s carrying it at her side, a fold of her bedsheet tucked around it. No need to remind them of her boar-murdering exploits, though they probably need no reminders.
“Cripes,” says Jimmy, who’s standing behind Toby. “Would you look at that. They’ve got to be planning something.”
Blackbeard has left the other Craker children and has clutched himself on to Toby. “Do not be afraid, Oh Toby,” he says. “Are you afraid?”
“Yes, I am afraid,” she says. Though not as afraid as Jimmy, she adds to herself, because I have a gun and he doesn’t. “They have attacked our garden more than once,” she says. “And we have killed some of them, to defend ourselves.” She thinks uneasily of the pork roasts, the bacon, and the chops that have resulted. “And we have put them into soup,” she says. “They have turned into a smelly bone. A lot of smelly bones.”
“Yes, a smelly bone,” says Blackbeard thoughtfully. “A lot of smelly bones. I have seen them near the kitchen.”
“So they are not our friends,” Toby says. “You are not the friend of those who turn you into a smelly bone.”
Blackbeard thinks about this. Then he looks up at her, smiling gently. “Do not be afraid, Oh Toby,” he says. “They are Children of Oryx and Children of Crake, both. They have said they will not harm you today. You will see.” Toby’s far from sure about that, but she smiles down at him anyway.
The advance deputation of Crakers has joined the herd of pigoons and is walking back with them. The rest of the Crakers wait silently by the swing set as the pigoons advance.
Now Napoleon Bonaparte and six other men step forward: piss parade, it looks like. Yes, they’re peeing in a line. Aiming carefully, peeing respectfully, but peeing. Having finished, they each take a step back. Three curious little piglets scamper forward, snuffle at the ground, then run squealing back to their mothers.
“There,” says Blackbeard. “See? It is safe.”
The Crakers move into a semicircle behind their demarcation line of urine. They begin to sing. The herd of pigoons divides in two, and the pair of boars moves slowly forward. Then they roll to either side, and the flower-covered burden they’ve been carrying slips onto the ground. They heave to their feet again and move some of the flowers away, using their trotters and snouts.
It’s a dead piglet. A tiny one, with its throat cut. Its front trotters are tied together with rope. The blood is still red, it’s oozing from the gaping neck wound. There are no other marks.
Now the whole herd is deploying itself in a semicircle around the – what? The bier? The catafalque? The flowers, the leaves – it’s a funeral. Toby remembers the boar she shot at the AnooYoo Spa – how, when she went to collect maggots from th
e carcass, there were fern fronds and leaves scattered over it. Elephants, she’d thought then. They do that. When someone they love has died.
“Crap,” says Jimmy. “I hope it wasn’t us who nuked that little porker.”
“I don’t think so,” says Toby. She would have heard about it, surely. There would have been some culinary chitchat.
The two piglet-bearers have gone forward to the line of piss. Abraham Lincoln and Sojourner Truth are on the other side of it. They kneel so they’re at the level of the pigoons: head facing head. The Crakers stop singing. There’s silence. Then the Crakers start singing again.
“What’s happening?” says Toby.
“They are talking, Oh Toby,” says Blackbeard. “They are asking for help. They want to stop those ones. Those ones who are killing their pig babies.” He takes a deep breath. “Two pig babies – one with a stick you point, one with a knife. The Pig Ones want those killing ones to be dead.”
“They want help from …” She can’t say the Crakers, it isn’t what they call themselves. “They want help from your people?”
If killing is the request, how can the Crakers help? she wonders. According to the MaddAddamites, Crakers are nonviolent by nature. They don’t fight, they can’t fight. They’re incapable of it. That’s how they’re made.
“No, Oh Toby,” says Blackbeard. “They want help from you.”
“Me?” says Toby.
“All of you. All those standing behind the fence, those with two skins. They want you to help them with the sticks you have. They know how you kill, by making holes. And then blood comes out. They want you to make such holes in the three bad men. With blood.” He looks a little ill: he isn’t finding this easy. Toby wants to hug him, but that would be condescending: he has chosen this duty.
“Did you say three men?” Toby asks. “Aren’t there only two?”
“The Pig Ones say there are three,” says Blackbeard. “They have smelled three.”
“That’s not so good,” says Zeb. “They’ve found a recruit.” He and Black Rhino exchange sombre glances. “Changes the odds,” says Rhino.
“They want you to make blood come out,” says Blackbeard. “Three with holes in them, and blood.”
“Us,” says Toby. “They want us to do it.”
“Yes,” says Blackbeard. “Those with two skins.”
“Then why aren’t they talking to us?” says Toby. “Why are they talking to you?”
Oh, she thinks. Of course. We’re too stupid, we don’t understand their languages. So there has to be a translator.
“It is easier for them to talk to us,” says Blackbeard simply. “And in return, if you help them to kill the three bad men, they will never again try to eat your garden. Or any of you,” he adds seriously. “Even if you are dead, they will not eat you. And they ask that you must no longer make holes in them, with blood, and cook them in a smelly bone soup, or hang them in the smoke, or fry them and then eat them. Not any more.”
“Tell them it’s a deal,” says Zeb.
“Throw in the bees and the honey,” says Toby. “Make those off-limits too.”
“Please, Oh Toby, what is a deal?” says Blackbeard.
“A deal means, we accept their offer and will help them,” says Toby. “We share their wishes.”
“Then they will be happy,” says Blackbeard. “They want to go hunting for the bad men tomorrow, or else the next day. You must bring your sticks, to make the holes.”
Something appears to have been concluded. The pigoons, who have been standing with ears cocked forward and snouts raised as if sniffing the words, turn away and head west, back from where they came. They’ve left the dead flower-strewn piglet on the ground.
“Wait,” says Toby to Blackbeard. “They’ve forgotten their …” She almost said their child. “They’ve forgotten the little one.”
“The small Pig One is for you, Oh Toby,” says Blackbeard. “It is a gift. It is dead already. They have already done their sadness.”
“But we have promised not to eat them any more,” says Toby.
“Not kill and then eat, no. But they say you would not be killing it yourselves. Therefore it is permitted. They say you may eat it or not eat it, as you choose. They would eat it themselves, otherwise.”
Curious funeral rites, thinks Toby. You strew the beloved with flowers, you mourn, and then you eat the corpse. No-holds-barred recycling. Even Adam and the Gardeners never went that far.
Palaver
The Crakers have moved apart, over to the swing set, where they are chewing away at the kudzu vines and talking together in low voices. The dead piglet lies on the ground, flies settling on it, encircled by a ring of MaddAddamites, pondering over it as if holding an inquest.
“So, you think those pricks were butchering it?” says Shackleton.
“Maybe,” says Manatee. “But it wasn’t hanging from a tree. That’s what you’d do normally, to drain the blood.”
“The pigs told my blue buddies it was just lying on the path,” says Crozier. “In plain view.”
“You think it’s a message to us?” says Zunzuncito.
“Sort of like a challenge,” says Shackleton. “Like they’re calling us out.”
“Maybe that’s how come the rope. It was the rope on them last time,” says Ren.
“Nah,” says Crozier. “Why would they use a piglet for that?”
“Maybe like This will be you next time. Or Look how close we can get. They’re triple-time Painball vets, remember. That’s Painball style: freak you out,” says Shackleton.
“Right,” says Rhino. “They really want our stuff now. Must be running out of cellpack power, getting desperate.”
“They’ll try to sneak in at night,” says Shackleton. “We’ll have to double up on sentries.”
“Better check the fences,” says Rhino. “They’re still pretty makeshift.”
“They may have tools,” says Zeb. “From some hardware store. Knives, wire cutters, stuff like that.” He moves off, around the corner of the cobb house, with Rhino following.
“Maybe it’s not the Painballers who killed it. Maybe it’s persons unknown,” says Ivory Bill.
“Maybe it’s the Crakers,” says Jimmy. “Hey, just joking, I know they’d never do that.”
“Never say never,” says Ivory Bill. “Their brains are more malleable than Crake intended. They’ve been doing several things we didn’t anticipate during the construction phase.”
“Maybe it’s someone in our own group,” says Swift Fox. “Someone who wanted sausages.”
There’s an uneasy, guilty laugh round the circle. Then a silence. “So. What next?” says Ivory Bill.
“What next is, do we cook it or not?” says Rebecca. “Suckling pig?”
“Oh, I couldn’t,” says Ren. “It would be like eating a baby.” Amanda starts to cry.
“My dear lady, what’s all this about?” says Ivory Bill.
“I’m sorry,” says Ren. “I shouldn’t have said baby.”
“Okay, cards on the table,” says Rebecca. “Hands up, anyone here who didn’t know that Amanda’s pregnant?”
“I appear to be the only one left in gynecological ignorance,” says Ivory Bill. “Perhaps such intimate feminine material was considered unfit for my elderly ears.”
“Or maybe you weren’t listening,” says Swift Fox.
“Okay, so that’s clear,” says Rebecca. “Now I would like to open up the circle, as we used to say at the Gardeners … Ren, you want to do this?”
Ren takes a breath. “I’m pregnant too,” she says. She begins to sniffle. “I peed on the stick. It turned pink, it made a smiley face … Oh God.” Lotis Blue pats her. Crozier makes a move towards her, then stops.
“Three’s company,” says Swift Fox. “Count me in. Bun in the oven, up the spout. Farrow in the barrow.” At least she’s cheerful about it, thinks Toby. But whose bun?
There’s another silence. “I don’t suppose there is any point,” says Ivo
ry Bill with heavy disapproval, “in speculating as to the paternity of these … these various imminent progenies.”
“None whatsoever,” says Swift Fox. “Or not in my case. I’ve been doing an experiment in genetic evolution. Reproduction of the fittest. Think of me as a petri dish.”
“I find that irresponsible,” says Ivory Bill.
“I’m not sure it’s any of your business,” says Swift Fox.
“Hey!” says Rebecca. “It is what it is!”
“With Amanda, it may be a Craker,” says Toby. “From something that happened the night she was … the night we got her back, from … That’s the best possibility. And that may be what happened with Ren too.”
“It wasn’t the Painballers, anyway,” says Ren. “With me. I know it wasn’t.”
“You know that how?” says Crozier.
“I don’t want to go into the gory details,” says Ren, “because you’d think it was oversharing. It’s girl stuff. We count the days. That’s how.”
“I can definitely rule out the Painballers,” says Swift Fox. “In my case. And I can rule out a few other guys too.” None of the men look at each other. Crozier suppresses a grin.
“And the Crakers as well?” says Toby, keeping her voice neutral. Who’s on her checklist? Crozier, definitely, but who else? Have there been multitudes? Maybe Zeb was one of them, after all; if so, soon there may be an infant Zeb. Then what will she herself do? Pretend she doesn’t notice? Knit babywear? Brood and sulk? The first two options would be preferable, but she’s not sure she’ll be up to them.
“I did have an interlude or two with the big blues,” says Swift Fox. “When no one was looking, which didn’t give me a huge window of opportunity, since everyone here is so snoopy. It was energetic, and I’m not sure I’d want to make a habit of it. Not much foreplay. But the pink smiley face doesn’t lie, and I will soon be heavy with young. The question is, young what?”
“Guess we’ll find out,” says Shackleton.
Zeb and Black Rhino return from their inspection of the fences. “This place is hardly a fortress,” Zeb says. “Thing is – if we take the weapons with us on the hunt, we leave everyone in the cobb house undefended.”
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