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But where is Zeb? Why isn't he back yet? Has he found Adam One?
If Adam's injured, he'll need to be carried. That would slow them down. What's happening out there in the ruined city, where she can't see? If only the cellphones still worked. But the towers are down; even if there were still a power source, no one here would know how to repair the tech. There's a hand-cranked radio, but it ceased to function.
We'll have to learn smoke signals all over again, she thinks. One for he loves me, two for he loves me not. Three for smouldering anger.
She spends the day working in the garden, on the theory that it will be soothing. If only she had some beehives to care for. She could share the daily news with the bees, as she and old Pilar used to do, back on the God's Gardeners' rooftop garden before Pilar died. Ask them for advice. Request that they fly out and explore and then report back to her, as if they were cyberbees.
Today we honour Saint Jan Swammerdam, first to discover that the Queen Bee is not a King, and that all worker Bees in a hive are sisters; and Saint Zosima, eastern patron of Bees, who lived the selfless monastic life in the desert, as we, too, are doing in our own way; and Saint C. R. Ribbands, for his meticulous observations on Bee communication stratagems. And let us thank the Creator for the Bees themselves, for their gifts of Honey and Pollen, for their priceless work of fertilization among our Fruits and Nuts and our flowering Vegetables, yes, and for the comfort they bring to us in times of stress, with, as Tennyson once wrote, the murmuring of innumerable Bees ...
Pilar had taught her to rub a little royal jelly into her skin before working with the bees: that way, they wouldn't see her as a threat. They'd walk on her arms and face, their tiny feet touching as gently as eyelashes, as lightly as a cloud passing over. The bees are messengers, Pilar used to say. They carry the news back and forth between the seen world and the unseen one. If a loved one of yours has crossed the shadow threshold, they will tell you.
Suddenly, today, there are dozens of honeybees in the garden, busying themselves among the bean flowers. There must be a new wild swarm nearby. One bee alights on her ha
nd, tastes the salt on it. Is Zeb dead? she asks it silently. Tell me now. But it lifts off again without signalling.
Had she believed all that? Old Pilar's folklore? No, not really; or not exactly. Most likely Pilar hadn't quite believed it either, but it was a reassuring story: that the dead were not entirely dead but were alive in a different way; a paler way admittedly, and somewhere darker. But still able to send messages, if only such messages could be recognized and deciphered. People need such stories, Pilar said once, because however dark, a darkness with voices in it is better than a silent void.
In the late afternoon, once the thunder is over, the gleaner team returns. Toby sees them walking down the street, weaving in and out among the abandoned trucks and solarcars, backlit in the declining sun, and counts their silhouettes even before she can identify them. Yes, there are four. Nobody's missing. But also, no one's been added.
As they approach the fence around the cobb house Ren and Lotis Blue run to meet them, with a posse of Craker children following. Amanda runs too, though not as fast as the others. Toby walks.
"It was intense!" Swift Fox is saying as she comes up. "But at least we made it to the drugstore." She's flushed, a little sweaty; smudged, jubilant. She sets down her pack, opening it. "Wait'll you see what I got!"
Zeb and Black Rhino look wiped; Katuro less so.
"What happened?" Toby says to Zeb. She doesn't say, "I was worried sick." Surely he knows that.
"Long story," Zeb says. "Tell you later. I need a shower. Any trouble?"
"Jimmy woke up," she says. "He's kind of weak. And thin."
"Good," says Zeb. "Let's fatten him up and get him walking. We could use some more help around here." Then he's moving away from her, over towards the back of the cobb house.
Toby feels a blip of rage travelling through her body. Gone for almost two days and that's all he has to say about it? She's not a wife, she has no nagging rights, but she can't stop the images: Zeb rolling around in the aisles of the deserted drugstore with Swift Fox, tearing off her camouflage outfit among the bottles of conditioner and shampoo-in colour, more than thirty exciting tints; or were they a couple of aisles over, near the condoms and sensation-enhancing gels? Maybe they'd squashed themselves in beside the cash register, or over by the baby products - finished off with a whole box of wet wipes. Something of the sort happened. It must have happened, to bring out that smug look on the face of Swift Fox.
"Nail polish, painkillers, toothbrushes! Look, tweezers!" she's saying now.
"Looks like you cleaned the place out," says Lotis Blue.
"There wasn't that much left," says Swift Fox. "Looters were through, looks like they were interested in the pharmaceuticals. The Oxy, the BlyssPluss pills, anything with codeine."
"Not much use for the hair products?" says Lotis Blue.
"No. And the girl stuff - they didn't take that," says Swift Fox. She starts unloading the packages of Heavy Days and tampons and Slimlines. "I made the guys carry some in their own packs. They scored some beer too. Now that was a minor miracle."
"Why did it take so long?" Toby asks. Swift Fox smiles at her, not snidely. Instead she's too friendly, too guileless, like a teenager who's broken curfew.
"We got kind of trapped," she says. "We poked around and gathered stuff, but then in the afternoon, right before we were going to head back, there was a herd of those huge pigs - the ones that used to try raiding the garden before we shot some of them.
"At first they were just lurking along behind us, but when we'd finished in the drugstore and were coming out, we saw they were heading us off. So we ran back into the drugstore, but the front windows were smashed, so there was nothing to keep them out. We managed to get up onto the roof through a little trapdoor in the storeroom ceiling - they can't climb."
"Did they look hungry?" says Ren.
"How can you tell with a pig?" says Swift Fox.
They're omnivorous, thinks Toby. They'll eat anything. But hungry or not, they'd kill in spite. Or for revenge. We've been eating them.
"So then?" says Ren.
