Let us forgive the killers of the Elephant, and the exterminators of the Tiger; and those who slaughtered the Bear for its gall bladder, and the Shark for its cartilage, and the Rhinoceros for its horn. May we forgive them freely, as we may hope to be forgiven by God, who holds our frail Cosmos in His hand, and keeps it safe through His endless Love.
This Forgiveness is the hardest task we shall ever be called upon to perform. Give us the strength for it.
I would like us all to join hands now.
Let us sing.
THE EARTH FORGIVES
The Earth forgives the Miner’s blast
That rends her crust and burns her skin;
The centuries bring Trees again,
And water, and the Fish therein.
The Deer at length forgives the Wolf
That tears his throat and drinks his blood;
His bones return to soil, and feed
The trees that flower and fruit and seed.
And underneath those shady trees
The Wolf will spend her restful days;
And then the Wolf in turn will pass,
And turn to grass the Deer will graze.
All Creatures know that some must die
That all the rest may take and eat;
Sooner or later, all transform
Their blood to wine, their flesh to meat.
But Man alone seeks Vengefulness
And writes his abstract Laws on stone;
For this false Justice he has made,
He tortures limb and crushes bone.
Is this the image of a god?
My tooth for yours, your eye for mine?
Oh, if Revenge did move the stars
Instead of Love, they would not shine.
We dangle by a flimsy thread,
Our little lives are grains of sand:
The Cosmos is a tiny sphere
Held in the hollow of God’s hand.
Give up your anger and your spite,
And imitate the Deer, the Tree;
In sweet Forgiveness find your joy,
For it alone can set you free.
From The God’s Gardeners Oral Hymnbook
77
REN. SAINT JULIAN AND ALL SOULS
YEAR TWENTY-FIVE
The new moon’s rising now, out over the sea: Saint Julian and All Souls has begun.
I loved Saint Julian’s when I was little. Each of us kids would make our own Cosmos, out of stuff we’d gleaned. Then we’d stick glittery things onto it and hang it on a string. The Feast that night was round foods, like radishes and pumpkins, and the whole Garden would be decorated with our shining worlds. One year we made the Cosmos balls out of wire and put candle ends inside them: that was really pretty. Another year we tried to make Divine Hands for holding the Cosmos balls, but the yellow plastic housework gloves we came up with looked very strange, like zombie hands. Anyway you don’t picture God as wearing gloves.
We’re sitting around the fire – Toby and Amanda and me. And Jimmy. And the two Gold Team Painballers, I have to include them. The light flickers on all of us and makes us look softer and more beautiful than we really are. But sometimes it makes us darker and scarier too, when the faces go into shadow and you can’t see the eyes, only the eye sockets. Deep pools of blackness welling out of our heads.
My body hurts all over, but at the same time I feel so joyful. We’re lucky, I think. To be here. All of us, even the Painballers.
After the mid-day heat and the thunderstorm I went back to the beach for our packsacks and brought them to the clearing, along with some wild mustard greens I’d found along the way. Toby took out her cooking pot, and the cups, and her knife, and her big spoon. Then she made soup with the leftovers from the rakunk and the rest of Rebecca’s meat, some of her dried botanicals. When she put the bones of the rakunk into the water she spoke the words of apology and asked for its pardon.
“But you didn’t kill it,” I said to her.
“I know,” she said. “But I wouldn’t feel right unless somebody did this.”
The Painballers are tied to a nearby tree with the rope and also some braided strips torn from Toby’s once-pink top-to-toe. I did the braiding: if there’s one thing the Gardeners taught you, it was craft uses for recycled materials.
The Painballers aren’t saying much. They can’t be feeling great, not after being pounded by Amanda. They must also be feeling stupid. I would be if I were them. Dumb as a box of hair – as Zeb would say – for letting us creep up on them like that.
Amanda must be still in shock. She’s crying gently, off and on, and twisting the raggedy ends of her hair. The first thing Toby did – once the Painballers were safely roped up – was to give her a cup of warm water with honey, for dehydration, with some of her lamb’s-quarters powder stirred in.
“Don’t drink it all at once,” she said. “Just little sips.” Once Amanda’s electrolyte levels were back up, said Toby, she could start to deal with whatever else about Amanda needed fixing. The cuts and bruises, to begin with.
Earlier she spread some honey on his foot, and fed him a spoonful of it, as well. She can’t give him any Willow or Poppy, because she left those back at the cobb house. We wrapped him up in Toby’s top-to-toe, but he keeps unwrapping himself. “We need to find him a bedsheet or something,” Toby says. “For tomorrow. And figure some way of keeping it on him or he’ll broil to death in the sun.”
Jimmy doesn’t recognize me at all, or Amanda either. He keeps talking to some other woman, who appears to be standing by the fire. “Owl music. Don’t fly away,” he says to her. There’s such longing in his voice. I feel jealous, but how can I be jealous of some woman who isn’t there?
“Who are you talking to?” I ask him.
“There’s an owl,” he says. “Calling. Right up there.” But I don’t hear any owl.
“Look at me, Jimmy,” I say.
“The music’s built in,” he says. “No matter what.” He’s gazing up into the trees.
Oh Jimmy, I think. Where have you gone?
The moon’s moved westward. Toby says the bone soup has boiled enough. She adds the mustard greens I collected, waits a minute, then ladles out. We’ve got only two cups – we’ll have to take turns, she says.
“Not them too?” said Amanda. She won’t look at the Painballers.
“Yes,” said Toby. “Them too. This is Saint Julian and All Souls.”
“What happens to them?” says Amanda. “Tomorrow?” At least she’s taking an interest in something.
“You can’t just let them loose,” I say. “They’ll kill us. They murdered Oates. And look what they did to Amanda!”
“I’ll consider that problem,” says Toby, “later. Tonight is a Feast night.” She dips the soup into the cups, then looks around the firelight circle. “Some feast,” she says in her dry-witch voice. She laughs a little. “But we’re not finished yet! Are we?” She says this last thing to Amanda.
“Kaputt,” says Amanda. Her voice is so small.
“Don’t think about it,” I say, but she begins to cry again, softly: she’s in a Fallow state. I put my arms around her. “I’m here, you’re here, it’s okay,” I whisper.
“What is the point?” says Amanda, not to me but to Toby.
“This is not the time,” says Toby in her old Eve voice, “for dwelling on ultimate purposes. I would like us all to forget the past, the worst parts of it. Let us be grateful for this food that has been given to us. Amanda. Ren. Jimmy. You, too, if you can manage it.” This to the two Painballers.
One of them mutters something like Fuck off, but he doesn’t say it very loudly. He wants some of the soup.
Toby continues on as if she hasn’t heard. “And I would like us to remember those who are gone,
throughout the world but most especially our absent friends. Dear Adams, dear Eves, dear Fellow Mammals and Fellow Creatures, all those now in Spirit – keep us in your view and lend us your strength, because we are surely going to need it.”
Then she takes a sip from the cup and passes it to Amanda. The other cup she gives to Jimmy, but he can’t hold it right and he spills half of the soup into the sand. I crouch down beside him to help him drink. Maybe he’s dying, I think. Maybe in the morning he’ll be dead.
“I knew you’d come back,” he says, this time to me. “I knew it. Don’t turn into an owl.”
“I’m not an owl,” I say. “You’re out of your mind. I’m Ren – remember? I just want you to know that you broke my heart; but anyway, I’m happy you’re still alive.” Now that I’ve said it, something heavy and smothering lifts away from me, and I truly do feel happy.
He smiles at me, or at whoever he thinks I am. A blistery little grin. “Here we go again,” he says to his sick foot. “Listen to the music.” He tilts his head to the side; his expression is rapturous. “You can’t kill the music,” he says. “You can’t!”
“What music?” I say, because I don’t hear anything.
“Quiet,” says Toby.
We listen. Jimmy’s right, there is music. It’s faint and far away, but moving closer. It’s the sound of many people singing. Now we can see the flickering of their torches, winding towards us through the darkness of the trees.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The Year of the Flood is fiction, but the general tendencies and many of the details in it are alarmingly close to fact. The God’s Gardeners cult appeared in the novel Oryx and Crake, as did Amanda Payne, Brenda (Ren), Bernice, Jimmy the Snowman, Glenn (alias Crake), and the MaddAddam group. The Gardeners themselves are not modelled on any extant religion, though some of their theology and practices are not without precedent. Their saints have been chosen for their contributions to those areas of life dear to the hearts of the Gardeners; they have many more saints, as well, but they are not in this book. The clearest influence on Gardener hymn lyrics is William Blake, with an assist from John Bunyan and also from The Hymn Book of the Anglican Church of Canada and the United Church of Canada. Like all hymn collections, those of the Gardeners have moments that may not be fully comprehensible to non-believers.
The music for the hymns came about by fortunate coincidence. Singer and musician Orville Stoeber of Venice, California, began composing the music to several of these hymns to see what might happen, and then got swept away. The extraordinary results can be heard on the CD, Hymns of the God’s Gardeners. Anyone who wishes to use any of these hymns for amateur devotional or environmental purposes is more than welcome to do so. Visit them at www.yearoftheflood.com, www.yearoftheflood.co.uk, or www.yearoftheflood.ca.
The name Amanda Payne originally appeared as that of a character in Oryx and Crake, courtesy of an auction for the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture (U.K.). Saint Allan Sparrow of Clean Air was sponsored by an auction run by CAIR (CommunityAIR, Toronto). The name Rebecca Eckler appears thanks to a benefit auction for The Walrus magazine (Canada). My thanks to all name donors.
My gratitude as always to my enthusiastic and loyal but hard-pressed editors, Ellen Seligman of McClelland & Stewart (Canada), Nan Talese of Doubleday (U.S.A.), and Alexandra Pringle and Liz Calder of Bloomsbury (U.K.), as well as Louise Dennys of Vintage/Knopf Canada, LuAnn Walther of Anchor (U.S.A.), Lennie Goodings of Virago (U.K.), and Maya Mavjee of Doubleday Canada. Also to my agents, Phoebe Larmore (North America) and Vivienne Schuster and Betsy Robbins of Curtis Brown (U.K.); and to Ron Bernstein; and to all my other agents and publishers around the world. Thanks also to Heather Sangster for her heroic job of copy-editing; and to my exceptional office support staff, Sarah Webster, Anne Joldersma, Laura Stenberg, and Penny Kavanaugh; and to Shannon Shields, who helped as well. Also to Joel Rubinovitch and Sheldon Shoib; and to Michael Bradley and Sarah Cooper. Also to Coleen Quinn and Xiaolan Zhang, for keeping my writing arm moving.
Special thanks to the dauntless early readers of this book: Jess Atwood Gibson, Eleanor and Ramsay Cook, Rosalie Abella, Valerie Martin, John Cullen, and Xandra Bingley. You are highly valued.
And finally, my special thanks to Graeme Gibson, with whom I’ve celebrated so many April Fish, Serpent Wisdom, and All Wayfarers’ Feasts. It’s been a fine long journey.
Copyright © 2013 by O.W. Toad Ltd.
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher – or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency – is an infringement of the copyright law.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Atwood, Margaret, 1939-
Maddaddam / Margaret Atwood.
Final book in the trilogy including Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood.
eISBN: 978-0-7710-0897-9
I. Title.
PS8501.T86M33 2013 C813’.54 C2013-900684-2
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Earlier versions of some chapters in this book have appeared in ARC Magazine (U.K.) and in a very limited edition called Bearlift, produced for fund-raising purposes.
Jacket design: Michael J. Windsor
Jacket images: egg/Getty Images; nest and handprint/Shutterstock.com
McClelland & Stewart,
a division of Random House of Canada Limited
One Toronto Street
Suite 300
Toronto, Ontario
M5C 2V6
www.mcclelland.com
v3.1
For my family
and for Larry Gaynor (1939–2010)
Contents
Master - Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
The MaddAddam Trilogy:
The Story So Far
EGG
The Story of the Egg, and of Oryx and Crake, and how they made People and Animals; and of the Chaos; and of Snowman-the-Jimmy; and of the Smelly Bone and the coming of the Two Bad Men
ROPE
Rope
Procession
Poppy
COBB HOUSE
Morning
Breakfast
Hammock
Story
Homecoming
BEARLIFT
The Story of when Zeb was lost in the Mountains, and ate the Bear
The Fur Trade
Crash
Supplies
Bunkie
Bigfoot
The Story of Zeb and Thank You and Good Night
SCARS
Scars
Violet Biolet
Blink
ZEB IN THE DARK
Zeb in the Dark
The Story of the Birth of Zeb
The PetrOleum Brats
Schillizzi’s Hands
Mute and Theft
Deeper into the Pleeblands
SNOWMAN’S PROGRESS
Floral Bedsheet
Girl Stuff
Snowman’s Progress
Drugstore Romance
Weeding
BLACKLIGHT HEADLAMP
The Story of Zeb and Fuck
Floating World
The Hackery
Cold Dish
Blacklight Headlamp
Intestinal Parasites, the Game
BONE CAVE
Cursive
Swarm
Bone Cave
Farrow
VECTOR
The Story of how Crake g
ot born
Young Crake
Grob’s Attack
Vector
Scales and Tails
The Story of Zeb and the Snake Women
PIGLET
Guru
Piglet
Palaver
Fallback
Fortress AnooYoo
THE TRAIN TO CRYOJEENYUS
The Story of the Two Eggs and Thinking
Shades
Kicktail
Raspberry Mousse
The Train to CryoJeenyus
Lumiroses
Edencliff
EGGSHELL
Muster
Sortie
Eggshell
The Story of the Battle
MOONTIME
Trial
Rites
Moontime
BOOK
Book
The Story of Toby
Acknowledgements
The MaddAddam Trilogy: The Story So Far
The first two books in the MaddAddam trilogy are Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood. MaddAddam is the third book.
1. Oryx and Crake
As the story begins, Snowman is living in a tree by the seashore. He believes he is the last true human being left alive after a lethal pandemic has swept the planet. Nearby live the Children of Crake, a gentle humanoid species bioengineered by the brilliant Crake, Snowman’s one-time best friend and rival for his beloved, the beautiful and enigmatic Oryx.
The Crakers are free from sexual jealousy, greed, clothing, and the need for insect repellent and animal protein – all the factors Crake believed had caused not only the misery of the human race but also the degradation of the planet. The Crakers mate seasonally, when parts of them turn blue. Crake tried to rid them of symbolic thinking and music, but they have an eerie singing style all their own and have developed a religion, with Crake as their creator, Oryx as mistress of the animals, and Snowman as their reluctant prophet. It is he who has led them out of the high-tech Paradice dome where they were made to their present home beside the ocean.