MaddAddam (MaddAddam 3)

"Yes," says Toby. "Then everything will be safe." Already the Crakers have constructed a formidable set of beliefs about Zeb. Soon he'll be all-potent and able to fix every ill; and that could be troublesome, because of course he can't. Not even for me, thinks Toby.

But the name of Zeb is reassuring to Blackbeard. He smiles again, lifts his hand, gives a little wave, like a president of old, like a queen in a cavalcade, like a movie star. Where has he picked up that gesture? Now he's sidling backwards through the doorway. He doesn't take his eyes off Toby until he's around the corner.

Did I scare him? she thinks. Will he go back to the others and tell them disgusting marvels, as real children - as children do?

Violet Biolet

Outside the main house the day is underway. The others must already have had their breakfasts, though Swift Fox and Ivory Bill are still at the table, engaged no doubt in some kind of arcane flirtation, she for practise, he in pathetic earnest.

Toby looks around for Zeb, but he is nowhere to be seen; maybe he's taking a shower. Crozier is just setting off with the Mo'Hair flock; Zunzuncito is with him, toting a spraygun, covering his back. Jimmy's hammock is under the tree, watched over by a trio of Crakers.

Lotis Blue and Ren are working on an addition to the cobb house. The MaddAddamites have voted to expand the number of sleeping cubicles; they'll make the new ones roomier, more like a real house. The core structure was built as a demonstration of olden-day ways: ersatz antiquity, like a dinosaur made of cement. The Tree of Life Natural Materials Exchange used to be held in this space; Toby remembers coming here with the God's Gardeners to peddle their recycled soap and their vinegar and honey and mushrooms and rooftop vegetables, back when there had still been buying and people to buy things, selling and people to sell them.

I ought to look around for some bees, she thinks. There must be escapees, living in the trees. It would be calming as well as useful to tend a few hives.

The cobb-house construction has to be done in stages. This morning Ren and Lotis Blue are mixing up the mud, straw, and sand in a plastic wading pool decorated with Mickey Mice. The wood frame is in place, the layers of cobb are being added day by day. Drying each layer is a problem in view of the afternoon thunderstorms, but luckily they've been able to glean some plastic sheeting for coverups.

Amanda sits near the two of them, hands in her lap, doing nothing. She does nothing a lot. Maybe it's slow healing, Toby thinks, like slow cooking. Maybe the end result will be better that way. But at least she's gained some weight. She has been making some effort over the past few da

ys: pulling out a weed or two, culling the odd slug or snail. In the old Edencliff Rooftop Garden days, they'd have relocated Our Fellow Vegetable Eaters by throwing them down onto the street - slugs, too, had a right to live, went the mantra, though not in inappropriate locations such as salad bowls, where they might be harmed by chewing. But now their numbers are too overwhelming - every plant seems to generate slugs and snails as if spontaneously - so by common though unspoken agreement they're being dropped into salt water.

Amanda seems to enjoy that slightly, despite the writhing and frothing. But the cobb-house building work is too much for her. She used to be so strong: nothing used to frighten her. She'd been a tough pleebrat, she'd lived by her wits, she could handle anything. Of the two of them, Ren was the weaker, the more timid. Whatever has happened to Amanda - whatever was done to her by the Painballers - must have been extreme.

Several Craker kids are watching the mud mixing. No doubt they're asking questions. Why are you doing that? Are you making a chaos? What are those, with the round black things on their heads? What is a mickeymouse? But they do not look like mice, we have seen mice, mice do not have big white hands, and so forth. Every new thing they discover in the territory of the MaddAddamites is a source of wonder for them. Yesterday Crozier managed to glean a package of cigarettes during his shepherding stroll, and the Crakers have not got over it. He set fire to a white stick! He put it in his mouth! He breathed in the smoke! Why did you do that, Oh Crozier? Smoke is not for breathing, smoke is for cooking a fish, and so on.

"Just tell them it's a Crake thing," said Toby, so Crozier did. The Crake gambit was one-size-fits-all.

Some of the Crakers - a number of the women, several of the smaller kids - are over in the erstwhile playground outside the cobb-house boundary fence, munching away at the kudzu vines draping the swing set. Kudzu is one of their favourite plants, which shows foresight on the part of Crake because there won't be a shortage of kudzu any time soon. They've got the red plastic slide almost uncovered, and the children are stroking it as if it's alive. Who remembered the swing set was under there, before they started gnawing?

Toby heads for the violet biolet, not only because she needs to but also because she doesn't want to arrive at the breakfast table before Swift Fox leaves it. She consciously suppresses the word slut: a woman should not use that word about another woman, especially with no exact cause.

Really? says her inner slut-uttering voice. You've seen the way she looks at Zeb. Eyelashes like Venus flytraps, and that sideways leer of the irises, like some outdated cut-rate prostibot commercial: Bacteria-Resistant Fibres, 100% Fluid-Flushing, Lifelike Moans, ClenchOMeter for Optimal Satisfaction.

She takes a breath, calls on her Gardener meditation training. She visualizes her anger pushing out through her skin like a snail horn, then lets the small bud of fury wither and fall away. She smiles gently in the direction of Swift Fox, thinking, All you want is a quick jump, you want to snag him just to show you can. Nail him up on your trophy wall. You know nothing about him, you can't truly value him, he isn't yours, you don't know how long I waited ...

Which counts for nothing. Nobody cares. There's no fairness, there's no ownership. She has no claims. If Zeb tumbles into bed with Swift Fox - even if he tiptoes into that bed, even if he oozes into it - what she is entitled to say about that is exactly nothing. For all she knows he's double-dipping already, leaving her in affectionate sleepy-time mode - though maybe a little too much like best pals, with a little too much camaraderie between them, no? - but all the time secretly still hungry; then ducking outside, then inside through a different doorway to slide himself voraciously into the voracious Swift Fox.

It doesn't bear thinking about, so she won't think about it. Will not think. Wills herself not.

The violet biolets are part of the original park installation: three stalls for men, three for women. Their solar cells are still operating, running the ultraviolet LEDs and the small aerating-fan motors. As long as the biolets are still functioning, the MaddAddamites won't have to dig outhouse pits. Luckily there's lots of toilet paper to be gleaned in the nearby streets, as it wasn't an item heavily looted during the pillaging phase of the plague. What would you do with a skid of toilet paper? You couldn't get drunk on it.

The walls inside the biolet are still covered with pleebland inscriptions: several generations of them, one layer on top of another. There'd been a time when those still devoted to some norm of propriety had tried to paint the words over, but a few kids bent on self-expressive anarchy could destroy in an hour a white surface it had taken a crew three days to blandify.

To Daryn, Im ur bitch, ur my King,

I

Fk the Corps

Loris a stuck up cunt

I hope ur raped by 100000 pit bulls

People who write on washroom walls, Shld roll their shit in little balls, And those who read these words of wit, Shld have to eat those balls of shit

Call me/ Best for ur $/ Ull scream 24/7 & die in a pond of Cum

STAY OUT MY WAY A HAT OR ILL KNIFE U