Oryx and Crake

Alex the parrot comes to him in a dream. It flies in through the window, lands close to him on the pillow, bright green this time with purple wings and a yellow beak, glowing like a beacon, and Snowman is suffused with happiness and love. It cocks its head, looks at him first with one eye, then the other. “The blue triangle,” it says. Then it begins to flush, to turn red, begi

“No, wait,” Snowman calls, or wants to call. His mouth won’t move. “Don’t go yet! Tell me…”

Then there’s a rush of wind, whuff, and Alex is gone, and Snowman is sitting up in his former bed, in the dark, drenched in sweat.

Scribble

The next morning his foot is somewhat better. The swelling has gone down, the pain has decreased. When evening falls he’ll give himself another shot of Crake’s superdrug. He knows he can’t overdo it, however: the stuff is very potent. Too much of it and his cells will pop like grapes.

Daylight filters through the insulating glass bricks facing the skylight window well. He roams around the space he once inhabited, feeling like a disembodied sensor. Here is his closet, here are the clothes once his, tropical-weight shirts and shorts, ranged neatly on hangers and begi

In the storeroom he finds some packets and cans. For breakfast he has cold ravioli in tomato sauce and half a Joltbar, washed down with a warm Coke. No hard liquor or beer left, he’d gone through all of that during the weeks he’d been sealed in here. Just as well. His impulse would have been to drink it up as fast as possible, turn all memory to white noise.

No hope of that now. He’s stuck in time past, the wet sand is rising. He’s sinking down.

After he’d shot Crake, he’d recoded the i

He went back to his room and drank some Scotch and then some more, as much as it took to conk himself out. What woke him up was the buzzer from the outer door: White Sedge and Black Rhino, trying to get back in. The others too, no doubt. Jimmy ignored them.

Some time the next day he made four slices of soytoast, forced himself to eat them. Drank a bottle of water. His entire body felt like a stubbed toe: numb but also painful.

During the day his cellphone rang. A high-ranking Corpsman, looking for Crake.

“Tell that fucker to get his big fat brain the fuck over here and help figure this thing out.”

“He isn’t here,” said Jimmy.

“Who is this?”

“I can’t tell you. Security protocol.”

“Listen, whoever you are, I have an idea what sort of scam that creep’s up to and when I lay my hands on him I’m going to break his neck. I bet he’s got the vaccine for this and he’s go

“Really? Is that what you think?” said Jimmy.

“I know the bastard’s there. I’m coming over and blow the door in.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” said Jimmy. “We’re seeing some very strange microbe activity here. Very unusual. The place is hotter than hell. I’m toughing it out in a biosuit, but I don’t really know whether I’m contaminated or not. Something’s really gone off the rails.”

“Oh shit. Here? In Rejoov? I thought we were sealed off.”

“Yeah, it’s a bad break,” said Jimmy. “My advice is, look in Bermuda. I think he went there with a lot of cash.”

“So he sold us out, the little shit. Hawked it deliberately to the competition. That would figure. That would absolutely figure. Listen, thanks for the tip.”

“Good luck,” said Jimmy.

“Yeah, sure, same to you.”

Nobody else buzzed the outer door, nobody tried to break in. The Rejoov folks must have got the message. As for the staff, once they’d realized the guards were gone they must have rushed outside and made a beeline for the outer gate. For what they’d confused with freedom.

Three times a day Jimmy checked on the Crakers, peering in at them like a voyeur. Scrap the simile: he was a voyeur. They seemed happy enough, or at least contented. They grazed, they slept, they sat for long hours doing what appeared to be nothing. The mothers nursed their babies, the young ones played. The men peed in a circle. One of the women came into her blue phase and the men performed their courtship dance, singing, flowers in hand, azure penises waving in time. Then there was a quintuplet fertility fest, off among the shrubbery.

Maybe I could do some social interaction, thought Jimmy. Help them invent the wheel. Leave a legacy of knowledge. Pass on all my words.

No, he couldn’t. No hope there.

Sometimes they looked uneasy—they’d gather in groups, they’d murmur. The hidden mikes picked them up.

“Where is Oryx? When is she coming back?”

“She always comes back.”

“She should be here, teaching us.”

“She is always teaching us. She is teaching us now.”

“Is she here?”

“Here and not here is the same thing, for Oryx. She said that.”

“Yes. She said it.”

“What does it mean?”

It was like some demented theology debate in the windier corners of chat-room limbo. Jimmy couldn’t stand listening to it for very long.

The rest of the time he himself grazed, slept, sat for long hours doing nothing. For the first two weeks he followed world events on the Net, or else on the television news: the riots in the cities as transportation broke down and supermarkets were raided; the explosions as electrical systems failed, the fires no one came to extinguish. Crowds packed the churches, mosques, synagogues, and temples to pray and repent, then poured out of them as the worshippers woke up to their increased risk of exposure. There was an exodus to small towns and rural areas, whose inhabitants fought off the refugees as long as they could, with ba

At first the newscasters were thoroughly into it, filming the action from traffic helicopters, exclaiming as if at a football match: Did you see that? Unbelievable! Brad, nobody can quite believe it. What we’ve just seen is a crazed mob of God’s Gardeners, liberating a ChickieNobs production facility. Brad, this is hilarious, those ChickieNob things can’t even walk! (Laughter.) Now, back to the studio.

It must have been during the initial mayhem, thinks Snowman, that some genius let out the pigoons and the wolvogs. Oh, thanks a bundle.

Street preachers took to self-flagellation and ranting about the Apocalypse, though they seemed disappointed: where were the trumpets and angels, why hadn’t the moon turned to blood? Pundits in suits appeared on the screen; medical experts, graphs showing infection rates, maps tracing the extent of the epidemic. They used dark pink for that, as for the British Empire once. Jimmy would have preferred some other colour.

There was no disguising the fear of the commentators. Who’s next, Brad? When are they going to have a vaccine? Well, Simon, they’re working round the clock from what I hear, but nobody’s claiming to have a handle on this thing yet. It’s a biggie, Brad. Simon, you said a mouthful, but we’ve licked some biggies before. Encouraging grin, thumbs-up sign, unfocused eyes, facial pallor.