Year of the Flood: Novel (19 page)

APRIL FISH

APRIL FISH
YEAR FOURTEEN.

OF THE FOOLISHNESS WITHIN ALL RELIGIONS.
SPOKEN BY ADAM ONE.

Dear Friends, dear Fellow Creatures and Fellow Mortals:

What a fun-filled April Fish Day we have had, here on our Edencliff Rooftop Garden! This year’s Fish lanterns, modelled on the phosphorescent Fish that adorn the depths of the Ocean, are the most effective yet, and the Fish cakes look delectable! We have Rebecca and her special helpers, Amanda and Ren, to thank for these toothsome confections.

Our Children always enjoy this day, as it allows them to make fun of their elders; and as long as that fun does not get out of hand, we elders welcome it, as it reminds us of our own childhoods. It never hurts us to remember how small we felt then, and how we depended on the strength, knowledge, and wisdom of our elders to keep us safe. Let us teach our Children tolerance, and loving-kindness, and correct boundaries, as well as joyful laughter. As God contains all things good, He must also contain a sense of playfulness — a gift he has shared with Creatures other than ourselves, as witness the tricks Crows play, and the sportiveness of Squirrels, and the frolicking of Kittens.

On April Fish Day, which originated in France, we make fun of one another by attaching a Fish of paper, or, in our case, a Fish of recycled cloth, to the back of another person and then crying out, “April Fish!” Or, in the original French, “Poisson d’Avril!” In anglophone countries, this day is known as April Fool’s Day. But April Fish was surely first a Christian festival, as a Fish image was used by the early Christians as secret signals of their faith in times of oppression.

The Fish was an apt symbol, for Jesus first called as his Apostles two fishermen, surely chosen by him to help conserve the Fish population. They were told to be fishers of men
instead of
being fishers of Fish, thus neutralizing two destroyers of Fish! That Jesus was mindful of the Birds, the Animals, and the Plants is clear from his remarks on Sparrows, Hens, Lambs, and Lilies; but he understood that most of God’s Garden was under water and that it, too, needed tending. Saint Francis of Assisi preached a sermon to the Fish, not realizing that the Fish commune directly with God. Still, the Saint was affirming the respect due to them. How prophetic does this appear, now that the world’s Oceans are being laid waste!

Others may take the Specist view that we Humans are smarter than Fish, and thus an April Fish is being marked as mute and foolish. But the life of the Spirit always seems foolish to those who do not share it: therefore we must accept and wear the label of God’s Fools gladly, for in relation to God we are all fools, no matter how wise we may think we are. To be an April Fish is to humbly accept our own silliness, and to cheerfully admit the absurdity — from a materialist view — of every Spiritual truth we profess.

Please join me now in a Meditation on our Fish brethren.

Dear God, You who created the great and wide Sea, with its Creatures innumerable: we pray that You hold in your gaze those who dwell in Your underwater Garden, in which Life originated; and we pray that none may vanish from the Earth by Human agency. Let Love and aid be brought to the Sea Creatures in their present peril and great suffering; which has come to them through the warming of the Sea, and through the dragging of nets and hooks along the bottom of it, and through the slaughtering of all within it, from the Creatures of the shallows to the Creatures of the depths, the Giant Squid included; and remember your Whales, that You created on the fifth day, and set in the Sea to play therein; and bring help especially to the Sharks, that misunderstood and much-persecuted breed.

We hold in our minds the Great Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico; and the Great Dead Zone in Lake Erie; and the Great Dead Zone in the Black Sea; and the desolate Grand Banks of Newfoundland, where the Cod once abounded; and the Great Barrier Reef, now dying and bleaching white and breaking apart.

Let them come to Life again; let Love shine upon them and restore them; and let us be forgiven for our oceanic murders; and for our foolishness, when it is the wrong kind of foolishness, being arrogant and destructive.

And help us to accept in all humility our kinship with the Fishes, who appear to us as mute and foolish; for in Your sight, we are all mute and foolish.

Let us sing.

OH LORD, YOU KNOW OUR FOOLISHNESS

Oh Lord, You know our foolishness,
And all our silly deeds;
You watch us scamper here and there,
Pursuing useless greeds.

We sometimes doubt that You are Love,
And we forget to thank;
We find the Sky an empty void,
The Universe a blank.

We fall into despondency,
And curse the hour that bore us;
We either claim You don’t exist,
Or else that You ignore us.

So pardon us these vacant moods,
Our dour and gloomy sayings;
Today we own ourselves Your Fools,
And celebrate by playing.

We make a full acknowledgment
Of all in us that’s vain —
Our petty strifes and tiny woes,
Our self-inflicted pain.

At April Fish we jest and sing
And laugh with childish glee;
We puncture pomp and puffed-up pride,
And smile at all we see.

Your starry World’s beyond our thought,
And wondrous without measure;
We pray, among Your Treasures bright,
Your Fools You’ll also treasure.

From
The God’s Gardeners Oral Hymnbook

37

REN

YEAR TWENTY-FIVE

I must have dozed off — being in the Sticky Zone makes you tired — because I was dreaming about Amanda. She was walking towards me in her khaki outfit through a wide field of dry grass with many white bones in it. There were vultures flying over her head. But she saw me dreaming her, and she smiled and waved at me, and I woke up.

It was too early to really go to sleep, so I did my toenails. Starlite liked the claw effect with spider-silk strengtheners, but I never used that because Mordis said it would be an image brainfry, like a bunny with spikes. So I stuck to the pastels. Shiny new toes make you feel all fresh and sparkling: if someone wants to suck your toes, those toes should be worth sucking. While the polish was drying I went to the intercom camera in the room I shared with Starlite. It cheered me up to connect with my own things — my dresser, my Robodog, my costumes on their hangers. I could hardly wait to be back in my normal life. Not that it was normal exactly. But I was used to it.

Then I surfed the Net, looking for the horoscope sites to see what sort of week was coming up, because I’d be out of the Sticky Zone very soon if my tests were clear. Wild Stars was my favourite: I liked it because it was so encouraging.

The Moon in your sign, Scorpio, means your hormones are pumped this week! It’s hot, hot, hot! Enjoy, but don’t take this sexy flareup too seriously — it will pass.

You’re working hard now at making your home a pleasure palace. Time to buy those new satin sheets and slip between them! You’ll be pampering all your Taurean senses this week!

I was hoping that romance and adventure might be heading my way, once I got out of the Sticky Zone. And maybe travel, or spiritual quests — sometimes they had those. But my own horoscope wasn’t so good:

Messenger Mercury in your sign, Pisces, means that things and people from the past will surprise you in the coming weeks. Be prepared for some quick transitions! Romance may take strange forms — illusion and reality are dancing closely together right now, so tread carefully!

I didn’t like the sound of romance taking strange forms. I got enough of that at work.

When I checked in on the Snakepit again, it was really crowded. Savona was still on the trapeze, and Crimson Petal was up there too, in a Biofilm Bodysuit with extra genital ruffles so she looked like a giant orchid. Down below, Starlite was still working away on her Painballer customer. That girl could raise the dead, but he was so close to being unconscious that I didn’t think she’d be getting a big tip out of him.

The CorpSeCorps minders were hovering, but suddenly they all looked in the direction of the entranceway, so I went to another camera and had a look myself. Mordis was over there, talking to a couple more CorpSeCorps guys. They had another Painballer in tow, who looked in even worse shape than the first three. More explosive. Mordis wasn’t happy. Four of those Painballers — that was a lot to handle. And what if they were from different teams and just yesterday they were trying to disembowel each other?

Mordis was herding the new Painballer to the far corner. Now he was barking into his cell; now three backup dancers were hurrying over: Vilya, Crenola, Sunset. Block the view, he must’ve told them. Use your tits, why in hell did God make them? There was a shimmering, a flurry of feathers, six arms twining around him. I could almost hear what Vilya was saying into the guy’s ear:
Take two, honey, they’re cheap.

A signal from Mordis and the music got louder: loud music distracts them, they’re less likely to rampage with their ears full of sound. Now the dancers were all over this guy like anacondas. Two Scales bouncers on standby.

Mordis was grinning: situation solved. He’d steer this one into the feather-ceiling rooms, dump in some alcohol, stick some girls on top of him, and he’d be what Mordis called one blitzed-out brain-dead squeeze-dried happy zombie. And now that we had BlyssPluss, he’d get multiple orgasms and wuzzy comfy feelings, with no microbe-death downside. The furniture breakage at Scales had tanked since they’d been using that stuff. They were serving it in chocolate-dipped polyberries, and in Soylectable olives — though you had to make sure not to overdo it, said Starlite, or the guy’s dick might split.

38

In Year Fourteen, we had April Fish Day as usual. On that day you were supposed to act silly and laugh a lot. I pinned a fish onto Shackie, and Croze pinned a fish onto me, and Shackie pinned a fish onto Amanda. A lot of kids pinned fish onto Nuala, but nobody pinned a fish onto Toby because you couldn’t get behind her without her knowing. Adam One pinned a fish onto himself to make some point about God. That little brat Oates ran around shouting, “Fish fingers” and poking his fingers into people from behind until Rebecca made him stop. Then he was sad, so I took him into the corner and told him the story about the Littlest Vulture. He was a sweet boy when he wasn’t being a pest.

Zeb was away on one of his trips — he’d been going away more lately. Lucerne stayed home: she said she had nothing to celebrate, and it was a stupid festival anyway.

It was my first April Fish without Bernice. We’d always decorated a Fish Cake together when we were little, before Amanda arrived. We’d fight all the time about what to put on it. Once we’d made our cake green, with spinach for the green colour, with eyes of carrot rounds. It looked really toxic. Thinking about that cake made me want to cry. Where was Bernice now? I felt ashamed of myself, for being so unkind to her. What if she was dead, like Burt? If she was, it was partly my fault. Mostly my fault. My fault.

Amanda and I walked back to the Cheese Factory, and Shackie and Croze walked with us — to protect us, they said. Amanda laughed at that but said they could come with us if they liked. The four of us were more or less friends again, though every once in a while Croze would say to Amanda, “You still owe us,” and Amanda would tell him to get knotted.

By the time we got back to the Cheese Factory it was dark. We thought we’d be in trouble for being so late — Lucerne was always warning us about the dangers of the street — but it turned out that Zeb was back, and already they were having a fight. So we went into the hall to wait it out, because their fights took up all the room in our place.

This fight was louder than usual. A piece of furniture toppled over, or was thrown: Lucerne, it must have been, because Zeb wasn’t a thrower.

“What’s it about?” I said to Amanda. She had her ear against the door. She was shameless about eavesdropping.

“I dunno,” she said. “She’s yelling too loud. Oh wait — she says he’s having sex with Nuala.”

“Not Nuala,” I said. “He wouldn’t!” Now I knew how Bernice must have felt when we’d said all that about her father.

“Men’ll have sex with anything, given the chance,” said Amanda. “Now she’s saying he’s a pimp at heart. And he despises her and treats her like shit. I think she’s crying.”

“Maybe we should stop listening,” I said.

“Okay,” said Amanda. We stayed with our backs against the wall, waiting until Lucerne would start wailing. As she always did. Then Zeb would stomp out and slam the door, and we might not see him for days.

Zeb came out. “See you around, Queens of the Night,” he said. “Watch your backs.” He was joking with us the way he liked to do, but there wasn’t any fun behind it. He looked grim.

Usually after their fights Lucerne would go to bed and cry, but this night she started packing a bag. The bag was a pink backpack Amanda and I had gleaned. There wasn’t much for Lucerne put into it, so quite soon she finished her packing and came into our cubicle.

Amanda and I were pretending to be asleep, on our husk-filled futons, under our blue-jean quilts. “Get up, Ren,” Lucerne said to me. “We’re going.”

“Where?” I said.

“Back,” she said. “To the HelthWyzer Compound.”

“Right now?”

“Yes. Why are you looking like that? It’s what you’ve always wanted.” It’s true that I’d longed for the HelthWyzer Compound, once. I’d been homesick for it. But ever since Amanda’d moved in, I hadn’t been thinking about it too much.

“Amanda’s coming too?” I said.

“Amanda’s staying here.”

I felt very cold. “I want Amanda to come,” I said.

“Out of the question,” said Lucerne. Something else had now happened, it seemed: Lucerne had cast off her paralyzing spell, the spell of Zeb. She’d stepped out of sex as if out of a loose dress. Now she was brisk, decisive, no nonsense. Had she been like that before, long ago? I could scarcely remember.

“Why?” I said. “Why can’t Amanda come?”

“Because they won’t let her in at HelthWyzer. We can get our identities back there, but she doesn’t have one, and I certainly don’t have the money to buy her one. They’ll take care of her here,” she added, as if Amanda was a kitten I was being forced to abandon.

“No way,” I said. “If she’s not coming, I’m not!”

“And where would you live, here?” said Lucerne with contempt.

“We’ll stay with Zeb,” I said.

“He’s never home,” said Lucerne. “You don’t think they’d let two young girls camp out by themselves!”

“Then we can live with Adam One,” I said. “Or Nuala. Or maybe Katuro.”

“Or Stuart the Screw,” said Amanda hopefully. This was desperate — Stuart was dour and a loner — but I grabbed the idea.

“We can help him make furniture,” I said. I imagined the whole scenario — Amanda and me collecting pieces of junk for Stuart, sawing and hammering and singing as we worked, making herbal tea …

“You won’t be welcome,” said Lucerne. “Stuart is a misanthrope. He only tolerates you kids because of Zeb, and it’s the same with all the others.”

“We’ll stay with Toby,” I said.

“Toby has other things to do. Now that’s enough. If Amanda can’t find someone who’ll take her in, she can always go back to the pleebrats. She belongs with them, anyway. You don’t. Now, hurry up.”

“I need to put on my clothes,” I said.

“Fine,” said Lucerne. “Ten minutes.” She left the cubicle.

“What’ll we do?” I whispered to Amanda as I started to dress.

“I don’t know,” Amanda whispered back. “Once you’re in there she’ll never let you out. Those Compounds are like castles, they’re like jails. She won’t ever let you see me. She hates me.”

“I don’t care what she thinks,” I whispered. “I’ll get out somehow.”

“My phone,” Amanda whispered. “Take it with you. You can phone me.”

“I’ll get you in somehow,” I said. By this time I was crying silently. I slipped her purple phone into my pocket.

“Hurry up, Ren,” said Lucerne.

“I’ll call you!” I whispered. “My dad will buy you an identity!”

“Sure he will,” said Amanda softly. “Don’t take shit, okay?”

In the main room, Lucerne was moving fast. She dumped out the sickly looking tomato plant she’d been growing on the windowsill. Underneath the soil there was a plastic bag full of money. She must’ve been ripping it off, from selling stuff at the Tree of Life — the soap, the vinegar, the macramé, the quilts. Money was old-fashioned, but people still used it for small things and the Gardeners wouldn’t take virtual money because they didn’t allow computers. So she’d been stashing away her escape money. She hadn’t been such a doormat as I’d thought.

Then she took the kitchen shears and cut off her long hair, straight across at neck level. The cutting made a Velcro sound — scratchy and dry. She left the pile of hair in the middle of the dining-room table.

Then she took me by the arm and hauled me out of our place and down the stairs. She never went out at night because of the drunks and druggies on the street corners, and the pleebrat gangs and muggers. But right then she was white-hot with anger and filled with crackling energy: people on the street cleared out of our path as if we were contagious, and even the Asian Fusions and the Blackened Redfish left us alone.

It took us hours to get through the Sinkhole and the Sewage Lagoon, and then the richer pleebs. As we went along, the houses and buildings and hotels got newer looking, and the streets emptier of people. In Big Box we got a solarcab: we drove through Golfgreens and then past a big open space, and finally right up to the gates of the HelthWyzer Compound. It was so long since I’d seen that place it was like one of those dreams, where you don’t recognize anything, yet also you do. I felt a little sick, but that might have been excitement.

Before we got into the cab, Lucerne had mussed up my hair and smeared dirt on her own face, and torn part of her dress. “Why’d you do that?” I said. But she didn’t answer.

There were two guards at the HelthWyzer gateway, behind the little window. “Identities?” they said.

“We don’t have any,” said Lucerne. “They were stolen. We were forcibly abducted.” She looked behind her, as if she was afraid someone was following us. “Please — you have to let us in, right away! My husband — he’s in Nanobioforms. He’ll tell you who I am.” She started to cry.

One of them reached for the phone, pushed a button. “Frank,” he said. “Main gate. Lady here says she’s your wife.”

“We’ll need some cheek swabs, ma’am, for the communicables,” said the second one. “Then you can wait in the holding room, pending bioform clearance and verification. Someone will be with you soon.”

In the holding room we sat on a black vinyl sofa. It was five in the morning. Lucerne picked up a magazine —
NooSkins,
it said on the cover.
Why Live With Imperfection?
She riffled through it.

“Were we forcibly abducted?” I asked her.

“Oh, my darling,” she said. “You don’t remember! You were too young! I didn’t want to tell you — I didn’t want you to be frightened! They might have done something terrible to you!” Then she began to cry again, harder. By the time the CorpSeMan in the biosuit walked in, her face was all streaky.