The MaddAddam Trilogy (117 page)

“Only half true,” says Manatee. “A horse plus a donkey gives you a
mule, but it’s sterile. We wouldn’t know for sure until the next generation.”

“I’ve only got enough for tomorrow,” says Rebecca. “We need to dig some dandelions. We’ve used up the ones around here.”

“It would be an interesting experiment,” says Ivory Bill. “But of course we would need the co-operation of the ladies.” He inclines his head courteously towards Swift Fox, who’s wearing a winsome floral print sheet, with bouquets of pink and blue flowers tied with pink and blue bows.

“You’ve seen those dicks of theirs?” says Swift Fox. “Too much of a good thing. If I find a dick in my mouth, I want to know it came in at the head end.” Ivory Bill turns away, visibly shocked, silently angry. Laughter from some, frowns from others. Swift Fox likes to potty-mouth the crowd, especially the men; to demonstrate that she isn’t just a pretty body, is Toby’s guess. She wants to have it both ways.

Zeb is down at the other end of the table. He came late; he hasn’t been joining in the debate. He appears to be engrossed in the flatbread. Swift Fox tosses him a glance: is he her intended audience? He pays no attention; but then he wouldn’t, would he? That’s what those lovelife advisers blogging about office romances used to say: you can tell the guilty parties by the way in which they studiously avoid each other.

“Those guys don’t need any co-operation,” says Crozier. “They jump anything with a c – Sorry, Toby. Anything with a skirt.”

“A skirt!” says Swift Fox, laughing again, showing her white teeth. “Where’ve you been? You’ve seen any of us wearing skirts? Bedsheet wraps don’t count.” She twists her shoulders back and forth, as if on a fashion runway. “You like my skirt? It goes all the way up to my armpits!”

“Leave him alone, he’s underage,” says Manatee. Crozier is making a strange face: anger? Embarrassment? Ren’s sitting beside him. He gives her a sheepish grin, puts his hand on her arm. She frowns at him like a spouse.

“They’re the most fun, the underage ones,” says Swift Fox. “Frisky. They’re packed with endorphins, and their nucleotide sequences are to die for – miles of telomeres left.” Ren stares at her, stone-faced.

“He’s not underage,” she says. Swift Fox smiles.

Do the men at the table see it? Toby wonders. The silent mud-wrestle
in the air? No, probably not. They’re not on the progesterone wavelength.

“They only do that under the right conditions,” says Manatee. “The group copulation. The woman has to be in heat.”

“That’s fine for their own women,” says Beluga. “They’ve got clear hormonal signals there, both visual and olfactory. But our women register to them as in heat all the time.”

“Maybe they are,” says Manatee, grinning. “They just won’t admit it.”

“Point being: two different species,” says Beluga.

“Women aren’t dogs,” says White Sedge. “I am finding this exchange offensive. I don’t think you should refer to us like that.” Her voice is calm but her spine’s like a ramrod.

“This is merely an objective scientific discussion,” says Zunzuncito.

“Hey,” says Rebecca. “All I said is, it would be neat to have some eggs.”

Morning worktime, the sun not yet too hot. Bright pink kudzu moths hang in the shade, flocks of butterflies in blue and magenta kite-fight in the air, golden honeybees flock on the polyberry flowers.

Toby’s on garden duty again, weeding and deslugging. Her rifle leans against the inside of the fence: she prefers it within reach, wherever she is, because you never know. All around her the plants are growing, weeds and cultivars both. She can almost hear them pushing up through the soil, their rootlets sniffing for nutrients and crowding the rootlets of their neighbours, their leaves releasing clouds of airborne chemicals.

Saint Vandana Shiva of Seeds
, she wrote in her notebook this morning.
Saint Nikolai Vavilov, Martyr
. She added the traditional God’s Gardener invocation:
May we be mindful of Saint Vandana and Saint Vavilov, fierce preservers of ancient seeds. Saint Vavilov, who collected the seeds and preserved them throughout the siege of Leningrad, only to fall victim to the tyrant Stalin; and Saint Vandana, tireless warrior against biopiracy, who gave of herself for the good of the Living Vegetable World in all its diversity and beauty. Lend us the purity of your Spirits and the strength of your resolve
.

Toby has a flash of memory: herself, back when she was Eve Six among the Gardeners, reciting this prayer along with old Pilar just before they set to work on the bean rows, doing their required stint of slug and snail relocation. Sometimes the homesickness for those days is so strong and also so unexpected that it knocks her down like a rogue wave. If she’d had a camera then, if she’d had a photo album, she’d be poring over the pictures. But the Gardeners didn’t believe in cameras, or in paper records; so all she has is the words.

There would be no point in being a Gardener now: the enemies of God’s Natural Creation no longer exist, and the animals and birds – those that did not become extinct under the human domination of the planet – are thriving unchecked. Not to mention the plant life.

Though maybe we could do with fewer of some plants, she thinks as she snips off the aggressive kudzu vines already climbing the garden fence. The stuff gets in everywhere. It’s tireless, it can grow a foot in twelve hours, it surges up and over anything in its way like a green tsunami. The grazing Mo’Hairs do a little to keep it down, and the Crakers munch away at it, and Rebecca serves it up like spinach, but that hardly makes a dent in it.

She’s heard some of the men discussing a plan to make it into wine, but she has mixed feelings about that. She can’t imagine the taste – Pinot Grigio crossed with mashed lawn rakings? Pinot Vert with a whiff of compost pile? But apart from that, can their tiny group really afford to indulge in alcohol in any form? It dulls awareness, and they’re too vulnerable for that. Their little enclave is poorly defended. One drunken sentry, then infiltration, then carnage.

“Found a swarm for you,” says Zeb’s voice. He’s come up behind her unseen: so much for her own alertness.

She turns, smiling. Is it a real smile? Not entirely, because she still doesn’t know the truth about Swift Fox. Swift Fox and Zeb. Did they or didn’t they? And if he simply took the open door, so to speak – if he didn’t think twice about it – why should she? “A swarm?” she says. “Really? Where?”

“Come into the forest with me,” he says, grinning like a fairy-tale wolf, holding out his paw of a hand. So of course she takes it, and forgives
him everything. For the moment. Even though there may not be anything to forgive.

They walk towards the tree edge, away from the cobb-house clearing. It does feel like a clearing now, though the MaddAddamites didn’t clear anything. But now that the vegetation is moving in they’re working to keep it clear, so maybe that counts.

It’s cooler under the trees. Also more ominous: the green cross-hatching of leaves and branches blocks the sight lines. There’s a trail, indicated by bent twigs, showing the way Zeb must have come earlier.

“Are you sure this is safe?” Toby says. She’s lowered her voice without even thinking about it. In the open you look, because a predator will be seen before it’s heard. But among the trees you have to listen, because it will be heard before it’s seen.

“I was just back here, I checked it out,” says Zeb, too confidently for Toby.

There’s the swarm, a large bee ball the size of a watermelon, hanging in the lower branches of a young sycamore. It’s buzzing softly; the surface of the ball is rippling, like golden fur in a breeze.

“Thank you,” says Toby. She ought to go back to the cobb-house enclave, find a container, and scoop the centre of the swarm into it to capture the queen. Then the rest of the swarm will follow. She won’t even need to smoke the bees: they won’t sting because they aren’t defending a nest. She’ll explain to them first that she means them well, and that she hopes they will be her messengers to the land of the dead. Pilar, her bee teacher at the Gardeners, told her this speech was necessary when persuading a swarm of wild bees to come with you.

“Maybe I should get a bag or something,” she says. “They’re already scouting for a good nest site. They’ll be flying soon.”

“You want me to babysit them?” asks Zeb.

“It’s okay,” she says. She’d like him to come back to the cobb house with her: she doesn’t want to walk through the forest alone. “But could you just not listen to me for a minute? And look the other way?”

“You need to take a leak?” says Zeb. “Don’t mind me.”

“You know how this goes. You were a Gardener yourself,” she says. “I need to talk to the bees.” It’s one of the Gardener practises that, viewed by an outsider, must seem weird; and it still does seem weird to her because part of her remains an outsider.

“Sure,” says Zeb. “Hey. Do your stuff.” He turns sideways, gazes into the forest.

Toby feels herself blushing. But she pulls the end of her bedsheet up to cover her head – essential, old Pilar said, or the bees would feel disrespected – and speaks in a whisper to the buzzing furball. “Oh Bees,” she says. “I send greetings to your Queen. I wish to be her friend, and to prepare a safe home for her, and for you who are her daughters, and to tell you the news every day. May you carry messages from the land of the living to all souls who dwell in the land of shadows. Please tell me now whether you accept my offer.”

She waits. The buzzing increases. Then several of the scout bees fly down and land on her face. They explore her skin, her nostrils, the corners of her eyes; it’s as if a dozen tiny fingers are stroking her. If they sting, the answer is no. If they don’t sting, the answer is yes. She breathes in, willing herself to be calm. They don’t like fear.

The scout bees lift away from her, spiral back towards the swarm, blend into the moving golden pelt. Toby breathes out.

“You can look now,” she says to Zeb.

There’s a crackling, a thrashing: something’s coming towards them through the undergrowth. Toby feels the blood leave her hands. Oh shit, she thinks. Pig, wolvog? We don’t have a spraygun. And my rifle’s back there in the garden. She scans around for a stone to throw. Zeb has picked up a stick.

Saint Dian, Saint Francis, Saint Fateh Singh Rathore: lend me your strength and wisdom. Speak to the animals now. May they turn away from us, and seek their meat from God.

But no, it’s not an animal. There’s a voice: it’s people. There’s no Gardener prayer against people. Painballers – they don’t know we’re here. What should we do? Run? No, they’re too close now. Get out of the line of fire. If possible.

Zeb has stepped in front of her, pushed her back with one hand. He freezes. Then he laughs.

Out of the bushes comes Swift Fox, straightening her pink and blue floral bedsheet. Right behind her is Crozier, similarly straightening, though his bedsheet is an understated black-and-grey stripe.

“Hi, Toby. Hi, Zeb,” he says, overly casual.

“Taking a stroll?” says Swift Fox.

“Bee hunting,” says Zeb. He doesn’t seem upset. So maybe I’ve been wrong, thinks Toby: he’s not feeling territorial about her, he doesn’t care that she’s been flailing among the weeds with Crozier.

As for Crozier, isn’t he supposed to be pursuing Ren? Or has Toby been wrong about that as well?

“Bee hunting? Really? Hey, whatever works,” says Swift Fox, laughing. “Us, we were foraging. For mushrooms. We foraged and foraged. We got down on our hands and knees, we looked everywhere. But we didn’t find a single mushroom, did we, Croze?”

Crozier shakes his head, looking down at the ground. It’s as if he’s been caught with his pants down, but he’s not wearing pants, only the striped bedsheet.

“See you,” says Swift Fox. “Happy bee hunting.” She heads back towards the cobb house, with Crozier following as if pulled on a string.

“C’mon, Bee Queen,” Zeb says to Toby. “Let’s get your supplies. I’ll walk you home.”

In a perfect world Toby would already have a Langstroth hive box, complete with supers and moveable frames. She should have prepared one ahead of time, on the off chance of finding a swarm; but, lacking
foresight, she did not do this. Barring a proper hive box, what can she use that will appeal to the bees? Any cavity that’s protected, with an entrance where they can go in and out; dry enough, cool enough, warm enough.

Rebecca offers a scavenged Styrofoam cooler; Zeb makes an entrance hole in the side, near the top, and several other ventilation holes. Toby and Zeb set it up in a corner of the garden, surround it with rocks for stability and extra shelter, then add a couple of vertical slabs of plywood, raising them above the bottom of the cooler with small stones. It’s only a rough approximation of a hive, but it will have to do for now, and perhaps for a long time. The danger is that if the bees get established here they’ll be very annoyed if she moves them later.

Toby improvises a catching bag out of a pillowcase, and they trek back into the woods to collect the bees. She uses a long stick, scrapes quickly. The core of the swarm tumbles gently into the bag. The densest part holds the magnet of the queen: like the heart in the body, she’s invisible.

They carry the pillowcase to the garden, buzzing loudly; a cloud of loose bees trails behind them. Toby eases the bee ball into the cooler, waits until all strays have found their way out of the pillowcase, then waits some more while the bees explore their new home.

There’s always an adrenalin rush for Toby when she’s handling bees. It could go badly: she might smell wrong one day and find herself the centre of an angry, stinging horde. Sometimes she feels she could wash herself all over in bees, like a bubble bath; but that’s the euphoria of bee handling, like an altitude high or the rapture of the deep. It would be stupid to actually try it.

When the swarm has settled down she closes the lid of the cooler and places a couple of stones on top. Soon the bees are winging in and out of the entrance hole and rummaging for pollen among the garden flowers.

“Thank you,” she says to Zeb; and he says, “Any time,” as if he’s a crossing guard rather than a lover. But it’s daytime, she reminds herself: he’s always a little brisk in daytime. He lopes off, around the corner of the cobb house, out of sight; mission accomplished.