“You’re very pink,” he says. “The colour suits you. The silhouette too. Michelin Tire Man?”
“Are you being an asshole?”
“Not on purpose,” he says. “Crows making a racket.” And they are making one. Caw caw caw over at the edge of the forest. Toby lifts the binoculars: nothing to be seen.
“It could be an owl,” she says.
“Could be,” says Zeb.
“The Pigoons keep saying there are three men. Not two.”
“I’d be surprised if they’re wrong,” says Zeb.
“Do you think it might be Adam?” says Toby.
“Remember what you said about hope?” says Zeb. “You said it can be bad for you. So I’m trying not to.”
There’s a flicker of something light, over among the branches. Is it a face? Gone again.
“The worst thing,” says Toby, “is the waiting.”
Blackbeard tugs at her bedspread. “Oh Toby,” he says. “Come! It is time for us to hear the story that you will tell to us. We have brought the red hat.”
The Train to CryoJeenyus
The Story of the Two Eggs and Thinking
Thank you. I am happy that you remembered to bring the red hat.
And the fish. It is not a fish exactly, it is more like a frog. But you caught it in the water, and we are far from the ocean, so I am sure that Crake will understand, and will know that it was too far for you to go all the way to the ocean in order to catch a fish there.
Thank you for cooking it. For asking Rebecca to cook it. Crake has told me that I do not have to eat all of it. A nibble will be enough.
There.
Yes, the frog … the fish has a bone in it. A smelly bone. That is why I spat it out. But we do not need to talk about the smelly bone right now.
Tomorrow is a very important day. Tomorrow, all of us with two skins must finish the work that Crake began — the work of clearing away the chaos. That work was the Great Rearrangement, and it made the Great Emptiness.
But that was only part of the work of Crake. The other part was when he made you. He made your bones out of the coral on the beach, which is white like bones but not smelly. And he made your flesh out of a mango, which is sweet and soft. He did all this inside the giant Egg, and he had some helpers there. And Snowman-the-Jimmy was his friend — he was inside the Egg as well.
And Oryx was there too. Sometimes she was in the form of a woman with green eyes like yours, and sometimes she was in the form of an owl. And she laid two smaller owl eggs, inside the giant Egg. One smaller owl egg was full of animals and birds and fish — all her Children. Yes, and bees. And butterflies too. And ants, yes. And beetles — very many beetles. And snakes. And frogs. And maggots. And rakunks, and bobkittens, and Mo’Hairs, and Pigoons.
Thank you, but I don’t think we need to list every one of them.
Because we would be here all night.
Let us just say that Oryx made very many Children. And each one was beautiful in its own special way.
Yes, it was kind of her to make each and every one of them, inside the smaller owl egg that she laid. Except maybe the mosquitoes.
The other egg she laid was full of words. But that egg hatched first, before the one with the animals in it, and you ate up many of the words, because you were hungry; which is why you have words inside you. And Crake thought that you had eaten all the words, so there were none left over for the animals, and that was why they could not speak. But he was wrong about that. Crake was not always right about everything.
Because when he was not looking, some of the words fell out of the egg onto the ground, and some fell into the water, and some blew away in the air. And none of the people saw them. But the animals and the birds and the fish did see them, and ate them up. They were a different kind of word, so it was sometimes hard for people to understand the animals. They had chewed the words up too small.
And the Pigoons — the Pig Ones — ate up more of the words than any of the other animals did. You know how they love to eat. So the Pig Ones can think very well.
Then Oryx made a new kind of thing, called singing. And she gave it to you because she loved birds and she wanted you to be able to sing that way as well. But Crake did not want you to do the singing. It worried him. He thought that if you could sing like birds you would forget to talk like people, and then you would not remember him or understand his work — all the work that he had done to make you.
And Oryx said, You will just have to suck it up. Because if these people cannot sing, they will be like … they will be like nothing. They will be like stones.
Suck it up means … we will talk about that some other time.
Now I will tell a different part of the story, which is about why Crake decided to make the Great Emptiness.
For a long time, Crake thought. He thought and thought. He told no one about all his thoughts, though he told some of them to Snowman-the-Jimmy and some of them to Zeb and some of them to Pilar and some of them to Oryx.
This is what he thought:
The people in the chaos cannot learn. They cannot understand what they are doing to the sea and the sky and the plants and the animals. They cannot understand that they are killing them, and that they will end by killing themselves. And there are so many of them, and each one of them is doing part of the killing, whether they know it or not. And when you tell them to stop, they don’t hear you.
So there is only one thing left to do. Either most of them must be cleared away while there is still an earth, with trees and flowers and birds and fish and so on, or all must die when there are none of those things left. Because if there are none of those things left, then there will be nothing at all. Not even any people.
But shouldn’t you give those ones a second chance? he asked himself. No, he answered, because they have had a second chance. They have had many second chances. Now is the time.
So Crake made some little seeds that tasted very good; and they made people very happy at first, when they ate them. But then those who ate the seeds would become very sick, and would come to pieces, and would die. And he sprinkled the seeds over all the earth.
And Oryx helped to sprinkle the seeds, because she could fly like an owl. And the Bird Women and the Snake Women and the Flower Women helped too. Though they did not understand about the dying part, only the happy part, because Crake had not told them all of his thoughts.
And then the Great Rearrangement began to happen. And Oryx and Crake left the Egg and flew up into the sky. But Snowman-the-Jimmy stayed behind, to watch over you and to keep bad things away from you, and to help you, and to tell you the stories of Crake. And the stories of Oryx as well.
You can do the singing later.
That is the story of the two eggs.
Now we must all go to sleep, because we must get up very early tomorrow. Some of us will go looking for the three bad men. Zeb will go, and Rhino, and Manatee, and Crozier, and Shackleton. And Snowman-the-Jimmy. Yes, the Pig Ones will go too, many of them. Not the little ones, or their mothers.
But you will stay here, with Rebecca, and Amanda, and Ren. And Swift Fox. And Lotis Blue. And you must keep the door shut, and not let anyone in, no matter what they say. Unless it is ones you already know.
Don’t be frightened.
Yes, I will go out looking for the bad men too. And Blackbeard will go, to help us talk with the Pig Ones.
Yes, we will come back. I hope we will come back.