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Crozier and Zunzuncito herd the Mo'Hairs out of their paddock so they can graze. Both carry sprayguns: in a Painballer confrontation they'd have the advantage - two weapons against one - unless they were taken by surprise. Toby hopes they'll remember to check above their heads if there are trees nearby: that must have been how the Painballers caught Amanda and Ren, by dropping down from above.
Why is war so much like a practical joke? she thinks. Hiding behind bushes, leaping out, with not much difference between Boo! and Bang! except the blood. The loser falls over with a scream, followed with a foolish expression, mouth agape, eyes akimbo. Those old biblical kings, setting their feet on conquered necks, stringing up rival kings on trees, rejoicing in piles of heads - there was an element of childish glee in all of that.
Maybe it's what drove Crake on, thinks Toby. Maybe he wanted to end it. Cut that part out of us: the grinning, elemental malice. Begin us anew.
She eats her lunch early, in solitude, because she's tagged for sentry with her rifle during the regular lunchtime. The food is cold pork and burdock root, with an Oreo cookie from a package gleaned from a pharmacy: a rare treat, carefully rationed. She opens her cookie and licks the white sweet filling before eating the two chocolatey halves: a guilty luxury.
Before the afternoon thunderstorm, five of the Crakers carry Jimmy into the cobb house, along with his Hey-Diddle-Diddle quilt. Toby sits with him while it rains, checks his wound, manages to raise his head so he drinks some of the mushroom elixir, even though he's still unconscious. Her supply is running low, but she doesn't know where to find the right mushrooms for a fresh brew.
A single Craker remains in the room with them, to purr: the others go away. They don't like houses; they'd rather be wet than cooped up. Once the rain stops, four other Crakers appear to carry Jimmy outside again.
The clouds part, the sun comes out. Crozier and Zunzuncito return with the flock of Mo'Hairs. Nothing has happened, they say; or nothing you can put your finger on. The Mo'Hairs were jumpy; it was hard to keep them together. And the crows were making a racket, but what does that tell you? Crows are always making a racket about something.
"Jumpy, how?" says Toby. "What sort of racket?" But they can't be more specific.
Tamaraw, with a denim shirt over her hunched shoulders and a canvas sunhat, attempts to milk the one Mo'Hair that's producing. The milking doesn't go smoothly: there's kicking and bleating, and the pail tips and spills.
Crozier shows the Crakers how to work the hand pump: a retro decoration once but now the source of their drinking water. God knows what's in it, thinks Toby: it's groundwater, and every toxic spill for miles around may have leaked into it. She'll push for rainwater, at least for drinking; though with faraway fires and maybe nuclear meltdowns sending dirty particulate into the stratosphere, God knows what's in that as well.
The Crakers are delighted with the pump; the children scamper over and clamour to have water pumped onto them. After that, Crozier demonstrates the one piece of solar the MaddAddamites have managed to get running; it's connected to a couple of light bulbs, one in the cooking shack and one in the yard. He tries to explain why the lights go on, but they're puzzled. It's obvious to them that the light bulbs are like lumiroses, or the green rabbits that come out at dusk: they glow because Oryx made them that way.
Supper takes place at the long table. White Sedge in an apron with bluebirds on it and Rebecca with a mauve bath towel tied around her middle with yellow satin ribbon dish out the food from the pots, then sit down. Ren and Lotis Blue are at the far end, coaxing Amanda to eat. The MaddAddamites not on sentry duty fi
lter in from their chores.
"Greetings, Inaccessible Rail," says Ivory Bill. He takes pleasure in calling Toby by her old MaddAddam codename. He has a tulip-sprinkled bedsheet draped around his sparse form and a turban-like object made from a matching pillowcase on his head. His angular nose juts out from his leathery face like a beak. It was odd, thinks Toby, how the MaddAddamites chose codenames that mirrored parts of themselves.
"How's he doing?" says Manatee. He's wearing a broad-brimmed straw hat that makes him look like a chubby plantation owner. "Our star patient."
"He's not dead," says Toby. "But he's not what you'd call conscious."
"If he ever was," says Ivory Bill. "We used to call him Thickney. That was his MaddAddam name, back in the early days."
"He was Crake's jackal at the Paradice Project," says Tamaraw. "Once he wakes up, there's a lot he needs to tell us. Before I trample him to death." She snorts to indicate that she's joking.
"Thickney by name, Thickney by nature," says Manatee. "I don't think he had the least freaking idea. He was just a dupe."
"Naturally we wouldn't have had a high opinion of him, to be fair," says Ivory Bill. "He was at the Project by choice. Unlike ourselves." He sticks his fork into a chunk of meat. "Dear lady," he says to White Sedge, "could you possibly identify this substance for me?"
"Ahc-tually," says White Sedge with her British accent, "actually, not."
"We were the brain slaves," says Manatee, spearing another chop. "The captive science brainiacs, working the evolution machines for Crake. What a power-tripper, thought he could perfect humanity. Not that he wasn't brilliant."
"He wasn't alone there," says slender Zunzuncito. "It was big business, the BioCorps were backing it. People were paying through the ceiling for those gene-splices. They were customizing their kids, ordering up the DNA like pizza toppings." He's wearing bifocals. Once we run out of optical products, Toby thinks, it really will be back to the Stone Age.
"Just, Crake was better at it," says Manatee. "He put some accessories into these guys nobody else even thought of. The built-in insect repellent: genius."
"And the women who can't say no. That colour-coded hormonal thing, you have to admire it," says Zunzuncito.
"As a meat-computer set of problems to be solved, it was an intriguing challenge," says Ivory Bill, turning his attention to Toby. "Let me elucidate." He's talking as if they're all at a graduate seminar, while cutting his greens into small, even squares. "For instance, the rabbit gizzard, and the baboon platform for certain chromatic features of the reproductive system --"
"The part where they turn blue," says Zunzuncito helpfully to Toby.
"I was doing the chemical composition of the urine," says Tamaraw. "The carnivore-deterrent element. Hard to test at the Paradice Project - we didn't have any carnivores."
"I was working on the voice box: now that was complex," says Manatee.
"Too bad you didn't code in a Cancel button for the singing," says Ivory Bill. "It gets on the nerves."
