The MaddAddam Trilogy Read Online Free PDF Page B

birthday, by his father. His father was always giving him tools, trying to make him more practical. In his father’s opinion Jimmy couldn’t screw in a light bulb.
So who wants to screw in a light bulb?
says the voice in Snowman’s head, a stand-up comic this time.
I’d rather do it in bed
.
    “Shut up,” says Snowman.
    “Did you give him a dollar?” Oryx had asked him when he told her about the knife.
    “No. Why?”
    “You need to give money when someone gives you a knife. So the bad luck won’t cut you. I wouldn’t like it for you to be cut by the bad luck, Jimmy.”
    “Who told you that?”
    “Oh, someone,” said Oryx.
Someone
played a big part in her life.
    “Someone who?” Jimmy hated him, this someone – faceless, eyeless, mocking, all hands and dick, now singular, now double, now a multitude – but Oryx had her mouth right next to his ear and was whispering,
Oh, oh, some, one
, and laughing at the same time, so how could he concentrate on his stupid old hate?
    In the short period of the lean-to he’d slept on a fold-up cot he’d dragged from a bungalow half a mile away, a metal frame with a foam mattress on top of a grillwork of springs. The first night he’d been attacked by ants, and so he’d filled four tin cans with water and stuck the cot legs into them. That put a stop to the ants. But the build-up of hot, damp air under the tarp was too uncomfortable: at night, at ground level, with no breeze, the humidity felt like a hundred per cent: his breath fogged the plastic.
    Also the rakunks were a nuisance, scuffling through the leaves and sniffing at his toes, nosing around him as if he were already garbage; and one morning he’d woken to find three pigoons gazing in at him through the plastic. One was a male; he thought he could see the gleaming point of a white tusk. Pigoons were supposed to be tusk-free, but maybe they were reverting to type now they’d gone feral, a fast-forward process considering their rapid-maturity genes. He’d shouted at them and waved his arms and they’d run off, but who could tell what they might do the next time they came around? Them, or the wolvogs: it wouldn’t take them forever to figure out that he no longer had a spraygun. He’dthrown it away when he’d run out of virtual bullets for it. Dumb not to have swiped a recharger for it: a mistake, like setting up his sleeping quarters at ground level.
    So he’d moved to the tree. No pigoons or wolvogs up there, and few rakunks: they preferred the undergrowth. He’d constructed a rough platform in the main branches out of scrap wood and duct tape. It’s not a bad job: he’s always been handier at putting things together than his father gave him credit for. At first he’d taken the foam mattress up there, but he had to toss it when it began to mildew, and to smell tantalizingly of tomato soup.
    The plastic tarp on the lean-to was torn away during an unusually violent storm. The bed frame remains, however; he can still use it at noon. He’s found that if he stretches out on it flat on his back, with his arms spread wide and his sheet off, like a saint arranged ready for frying, it’s better than lying on the ground: at least he can get some air on all the surfaces of his body.
    From nowhere, a word appears:
Mesozoic
. He can see the word, he can hear the word, but he can’t reach the word. He can’t attach anything to it. This is happening too much lately, this dissolution of meaning, the entries on his cherished wordlists drifting off into space.
    “It’s only the heat,” he tells himself. “I’ll be fine once it rains.” He’s sweating so hard he can almost hear it; trickles of sweat crawl down him, except that sometimes the trickles are insects. He appears to be attractive to beetles. Beetles, flies, bees, as if he’s dead meat, or one of the nastier flowers.
    The best thing about the noon hours is that at least he doesn’t get hungry: even the thought of food makes him queasy, like chocolate