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"No," Toby lies. "I'm good."
"You're into prevarication?" says Zeb. "Fine with me."
"Prevarication. That's a lot of syllables," says Toby.
"Let me guess. You think I should tell you what happened out in the wilds of the shopping strip with what's-her-name. Little Miss Fox. Whether I groped her or vice versa. Whether sexual congress took place."
Toby thinks about it. Does she want bad news about what she fears or good news she won't believe? Is she turning into a clinging invertebrate with tentacles and suction cups? "Tell me something more interesting," she says.
Zeb laughs. "Good one," he says.
So. Stalemate. It's for him to know and for her to try to refrain from finding out. He loves encryption. Even though she can't see him in the dark, she can feel him smiling.
They set out the next morning just at sunrise. The vultures that top the taller, deader trees are spreading their black wings so the dew on them will evaporate; they're waiting for the thermals to help them lift and spiral. Crows are passing the rumours, one rough syllable at a time. The smaller birds are stirring, beginning to cheep and trill; pink cloud filaments float above the eastern horizon, brightening to gold at the lower edges. Some days the sky looks like old paintings of heaven: there should be a few angels floating around, their white robes deployed like the skirts of archaic debutantes, their pink toes daintily pointed, their wings aerodynamically impossible. Instead, there are gulls.
They're walking along what is still a trail, through what is still recognizable as the Heritage Park. The little gravelled paths leading off to the side have vines creeping across them, but the picnic tables and cement barbecues have not yet been obscured. If there are ghosts here, they're the ghosts of children, laughing.
Every one of the drum-shaped trash containers has been tipped over, the lids pried off. That wouldn't have been people. Something has been busy. Not rakunks, though: the trash containers were made to be rakunk-proof. The earth around the picnic tables is rutted and muddy: something's been trampling, and wallowing.
The asphalted main pathway is wide enough for a Heritage Park vehicle, like the one Zeb and Toby used to transport Pilar to the site of her composting. Already there are weed shoots nosing up through. The force they can exert is staggering: they'll have a building cracked like a nut in a few years, they'll reduce it to rubble in a decade. Then the earth swallows the pieces. Everything digests, and is digested. The Gardeners found that a cause for celebration, but Toby has never been reassured by it.
Rhino walks ahead with a spraygun. Shackleton is at the rear. Zeb's in the middle, beside Toby, keeping a close eye on her. He's carrying the rifle for safekeeping, since she's already drunk the short-form Enhanced Meditation mixture. Luckily there were some Psilocybe species from the old Gardener mushroom beds among the assortment of dried mushrooms she'd saved over the years and brought with her from the AnooYoo Spa. To the soaked dried mushrooms and the mixed ground-up seeds she'd added a pinch of muscaria. Just a pinch: she doesn't want all-out brain fractals, just a low-level shakeup - a crinkling of the window glass that separates the visible world from whatever lies behind it. The effects are beginning: already there's a wavering, a shift.
"Hey, what're you doing here?" says a voice. Shackleton's voice, coming to her along a dark tunnel. She turns: it's Blackbeard.
"I wish to be with Toby," he says.
"Oh fuck," says Shackleton. Blackbeard smiles happily. "And with Fuck too," he says.
"It's all right," says Toby. "Let him come."
"You can't stop him, anyway," says Zeb. "Short of braining him. Though I could tell him to fuck the fuck off."
"Please," says Toby. "Don't confuse him."
"Where are you going, Oh Toby?" says Blackbeard.
Toby takes the hand he holds up to her. "To visit a friend," she says. "But it's a friend you can't see." Blackbeard asks no questions; he simply nods.
Zeb looks ahead, looks left, looks right. He's singing to himself, a habit he's had ever since Toby's known him. It usually means he's feeling stressed.
Now we're in the muck,
And that can really suck,
And this is why we're out of luck,
Because we don't know fuck ...
"But Snowman-the-Jimmy knows him," says Blackbeard. "And Crake. He knows him too." He beams up at Toby and Zeb for verification, pleased with himself.
"You're right there, pal," says Zeb. "That's what they know. Both of them."
Toby can feel the full strength of the Enhanced Meditation formula kicking in. Zeb's head against the sun is circled with a halo of what she realizes must be split ends - he could really use a trim, she must get hold of some scissors - but which nevertheless appears to her as a radiant burst of electric energy shooting out of his hair. A morpho-splice butterfly floats down the path, luminescent. Of course, she remembers, it's luminescent anyway, but now it's blue-hot, like a gasfire. Black Rhino looms up out of his own footsteps, an earth giant. Nettles arc from the sides of the walkway, the stinging hairs on their leaves gauzy with light. All around there are sounds, noises, almost-voices: hums and clicks, tappings, whispered syllables.
And there is the elderberry bush, where they planted it on Pilar's grave so long ago. It's much larger now. White bloom cascades from it, sweetness fills the air. A vibration surrounds it: honeybees, bumblebees, butterflies large and small.
"You stay here, with Zeb," Toby says to Blackbeard. She lets go of his hand, steps forward, kneels in front of the elderberry.
