"Then, when I came here to head up this place, I was able to offer her a more official position. She was delighted to accept. It was triple the pay she'd been getting, with a lot of perks; but also she said the work intrigued her. I have to say she's a devoted employee." Crake gave a smug little smile, an alpha smile, and Jimmy wanted to smash him.
"Great," he said. Knives were going through him. No sooner found than lost again. Crake was his best friend. Revision: his only friend. He wouldn't be able to lay a finger on her. How could he?
They waited for Oryx to come out of the shower room, where she was removing her protective spray, and, Crake added, her luminous-green gel contact lenses: the Crakers would have found her brown eyes off-putting. She emerged finally, her hair braided now and still damp, and was introduced, and shook Jimmy's hand with her own small hand. (I touched her, thought Jimmy like a ten-year-old. I actually touched her!)
She had clothes on now, she was wearing the standard-issue lab outfit, the jacket and trousers. On her it looked like lounge pyjamas. Clipped to the pocket was her name tag: ORYX BEISA. She'd chosen it herself from the list provided by Crake. She liked the idea of being a gentle water-conserving East African herbivore, but had been less pleased when told the animal she'd picked was extinct. Crake had needed to explain that this was the way things were done in Paradice.
The three of them had coffee in the Paradice staff cafeteria. The talk was of the Crakers - this is what Oryx called them - and of how they were doing. It was the same every day, said Oryx. They were always quietly content. They knew how to make fire now. They'd liked the rakunk. She found them very relaxing to spend time with.
"Do they ever ask where they came from?" said Jimmy. "What they're doing here?" At that moment he couldn't have cared less, but he wanted to join the conversation so he could look at Oryx without being obvious.
"You don't get it," said Crake, in his you-are-a-moron voice. "That stuff's been edited out."
"Well, actually, they did ask," said Oryx. "Today they asked who made them."
"And?"
"And I told them the truth. I said it was Crake." An admiring smile at Crake: Jimmy could have done without that. "I told them he was very clever and good."
"Did they ask who this Crake was?" said Crake. "Did they want to see him?"
"They didn't seem interested."
Night and day Jimmy was in torment. He wanted to touch Oryx, worship her, open her up like a beautifully wrapped package, even though he suspected that there was something - some harmful snake or homemade bomb or lethal powder - concealed within. Not within her, of course. Within the situation. She was off limits, he told himself, again and again.
He behaved as honourably as he could: he showed no interest in her, or he tried to show none. He took to visiting the pleeblands, paying for girls in bars. Girls with frills, with spangles, with lace, whatever was on offer. He'd shoot himself up with Crake's quicktime vaccine, and he had his own Corps bodyguard now, so it was quite safe. The first couple of times it was a thrill; then it was a distraction; then it was merely a habit. None of it was an antidote to Oryx.
He fiddled around at his job: not much of a challenge there. The BlyssPluss Pill would sell itself, it didn't need help from him. But the official launch was looming closer, so he had his staff turn out some visuals, a few catchy slogans: Throw Away Your Condoms! BlyssPluss, for the Total Body Experience! Don't Live a Little, Live a Lot! Simulations of a man and a woman, ripping off their clothes, grinning like maniacs. Then a man and a man. Then a woman and a woman, though for that one they didn't use the condom line. Then a threesome. He could churn out this crap in his sleep.
Supposing, that is, he could manage to sleep. At night he'd lie awake, berating himself, bemoaning his fate. Berating, bemoaning, useful words. Doldrums. Lovelorn. Leman. Forsaken. Queynt.
But then Oryx seduced him. What else to call it? She came to his suite on purpose, she marched right in, she had him out of his shell in two minutes flat. It made him feel about twelve. She was clearly a practised hand at this, and so casual on that first occasion it took his breath away.
"I didn't want to see you so unhappy, Jimmy," was her explanation. "Not about me."
"How could you tell I was unhappy?"
"Oh, I always know."
"What about Crake?" he said, after she'd hooked him that first time, landed him, left him gasping.
"You are Crake's friend. He wouldn't want you to be unhappy."
Jimmy wasn't so sure about that, but he said, "I don't feel easy about this."
"What are you saying, Jimmy?"
"Aren't you - isn't he ..." What a dolt!
"Crake lives in a higher world, Jimmy," she said. "He lives in a world of ideas. He is doing important things. He has no time to play. Anyway, Crake is my boss. You are for fun."
"Yes, but ..."
"Crake won't know."
And it seemed to be true, Crake didn't know. Maybe he was too mesmerized by her to notice anything; or maybe, thought Jimmy, love really was blind. Or blinding. And Crake loved Oryx, no doubt there; he was almost abject about it. He'd touch her in public, even. Crake had never been a toucher, he'd been physically remote, but now he liked to have a hand on Oryx: on her shoulder, her arm, her small waist, her perfect butt. Mine, mine, that hand was saying.
Moreover, he appeared to trust her, more perhaps than he trusted Jimmy. She was an expert businesswoman, he said. He'd given her a slice of the BlyssPluss trials: she had useful contacts in the pleeblands, through her old pals who'd worked with her at Student Services. For that reason she had to make a lot of trips, here and there around the world. Sex clinics, said Crake. Whorehouses, said Oryx: who better to do the testing?
"Just as long as you don't do any testing on yourself," said Jimmy.
"Oh no, Jimmy. Crake said not to."
"You always do what Crake tells you?"
"He is my boss."
"He tell you to do this?"
Big eyes. "Do what, Jimmy?"
"What you're doing right now."
"Oh Jimmy. You always make jokes."
The times when she was away were hard for Jimmy. He worried about her, he longed for her, he resented her for not being there. When she'd get back from one of her trips, she'd materialize in his room in the middle of the night: she managed to do that no matter what might be on Crake's agenda. First she'd brief Crake, provide him with an account of her activities and their success - how many BlyssPluss Pills, where she'd placed them, any results so far: an exact account, because he was so obsessive. Then she'd take care of what she called the personal area.
Crake's sexual needs were direct and simple, according to Oryx; not intriguing, like sex with Jimmy. Not fun, just work - although she respected Crake, she really did, because he was a brilliant genius. But if Crake wanted her to stay longer on any given night, do it again maybe, she'd make some excuse - jet lag, a headache, something plausible. Her inventions were seamless, she was the best poker-faced liar in the world, so there would be a kiss goodbye for stupid Crake, a smile, a wave, a closed door, and the next minute there she would be, with Jimmy.
How potent was that word. With.
He could never get used to her, she was fresh every time, she was a casketful of secrets. Any moment now she would open herself up, reveal to him the essential thing, the hidden thing at the core of life, or of her life, or of his life - the thing he was longing to know. The thing he'd always wanted. What would it be?
"What went on in that garage, anyway?" said Jimmy. He couldn't leave her alone about her earlier life, he was driven to find out. No detail was too small for him in those days, no painful splinter of her past too tiny. Perhaps he was digging for her anger, but he never found it. Either it was buried too deeply, or it wasn't there at all. But he couldn't believe that. She wasn't a masochist, she was no saint.
They were in Jimmy's bedroom, lying on the bed together with the digital TV on, hooked into his computer, some copulation Web site with an a
nimal component, a couple of well-trained German shepherds and a double-jointed ultra-shaved albino tattooed all over with lizards. The sound was off, it was just the pictures: erotic wallpaper.
They were eating Nubbins from one of the takeout joints in the nearest mall, with the soyafries and the salad. Some of the salad leaves were spinach, from the Rejoov greenhouses: no pesticides, or none that were admitted to. The other leaves were a cabbage splice - giant cabbage trees, continuous producers, very productive. The stuff had a whiff of sewage to it, but the special dressing drowned that out.
"What garage, Jimmy?" said Oryx. She wasn't paying attention. She liked to eat with her fingers, she hated cutlery. Why put a big chunk of sharp-edged metal into your mouth? She said it made the food taste like tin.
"You know what garage," he said. "The one in San Francisco. That creep. That geek who bought you, flew you over, got his wife to say you were the maid."
"Jimmy, why do you dream up such things? I was never in a garage." She licked her fingers, tore a Nubbin into bite-sized bits, fed one of the bits to Jimmy. Then she let him lick her fingers for her. He ran his tongue around the small ovals of her nails. This was the closest she could get to him without becoming food: she was in him, or part of her was in part of him. Sex was the other way around: while that was going on, he was in her. I'll make you mine, lovers said in old books. They never said, I'll make you me.
"I know it was you," Jimmy said. "I saw the pictures."
"What pictures?"
"The so-called maid scandal. In San Francisco. Did that creepy old geezer make you have sex?"
"Oh Jimmy." A sigh. "So that is what you have in mind. I saw that, on TV. Why do you worry about a man like that? He was so old he was almost dead."
"No, but did he?"
"No one made me have sex in a garage. I told you."
"Okay, revision: no one made you, but did you have it anyway?"
"You don't understand me, Jimmy."
"But I want to."
"Do you?" A pause. "These are such good soyafries. Just imagine, Jimmy - millions of people in the world never ate fries like this! We are so lucky!"
"Tell me." It must have been her. "I won't get mad."
A sigh. "He was a kind man," said Oryx, in a storytelling voice. Sometimes he suspected her of improvising, just to humour him; sometimes he felt that her entire past - everything she'd told him - was his own invention. "He was rescuing young girls. He paid for my plane ticket, just like it said. If it wasn't for him, I wouldn't be here. You should like him!"
"Why should I like such a hypocritical sanctimonious bastard? You didn't answer my question."
"Yes, I did, Jimmy. Now leave it alone."
"How long did he keep you locked in the garage?"
"It was more like an apartment," said Oryx. "They didn't have room in their house. I wasn't the only girl they took in."
"They?"
"Him and his wife. They were trying to be helpful."
"And she hated sex, is that it? Is that why she put up with you? You were getting the old goat off her back?"
Oryx sighed. "You always think the worst of people, Jimmy. She was a very spiritual person."
"Like fuck she was."
"Don't swear, Jimmy. I want to enjoy being with you. I don't have very much time, I have to go soon, I need to do some business. Why do you care about things that happened so long ago?" She leaned over him, kissed him with her Nubbin-smeared mouth.
Unguent, unctuous, sumptuous, voluptuous, salacious, lubricious, delicious, went the inside of Jimmy's head. He sank down into the words, into the feelings.
After a while he said, "Where are you going?"
"Oh, someplace. I'll call you when I get there." She never would tell him.
Takeout
~
Now comes the part that Snowman has replayed in his head time after time. If only haunts him. But if only what? What could he have said or done differently? What change would have altered the course of events? In the big picture, nothing. In the small picture, so much.
Don't go. Stay here. At least that way they would have been together. She might even have survived - why not? In which case she'd be right here with him, right now.
I just want some takeout. I'm just going to the mall. I need some air. I need a walk.
Let me come with you. It's not safe.
Don't be silly! There's guards everywhere. They all know who I am. Who's safer than me?
I have a gut feeling.
But Jimmy'd had no gut feeling. He'd been happy that evening, happy and lazy. She'd arrived at his door an hour earlier. She'd just come from being with the Crakers, teaching them a few more leaves and grasses, so she was damp from the shower. She was wearing some sort of kimono covered with red and orange butterflies; her dark hair was braided with pink ribbon, coiled up and pinned loosely. The first thing he'd done when she'd arrived at his door, hurrying, breathless, brimming with joyous excitement or a very good imitation of it, was to unpin her hair. The braid went three times around his hand.
"Where's Crake?" he whispered. She smelled of lemons, of crushed herbs.
"Don't worry, Jimmy."
"But where?"
"He's outside Paradice, he went out. He had a meeting. He doesn't want to see me when he comes back, he said he would be thinking tonight. He never wants sex when he's thinking."
"Do you love me?"
That laugh of hers. What had it meant? Stupid question. Why ask? You talk too much. Or else: What is love? Or possibly: In your dreams.
Then time passed. Then she was pinning her hair up again, then slipping on her kimono, then tying it with the sash. He stood behind her, watching in the mirror. He wanted to put his arms around her, take off the covering she'd just put back on, start all over again.
"Don't go yet," he said, but it was never any use saying don't go yet to her. When she'd decided a thing, she was on her way. Sometimes he felt he was merely a house call on a secret itinerary of hers - that she had a whole list of others to be dealt with before the night was over. Unworthy thoughts, but not out of the question. He never knew what she was doing when she wasn't with him.
"I'm coming back right away," she said, slipping her feet into her little pink and red sandals. "I'll bring pizza. You want any extras, Jimmy?"
"Why don't we dump all this crap, go away somewhere?" he said on impulse.
"Away from here? From Paradice? Why?"
"We could be together."
"Jimmy, you're funny! We're together now!"
"We could get away from Crake," said Jimmy. "We wouldn't have to sneak around like this, we could ..."
"But Jimmy." Wide eyes. "Crake needs us!"
"I think he knows," said Jimmy. "About us." He didn't believe this; or he believed it and not, both at the same time. Surely they'd been more and more reckless lately. How could Crake have missed it? Was it possible for a man that intelligent in so many ways to be acutely brain-damaged in others? Or did Crake have a deviousness that outdid Jimmy's own? If so, there were no signs.
Jimmy had taken to sweeping his room for bugs: the hidden mini-mikes, the micro-cams. He'd known what to look for, or so he thought. But there'd been nothing.
There were signs, Snowman thinks. There were signs and I missed them.
For instance, Crake said once, "Would you kill someone you loved to spare them pain?"
"You mean, commit euthanasia?" said Jimmy. "Like putting down your pet turtle?"
"Just tell me," said Crake.
"I don't know. What kind of love, what kind of pain?"
Crake changed the subject.
Then, one lunchtime, he said, "If anything happens to me, I'm depending on you to look after the Paradice Project. Any time I'm away from here I want you to take charge. I've made it a standing order."
"What do you mean, anything?" said Jimmy. "What could happen?"
"You know."
Jimmy thought he meant kidnapping, or being whacked by the opposition: that was
a constant hazard, for the Compound brainiacs. "Sure," he said, "but one, your security's the best, and two, there's people in here much better equipped than I am. I couldn't head up a thing like this, I don't have the science."
"These people are specialists," said Crake. "They wouldn't have the empathy to deal with the Paradice models, they wouldn't be any good at it, they'd get impatient. Even I couldn't do it. I couldn't begin to get onto their wavelength. But you're more of a generalist."
"Meaning?"
"You have a great ability to sit around not doing much of anything. Just like them."
"Thanks," said Jimmy.
"No, I'm serious. I want - I'd want it to be you."
"What about Oryx?" said Jimmy. "She knows the Crakers a lot better than I do." Jimmy and Oryx said Crakers, but Crake never did.
"If I'm not around, Oryx won't be either," said Crake.
"She'll commit suttee? No shit! Immolate herself on your funeral pyre?"
"Something like that," said Crake, grinning. Which at the time Jimmy had taken both as a joke and also as a symptom of Crake's truly colossal ego.
"I think Crake's been snooping on us," said Jimmy that last night. As soon as it was out he saw it could be true, though maybe he was just saying it to frighten Oryx. Stampede her, perhaps; though he had no concrete plans. Suppose they ran, where would they live, how would they keep Crake from finding them, what would they use for money? Would Jimmy have to turn pimp, live off the avails? Because he certainly had no marketable skills, nothing he could use in the pleeblands, not if they went underground. As they would have to do. "I think he's jealous."
"Oh Jimmy. Why would Crake be jealous? He doesn't approve of jealousy. He thinks it's wrong."
"He's human," said Jimmy. "What he approves of is beside the point."
"Jimmy, I think it's you that's jealous." Oryx smiled, stood on tiptoe, kissed his nose. "You're a good boy. But I would never leave Crake. I believe in Crake, I believe in his" - she groped for the word - "his vision. He wants to make the world a better place. This is what he's always telling me. I think that is so fine, don't you, Jimmy?"
"I don't believe that," said Jimmy. "I know it's what he says, but I've never bought it. He never gave a piss about anything like that. His interests were strictly ..."
"Oh, you are wrong, Jimmy. He has found the problems, I think he is right. There are too many people and that makes the people bad. I know this from my own life, Jimmy. Crake is a very smart man!"
Oryx and Crake Page 27