Oryx and Crake

by Margaret Atwood

  "It must have been a deep hurt."

  "It will need more."

  "We will try again later."

  They bring the fish, cooked now and wrapped in leaves, and watch joyfully while he eats it. He's not that hungry - it's the fever - but he tries hard because he doesn't want to frighten them.

  Already the children are destroying the image they made of him, reducing it to its component parts, which they plan to return to the beach. This is a teaching of Oryx, the women tell him: after a thing has been used, it must be given back to its place of origin. The picture of Snowman has done its work: now that the real Snowman is among them once more, there is no reason for the other, the less satisfactory one. Snowman finds it odd to see his erstwhile beard, his erstwhile head, travelling away piecemeal in the hands of the children. It's as if he himself has been torn apart and scattered.

  Sermon

  ~

  "Some others like you came here," says Abraham Lincoln, after Snowman has done his best with the fish. He's lying back against a tree trunk; his foot is gently tingling now, as if it's asleep; he feels drowsy.

  Snowman jolts awake. "Others like me?"

  "With those other skins, like you," says Napoleon. "And one of them had feathers on his face, like you."

  "Another one had feathers too but not long feathers."

  "We thought they were sent by Crake. Like you."

  "One was a female."

  "She must have been sent by Oryx."

  "She smelled blue."

  "We couldn't see the blue, because of her other skin."

  "But she smelled very blue. The men began to sing to her."

  "We offered her flowers and signalled to her with our penises, but she did not respond with joy."

  "The men with the extra skins didn't look happy. They looked angry."

  "We went towards them to greet them, but they ran away."

  Snowman can imagine. The sight of these preternaturally calm, well-muscled men advancing en masse, singing their unusual music, green eyes glowing, blue penises waving in unison, both hands outstretched like extras in a zombie film, would have to have been alarming.

  Snowman's heart is going very fast now, with excitement or fear, or a blend. "Were they carrying anything?"

  "One of them had a noisy stick, like yours." Snowman's spraygun is out of sight: they must remember the gun from before, from when they walked out of Paradice. "But they didn't make any noise with it." The Children of Crake are very nonchalant about all this, they don't realize the implications. It's as if they're discussing rabbits.

  "When did they come here?"

  "Oh, the day before, maybe."

  Useless to try to pin them down about any past event: they don't count the days. "Where did they go?"

  "They went there, along the beach. Why did they run away from us, oh Snowman?"

  "Perhaps they heard Crake," says Sacajawea. "Perhaps he was calling to them. They had shiny things on their arms, like you. Things for listening to Crake."

  "I'll ask them," says Snowman. "I'll go and talk with them. I'll do it tomorrow. Now I will go to sleep." He heaves himself upright, winces with pain. He still can't put much weight on that foot.

  "We will come too," say several of the men.

  "No," says Snowman. "I don't think that would be a very good idea."

  "But you are not well enough yet," says the Empress Josephine. "You need more purring." She looks worried: a small frown has appeared between her eyes. Unusual to see such an expression on one of their perfect wrinkle-free faces.

  Snowman submits, and a new purring team - three men this time, one woman, they must think he needs strong medicine - hovers over his leg. He tries to sense a responding vibration inside himself, wondering - not for the first time - whether this method is tailored to work only on them. Those who aren't purring watch the operation closely; some converse in low voices, and after half an hour or so a fresh team takes over.

  He can't relax into the sound as he knows he should, because he's rehearsing the future, he can't help it. His mind is racing; behind his half-closed eyes possibilities flash and collide. Maybe all will be well, maybe this trio of strangers is good-hearted, sane, well-intentioned; maybe he'll succeed in presenting the Crakers to them in the proper light. On the other hand, these new arrivals could easily see the Children of Crake as freakish, or savage, or non-human and a threat.

  Images from old history flip through his head, sidebars from Blood and Roses: Ghenghis Khan's skull pile, the heaps of shoes and eyeglasses from Dachau, the burning corpse-filled churches in Rwanda, the sack of Jerusalem by the Crusaders. The Arawak Indians, welcoming Christopher Columbus with garlands and gifts of fruit, smiling with delight, soon to be massacred, or tied up beneath the beds upon which their women were being raped.

  But why imagine the worst? Maybe these people have been frightened off, maybe they'll have moved elsewhere. Maybe they're ill and dying.

  Or maybe not.

  Before he reconnoitres, before he sets out on what - he now sees - is a mission, he should make a speech of some kind to the Crakers. A sort of sermon. Lay down a few commandments, Crake's parting words to them. Except that they don't need commandments: no thou shalt nots would be any good to them, or even comprehensible, because it's all built in. No point in telling them not to lie, steal, commit adultery, or covet. They wouldn't grasp the concepts.

  He should say something to them, though. Leave them with a few words to remember. Better, some practical advice. He should say he might not be coming back. He should say that the others, the ones with extra skins and feathers, are not from Crake. He should say their noisy stick should be taken away from them and thrown into the sea. He should say that if these people should become violent - Oh Snowman, please, what is violent? - or if they attempt to rape (What is rape?) the women, or molest (What?) the children, or if they try to force others to work for them ...

  Hopeless, hopeless. What is work? Work is when you build things - What is build? - or grow things - What is grow? - either because people would hit and kill you if you didn't, or else because they would give you money if you did.

  What is money?

  No, he can't say any of that. Crake is watching over you, he'll say. Oryx loves you.

  Then his eyes close and he feels himself being lifted gently, carried, lifted again, carried again, held.

  15

  ~

  Footprint

  ~

  Snowman wakes before dawn. He lies unmoving, listening to the tide coming in, wish-wash, wish-wash, the rhythm of heartbeat. He would so like to believe he is still asleep.

  On the eastern horizon there's a greyish haze, lit now with a rosy, deadly glow. Strange how that colour still seems tender. He gazes at it with rapture; there is no other word for it. Rapture. The heart seized, carried away, as if by some large bird of prey. After everything that's happened, how can the world still be so beautiful? Because it is. From the offshore towers come the avian shrieks and cries that sound like nothing human.

  He takes a few deep breaths, scans the ground below for wildlife, makes his way down from the tree, setting his good foot on the ground first. He checks the inside of his hat, flicks out an ant. Can a single ant be said to be alive, in any meaningful sense of the word, or does it only have relevance in terms of its anthill? An old conundrum of Crake's.

  He hobbles across the beach to the water's edge, washes his foot, feels the sting of salt: there must have been a boil, the thing must have ruptured overnight, the wound feels huge now. The flies buzz around him, waiting for a chance to settle.

  Then he limps back up to the treeline, takes off his flowered bedsheet, hangs it on a branch: he doesn't want to be impeded. He'll wear nothing but his baseball cap, to keep the glare out of his eyes. He'll dispense with the sunglasses: it's early enough so they won't be needed. He needs to catch every nuance of movement.

  He pees on the grasshoppers, watches with nostalgia as they whir away. Already this rout
ine of his is entering the past, like a lover seen from a train window, waving goodbye, pulled inexorably back, in space, in time, so quickly.

  He goes to his cache, opens it, drinks some water. His foot hurts like shit, it's red around the wound again, his ankle's swollen: whatever's in there has overcome the cocktail from Paradice and the treatment of the Crakers as well. He rubs on some of the antibiotic gel, useless as mud. Luckily he's got aspirins; those will dull the pain. He swallows four, chews up half a Joltbar for the energy. Then he takes out his spraygun, checks the cellpack of virtual bullets.

  He's not ready for this. He's not well. He's frightened.

  He could choose to stay put, await developments.

  Oh honey. You're my only hope.

  He follows the beach northward, using his stick for balance, keeping to the shadow of the trees as much as possible. The sky's brightening, he needs to hurry. He can see the smoke now, rising in a thin column. It will take him an hour or more to get there. They don't know about him, those people; they know about the Crakers but not about him, they won't be expecting him. That's his best chance.

  From tree to tree he limps, elusive, white, a rumour. In search of his own kind.

  Here's a human footprint, in the sand. Then another one. They aren't sharp-edged, because the sand here is dry, but there's no mistaking them. And now here's a whole trail of them, leading down to the sea. Several different sizes. Where the sand turns damp he can see them better. What were these people doing? Swimming, fishing? Washing themselves?

  They were wearing shoes, or sandals. Here's where they took them off, here's where they put them on again. He stamps his own good foot into the wet sand, beside the biggest footprint: a signature of a kind. As soon as he lifts his foot away the imprint fills with water.

  He can smell the smoke, he can hear the voices now. Sneaking he goes, as if walking through an empty house in which there might yet be people. What if they should see him? A hairy naked maniac wearing nothing but a baseball cap and carrying a spraygun. What would they do? Scream and run? Attack? Open their arms to him with joy and brotherly love?

  He peers out through the screen of leaves: there are only three of them, sitting around their fire. They've got a spraygun of their own, a CorpSeCorps daily special, but it's lying on the ground. They're thin, battered-looking. Two men, one brown, one white, a tea-coloured woman, the men in tropical khakis, standard issue but filthy, the woman in the remains of a uniform of some kind - nurse, guard? Must have been pretty once, before she lost all that weight; now she's stringy, her hair parched, broom-straw. All three of them look wasted.

  They're roasting something - meat of some kind. A rakunk? Yes, there's the tail, over there on the ground. They must have shot it. The poor creature.

  Snowman hasn't smelled roast meat for so long. Is that why his eyes are watering?

  He's shivering now. He's feverish again.

  What next? Advance with a strip of bedsheet tied to a stick, waving a white flag? I come in peace. But he doesn't have his bedsheet with him.

  Or, I can show you much treasure. But no, he has nothing to trade with them, nor they with him. Nothing except themselves.

  They could listen to him, they could hear his tale, he could hear theirs. They at least would understand something of what he's been through.

  Or, Get the hell off my turf before I blow you off, as in some old-style Western film. Hands up. Back away. Leave that spraygun. That wouldn't be the end of it though. There are three of them and only one of him. They'd do what he'd do in their place: they'd go away, but they'd lurk, they'd spy. They'd sneak up on him in the dark, conk him on the head with a rock. He'd never know when they might come.

  He could finish it now, before they see him, while he still has the strength. While he can still stand up. His foot's like a shoeful of liquid fire. But they haven't done anything bad, not to him. Should he kill them in cold blood? Is he able to? And if he starts killing them and then stops, one of them will kill him first. Naturally.

  "What do you want me to do?" he whispers to the empty air.

  It's hard to know.

  Oh Jimmy, you were so funny.

  Don't let me down.

  From habit he lifts his watch; it shows him its blank face.

  Zero hour, Snowman thinks. Time to go.

  Acknowledgments

  My thanks to the Society of Authors (England), as the literary representative of the estate of Virginia Woolf, for permission to quote from To the Lighthouse; to Anne Carson for permission to quote from The Beauty of the Husband; and to John Calder Publications and Grove Atlantic for permission to quote eight words from Samuel Beckett's novel, Mercier and Camier. A full list of the other quotations used or paraphrased on the fridge magnets in this book may be found at oryxandcrake.com. "Winter Wonderland," alluded to in Part 9, is by Felix Bernard and Richard B. Smith, and is copyrighted by Warner Bros.

  The name "Amanda Payne" was graciously supplied by its auction-winning owner, thereby raising much-needed funds for the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture (U.K.). Alex the parrot is a participant in the animal-intelligence work of Dr. Irene Pepperberg, and is the protagonist of many books, documentaries, and Web sites. He has given his name to the Alex Foundation. Thank you also to Tuco the parrot, who lives with Sharon Doobenen and Brian Brett, and to Ricki the parrot, who lives with Ruth Atwood and Ralph Siferd.

  Deep background was inadvertently supplied by many magazines and newspapers and non-fiction science writers encountered over the years. A full list of these is available at oryxandcrake.com. Thanks also to Dr. Dave Mossop and Grace Mossop, and to Norman and Barbara Barichello, of Whitehorse, in the Yukon, Canada; to Max Davidson and team, of Davidson's Arnheimland Safaris, Australia; to my brother, neurophysiologist Dr. Harold Atwood (thank you for the study of sex hormones in unborn mice, and other arcana); to Lic. Gilberto Silva and Lic. Orlando Garrido, dedicated biologists, of Cuba; to Matthew Swan and team, of Adventure Canada, on one of whose Arctic voyages a portion of this book was written; to the boys at the lab, 1939-45; and to Philip and Sue Gregory of Cassowary House, Queensland, Australia, from whose balcony, in March 2002, the author observed that rare bird, the Rednecked Crake.

  My gratitude as well to astute early readers Sarah Cooper, Matthew Poulakakis, Jess Atwood Gibson, Ron Bernstein, Maya Mavjee, Louise Dennys, Steve Rubin, Arnulf Conradi, and Rosalie Abella; to my agents, Phoebe Larmore, Vivienne Schuster, and Diana Mackay; to my editors, Ellen Seligman of McClelland & Stewart (Canada), Nan Talese of Doubleday (U.S.A.), and Liz Calder of Bloomsbury (U.K.); and to my dauntless copyeditor, Heather Sangster. Also to my hardworking assistant, Jennifer Osti, and to Surya Bhattacharya, the keeper of the ominous Brown Box of research clippings. Also to Arthur Gelgoot, Michael Bradley, and Pat Williams; and to Eileen Allen, Melinda Dabaay, and Rose Tornato. And finally, to Graeme Gibson, my partner of thirty years, dedicated nature-watcher, and enthusiastic participant in the Pelee Island Bird Race of Ontario, Canada, who understands the obsessiveness of the writer.