Oryx and Crake (MaddAddam 1)

Five hours later they were strolling through the pleeblands north of New New York. It had taken only a couple of hours to get there - bullet train to the nearest Compound, then an official Corps car with an armed driver, laid on by whoever was doing Crake's bidding. The car had taken them into the heart of what Crake called the action, and dropped them off there. They'd be shadowed though, said Crake. They'd be protected. So no harm would come to them.

Before setting out, Crake had stuck a needle in Jimmy's arm - an all-purpose, short-term vaccine he'd cooked himself. The pleeblands, he said, were a giant Petri dish: a lot of guck and contagious plasm got spread around there. If you grew up surrounded by it you were more or less immune, unless a new bioform came raging through; but if you were from the Compounds and you set foot in the pleebs, you were a feast. It was like having a big sign on your forehead that said, Eat Me.

Crake had nose cones for them too, the latest model, not just to filter microbes but also to skim out particulate. The air was worse in the pleeblands, he said. More junk blowing in the wind, fewer whirlpool purifying towers dotted around.

Jimmy had never been to the pleeblands before, he'd only looked over the wall. He was excited to finally be there, though he wasn't prepared for so many people so close to one another, walking, talking, hurrying somewhere. Spitting on the sidewalk was a feature he personally could skip. Rich pleeblanders in luxury cars, poor ones on solarbikes, hookers in fluorescent Spandex, or in short shorts, or - more athletically, showing off their firm thighs - on scooters, weaving in and out of traffic. All skin colours, all sizes. Not all prices though, said Crake: this was the low end. So Jimmy could window-shop, but he shouldn't purchase. He should save that for later.

The pleebland inhabitants didn't look like the mental deficients the Compounders were fond of depicting, or most of them didn't. After a while Jimmy began to relax, enjoy the experience. There was so much to see - so much being hawked, so much being offered. Neon slogans, billboards, ads everywhere. And there were real tramps, real beggar women, just as in old DVD musicals: Jimmy kept expecting them to kick up their battered bootsoles, break into song. Real musicians on the street corners, real bands of street urchins. Asymmetries, deformities: the faces here were a far cry from the regularity of the Compounds. There were even bad teeth. He was gawking.

"Watch your wallet," said Crake. "Not that you'll need cash."

"Why not?"

"My treat," said Crake.

"I can't let you do that."

"Your turn next time."

"Fair enough," said Jimmy.

"Here we are - this is what they call the Street of Dreams."

The shops here were mid-to-high end, the displays elaborate. Blue Genes Day? Jimmy read. Try SnipNFix! Herediseases Removed. Why Be Short? Go Goliath! Dreamkidlets. Heal Your Helix. Cribfillers Ltd. Weenie Weenie? Longfellow's the Fellow!

"So this is where our stuff turns to gold," said Crake.

"Our stuff?"

"What we're turning out at Rejoov. Us, and the other body-oriented Compounds."

"Does all of it work?" Jimmy was impressed, not so much by the promises as by the slogans: minds like his had passed this way. His dank mood of that morning had vanished, he was feeling quite cheerful. There was so much coming at him, so much information; it took up all of his headroom.

"Quite a lot of it," said Crake. "Of course, nothing's perfect. But the competition's ferocious, especially what the Russians are doing, and the Japanese, and the Germans, of course. And the Swedes. We're holding our own though, we have a reputation for dependable product. People come here from all over the world - they shop around. Gender, sexual orientation, height, colour of skin and eyes - it's all on order, it can all be done or redone. You have no idea how much money changes hands on this one street alone."

"Let's get a drink," said Jimmy. He was thinking about his hypothetical brother, the one that wasn't born yet. Was this where his father and Ramona had gone shopping?

They had a drink, then something to eat - real oysters, said Crake, real Japanese beef, rare as diamonds. It must have cost a fortune. Then they went to a couple of other places and ended up in a bar featuring oral sex on trapezes, and Jimmy drank something orange that glowed in the dark, and then a couple more of the same. Then he was telling Crake the story of his life - no, the story of his mother's life - in one long garbled sentence, like a string of chewing gum that just kept coming out of his mouth. Then they were somewhere else, on an endless green satin bed, being worked over by two girls covered from head to toe in sequins that were glued onto their skin and shimmered like the scales of a virtual fish. Jimmy had never known a girl who could twist and twine to such advantage.

Was it there, or at one of the bars, earlier, that the subject of the job had come up? The next morning he couldn't remember. Crake had said, Job, You, Rejoov, and Jimmy had said, Doing what, cleaning the toilets, and Crake had laughed and said, Better than that. Jimmy couldn't remember saying yes, but he must have. He would have taken any job, no matter what it was. He wanted to move, move on. He was ready for a whole new chapter.

BlyssPluss

~

On the Monday morning after his weekend with Crake, Jimmy turned up at AnooYoo for another day of word-mongering. He felt pretty wasted, but hoped it didn't show. Though it encouraged all kinds of chemical experiments by its paying clientele, AnooYoo frowned upon anything similar amongst the hired help. It figured, Jimmy thought: in the olden days, bootleggers had seldom been drunks. Or so he'd read.

Before going to his desk he visited the Men's, checked himself in the mirror: he looked like a regurgitated pizza. Plus he was late, but for once nobody noticed. All of a sudden there was his boss, and some other functionaries so elevated that Jimmy had never seen them before. Jimmy's hand was being shaken, his back gently slapped, a glass of champagne look-alike pressed into his hand. Oh good! Hair of the dog! Glug-glug-glug, went Jimmy's voice balloon, but he took care to merely sip.

Then he was being told what a pleasure it had been to have him with AnooYoo, and what an asset he'd proved to be, and how many warm wishes would accompany him where he was going, and by the way, many, many congratulations! His severance package would be deposited immediately to his Corpsbank account. It would be a generous one, more generous than his length of service warranted, because, let's be frank, his friends at AnooYoo wanted Jimmy to remember them in a positive manner, in his terrific new position.

Whatever that may be, thought Jimmy, as he sat in the sealed bullet train. The train had been arranged for him, and so had the move - a team would arrive, they'd pack up everything, they were professionals, never fear. He barely had time to contact his various lovers, and when he did he discovered that each one of them had already been discreetly informed by Crake personally, who - it appeared - had long tentacles. How had he known about them? Maybe he'd been hacking into Jimmy's e-mail, easy for him. But why bother?

I'll miss you Jimmy, said an e-message from one.

Oh Jimmy, you were so funny, said another.

Were was a creep-out. It wasn't as if he'd died or anything.