The asphalted main pathway is wide enough for a Heritage Park vehicle, like the one Zeb and Toby used to transport Pilar to the site of her composting. Already there are weed shoots nosing up through. The force they can exert is staggering: they’ll have a building cracked like a nut in a few years, they’ll reduce it to rubble in a decade. Then the earth swallows the pieces. Everything digests, and is digested. The Gardeners found that a cause for celebration, but Toby has never been reassured by it.
Rhino walks ahead with a spraygun. Shackleton is at the rear. Zeb’s in the middle, beside Toby, keeping a close eye on her. He’s carrying the rifle for safekeeping, since she’s already drunk the short-form Enhanced Meditation mixture. Luckily there were some Psilocybe species from the old Gardener mushroom beds among the assortment of dried mushrooms she’d saved over the years and brought with her from the AnooYoo Spa. To the soaked dried mushrooms and the mixed ground-up seeds she’d added a pinch of muscaria. Just a pinch: she doesn’t want all-out brain fractals, just a low-level shakeup – a crinkling of the window glass that separates the visible world from whatever lies behind it. The effects are beginning: already there’s a wavering, a shift.
“Hey, what’re you doing here?” says a voice. Shackleton’s voice, coming to her along a dark tunnel. She turns: it’s Blackbeard.
“I wish to be with Toby,” he says.
“Oh fuck,” says Shackleton. Blackbeard smiles happily. “And with Fuck too,” he says.
“It’s all right,” says Toby. “Let him come.”
“You can’t stop him, anyway,” says Zeb. “Short of braining him. Though I could tell him to fuck the fuck off.”
“Please,” says Toby. “Don’t confuse him.”
“Where are you going, Oh Toby?” says Blackbeard.
Toby takes the hand he holds up to her. “To visit a friend,” she says. “But it’s a friend you can’t see.” Blackbeard asks no questions; he simply nods.
Zeb looks ahead, looks left, looks right. He’s singing to himself, a habit he’s had ever since Toby’s known him. It usually means he’s feeling stressed.
Now we’re in the muck,
And that can really suck,
And this is why we’re out of luck,
Because we don’t know fuck …
“But Snowman-the-Jimmy knows him,” says Blackbeard. “And Crake. He knows him too.” He beams up at Toby and Zeb for verification, pleased with himself.
“You’re right there, pal,” says Zeb. “That’s what they know. Both of them.”
Toby can feel the full strength of the Enhanced Meditation formula kicking in. Zeb’s head against the sun is circled with a halo of what she realizes must be split ends – he could really use a trim, she must get hold of some scissors – but which nevertheless appears to her as a radiant burst of electric energy shooting out of his hair. A morpho-splice butterfly floats down the path, luminescent. Of course, she remembers, it’s luminescent anyway, but now it’s blue-hot, like a gasfire. Black Rhino looms up out of his own footsteps, an earth giant. Nettles arc from the sides of the walkway, the stinging hairs on their leaves gauzy with light. All around there are sounds, noises, almost-voices: hums and clicks, tappings, whispered syllables.
And there is the elderberry bush, where they planted it on Pilar’s grave so long ago. It’s much larger now. White bloom cascades from it, sweetness fills the air. A vibration surrounds it: honeybees, bumblebees, butterflies large and small.
“You stay here, with Zeb,” Toby says to Blackbeard. She lets go of his hand, steps forward, kneels in front of the elderberry.
She gazes at the clustered flowers, thinks, Pilar. The wizened old face, the brown hands, the gentle smile. All so real, once. Gone to ground.
I know you’re here, in your new body. I need your help.
There’s no voice, but there’s a space. A waiting.
Amanda. Will she die, will this baby kill her? What should I do?
Nothing. Toby feels abandoned. But really, what did she expect? There is no magic, there are no angels. It was always child’s play.
But she can’t help asking anyway. Send me a message. A signal. What would you do in my place?
“Watch it,” says the voice of Zeb. “Stay still. Look slowly. To the left.”
Toby turns her head. Crossing the path, within stone-throw, there’s one of the giant pigs. A sow, with farrow: five little piglets, all in a row. Soft gruntings from the mother, high screechy pipings from the young. How pink and brightly shining are their ears, how crystalline their hooves, how …
“I’ve got you covered,” Zeb says. He’s slowly lifting the rifle.
“Don’t shoot,” says Toby. Her own voice in her ears is distant, her mouth feels huge and numbed. Her heart’s becalmed.
The sow stops, turns sideways: a perfect target. She looks at Toby out of her eye. The five little ones gather in her shadow, under the nipples, which are all in a row too, like vest buttons. Her mouth upturns in a smile, but that’s only the way it’s made. Glint of light on a tooth.
Little Blackbeard moves forward. He’s golden in the sun, his green eyes lambent, his hands outstretched.
“Get back here,” says Zeb.