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Luckily there's a palsa that's been ripped open, no doubt by an enraged grolar in s
earch of evasive ground squirrels. Zeb digs himself and the bike into the moist black earth, leaving a vantage point between clods. After a long damp wait, here comes the 'thopter. It hovers over where the two young cyclists must be hugging and shivering and thanking their lucky stars, and down goes the ladder, and, after a time, up go the lovers, and then they're carried away in the slow, low 'thopter, flippity-flop, blimpity-blimp. What a story they will have to tell.
And they tell it. Once in Whitehorse, having shed his bearskin wrappings some time back and sunk them in a pond, having changed into the fresh gear provided by Fortune, having grabbed a hitchhike, having freshened up considerably and altered his hairstyle, having hacked certain features of the cyclist's identity and run some cash through a backdoor known to him by memory, and having swiftly topped up his own cash flow thereby, he reads all about it.
Sasquatches are real after all, and they've migrated to the Mackenzie Mountain Barrens. No, it couldn't have been a bear because bears can't ride mountain bikes. Anyway, this thing was seven feet tall with eyes almost like a man's, and it smelled terrible, and it showed signs of almost-human intelligence. There's even a picture, taken on the girl's cellphone: a brown blob, with a red circle around it to signal which of the many brown blobs in the picture is the significant one.
Within a week, Bigfoot-believers from around the world have formed a posse and mounted an expedition to the site of the discovery, and are combing the area for footprints and tufts of hair and piles of dung. Soon, says their leader, they will have a batch of definitive DNA, and then the scoffers will be shown up for the corrupt, fossilized, obsolete truth-deniers that they are.
Very soon.
The Story of Zeb and Thank You and Good Night
Thank you for bringing me this fish.
Thank you means ... Thank you means you did something good for me. Or something you thought was good. And that good thing was giving me a fish. So that made me happy, but the part that really made me happy was that you wanted me to be happy. That's what Thank you means.
No, you don't need to give me another fish. I am happy enough for now.
Don't you want to hear about Zeb?
Then you must listen.
After Zeb came back from the high and tall mountains with snow on top, and after he had taken off the skin of the bear and put it on himself, he said Thank You to the bear. To the spirit of the bear.
Because the bear didn't eat him, but allowed him to eat it instead, and also because it gave him its fur skin to put on.
A spirit is the part of you that doesn't die when your body dies.
Dies is ... it's what the fish do when they are caught and then cooked.
No, it is not only fish that die. People do it as well.
Yes. Everyone.
Yes, you as well. Sometime. Not yet. Not for a long time.
I don't know why. Crake made it that way.
Because ...
Because if nothing ever died, but everything had more and more babies, the world would get too full and there wouldn't be any room.
No, you will not be cooked on a fire when you die.
Because you are not a fish.
No, the bear was not a fish either. And it died in a bear way. Not in a fish way. So it was not cooked on a fire.
Yes, maybe Zeb said Thank You to Oryx too. As well as to the bear.
Because Oryx let Zeb eat one of her Children. Oryx knows that some of her Children eat other ones; that is the way they are made. The ones with sharp teeth. So she knew that Zeb could eat one of her Children too, because he was very hungry.
I don't know whether Zeb said Thank You to Crake. Maybe you could ask Zeb that, the next time you see him. Anyway, Crake is not in charge of bears. Oryx is in charge of bears.
Zeb put on the bear's fur to keep warm.
Because he was very cold. Because it was colder there. Because of the mountains all around, with snow on the top.
