MaddAddam (MaddAddam 3)

Better to concentrate on the task at hand. Don't brood or mope. Take one day at a time.

Saint Bob Hunter and the Feast of Rainbow Warriors, Toby writes. This may not be accurate, time-wise - she's probably out by a day or two - but it will have to do because how can she check? There's no central authority any more for days of the month. But Rebecca might know. There were special recipes for the Festivals and Feasts. Maybe she's memorized them; maybe she's kept track.

Moon: Waxing gibbous. Weather: Nothing unusual. Noteworthy occurrences: Group pig aggression displayed. Painballer evidence sighted by Zeb's expedition: piglet shot and partly butchered. Discovery of a tire tread sandal, possible clue to Adam. No definite sign of Adam One and the Gardeners.

She thinks a minute, then adds: Jimmy is conscious and improving. Crakers continue friendly.

"What are you making, Oh Toby?" It's little Blackbeard: she didn't hear him come in. "What are those lines?"

"Come over here," she says. "I won't bite you. Look. I'm doing writing: that is what these lines are. I'll show you."

She runs through the basics. This is paper, it is made from trees.

Does it hurt the tree? No, because the tree is dead by the time the paper is made - a tiny lie, but no matter. And this is a pen. It has a black liquid in it, it is called ink, but you do not need to have a pen to do writing. Just as well, she thinks: those rollerballs will run out soon.

You can use many things to make writing. You can use the juice of elderberries for the ink, you can use the feather of a bird for the pen, you can use a stick and some wet sand to write on. All of these things can be used to make writing.

"Now," she says, "you have to draw the letters. Each letter means a sound. And when you put the letters together they make words. And the words stay where you've put them on the paper, and then other people can see them on the paper and hear the words."

Blackbeard looks at her, squinting with puzzlement and unbelief. "Oh Toby, but it can't talk," he says. "I see the marks you have put there. But it is not saying anything."

"You need to be the voice of the writing," she says. "When you read it. Reading is when you turn these marks back into sounds. Look, I will write your name."

She tears a page carefully from the back of the notebook, prints on it: BLACKBEARD. Then she sounds out each letter for him. "See?" she says. "It means you. Your name." She puts the pen in his hand, curls his fingers around it, guides the hand and the pen: the letter B.

"This is how your name begins," she says. "B. Like bees. It's the same sound." Why is she telling him this? What use will he ever have for it?

"That is not me," says Blackbeard, frowning. "It is not bees either. It is only some marks."

>

"Take this paper to Ren," says Toby, smiling. "Ask her to read it, then come back and tell me if she says your name."

Blackbeard stares at her. He doesn't trust what she's told him, but he takes the piece of paper anyway, holding it gingerly as if it's coated with invisible poison. "Will you stay here?" he says. "Until I come back?"

"Yes," she says. "I'll be right here." He backs out the doorway as he always does, keeping his eyes on her until he turns the corner.

She turns back to her journal. What else to write, besides the bare-facts daily chronicle she's begun? What kind of story - what kind of history will be of any use at all, to people she can't know will exist, in the future she can't foresee?

Zeb and the Bear, she writes. Zeb and MaddAddam. Zeb and Crake. All of these stories could be set down. But why, but for whom? Only for herself because it gives her a chance to dwell upon Zeb?

Zeb and Toby, she writes. But surely that will be only a footnote.

Don't jump to conclusions, she tells herself. He came to the garden, bringing gifts. You could be misinterpreting, about Swift Fox. And even if not, so what? Take what the moment offers. Don't close doors. Be thankful.

Blackbeard slips into the room again. He's carrying the sheet of paper, holding it in front of him like a hot shield. His face is radiant.

"It did, Oh Toby," he says. "It said my name! It told my name to Ren!"

"There," she says. "That is writing."

Blackbeard nods: now he's grasping the possibilities. "I can keep this?" he says.

"Of course," says Toby.

"Show me again. With the black thing."

Later - after it's rained, after the rain has stopped - she finds him at the sandbox. He has a stick, and the paper. There's his name in the sand. The other children are watching him. All of them are singing.