“Just because most of the human race has been wiped out and the surviving remnant can hardly get enough solar going to run a light bulb?” says Shackleton. “So you want to let these two cesspools bash your brains out?”
“I don’t know why you’re being so hostile,” says White Sedge. “Adam One would have advocated clemency.”
“Maybe he’d have been wrong,” says Amanda. “You weren’t there, you don’t know what they did to us. Me and Ren. You don’t know what they’re like.”
“Though, with so few true humans left,” says Ivory Bill, “perhaps we shouldn’t waste any increasingly rare human DNA. Even if the individuals in question must be eliminated, possibly their … their generative fluids should be, as it were, siphoned off, to provide genetic variety. An ingrown gene pool must be avoided.”
“Avoid it yourself,” says Swift Fox. “Personally, the mere idea of having sex with those two festering bedsores just to capture their rancid DNA makes me nauseous.”
“You wouldn’t need to have sex with them, as such,” says Ivory Bill. “We could use a turkey baster.”
“Use it on your own self,” says Swift Fox rudely. “Men are always telling women what to do with their uteruses. Excuse me, their uteri.”
“I’d rather slit my wrists than let any of their fucking generative fluids near me ever again,” says Amanda. “It’s bad enough as it is. How do I know my own kid won’t be one of theirs?”
“Anyway, a child with such warped genes would be a monster,” says Ren. “The mother couldn’t love it. Oh, sorry,” she says to Amanda.
“It’s okay,” says Amanda. “If it’s theirs, I’ll hand it over to White Sedge and she can love it. Or the Pigoons can eat the thing; they’d appreciate it.”
“We could try rehabilitation,” says White Sedge serenely. “Incorporate them into the community, keep them in a safe place at night, let them help out. Sometimes, when people feel they can contribute, it makes for a genuine change in …”
“Look around,” Zeb says. “See any social workers? See any jails?”
“Contribute to what?” says Amanda. “You want to let them be in charge of the day care?”
“They’d put everyone else at risk,” says Katuro.
“There’s no safe place to store them except a hole in the ground,” says Shackleton.
“The vote,” says Zeb.
They use pebbles: black for death, white for mercy. It has an archeological feel. The old symbol systems follow us around, thinks Toby, as she collects the pebbles in Jimmy’s red hat. There’s only one white pebble.
The Pigoons vote collectively, through their leader, with Blackbeard as their interpreter. “They all say dead,” he tells Toby. “But they will not eat those ones. They do not want those ones to be part of them.”
The rest of the Crakers are puzzled. They clearly do not understand what vote means, or trial, or why pebbles should be put into the hat of Snowman-the-Jimmy. Toby tells them it is a thing of Crake.
The Story of the Trial
The two bad men were put in a room at night, with ropes tying them. We could feel that the rope was hurting them, and making them sad and also angry. But we did not untie the rope the way we did before. Toby told us not to, because it would only cause more killing. And we told the children not to go too close, because the bad ones might bite them.
And then they were given soup, with a smelly bone.
In the morning there was a Trial. You all saw it. It was at the table. Many words were said. The Pig Ones were also at the Trial.
Perhaps we will understand it later, this Trial.
And after the Trial, all the Pig Ones went down to the seashore. And Toby went with them, and she had her gun thing that we should not touch. And Zeb went. And Amanda went, and Ren. And Crozier and Shackleton. But we did not go, we Children of Crake, because Toby said it would be hurtful to us.
And after a while they all came back, without the two bad ones. They looked tired. But they were more peaceful.
Toby said that now we would be safe from the bad ones. And the Pig Ones said their babies were now safe too. And they said also that even though the Battle was over now, they would keep the pact they made with Toby, and with Zeb, and they would not hunt and eat any of the two-skinned ones, and they would also not dig up their garden any more. Or eat the honey of the bees.
And Toby told me the words to say to them, which were: We agree to keep the pact. None of you, or your children, or your children’s children, will ever be a smelly bone in a soup. Or a ham, she added. Or a bacon.
And Rebecca said, Worse luck.
And Crozier said, What’re they saying, what the fuck is going on? And Toby said, Watch your language, it’s confusing for him.
And I said that Crozier did not need to call Fuck right now because we were not in trouble and did not need his help. And Toby said, That’s right, he doesn’t like to be summoned on trivial matters. And Zeb coughed.
After the Pig Ones had gone away, Toby told us that the two bad men had been washed away in the sea. They had been poured away, as Crake poured away the chaos. So everything was much cleaner now.
Yes, good, kind Crake.
Please don’t sing.
Because when you sing I can’t hear the words that Crake is telling me to say, and also when we sing about him he can’t tell me any words of the story, because he has to listen to the singing.
So that is the Story of the Trial. It is a thing from Crake. We do not have to have a Trial, among us. Only the two-skinned ones and the Pig Ones have to have a Trial.
And that is a good thing, because I did not like the Trial.
Thank you. Good night.
Rites
The Feast of Cnidaria, Toby writes. Waxing gibbous moon.
The Cnidaria phylum contains the jellyfish, the corals, the sea anemones, and the hydra. The Gardeners had been thorough — no phylum or genus was left out of their list of feasts and festivals, if they could help it — though some celebrations had been odder than others. The Festival of Intestinal Parasites, for instance, had been memorable, though not what you would call delightful.
The Feast of Cnidaria, however, had been an especially beautiful one. There had been paper lanterns in the shapes of jellyfish, and many decorations fashioned from objects found in dumpsters. A creative use was made of spent balloons and inflated rubber gloves with trailing filaments of string, sea anemones were created from modified round dish-scrubbing brushes, and hydras crafted from transparent plastic sandwich bags.
The children would do a little jellyfish dance, festooned with streamers and waving their arms slowly, and one year they’d composed and performed an interminable play on the subject of the life cycle of the jellyfish, which was uneventful. First I was an egg, Then I grew and grew, Now I am a jellyfish, Green and pink and blue. Though when the Portuguese Man O’ War had made its entrance, drama had been possible: I drifted here, I drifted there, My tentacles so fine to view, But don’t get tangled up with me, Or I will put an end to you.
Had Ren helped with that play? Toby wonders. Had Amanda? The song, the grabbing of a smaller child playing a fish, the stinging to death — they had the earmarks of Amanda; or of the streetwise pleebrat Amanda of those days, who, since the disposal of the two malignant Painballers, appears to have been reborn.
“After the disposal of the two malignant Painballers,” she writes. Disposal makes them sound like garbage, as in garbage disposal. She wonders if this kind of name-calling is worthy of her one-time position as Eve Six, decides it’s not, leaves it anyway.