The MaddAddam Trilogy (71 page)

It was midmorning. The Hammerhead was still sleeping off the effects of yesterday’s Poppy: Toby had overdone it, but she didn’t feel too guilty, and now she had some time for her regular chores. She’d garbed up in her bee veil and gloves and lit the smudge in her bellows: as she’d explained to the bees, she intended to spend the morning extracting the full honeycombs. Before she’d begun the smoking, however, Zeb appeared.

“Crappy news,” he said. “Your Painball buddy’s out again.” Like everyone at the Gardeners, Zeb knew the story of Toby’s rescue from Blanco by Adam One and the Buds and Blooms – it was part of oral history. But he also sensed her fear. Though they’d never discussed it.

Toby felt an ice needle shoot through her. She lifted up her veil. “Really?”

“Older and meaner,” said Zeb. “Twisted fuck should have been vulture pellets long ago. He must have friends in high places, though, because he’s back managing SecretBurgers, over in the Sewage Lagoon.”

“As long as he stays there,” said Toby. She tried to make her voice sound strong.

“The bees can wait,” said Zeb. He took her arm. “You need to sit down. I’ll do a snoop. Maybe he’s forgotten all about you.”

He took Toby to the kitchen. “Sweetheart, you look beat,” said Rebecca. “What’s wrong?” Toby told her.

“Oh shit,” said Rebecca. “I’ll make you some Rescue Tea, you look like you need it. Don’t you worry – that man’s karma will kill him one day.” But, thought Toby,
one day
was far too distant.

It was afternoon. Many of the general-membership Gardeners were gathered on the roof. Some were retying the tomatoes and climbing zucchinis that had blown over in the storm, a more violent one than usual. Others sat in the shade, working at their knitting, their knotting, their mending. The Adams and Eves were restless, as they always were when they were harbouring a runaway – what if the Hammerhead had been followed? Adam One had posted sentinels; he himself was standing over by the roof’s edge in one-legged meditation pose, keeping an eye on the street below.

The Hammerhead had woken up, and Toby had set her to work picking snails off the lettuces; she’d told the rank-and-file Gardeners this was a new convert, and shy. They’d seen so many new converts come and go.

“If we have a visit,” Toby said to the Hammerhead, “anything like an inspection, pull your sunhat down and go on with the snails. Act like background.” She herself was smoking the bees, on the theory that it was best to carry on as usual.

Then Shackleton and Crozier and young Oates came pounding up the fire-escape stairs, followed by Amanda, then Zeb. They headed straight over to Adam One. He motioned to Toby with his chin:
join us
.

“There’s been a scuffle in the Sewage Lagoon,” said Zeb after they’d grouped around Adam One.

“Scuffle?” said Adam One.

“We were just looking,” said Shackleton. “But he saw us.”

“He called us fucking meat-stealers,” said Crozier. “He was drunk.”

“Not drunk: wasted,” said Amanda with authority. “He tried to hit me, but I did a
satsuma.”
Toby smiled a little: it was a mistake to underestimate Amanda. She was a tall sinewy Amazon by now, and she’d been studying Urban Bloodshed Limitation with Zeb. As had her two devoted henchmen. There were three if you counted Oates, though he was merely at the hopeless crush level.

“Who is ‘he’?” said Adam One. “Where was this?”

“SecretBurgers,” said Zeb. “We were checking it out – we heard Blanco was back.”

“Zeb pulled an
unagi
on him,” said Shackleton. “It was neat!”

“Did you have to actually go there?” said Adam One, a little peevishly. “We have other ways of …”

“Then the Asian Fusions swarmed him,” said Oates excitedly. “They had bottles!”

“He pulled a killer knife,” said Croze. “He notched a couple.”

“I hope there was no lasting damage,” said Adam One. “Much as we deplore the very existence of SecretBurgers, and the depredations of this – this unlucky individual, we want no violence.”

“Booth overturned, meat thrown around. All he suffered was cuts and bruises,” said Zeb.

“That is unfortunate,” said Adam One. “It’s true that we sometimes have to defend ourselves, and we’ve had trouble with this – with him before. But on this occasion, do I have the impression that we attacked first?” He frowned at Zeb. “Or provoked an attack? Is this correct?”

“Asshole had it coming,” said Zeb. “We should be getting medals.”

“Our way is the way of peace,” said Adam One, frowning even more.

“Peace goes only so far,” said Zeb. “There’s at least a hundred new extinct species since this time last month. They got fucking eaten! We can’t just sit here and watch the lights blink out. Have to begin somewhere. Today SecretBurgers, tomorrow that fucking gourmet restaurant chain. Rarity. That needs to go.”

“Our role in respect to the Creatures is to bear witness,” said Adam One. “And to guard the memories and the genomes of the departed. You can’t fight blood with blood. I thought we’d agreed on that.”

There was a silence. Shackleton and Crozier and Oates and Amanda were staring at Zeb. Zeb and Adam One were staring at each other.

“Anyway, it’s too late now,” said Zeb. “Blanco’s raging.”

“Will he cross pleebmob boundaries?” said Toby. “Raid us here, in the Sinkhole?”

“Mood he’s in, no question,” said Zeb. “Ordinary mob guys don’t scare him any more. He’s multiple-session Painball.”

Zeb warned the assembled Gardeners, posted a line of watchers around the roof, and stationed the strongest gatekeepers at the bottom of the fire-escape stairs. Adam One protested, saying that to act like one’s enemies was to descend to their level. Zeb said that if Adam One wanted to handle defence matters in some other way he was free to do so, but if not he should keep his nose out of it.

“There’s movement,” said Rebecca, who was watching. “Three of them coming, it looks like.”

“Whatever you do,” Toby told the Hammerhead, “don’t cut and run. Don’t do anything that calls attention.” She went over to the roof’s edge to look.

Three heavyweights were muscling along the sidewalk. They had baseball bats. No sprayguns. Not CorpSeCorps then, just pleeb thugs: payback for the wreckage at SecretBurgers. One of the three was Blanco – she could spot him from any angle. What would he do? Bash her to death on the spot, or drag her away to do it more slowly elsewhere?

“What is it, my dear?” said Adam One.

“It’s him,” said Toby. “If he sees me, he’ll kill me.”

“Be of good cheer,” he said. “Nothing bad will be done to you.” But since Adam One thought that even the most terrible things happened for ultimately excellent though unfathomable reasons, Toby did not find this reassuring.

Zeb told her she’d better get their special guest out of sight, just in case, so she took the Hammerhead to her own cubicle and gave her a calming drink, heavy on the chamomile, with a little Poppy. The Hammerhead drifted off to sleep, and Toby sat watching her and hoping the two of them wouldn’t end up cornered. She found herself looking around for weapons. I suppose I could hit them with the Poppy bottle, she thought. But it’s not very big.

Then she walked back out to the Rooftop. She was still in her bee gear. She adjusted her heavy gloves, took up her bellows, and lowered her veil. “Stand by me,” she said to the bees. “Be my messengers.” As if they could hear.

The fight didn’t last long. Later, Toby heard Shackleton and Crozier and Oates enacting the full battle story for the younger children, who’d been hurried out of the way by Nuala. According to them, it had been epic.

“Zeb was brilliant,” said Shackleton. “He had it all planned out! They must’ve thought since we’re so pacifist and all, they could just … Anyway, it was like an ambush – we backed up the stairs, with them following.”

“And then, and then,” said Oates.

“And then, at the top, Zeb let the first guy lunge at him, and then he got the end of the guy’s baseball bat and kind of flung it, and the guy almost crashed into Rebecca, and she had this two-pronged fork, and then he went screaming right over the edge of the roof.”

“Like this!” said Oates, arms flailing.

“Then Stuart sprayed the next one with the plant hydrator,” said Crozier. “He says it works on cats.”

“Amanda did something to him. Didn’t you?” Shackleton said to her fondly. “Like, some Bloodshed Limitation move, like a
hamachi
, or – I don’t know what she did, but he went over the railing too. Did you kick him in the nuts or what?”

“I relocated him,” said Amanda demurely. “Like a snail.”

“Then the third one ran away,” said Oates. “The biggest guy. With
bees all over him. Toby did that, it was wicked. Adam One wouldn’t let us go after him.”

“Zeb says this won’t be the end of it,” said Amanda.

Toby had her own version, in which everything had moved both very fast and very slowly. She’d placed herself behind the hives, and then the three of them had been right there, just emerging from the stair-top. A pale-faced man with a dark chin and a baseball bat, a scarred Redfish type, and Blanco. Blanco had spotted her immediately. “I see you, stringy-assed bitch!” he’d yelled. “You’re meat!” Her bee veil was no disguise. He had his knife out; he was grinning.

The first man had tangled with Rebecca and gone over the railing somehow, screaming on the way down, but the second one was still coming. Then Amanda – who’d been standing off to the side, looking ethereal and harmless – had raised her arm. Toby had seen a flash of light: was that glass? But Blanco was almost upon her: there was nothing between them but the hives.

She pushed the hives over – three of them. She was veiled, Blanco was not. The bees poured out, whining with anger, and went for him like arrows. He fled howling down the fire-escape stairs, flailing and slapping, trailing a plume of bees.

It took some time for Toby to set the hives back up. The bees were furious, and several Gardeners got stung. Toby apologized to the victims, and she and Katuro treated them with calamine and chamomile; but she apologized much more profusely to the bees, once she’d smoked them enough to make them drowsy: they’d sacrificed many of their own in the battle.

The Adams and Eves had a tense meeting in the hidden room behind the vinegar barrels. “That shit wouldn’t attack without authorization,” said Zeb. “It’s the CorpSeCorps behind it – they’re aware of some of the folks we’ve been helping out, so they’re working up to branding us as terrorist fanatics, like the Wolf Isaiahists.”

“Nope, it’s personal,” said Rebecca. “That man is mean as a snake, no disrespect to Snakes, and he was after Toby, is all. Once he’s stuck his pole in some hole, he thinks it’s his.” When Rebecca got worked up, she tended to revert to her earlier vocabulary and then regret it. “No offence, Toby,” she said.

“Surely the proximate cause is among us,” said Adam One. “The young people provoked him. And Zeb. We should have let sleeping dogs lie.”

“Dogs is right,” said Rebecca. “No disrespect to Dogs.”

“Two dead bodies on the sidewalk will hardly do our peaceful reputation any good,” said Nuala.

“Accidents. They fell off the roof,” said Zeb.

“And one got his throat cut and the other had his eye put out on the way down,” said Adam One. “As any forensic investigation will show.”

“Dangerous, brick walls,” said Katuro. “Things stick. Nails. Broken glass. Sharp things.”

“Maybe you’d like a few dead Gardeners better?” said Zeb.

“If your premise is correct,” said Adam One, “and this is a CorpSeCorps plot, has it occurred to you that those three may have
been sent to provoke exactly such an incident? To cause us to break the law, thus providing an excuse for reprisals?”

“What was our choice?” said Zeb. “Let them squash us like bugs? Not that we squash Bugs,” he added.

“He’ll come back,” said Toby. “Whatever the reason, CorpSeCorps or not. As long as I stay here, I’ll be a target.”

“I think,” said Adam One, “that it would be best for your safety, dear Toby, and also for the safety of the Garden, if we were to place you in one of our Truffle niches in the Exfernal World. You can be of much use to us there. We’ll ask our pleebrat connections to spread the news that you are no longer among us. Perhaps your foe may then lack motivation, and we will be protected from aggression from that quarter, at least for the moment. How soon can we move her?” he asked Zeb.

“Consider it done,” said Zeb.

Toby went to her sleeping cubicle and packed her most necessary items – the bottled extracts, the dried herbs, the mushrooms. Pilar’s honey, the last three jars. She left some of each thing behind for who-ever might be filling her empty Eve Six shoes.

She remembered her early desire to leave the Garden, out of boredom and claustrophobia, and the desire for what she used to think of as a life of her own; but now that she was actually going, it felt like an expulsion. No: more like a wrenching, a severing, a skin peeling off. She resisted the urge to drink some Poppy, to dull the edge. She had to stay alert.

Another hurt: she was failing Pilar. Would she have time to say goodbye to the bees, and if she didn’t, would the hives die? Who would take over as beekeeper? Who had the skills? She covered her head with a scarf and hurried out to the hives.

“Bees,” she said out loud. “I have news.” Did the bees pause in mid-air, were they listening? Several came to investigate her; they lit on her face, exploring her emotions through the chemicals on her skin. She hoped they’d forgiven her for tipping their hives. “You must tell your
Queen I’ve had to leave,” she said. “Nothing to do with you, you’ve performed your duties well. My enemy is forcing me to go. I’m sorry. I hope that when we meet again it will be under happier circumstances.” She always found herself using a formal style with the bees.

The bees buzzed and fizzed; they appeared to be discussing her. She wished she could take them with her like a large, golden, furry collective pet. “I’ll miss you, bees,” she said. As if in answer, one of them started crawling up her nostril. She breathed it sharply out. Maybe we wear hats for these interviews, she thought, so they won’t go into our ears.