The MaddAddam Trilogy (90 page)

“We gonna feed her?” says the shorthair. He’s licking his fingers.

“Give her some of yours,” says the bearded one. “She’s no use to us dead.”

“No use to
me
dead,” says the shorthair. “You’re such a pervert you’d plank a fuckin’ corpse.”

“Speaking of which, your turn first. Get the pump primed. I hate a dry fuck.”

“It was me first yesterday.”

“So, we arm-wrestle?”

Then suddenly there’s a fourth person in the clearing – a naked man, but not one of the green-eyed beautiful ones. This one is emaciated and scabby. He has a long scraggly beard, and he looks very crazy. But I know him. Or I think I know him. Is it Jimmy?

He’s carrying a spraygun, and he has it aimed it at the two men. He’s going to shoot them. He has that kind of maniac focus.

But he’ll shoot Amanda too, because the dark-bearded guy sees him and scrambles up onto his knees and pulls Amanda in front of him, one arm around her neck. The shorthair ducks in behind them. Jimmy hesitates, but he doesn’t lower the spraygun.

“Jimmy!” I scream from inside the shrubbery. “Don’t! That’s Amanda!”

He must think the bushes are talking to him. His face turns. I come out from behind the leaves.

“Great! The other bimbo,” says the bearded one. “Now we’ll have one each!” He’s grinning. The shorthair crouches forward, reaches for their spraygun.

Toby steps into the clearing. She has the rifle up and aimed. “Don’t touch that,” she says to the shorthair. Her voice is strong and clear but dead flat even. She must sound scary to him, and look it too – skinny, tattered, teeth bared. Like a
TV
banshee, like a walking skeleton; like someone with nothing to lose.

The shorthair freezes. The one holding Amanda doesn’t know which way to turn: Jimmy’s in front of him, but Toby’s off to the side. “Back off! I’ll break her neck,” he says to all of us. His voice is very loud: that means he’s afraid.

“I might care about that, but he doesn’t,” Toby says, meaning Jimmy. To me: “Get that spraygun. Don’t let him grab you.” To the shorthair: “Lie down.” To me: “Watch your ankles.” To the bearded one: “Let go of her.”

This is very fast, but at the same time slowed down. The voices are coming from far away; the sun’s so bright it hurts me; the light crackles on our faces; we glare and sparkle, as if electricity’s running all over us like water. I can almost see into the bodies – everyone’s bodies. The veins, the tendons, the blood flowing. I can hear their hearts, like thunder coming nearer.

I think I might faint. But I can’t, because I need to help Toby. I don’t know how, but I run over. So close I can smell them. Rancid sweat, oily hair. Snatch up their spraygun.

“Around behind him,” Toby tells me. To the Painballer: “Hands behind your head.” To me: “Shoot him in the back if you don’t see those hands quick.” She’s talking as if I know how to work this thing. To Jimmy, she says, “Easy now,” as if he’s a big frightened animal.

All this time Amanda has kept still, but when the dark-bearded one lets go of her she moves like a snake. She pulls the rope noose up and over her head and whips the guy across the face with it. Then she kicks him in the nuts. I can tell she doesn’t have a lot of strength left, but she uses all she has, and when he doubles over on the ground she kicks the other one. Then she grabs a stone and whacks each of them over the head, and there’s blood. Then she drops the stone and hobbles over to me. She’s crying, big gulping sobs, and I know it must have been very terrible, those
days when I wasn’t there, because it takes more than a lot to make Amanda cry.

“Oh, Amanda,” I say to her. “I’m so sorry.”

Jimmy’s swaying on his feet. “Are you real?” he says to Toby. He looks so bewildered. He rubs his eyes.

“As real as you,” says Toby. “You’d better tie them up,” she says to me. “Do a good job. When they come out of it they’re going to be very angry.”

Amanda wipes her face on her sleeve. Then we start knotting the two of them together, the hands behind the backs, a loop around each neck. We could use more rope, but it will do for now.

“Is it you?” says Jimmy. “I think I’ve seen you before.”

I walk towards him, slowly and carefully because he still has his gun. “Jimmy,” I say. “It’s Ren. Remember me? You can put that down. It’s okay now.” It’s how you’d say it to a child.

He lowers the spraygun and I wrap my arms around him and give him a long hug. He’s shivering, but his skin’s burning hot.

“Ren?” he says. “Are you dead?”

“No, Jimmy. I’m alive, and so are you.” I smooth back his hair.

“I’m such a mess,” he says. “Sometimes I think everyone’s dead.”

SAINT JULIAN AND ALL SOULS

SAINT JULIAN AND ALL SOULS

YEAR TWENTY-FIVE.

OF THE FRAGILITY OF THE UNIVERSE.
SPOKEN BY ADAM ONE.

My dear Friends, those few that now remain:

Only a little time is left to us. We have used some of that time to make our way up here, to the site of our once-flourishing Edencliff Rooftop Garden, where in a more hopeful era we spent such happy days together.

Let us take this opportunity to dwell, for one final moment, on the Light.

For the new moon is rising, signalling the beginning of Saint Julian and All Souls. All Souls is not restricted to Human Souls: among us, it encompasses the Souls of all the living Creatures that have passed through Life, and have undergone the Great Transformation, and have entered that state sometimes called Death, but more rightly known as Renewed Life. For in this our World, and in the eye of God, not a single atom that has ever existed is truly lost.

Dear Diplodocus, dear Pterosaur, dear Trilobite; dear Mastodon, dear Dodo, dear Great Auk, dear Passenger Pigeon; dear Panda, dear Whooping Crane; and all you countless others who have played in this our shared Garden in your day: be with us at this time of trial, and strengthen our resolve. Like you, we have enjoyed the air and the sunlight and the moonlight on the water; like you, we have heard the call of the seasons and have answered them. Like you, we have replenished the Earth. And like you, we must now witness the end of our Species, and pass from Earthly view.

As always on this day, the words of Saint Julian of Norwich, that compassionate fourteenth-century Saint, remind us of the fragility of our Cosmos – a fragility affirmed anew by the physicists of the twentieth century, when Science discovered the vast spaces of emptiness that lie,
not only within the atoms, but between the stars. What is our Cosmos but a snowflake? What is it but a piece of lace? As our dear Saint Julian so beautifully said, in words of tenderness that have echoed down through the centuries:

… He showed me a little thing, the quantity of a hazel nut, lying in the palm of my hand … as round as any ball. I looked at it and thought, What may this be, and I was answered generally thus: It is all that is made. I marvelled how it might last. For I thought it might fall suddenly to nothing, for little cause; and I was answered in my understanding: It lasts and ever shall, for God loves it. And so has everything its being, through the love of God.

Do we deserve this Love by which God maintains our Cosmos? Do we deserve it as a Species? We have taken the World given to us and carelessly destroyed its fabric and its Creatures. Other religions have taught that this World is to be rolled up like a scroll and burnt to nothingness, and that a new Heaven and a new Earth will then appear. But why would God give us another Earth when we have mistreated this one so badly?

No, my Friends. It is not this Earth that is to be demolished: it is the Human Species. Perhaps God will create another, more compassionate race to take our place.

For the Waterless Flood has swept over us – not as a vast hurricane, not as a barrage of comets, not as a cloud of poisonous gasses. No: as we suspected for so long, it is a plague – a plague that infects no Species but our own, and that will leave all other Creatures untouched. Our cities are darkened, our lines of communication are no more. The blight and ruin of our Garden is now mirrored by the blight and ruin that have emptied the streets below. We need not fear discovery now: our old enemies cannot pursue us, occupied as they must be by the hideous torments of their own bodily dissolution, if they are not already dead.

We should not – indeed we cannot – rejoice at that. For yesterday
the plague took three of us. Already I sense within myself those changes that I see reflected in your own eyes. We know only too well what awaits us.

But let our going out be brave and joyous! Let us end with a prayer for All Souls. Among these are the Souls of those who have persecuted us; those who have murdered God’s Creatures, and extinguished His Species; those who have tortured in the name of Law; who have worshipped nothing but riches; and who, to gain wealth and worldly power, have inflicted pain and death.

Let us forgive the killers of the Elephant, and the exterminators of the Tiger; and those who slaughtered the Bear for its gall bladder, and the Shark for its cartilage, and the Rhinoceros for its horn. May we forgive them freely, as we may hope to be forgiven by God, who holds our frail Cosmos in His hand, and keeps it safe through His endless Love.

This Forgiveness is the hardest task we shall ever be called upon to perform. Give us the strength for it.

I would like us all to join hands now.

Let us sing.

THE EARTH FORGIVES

The Earth forgives the Miner’s blast
That rends her crust and burns her skin;
The centuries bring Trees again,
And water, and the Fish therein.

The Deer at length forgives the Wolf
That tears his throat and drinks his blood;
His bones return to soil, and feed
The trees that flower and fruit and seed.

And underneath those shady trees
The Wolf will spend her restful days;
And then the Wolf in turn will pass,
And turn to grass the Deer will graze.

All Creatures know that some must die
That all the rest may take and eat;
Sooner or later, all transform
Their blood to wine, their flesh to meat.

But Man alone seeks Vengefulness
And writes his abstract Laws on stone;
For this false Justice he has made,
He tortures limb and crushes bone.

Is this the image of a god?
My tooth for yours, your eye for mine?
Oh, if Revenge did move the stars
Instead of Love, they would not shine.

We dangle by a flimsy thread,
Our little lives are grains of sand:
The Cosmos is a tiny sphere
Held in the hollow of God’s hand.

Give up your anger and your spite,
And imitate the Deer, the Tree;
In sweet Forgiveness find your joy,
For it alone can set you free.

From
The God’s Gardeners Oral Hymnbook

The new moon’s rising now, out over the sea: Saint Julian and All Souls has begun.

I loved Saint Julian’s when I was little. Each of us kids would make our own Cosmos, out of stuff we’d gleaned. Then we’d stick glittery things onto it and hang it on a string. The Feast that night was round foods, like radishes and pumpkins, and the whole Garden would be decorated with our shining worlds. One year we made the Cosmos balls out of wire and put candle ends inside them: that was really pretty. Another year we tried to make Divine Hands for holding the Cosmos balls, but the yellow plastic housework gloves we came up with looked very strange, like zombie hands. Anyway you don’t picture God as wearing gloves.