“We will come with you,” says another man – a shorter one, yellow in tone, with green eyes. “We will help Snowman too.” Now that I notice, they all have green eyes. They smell like citrus fruits.

“Snowman often needs our help,” says the tall man. “His smell is weak. It has no power. And this time he is sick. He is sick in his foot. He is limping.”

“If Snowman told you to stay here, you must stay here,” says Toby. They look at one another: something’s worrying them.

“We will stay here,” says the tall man. “But you must come back soon.”

“And bring Snowman,” says one of the women. “So we can help him. Then he can live in his tree again.”

“And give him a fish. A fish makes him happy.”

“He eats it,” says one of the children, making a face. “He chews it up. He swallows it. Crake said he has to.”

“Crake lives in the sky. He loves us,” says a short woman. They seem to think this Crake is God. Glenn as God, in a black T-shirt – that’s pretty funny, considering what he was really like. But I don’t laugh.

“We could give you a fish too,” says the woman. “Would you like a fish?”

“Yes. Bring Snowman,” says the tall man. “Then we will catch two fish. Three. One for you, one for Snowman, one for the woman who smells blue.”

“We’ll do our best,” says Toby.

This seems to puzzle them. “What is ‘best’?” says the man.

We step out from under the trees, into the open sunlight and the sound of the waves, and walk over the soft dry sand, down to the hard wet strip above the water’s edge. The water slides up, then falls back with a gentle hiss, like a big snake breathing. Bright junk litters the shore: shards of plastic, empty cans, broken glass.

“I thought they were going to jump me,” I say.

“They smelled you,” says Toby. “They smelled the estrogen. They thought you were in season. They only mate when they turn blue. It’s like baboons.”

“How do you know all that?” I say. Croze told me about the blue penises but not about the estrogen.

“From Ivory Bill,” says Toby. “The MaddAddams helped to design that feature. It was supposed to make life simpler. Facilitate mate selection. Eliminate romantic pain. Now we should keep very quiet.”

Romantic pain, I think. I wonder what Toby knows about that?

There’s a line of deserted high-rises standing in the offshore water: I remember them from our Gardener trips to the Heritage Park beach. It was dry land out there before the sea levels rose so much, and all the hurricanes: we’d learned that in school. Gulls are soaring and settling on the flat roofs.

We can get eggs there, I think. And fish. Jacklight, Zeb taught us, if you’re desperate. Make a torch, the fish will swim to the light. There’s a few crab holes in the sand, small ones. Nettles growing farther up the beach. You can eat seaweed too. All those Saint Euell things.

I’m wishing again: planning lunch, when in the back of my head is just plain fear. We can never do it. We’ll never get Amanda back. We’ll be killed.

Toby’s found some tracks in the wet sand – several people with shoes or boots, and the place where they took the shoes off, maybe to wash their feet, and then where they put the shoes back on and headed up towards the trees.

They could be in among those trees right now, looking out. They could be watching us. They could be aiming.

On top of those tracks is another set. Barefoot. “Someone limping,” whispers Toby, and I think, It must be Snowman. The crazy man who lives in a tree.

We slip our packsacks off and leave them where the sand ends and the grass and weeds begin, under the first trees. Toby says we don’t need them weighing us down: we need our arms free.

So, God, thinks Toby. What’s Your view? Supposing You exist. Tell me now, please, because this may be the end of it: once we tangle with the Painballers, we don’t have a cat’s chance in a bonfire, the way I see it.

Are the new people Your idea of an improved model? Is this what the first Adam was supposed to be? Will they replace us? Or do You intend to shrug your shoulders and carry on with the present human race? If so, you’ve chosen some odd marbles: a clutch of one-time scientists, a handful of renegade Gardeners, two psychotics on the loose with a nearly dead woman. It’s hardly the survival of the fittest, except for Zeb; but even Zeb’s tired.

Then there’s Ren. Couldn’t you have picked someone less fragile? Less innocent? A little tougher? If she were an animal, what would she be? Mouse? Thrush? Deer in the headlights? She’ll fall apart at the crucial moment: I should have left her back there on the beach. But that would prolong the inevitable, because if I go down, so will she. Even if she runs, it’s too far back to the cobb house: she’ll never make it, and even if she outruns them she’ll get lost. And who’s going to protect her from the dogs and pigs, in the wild woods? Not the blue folks back there. Not if the Painballers have a spraygun that works. Much worse for her if she doesn’t die immediately.

The Human moral keyboard is limited, Adam One used to say: there’s nothing you can play on it that hasn’t been played before. And, my dear Friends, I am sorry to say this, but it has its lower notes.

She stops, checks the rifle. Safety off.

Left foot, right foot, quietly along. The faint sounds of her feet on the fallen leaves hit her ears like shouts. How visible, how audible I am, she thinks. Everything in the forest is watching. They’re waiting for blood, they can smell it, they can hear it running through my veins, katoush. Above her head, clustering in the treetops, the crows are treacherous: Hawhawhaw! They want her eyes, those crows.

Yet each flower, each twig, each pebble, shines as though illuminated from within, as once before, on her first day in the Garden. It’s the stress, it’s the adrenalin, it’s a chemical effect: she knows this well enough. But why is it built in? she thinks. Why are we designed to see the world as supremely beautiful just as we’re about to be snuffed? Do rabbits feel the same as the fox teeth bite down on their necks? Is it mercy?

She pauses, turns, smiles at Ren. Do I look reassuring? she wonders. Calm and in control? Do I look as if I know what the hell I’m doing? I’m not up to this. I’m not fast enough, I’m too old, I’m rusty, I don’t have the whiplash reflexes, I’m weighed down with scruples. Forgive me, Ren. I’m leading you to doom. I pray that if I miss we both die quickly. No bees to save us this time.

What Saint should I call upon? Who has the resolution and the skill? The ruthlessness. The judgment. The accuracy.

Dear Leopard, dear Wolf, dear Liobam: lend me your Spirits now.