Bubble

In the aftermath of the storm the air is cooler. Mist rises from the distant trees, the sun declines, the birds are beginning their evening racket. Three crows are flying overhead, their wings black flames, their words almost audible. Crake! Crake! they’re saying. The crickets are saying Oryx. I’m hallucinating, thinks Snowman.

He progresses along the rampart, step by wrenching step. His foot feels like a gigantic boiled wiener stuffed with hot, masticated flesh, boneless and about to burst. Whatever bug is fermenting inside it is evidently resistant to the antibiotics in the watchtower ointment. Maybe in Paradice, in the jumble of Crake’s ransacked emergency storeroom – he knows how ransacked it is, he did the ransacking himself – he’ll be able to find something more effective.

Crake’s emergency storeroom. Crake’s wonderful plan. Crake’s cutting-edge ideas. Crake, King of the Crakery, because Crake is still there, still in possession, still the ruler of his own domain, however dark that bubble of light has now become. Darker than dark, and some of that darkness is Snowman’s. He helped with it.

“Let’s not go there,” says Snowman.

Sweetie, you’re already there. You’ve never left.

At the eighth watchtower, the one overlooking the park surrounding Paradice, he checks to see if either of the doors leading to the upper room are unlocked – he’d prefer to descend by a stairway, if possible – but they aren’t. Cautiously he surveys the ground below through one of the observation slits: no large or medium-sized life forms visible down there, though there’s a scuttering in the underbrush he hopes is only a squirrel. He unpacks his twisted sheet, ties it to a ventilation pipe – flimsy, but the only possibility – and lowers the free end over the edge of the rampart. It’s about seven feet short, but he can stand the drop, as long as he doesn’t land on his bad foot. Over he goes, hand over hand down the ersatz rope. He hangs at the end of it like a spider, hesitates – isn’t there a technique for doing this? What has he read about parachutes? Something about bending your knees. Then he lets go.

He lands two-footed. The pain is intense, but after rolling around on the muddy ground for a time and making speared-animal noises, he hauls himself whimpering to his feet. Revision: to his foot. Nothing seems to be broken. He looks around for a stick to use as a crutch, finds one. Good thing about sticks, they grow on trees.

Now he’s thirsty.

Through the verdure and upspringing weeds he goes, hoppity hoppity hop, gritting his teeth. On the way he steps on a huge banana slug, almost falls. He hates that feeling: cold, viscous, like a peeled, refrigerated muscle. Creeping snot. If he were a Craker he’d have to apologize to it – I’m sorry I stepped on you, Child of Oryx, please forgive my clumsiness.

He tries it out: “I’m sorry.”

Did he hear something? An answer?

When the slugs begin to talk there’s no time to lose.

He reaches the bubble-dome, circles around the white, hot, icy swell of it to the front. The airlock door is open, as he remembers it. A deep breath, and in he goes.

Here are Crake and Oryx, what’s left of them. They’ve been vulturized, they’re scattered here and there, small and large bones mingled and in disarray, like a giant jigsaw puzzle.

Here’s Snowman, thick as a brick, dunderhead, frivol, and dupe, water running down his face, giant fist clenching his heart, staring down at his one true love and his best friend in all the world. Crake’s empty eye sockets look up at Snowman, as his empty eyes, once before. He’s grinning with all the teeth in his head. As for Oryx, she’s face down, she’s turned her head away from him as if in mourning. The ribbon in her hair is as pink as ever.

Oh, how to lament? He’s a failure even at that.

Snowman goes through the inner doorway, past the security area, into the staff living quarters. Warm air, humid, unfresh. The first place he needs is the storeroom; he finds it without difficulty. Dark except for a few skylights, but he’s got his flashlight. There’s a smell of mildew and of rats or mice, but otherwise the place is untouched since he was last here.

He locates the medical-supply shelves, roots around. Tongue depressors, gauze pads, burn dressings. A box of rectal thermometers, but he doesn’t need one of them stuffed up his anus to tell him he’s burning up. Three or four kinds of antibiotics, pill form and therefore slow-acting, plus one last bottle of Crake’s supergermicide short-term pleebland cocktail. Gets you there and back, but don’t stay until the clock strikes midnight or you’ll turn into a pumpkin, is what Crake used to say. He reads the label, Crake’s precise notations, estimates the measurement. He’s so weak now he can hardly lift the bottle; it takes him a while to get the top off.

Glug glug glug, says his voice balloon. Down the hatch.

But no, he shouldn’t drink it. He finds a box of clean syringes, shoots himself up. “Bite the dust, foot germs,” he says. Then he hobbles to his own suite, what used to be his own suite, and collapses onto the damp unmade bed, and goes brownout.

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, beginning with the eye. This change is frightening, as if it’s a parrot-shaped light bulb filling up with blood. “I’m going away now,” it says.

“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.