"Anybody didn't mean me," said Crake. "Don't be a cork-nut."
"How do I know you're not a carrier?" said Jimmy.
"I'm not."
"How do I know that?"
"Let's just suppose," said Crake wearily, "that I anticipated this event and took precautions. Anyway, you're immune to this."
"Why would I be?" said Jimmy. His brain was slow on logic tonight. There was something wrong with what Crake had just said, but he couldn't pinpoint it.
"The antibody serum was in the pleeb vaccine. Remember all those times you shot up with that stuff? Every time you went to the pleebs to wallow in the mud and drown your lovesick sorrows."
"How did you know?" said Jimmy. "How did you know where I, what I wanted?" His heart was racing; he wasn't being precise.
"Don't be a moron. Let me in."
Jimmy coded open the door into the airlock. Now Crake was at the inmost door. Jimmy turned on the airlock video monitor: Crake's head floated life-sized, right in front of his eyes. He looked wrecked. There was something - blood? - on his shirt collar.
"Where were you?' said Jimmy. "Have you been in a fight?"
"You have no idea," said Crake. "Now let me in."
"Where's Oryx?"
"She's right here with me. She's had a hard time."
"What happened to her? What's going on out there? Let me talk to her!"
"She can't talk right now. I can't lift her up. I've had a few injuries. Now quit fucking the dog and let us in."
Jimmy took out his spraygun. Then he punched in the code. He stood back and to the side. All the hairs on his arms were standing up. We understand more than we know.
The door swung open.
Crake's beige tropicals were splattered with redbrown. In his right hand was an ordinary storeroom jackknife, the kind with the two blades and the nail file and the corkscrew and the little scissors. He had his other arm around Oryx, who seemed to be asleep; her face was against Crake's chest, her long pink-ribboned braid hung down her back.
As Jimmy watched, frozen with disbelief, Crake let Oryx fall backwards, over his left arm. He looked at Jimmy, a direct look, unsmiling.
"I'm counting on you," he said. Then he slit her throat.
Jimmy shot him.
13
~
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.