MaddAddam (MaddAddam 3)

"We caught them, night before last," she says. "We tied them to a tree. But I didn't kill them. It was Saint Julian's, I just couldn't. They got away, they took their spraygun."

She's crying now. This is pathetic, like baby mice, blind and pink and whimpering. It's not what she does. But she's doing it.

"Hey," says Zeb. "It'll be fine."

"No," says Toby. "It won't be fine." She turns away to leave: if she's going to snivel, she should do it alone. Alone is how she feels, alone is how she'll always be. You're used to solitude, she tells herself. Be a stoic.

Then she's enfolded.

She'd waited so long, she'd given up waiting. She'd longed for this, and denied it was possible. But now how easy it is, like coming home must have been once, for those who'd had homes. Walking through the doorway into the familiar, the place that knows you, opens to you, allows you in. Tells you the stories you've needed to hear. Stories of the hands as well, and of the mouth.

I've missed you. Who said that?

A shape against the night window, glint of an eye. Dark heartbeat.

Yes. At last. It's you.

Bearlift

The Story of when Zeb was lost in the Mountains, and ate the Bear

And so Crake poured away the chaos, to make a safe place where you could live. And then ...

We know the story of Crake. We know it many times. Now tell us the story of Zeb, Oh Toby.

The story of how Zeb ate a bear!

Yes! Ate a bear! A bear! What is a bear?

We want to hear the story of Zeb. And the bear. The bear he ate.

Crake wants us to hear it. If Snowman-the-Jimmy was awake, he would tell us that story.

Well then. Let me listen to the shiny thing of Snowman-the-Jimmy. Then I can hear the words.

I am listening very hard. It doesn't help me to listen when you are singing.

So. This is the story of Zeb and the bear. Only Zeb is in the story at first. He is all alone. The bear comes later. Maybe tomorrow the bear will come. For bears to come, you must be patient.

Zeb was lost. He sat down under a tree. The tree was in a big open space, wide and flat, like the beach except there was no sand and no sea, only some chilly pools and a lot of moss. All around but quite far away, there were mountains.

How did he get there? He flew there, in a ... never mind. That part is in a different story. No, he cannot fly like a bird. Not any more.

Mountains? Mountains are very large and high rocks. No, those are not mountains, those are buildings. Buildings fall down, and then they make a crash. Mountains fall down too, but they do it very slowly. No, the mountains did not fall down on Zeb.

So Zeb looked at the mountains that were all around him but quite far away, and he thought, How will I get through these mountains? They are so large and high.

He needed to get through the mountains because the people were on the other side. He wanted to be with the people. He didn't want to be all alone. Nobody wants to be all alone, do they?

No, they were not people like you. They had clothes on. A lot of clothes, because it was cold there. Yes, it was in the time of the chaos, before Crake poured it all away.

So Zeb looked at the mountains and the pools and the moss, and he thought, What will I eat? And then he thought, Those mountains have a lot of bears living in them.

A bear is a very big, fur-covered animal with big claws and many sharp teeth. Bigger than a bobkitten. Bigger than a wolvog. Bigger than a pigoon. This big.

It speaks with a growl. It gets very hungry. It tears things apart.

Yes, bears are the Children of Oryx. I don't know why she made them so big, with very sharp teeth.