The MaddAddam Trilogy (73 page)

After a cautious pause, she began stashing away a few supplies – building her own private Ararat. She wasn’t sure she believed in the Waterless Flood – as time passed, the Gardeners and their theories seemed more and more remote, more fanciful, more creative – in a word, loonier – but she believed in it enough to take the rudimentary precautions. She was in charge of Spa inventory, so stockpiling was easy. She’d simply retrieve empty product containers from the recycling bins, a few at a time – those for AnooYoo Intestinal Whisk were especially useful, as they were large and had tops that snapped on – and fill them with soybits or dried seaweed or powdered milk substitute or tins of soydines. Then she’d replace the tops and store the containers at the very backs of the stockroom shelves. A couple of other staff members had the storeroom door code, but as Toby was known to be a strict inventory-taker and to be tough on pilferers, no one was likely to make off with any of her refilled containers.

She had an office of her own, and in that office there was a computer. She knew the hazards of out-of-bounds usage – some AnooYoo Corp functionary might be monitoring her searches and messages and checking to make sure staff wasn’t watching porno flicks on company time – so most days she scanned only for general news, hoping that way to pick up any word of the Gardeners.

There wasn’t much. From time to time there’d be a story on subversive acts by fanatical greenies, but there was a number of such groups by now. She glimpsed some Gardener faces in the crowd during the Boston Coffee Party, when they were dumping Happicuppa beans into the harbour, but she might have been wrong about that. Several people were wearing T-shirts with
GISG
on them for “God Is Green,” which proved nothing: the Gardeners themselves hadn’t worn such T-shirts, not in the old days.

The CorpSeCorps could have shut down the Happicuppa riots. They could have spraygunned the lot, plus any TV camerafolk who happened to be nearby. Not that you could shut down coverage of such events completely: people used their cameraphones. Still, why didn’t the CorpSeCorps move in openly, blitz their opponents right in plain view, and impose overt totalitarian rule, since they were the only ones with weapons? They were even running the army, now that it had been privatized.

She’d once put this question to Zeb. He’d said that officially they were a private Corporation Security Corps employed by the brand-name Corporations, and those Corporations still wanted to be perceived as honest and trustworthy, friendly as daisies, guileless as bunnies. They couldn’t afford to be viewed by the average consumer as lying, heartless, tyrannical butchers.

“The Corps have to sell, but they can’t force people to buy,” he’d said. “Not yet. So the clean image is still seen as a must.”

That was the short answer: people didn’t want the taste of blood in their Happicuppas.

Muffy, her Truffle-cell minder, kept in touch with Toby by checking herself in for AnooYoo treatments. Occasionally she’d bring news: Adam One was well, Nuala sent regards, the Gardeners were still expanding their influence, but the situation was unstable. Once in a while she’d bring in a female fugitive in need of a temporary hide. She’d dress the woman in clothes like hers – rich SolarSpace matron colours, pastel blue,
creamy beige – and book her in for treatments. “Just pile on the mud and smother her in towels, and no one will notice a thing,” she’d say, which turned out to be true.

One of these emergency guests was the Hammerhead. Toby recognized her – the fidgety hands, the intense blue martyr’s eyes – but she didn’t recognize Toby. So the Hammerhead hadn’t made it to a quiet life in Oregon after all, thought Toby: she’s still in the area, taking the risks, on the run all the time. Most likely she’d been sucked into the urban green-guerrilla scene; in which case her days were numbered, because the CorpSeCorps were said to be bent on eliminating all such activists. They’d have the samples from her old HelthWyzer identity, and once you were in their system you never got out of it except by turning up as a corpse with dental work and
DNA
that matched their records.

Toby ordered the Total Aromatics for the Hammerhead, and an extra Deep Pore Relax. She looked as if she needed them.

There was one serious hazard at the AnooYoo: Lucerne was a regular customer. She came every month, toting a Compound senior-level wife’s wardrobe. She always had the Luscious Polish, the Plum Skin Plumper, and the AnooYoo Fountain of Yooth Total Immersion. She looked more stylish than she’d been at the Gardeners – not difficult, thought Toby, because in a plastic bag you’d be more stylish than a Gardener – but she also looked older and more desiccated. Her once-lush lower lip had developed a downward sag, despite all the collagen and plant extracts Toby knew had been pumped into it, and her eyelids were getting the crinkly texture of poppy petals. These signs of decline were gratifying to Toby, though it dismayed her to be burdened with such a petty and jealous emotion.
Give it up
, she told herself.
Just because Lucerne’s turning into an old puffball doesn’t mean you’re a hot babe
.

It would of course be catastrophic if Lucerne were suddenly to burst out from behind a shrub or a shower curtain and shout out Toby’s real name. So Toby took evasive action. She’d review the advance bookings so she’d know exactly when Lucerne was going to show up. Then
she’d assign her most vigorous operatives – Melody with her big shoulders, Symphony with her firm hands – and keep herself out of Lucerne’s sightline. But as Lucerne was usually prone and covered with brown goop and eye pads, she was unlikely to spot Toby; and even if she did see her, she’d be sure to look right through her. To women like Lucerne, women like Tobiatha were faceless.

What if I crept up on her during the Fountain of Yooth Total Immersion and gunned the lasers? Toby wondered. Or shorted the heat lamp? She’d melt like a marshmallow. A nematode snack. The Earth would cheer.

Dear Eve Six, said Adam One’s voice. Such fantasies are unworthy of you. What would Pilar think?

One afternoon there was a knock at Toby’s office door. “Come in,” she said. It was a large man in a groundsman’s green denim overall. He was whistling – surely – a familiar tune.

“I’m here to prune the lumiroses,” he said. Toby looked up, drew her breath in sharply. She knew better than to say anything: her office could be crawling with bugs.

Zeb glanced back along the hallway, then stepped in and shut the door. He sat down at her computer, then took a Sharpie and wrote on her desk pad:
Watch what I do
.

The Gardeners?
Toby wrote.
Adam One?

Schism
, Zeb wrote.
Own group now
. “Having any trouble with the plantings?” he said out loud.

Shackleton and Crozier?
Toby wrote.
With you?

Manner of speaking
, Zeb replied.
Oates. Katuro, Rebecca. New ones too
.

Amanda?

Got out. Higher education. Art. Smart
.

He’d pulled up a site:
EXTINCTATHON
. Monitored by MaddAddam.
Adam named the living animals, MaddAddam names the dead ones. Do you want to play?

MaddAddam?
Toby wrote on her desk pad.
Your group? You’re plural?
She was elated: Zeb was here, beside her, in the flesh. After she’d thought for so long that she’d never see him again.

I contain multitudes
, wrote Zeb.
Pick a codename. Life form, extinct
.

Dodo
, Toby wrote.

Last fifty years
, Zeb wrote. Not much time.
Pruning team waiting. Ask about aphids
.

“There’s aphids on the lumiroses,” Toby said. She was riffling through the old Gardener lists in her head – animals, fish, birds, flowers, clams, lizards, recently extinct.
Inaccessible Rail
, she wrote. That bird had gone ten years ago.
Can they hack this site?

“We can take care of that,” Zeb said. “Though there’s supposed to be a built-in insecticidal deterrent … I’ll take some samples. There’s more than one way to skin a cat.” No, he wrote.
Made our own virtual private networks. Quadrupally encrypted. Sorry about the cat-skinning ref. Here’s your number
.

He wrote her new codename and a pass number on the pad. Then he typed his own number and code into the log-in space provided.
Welcome, Spirit Bear. Do you want to play a general game or do you want to play a Grandmaster?
said the screen.

Zeb clicked on Grandmaster.
Good. Find your playroom. MaddAddam will meet you there
.

Watch
, he wrote on her pad. He entered a site advertising Mo’Hair transplants, skipped through a pixel gateway on the eye of a magenta-haired sheep, entered the blue percolating stomach of an ad for a HelthWyzer antacid, which led to the avid open mouth of a SecretBurger customer caught in mid-chomp. Then a wide green landscape unfolded – trees in the distance, a lake in the foreground, a rhino and three lions drinking. A scene from the past.

A line of type unscrolled across it:
Welcome to MaddAddam’s playroom, Spirit Bear. You have a message
.

Deliver message
, Zeb clicked.

The liver is evil and must be punished
.

I hear you, Red-necked Crake
, Zeb typed.
All is well
.

Then he closed the site and stood up. “Call me if there are any aphid recurrences,” he said. “If you’d check our work from time to time and keep me informed, that would be good.” He wrote on her pad:
The hair’s great, babe. Love the slanty eyes
. Then he was gone.

Toby gathered up all the desk-pad pages. Luckily she had some matches to burn them with; she’d been hoarding matches for her Ararat, storing them in a container labelled Lemon Meringue Facial.

After Zeb’s visit she felt less isolated. She’d log in to Extinctathon at irregular intervals and trace the path to the MaddAddam Grandmaster chatroom. Codenames and messages flitted across the screen:
Black Rhino to Spirit Bear: Newbies coming. Ivory Bill to Swift Fox: Fear no weevil. White Sedge and Lotis Blue: Micesplice a ten. Red-necked Crake to MaddAddam: Marshmallow hiways nice one!
She had no idea what most of these messages meant, but at least she felt included.

Sometimes there were e-bulletins that appeared to be CorpSeCorps classified information. Many of these were about strange outbreaks of new diseases, or peculiar infestations – the splice porcubeaver that was attacking the fan belts in cars, the bean weevil that was decimating Happicuppa coffee plantations, the asphalt-eating microbe that was melting highways.

Then the Rarity restaurant chain was obliterated by a series of lethal bombings. She saw the regular news, where these events were blamed on unspecified eco-terrorists; but she also read a detailed analysis on MaddAddam. It was the Wolf Isaiahists who’d done the bombings, they said, because Rarity had introduced a new menu item – liobam, a sacred animal for the Wolf Isaiahists. MaddAddam had added a P.S.:
Warning all God’s Gardeners: They’ll pin this on you. Go to ground
.

Shortly after that, Muffy came to the Spa unexpectedly. She was her usual elegant self; her manner gave nothing away. “Let’s walk on the lawn,” she said. When they were out in the open and away from any hidden mikes, she whispered, “I’m not here for a treatment. I just needed
to tell you that we’re going away, I can’t say where. Don’t worry. It’s only urgent on the inside.”

“Will you be all right?” Toby asked.

“Time will tell,” said Muffy. “Good luck, dear Toby. Dear Tobiatha. Put Light around me.”

She and her husband were listed as fatalities in an airship accident a week later. The CorpSeCorps were good at arranging high-class mishaps for highly placed suspects, Zeb had told her – people whose disappearance without a trace would cause a stir, up there among the Corps anointed.

Toby didn’t go near the MaddAddam chatroom for months after that. She waited for the knock on the door, the shattering of glass, the
zipzip
of a spraygun. But nothing happened. When she finally screwed up the courage to enter MaddAddam again, there was a message for her:

Inaccessible Rail from Spirit Bear: The Garden is destroyed. Adams and Eves gone dark. Watch and wait
.

POLLINATION DAY

POLLINATION DAY

YEAR TWENTY-ONE

OF THE TREES, AND OF THE FRUITS IN THEIR SEASONS.
SPOKEN BY ADAM ONE.

Dear Friends and Fellow Mammals:

Today is a Feast day, but sadly we have no feast. Our flight was rapid: our escape narrow. Now, true to their nature, our enemies have laid waste to our Rooftop. But surely one day we will return to Edencliff and restore that blissful site to its former glory. The CorpSeCorps may have destroyed our Garden, but they have not destroyed our Spirit. Eventually, we shall plant again.

Why did the Corps strike? Alas, we were becoming too powerful for their liking. Many rooftops were blossoming as the rose; many hearts and minds were bent towards an Earth restored to balance. But in success lay the seeds of ruin, for those in power could no longer dismiss us as ineffectual faddists: they feared us, as prophets of the age to come. In short, we threatened their profit margins.

In addition, they linked us to the bio-attacks made on their infrastructures by the schismatic and heretical group calling itself MaddAddam. Last week’s bombing attacks on the Rarity restaurant chain – though perpetrated by the Wolf Isaiahists alone – gave them an excuse to unleash a sweeping crackdown on all who have sided with God’s Created Earth.

May they prove as blind in material vision as they have long been in Spiritual vision! For though our days of calling carnivores to open repentance on the pleebland streets are over, the lessons of Animal Camouflage have not been lost on us. Disguised to blend with the background, we thrive under the noses of our enemies. We have shed our plain vestments and swathed ourselves in mallway purchases. The monogrammed golf shirt, the lime green tank top, the striped pastel knit ensemble sported so courageously by Nuala – such is our defensive armour.

Some of you have chosen to allay suspicion by courageously eating the flesh of our fellow Creatures; but do not attempt feats beyond your strength, dear Friends. To bite into a SecretBurger and then choke on it will attract unwelcome scrutiny. If in doubts as to your limits, confine yourselves to a SoYummie ice cream. Such quasi-foods may be swallowed without undue strain.

Let us give thanks to the Fernside Truffle cell, which has made this Street of Dreams refuge available to us. The sign on our door proclaims,
GREEN GENES
,which purports to be a firm of botanic splice designers. The second sign – the one that says,
CLOSED FOR RENOVATIONS
– is our protection. If asked, say we’ve been having trouble with the contractor. That is always a plausible explanation.

Today is Pollination Day, on which we remember the contributions to forest preservation of Saint Suryamani Bhagat of India, Saint Stephen King of the Pureora Forest in New Zealand, and Saint Odigha of Nigeria, among so many others. This Festival is devoted to the mysteries of Plant Reproduction, especially that of those wondrous trees, the Angiosperms, with special emphasis upon the Drupes and the Pomaceous Fruits.

Legends of such Fruits have come down to us from the Ancients – the Golden Apples of the Hesperides, the similarly golden Apple of Discord. Some say that the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was a fig, others prefer a date, yet others a pomegranate. It would have made sense for this foodstuff to have been truly evil – a meat object, such as a beefsteak. Why then a Fruit? Because our Ancestors were fruitivores, without a doubt, and only a Fruit would have tempted them.

The Fruit remains a deeply meaningful symbol for us, embodying the notions of healthful harvest, of rich culmination, and of new beginning, for within every Fruit is a seed – a potential new life. The Fruit ripens and falls and returns to the soil; but the Seed takes root, and grows, and brings forth more Life. As the Human Words of God have said, “By their Fruits ye shall know them.” Let us pray that our Fruits be Fruits of Good, and not Fruits of Evil.

But a word of caution: we honour the Pollinating Insects, and in especial the Bees, but we are now informed that, in addition to the virus-resistant strain introduced after the recent honeybee die-off, the Corps have now developed a hybrid bee. It is not a genetic splice, my Friends. No: it is a greater abomination! Bees are seized while still in larval form, and micro-mechanical systems are inserted into them. Tissue grows around the insert, and when the full adult or “imago” emerges, it is a bee cyborg spy controllable by a CorpSeCorps operator, equipped to transmit, and thus to betray.

The ethical problems raised are troubling: Should we have recourse to insecticides? Is such a mechanized slave bee
alive?
If so, is it a true Creature of God or something else entirely? We must ponder the deeper implications, my Friends, and pray for guidance.

Let us sing.