“What is the thing that fell down, oh Snowman? Is it a man or a woman? It has extra skins, like you.”
“It’s nothing. It’s a piece of a bad dream that Crake is dreaming.”
They understood about dreaming, he knew that: they dreamed themselves. Crake hadn’t been able to eliminate dreams. We’re hard-wired for dreams, he’d said. He couldn’t get rid of the singing either. We’re hard-wired for singing. Singing and dreams were entwined.
“Why does Crake dream a bad dream like that?”
“He dreams it,” said Snowman, “so you won’t have to.”
“It is sad that he suffers on our behalf.”
“We are very sorry. We thank him.”
“Will the bad dream be over soon?”
“Yes,” said Snowman. “Very soon.” The last one had been a close call, the woman was like a rabid dog. His hands were shaking now. He needed a drink.
“It will be over when Crake wakes up?”
“Yes. When he wakes up.”
“We hope he will wake up very soon.”
And so they walked together through No Man’s Land, stopping here and there to graze or picking leaves and flowers as they went, the women and children hand in hand, several of them singing, in their crystal voices, their voices like fronds unrolling. Then they wound through the streets of the pleeblands, like a skewed parade or a fringe religious procession. During the afternoon storms they took shelter; easy to do, as doors and windows had ceased to have meaning. Then, in the freshened air, they continued their stroll.
Some of the buildings along the way were still smouldering. There were many questions, and much explaining to do. What is that smoke? It is a thing of Crake’s. Why is that child lying down, with no eyes? It was the will of Crake. And so forth.
Snowman made it up as he went along. He knew what an improbable shepherd he was. To reassure them, he tried his best to appear dignified and reliable, wise and kindly. A lifetime of deviousness came to his aid.
Finally they reached the edge of the park. Snowman had to shoot only two more disintegrating people. He was doing them a favour, so he didn’t feel too bad about it. He felt worse about other things.
Late in the evening, they came at last to the shore. The leaves of the trees were rustling, the water was gently waving, the setting sun was reflected on it, pink and red. The sands were white, the offshore towers overflowing with birds.
“It is so beautiful here.”
“Oh look! Are those feathers?”
“What is this place called?”
“It is called home,” said Snowman.
14
Idol
Snowman rifles the storeroom, packs what he can carry—the rest of the food, dried and in tins, flashlight and batteries, maps and matches and candles, ammunition packs, duct tape, two bottles of water, painkiller pills, antibiotic gel, a couple of sun-proof shirts, and one of those little knives with the scissors. And the spraygun, of course. He picks up his stick and heads out through the airlock doorway, avoiding Crake’s gaze, Crake’s grin; and Oryx, in her silk butterfly shroud.
Oh Jimmy. That’s not me!
Birdsong’s beginning. The predawn light is a feathery grey, the air misty; dew pearls the spiderwebs. If he were a child it would seem fresh and new, this ancient, magical effect. As it is, he knows it’s an illusion: once the sun’s up, all will vanish. Halfway across the grounds he stops, takes one last backward look at Paradice, swelling up out of the foliage like a lost balloon.
He has a map of the Compound, he’s already studied it, charted his route. He cuts across a main artery to the golf course and crosses it without incident. His pack and the gun are beginning to weigh on him, so he stops for a drink. The sun’s up now, the vultures are rising on their updrafts; they’ve spotted him, they’ll note his limp, they’ll be watching.
He makes his way through a residential section, then across a schoolground. He has to shoot one pigoon before he reaches the peripheral walclass="underline" it was just having a good stare, but he was certain it was a scout, it would have told the others. At the side gate he pauses. There’s a watchtower here, and access to the rampart; he’d like to climb up, have a look around, check out that smoke he saw. But the door to the gatehouse is locked, so he goes on out.
Nothing in the moat.
He crosses No Man’s Land, a nervous passage: he keeps seeing furry movement at the sides of his eyes, and worries that the clumps of weeds are changing shape. At last he’s in the pleeblands; he wends his way through the narrow streets, alert for ambushes, but nothing hunts him. Only the vultures circle above, waiting for him to be meat.
An hour before noon he climbs a tree, conceals himself in the shade of the leaves. There he eats a tin of SoyOBoy wieners and finishes the first bottle of water. Once he stops walking, his foot asserts itself: there’s a regular throbbing, it feels hot and tight, as if it’s crammed into a tiny shoe. He rubs some antibiotic gel into the cut, but without much faith: the microbes infecting him have doubtless already mounted their resistance and are simmering away in there, turning his flesh to porridge.
He scans the horizon from his arboreal vantage point, but he can’t see anything that looks like smoke. Arboreal, a fine word. Our arboreal ancestors, Crake used to say. Used to shit on their enemies from above while perched in trees. All planes and rockets and bombs are simply elaborations on that primate instinct.
What if I die up here, in this tree? he thinks. Will it serve me right? Why? Who will ever find me? And so what if they do? Oh look, another dead man. Big fucking deal. Common as dirt. Yeah, but this one’s in a tree. So, who cares?
“I’m not just any dead man,” he says out loud.
Of course not! Each one of us is unique! And every single dead person is dead in his or her very own special way! Now, who wants to share about being dead, in our own special words? Jimmy, you seem eager to talk, so why don’t you begin?
Oh torture. Is this purgatory, and if it is, why is it so much like the first grade?
After a couple of hours of fitful rest he moves on, holing up from the afternoon storm in the remains of a pleebland condo. Nobody in it, dead or alive. Then he continues on, limpity-limp, picking up speed now, heading south and then east, towards the shore.
It’s a relief when he hits the Snowman Fish Path. Instead of turning left towards his tree, he hobbles along towards the village. He’s tired, he wants to sleep, but he’ll have to reassure the Crakers—demonstrate his safe return, explain why he’s been away so long, deliver his message from Crake.
He’ll need to invent some lies about that. What did Crake look like? I couldn’t see him, he was in a bush. A burning bush, why not? Best to be nonspecific about the facial features. But he gave some orders: I get two fish a week—no, make it three—and roots and berries. Maybe he should add seaweed to that. They’ll know which kinds are good. And crabs too—not the land crabs, the other kinds. He’ll order them up steamed, a dozen at a time. Surely that’s not too much to ask.
After he’s seen the Crakers, he’ll stow away his new food and eat some of it, and then have a doze in his familiar tree. After that he’ll be refreshed, and his brain will be working better, and he’ll be able to think about what to do next.
What to do next about what? That’s too difficult. But suppose there are other people around, people like himself—smoke-making people—he’ll wish to be in some kind of shape to greet them. He’ll wash up—this one time he can risk the bathing pool—then put on one of the clean sun-proof shirts he’s brought, maybe hack off some of his beard with the little scissors on the knife.