Jimmy spent his first night in RejoovenEsense at the VIP guest hotel. He poured himself a drink from the minibar, straight Scotch, as real as it came, then spent a while looking out the picture window at the view, not that he could make out very much except lights. He could see the Paradice dome, an immense half-circle in the distance, floodlit from below, but he didn't yet know what it was. He thought it was a skating rink.
Next morning Crake took him for a preliminary tour of the RejoovenEsense Compound in his souped-up electric golf cart. It was, Jimmy had to admit, spectacular in all ways. Everything was sparkling clean, landscaped, ecologically pristine, and very expensive. The air was particulate-free, due to the many solar whirlpool purifying towers, discreetly placed and disguised as modern art. Rockulators took care of the microclimate, butterflies as big as plates drifted among the vividly coloured shrubs. It made all the other Compounds Jimmy had ever been in, Watson-Crick included, look shabby and retro.
"What pays for all this?" he asked Crake, as they passed the state-of-the-art Luxuries Mall - marble everywhere, colonnades, cafes, ferns, takeout booths, roller-skating path, juice bars, a self-energizing gym where running on the treadmill kept the light bulbs going, Roman-look fountains with nymphs and sea-gods.
"Grief in the face of inevitable death," said Crake. "The wish to stop time. The human condition."
Which was not very informative, said Jimmy.
"You'll see," said Crake.
They had lunch at one of the five-star Rejoov restaurants, on an air-conditioned pseudobalcony overlooking the main Compound organic-botanics greenhouse. Crake had the kanga-lamb, a new Australian splice that combined the placid character and highprotein yield of the sheep with the kangaroo's resistance to disease and
absence of methane-producing, ozone-destroying flatulence. Jimmy ordered the raisin-stuffed capon - real free-range capon, real sun-dried raisins, Crake assured him. Jimmy was so used to ChickieNobs by now, to their bland tofulike consistency and their inoffensive flavour, that the capon tasted quite wild.
"My unit's called Paradice," said Crake, over the soy-banana flambe. "What we're working on is immortality."
"So is everyone else," said Jimmy. "They've kind of done it in rats."
"Kind of is crucial," said Crake.
"What about the cryogenics guys?" said Jimmy. "Freeze your head, get your body reconstituted once they've figured out how? They're doing a brisk business, their stock's high."
"Sure, and a couple of years later they toss you out the back door and tell your relatives there was a power failure. Anyway, we're cutting out the deep-freeze."
"How do you mean?"
"With us," said Crake, "you wouldn't have to die first."
"You've really done it?"
"Not yet," said Crake. "But think of the R&D budget."
"Millions?"
"Mega-millions," said Crake.
"Can I have another drink?" said Jimmy. This was a lot to take in.
"No. I need you to listen."
"I can listen and drink too."
"Not very well."
"Try me," said Jimmy.
Within Paradice, said Crake - and they'd visit the facility after lunch - there were two major initiatives going forward. The first - the BlyssPluss Pill - was prophylactic in nature, and the logic behind it was simple: eliminate the external causes of death and you were halfway there.
"External causes?" said Jimmy.
"War, which is to say misplaced sexual energy, which we consider to be a larger factor than the economic, racial, and religious causes often cited. Contagious diseases, especially sexually transmitted ones. Overpopulation, leading - as we've seen in spades - to environmental degradation and poor nutrition."
Jimmy said it sounded like a tall order: so much had been tried in those areas, so much had failed. Crake smiled. "If at first you don't succeed, read the instructions," he said.
"Meaning?"
"The proper study of Mankind is Man."