They're following the lead of the Pigoons, but it's Jimmy who provides the verbal guidelines. "We're still in the pleebs," he says. "I remember this part." Then: "We're coming up to No Man's Land, cleared buffer zone before the Compounds."
Then: "Main security perimeter coming up." After a while: "Over there, CryoJeenyus. Next up, Genie-Gnomes. Look at that fucking light-up genie sign! The solar must still be working."
Then: "Here comes the biggie. The RejoovenEsense Compound." Crows on the wall: four, no, five. One crow, sorrow, Pilar used to say; more, and they were protectors, or else tricksters, take your choice. Two of the crows lift off, circle overhead, sizing them up.
The Rejoov gates stand open. Inside, dead houses, dead malls, dead labs, dead everything. Tatters of cloth, derelict solarcars.
"Thank God for the pigs," says Jimmy. "Without them, needle in a haystack. The place is a labyrinth."
But the Pigoons are sure of the trail. They trot steadily forward, not hesitating. A corner turned, another corner.
"There it is," says Jimmy. "Up ahead. The gates of Paradice."
Eggshell
Crake had planned the Paradice Project himself. There was a tight security perimeter around it, in addition to the Rejoov barrier wall. Inside that was a park, a microclimate-modifying planting of mixed tropical splices, tolerant alike to drought and downpour. At the centre of it all was the Paradice dome, climate-controlled, airlocked, an impenetrable eggshell harbouring Crake's treasure trove, his brave new humans. And at the very centre of the dome he'd placed the artificial ecosystem where the Crakers themselves in all their strange perfection had been brought into being and set to live and breathe.
They reach the perimeter gate, stop to reconnoitre. No one in the gatehouses to either side, according to the Pigoons: their inactive tails and ears are semaphoring as much.
Zeb signals a rest stop: they need to gather their energy. The humans resort to their water bottles and eat half a Joltbar each. The Pigoons have found an avomango tree and are gobbling down the windfalls, the orange ovals pulped by their jaws, the fatty seeds crushed. Fermented sweetness fills the air.
I hope they aren't getting drunk, thinks Toby. That wouldn't be good, drunk Pigoons. "How are you doing?" she asks Jimmy.
"I remember this place," says Jimmy. "In every detail. Shit. I wish I didn't."
Ahead of them is the roadway leading through the forest. Untrimmed branches reach into the corridor of light above it, opportunist weeds push into it from the margins, renegade vines overhang it. Out of the swelling foam of vegetation the curved dome rises like the white half-eye of a sedated patient. It must once have seemed so bright and shining, that dome; so much like a harvest moon, or like a hopeful sunrise, but without the burning rays. Now it looks barren. More than that, it looks like a trap: for who can tell what's hidden in it, and what's hiding?
But that's only because of what we know, thinks Toby. There's nothing in the image itself that would signal death to an innocent observer.
"Oh Toby!" says Blackbeard. "Look! It is the Egg! The Egg where Crake made us!"
"Do you remember it?" says Toby.
"I don't know," says Blackbeard. "Not very much. Trees were growing in it. It rained, but it did not thunder. Oryx came to visit us every day. She taught us many things. We were happy."
"It might not be the same any more," says Toby.
"Oryx is not there," says Blackbeard. "She flew out because she wanted to help Snowman-the-Jimmy when he was sick, didn't she?"
"Yes, I'm sure she did," says Toby.
The young Pigoon scouts have been sent ahead to sniff out possible roadside ambushes. They're racing back now, along the leaf-strewn asphalt. Their ears are back, their tails out straight behind them: cause for alarm.
The elders leave their rooting party among the fallen avomangoes; Blackbeard runs over to them; there's a quick huddle. The MaddAddamites gather around. "What's up?" Zeb asks.
"They say the bad ones are near the Egg," says Blackbeard. "Three. One with ropes tied on. He has white feathers on his face."
"What's he wearing?" Toby asks. Is it for instance a caftan, like those Adam One always wore? But how to ask that? She revises: "Does he have a second skin?"
"Shit," says Jimmy. "Keep them out of the emergency storeroom! They'll get all the sprayguns, and then we're toast!"
"Yes, he has a second skin, like you,"
says Blackbeard. "Only not pink. It is different colours. It is dirty. He has only one of these, on his foot. A shoe."
"How'll we do that?" says Rhino. "We can't move fast enough."
"We send some of the pigs," says Zeb. "The faster ones. They can cut through the woods."