The Year of the Flood (MaddAddam 2)

"Nobody that good at hacking," said Zeb. "This guy's one of a kind."

45

They reached the Wellness Clinic and entered the Vinegar Room. Toby moved around behind the three huge barrels, unlocked the bottle shelf, and swung it out so she could open the inner door. She could hear Zeb sucking in his stomach to squeeze past the barrels: he wasn't softly fat, but he was large.

The inner room was almost filled by a table patched together from old floorboards, with a motley collection of chairs. On one wall there was a recent watercolour -- Saint E.O. Wilson of Hymenoptera -- done by Nuala in one of her too frequent moments of artistic inspiration. The Saint was shown with the sun behind him, giving him a halo effect. On his face was an ecstatic smile, in his hand was a collecting jar containing several black spots. These were the bees, Toby supposed, or possibly the ants. As was often the case with Nuala's paintings of Saints, one of the arms was longer than the other.

There was a gentle knock, and Adam One slipped through the door. The rest followed in their turn.

Adam One was a different person behind the scenes. Not entirely different -- no less sincere -- but more practical. Also more tactical. "Let us say a silent prayer for the success of our deliberations," he began. The meetings always opened this way. Toby had some difficulty praying in the close confines of the hidden room: she was too aware of stomach rumblings, of the waftings of clandestine odours, of the creaks and shiftings of bodies. But then, she had some difficulty praying anyway.

The silent prayer seemed to be on a timer. As heads lifted and eyes opened, Adam One glanced around the room. "Is that a new picture?" he said. "On the wall?"

Nuala beamed. "It's Saint E.O.," she said. "Wilson. Of Hymenoptera."

"So like him, my dear," said Adam One. "Especially the ... You are blessed with such talent." He coughed slightly. "Now to a pressing practical matter. We have just received a very s

pecial guest, originally from HelthWyzer Central, though she has been, shall we say, travelling. Despite all obstacles, she's brought us a gift of genome codes, for which we owe her, not only temporary asylum, but secure Exfernal placement."

"They're looking for her," said Zeb. "She shouldn't have come back to this country. We'll have to move her out as fast as possible. Through the FenderBender and over to the Street of Dreams, as usual?"

"If it's a clear path," said Adam One. "We can't take unnecessary risks. We can always keep her hidden in this meeting room, if we have to."

The ratio of women to men fleeing the Corporations was roughly three to one. Nuala said it was because women were more ethical, Zeb said it was because they were more squeamish, and Philo said it amounted to the same thing. Such fugitives often brought contraband information with them. Formulae. Long lines of code. Test secrets, proprietary lies. What did the Gardeners do with it all? Toby wondered. Surely they didn't sell it as industrial corp espionage material, though it would fetch a bundle from foreign rivals. As far as she could tell, they just held on to it; though it was possible that Adam One harboured a dream of restoring all the lost Species via their preserved DNA codes, once a more ethical and technically proficient future had replaced the depressing present. They'd cloned the mammoth, so why not all? Was that his vision of the ultimate Ark?

"Our new guest wants to send a message to her son," said Adam One. "She's worried about having left him at what may have been a crucial time in his life. Jimmy is this lad's name. I believe he's now at the Martha Graham Academy."

"A postcard," said Zeb. "We'll say it's from Aunt Monica. Get me the address, I'll relay it through England -- one of our Truffle cellfolk has a trip there next week. The CorpSeCorps will read it, of course. They read all the postcards."

"She wants us to say that his pet rakunk was released into the wilds of Heritage Park, where it is living a free and happy life. Its name is -- ah -- Killer."

"Oh, Christ in a Zeppelin!" said Zeb.

"That language is uncalled for," said Nuala.

"Sorry. But they make it so fucking complicated," said Zeb. "That's the third pet rakunk message this month. Next it'll be gerbils and mice."

"I think it's touching," said Nuala.

"Guess some people anyway practise what they preach," said Rebecca.

Toby was assigned as minder to the new refugee. Her code name was the Hammerhead, because upon leaving HelthWyzer she was said to have taken her husband's computer apart with a home handyman's toolkit to disguise the extent of her data thefts. She was thin and blue-eyed, and far from calm. Like all Corp defectors, she thought she was the only one ever to have taken the momentous and heretical step of defying a Corp; and like all of them, she desperately wanted to be told what a good person she was.

Toby obliged. She said how brave the Hammerhead had been, which was true, and how smart she'd been to take a winding and devious path, and how much they appreciated the information she'd brought them. In reality she hadn't told them anything they didn't already know -- it was that old human-to-pig neocortex transplant material -- but it would have been less than kind to say so. We must cast a wide net, said Adam One, although some of the fish may be small. Also we must be a beacon of hope, because if you tell people there's nothing they can do, they will do worse than nothing.

Toby shrouded the Hammerhead in a dark blue Gardener dress, adding a nose cone to conceal her face. But the woman was nervous and fidgety, and kept asking if she could have a cigarette. Toby said no Gardener smoked -- not tobacco -- so to be caught doing so would blow her cover. Anyway there weren't any cigarettes up on the Rooftop.

The Hammerhead paced the floor and gnawed her fingernails until Toby felt like hitting her. We didn't ask you to come here and put all our necks in a noose over a teaspoonful of stale-dated crap, she wanted to say. In the end she gave the woman some chamomile tea with Poppy in it, just to take her off the airwaves.

46

The next day was Saint Aleksander Zawadzki of Galicia. A minor saint but one of Toby's favourites. He'd lived in turbulent times -- what times in Poland had ever not been turbulent? -- but had followed his own peaceful and slightly dotty pursuits nonetheless, cataloguing the flowers of Galicia, naming its beetles. Rebecca liked him too: she'd put on her apron with the butterfly appliques and made beetle biscuits for the small children's snack time, ornamenting each one with an A and a Z. The children had made up their own little song about him: Alexsander, Alexsander, beetle up your nose! Blow it on your handkerchief, stick it on a rose!

It was midmorning. The Hammerhead was still sleeping off the effects of yesterday's Poppy: Toby had overdone it, but she didn't feel too guilty, and now she had some time for her regular chores. She'd garbed up in her bee veil and gloves and lit the smudge in her bellows: as she'd explained to the bees, she intended to spend the morning extracting the full honeycombs. Before she'd begun the smoking, however, Zeb appeared.

"Crappy news," he said. "Your Painball buddy's out again." Like everyone at the Gardeners, Zeb knew the story of Toby's rescue from Blanco by Adam One and the Buds and Blooms -- it was part of oral history. But he also sensed her fear. Though they'd never discussed it.

Toby felt an ice needle shoot through her. She lifted up her veil. "Really?"