Night of the Animals (22 page)

“If you would not mind terribly, brother. Time, my
saliq,
is short. The end is near. Still, you see, there are certain absolutes one cannot avoid. Al-Khidr or not, I must on English soil eat rats. And I would like to pay my respects to the Shayk, and you must, you really
must,
too. And I want to take you there. We must go now.”

BUT CUTHBERT FELT A NEED TO REST. THE CRAWL
into the zoo, the gap-making in the fence, the catastrophic tumble in the Penguin Pool, the freeing of the cats—it was all knackering him. And now more strange lights were appearing outside the zoo, along with sirens and faint human voices. Was there something in the sky, besides children's cloud-doodles? Had the suicided cultists completely gathered in their comet ship? Had their California cocktails of death “released” them from their bodily “vehicles,” and soon their hordes would be in London?

As much as Cuthbert felt affection for Muezza, along with no small dose of bewilderment, he wondered how much more he could take. He leaned against a rubbish receptacle meant to resemble a hippopotamus with a gaping, dust-devouring maw. Wasn't he already spoken for? The poor penguins had already tasked him with helping them find their Gulls of Imago, and he was failing them.

Cuthbert said to Muezza, “If I go with you to see your ‘shayk,' I'll lose more time. I've already promised meself to these blunky penguins, see?”

“The penguins?” gasped the cat. “Oh,
saliq
! Why waste time with them? Don't you know that their pool is the Altar of Lost Chances? They cannot be harmed or helped, nor can the prophecies surrounding them be changed: the Altar
will
stir.”

“Well, I wouldn't know about
that,
would I?”

“You will. It is beyond us,” said Muezza. “Only Allah understands it. But the Altar, no single thing could be more dangerous to animals. It is a contraption of promises not kept. You watch—your Luciferians, oh, they will admire the Altar, you will see. It is part of their technology.”

“But it's a lovely thing, it is. This Tecton chap, he won a big award for it.”

“It's white cement. No one ever asked the penguins what
they
thought of their yoghurt-colored house of amusement. And it wouldn't have been so hard. But now, the penguins are brainwashed. They are ciphers of design. They are waiting to perform for someone who will never come. They wait every night, in their secret chambers, singing their verses to the Gulls of Imago.”

“Well, what's so terrible about that?”

“I'm surprised at you, wise brother,” said the cat. “The poor penguins are merely very clever decor, and when the aliens bring the Altar to life, the little jackarses will also perish. Don't you see? The Altar is a monument to what
should
be but never quite
will
be? The penguins wait to perform a ballet of collectivist magnificence that can be danced nowhere else but in the mind of an architect.”

Cuthbert said: “You said—you
promised
—to tell me about the gulls, then. They're important, to me, and to the penguin muckers. I'm in a real palaver with all this penguin stuff. There's this Tecton fellow—'e's been ghosted into birds. But I distinctly heard you say you would help me if I got you out of your—your cat capsule. You did say that, didn't you?”

“If that is what you say, if you must say it, I will believe it,” said Muezza. “But that is not what I said.”

“Ah, cat!”

“Calm your heart,
saliq
. Listen: I suppose you have already done what is necessary to bring the ‘Imago gulls' upon you; we will see—in time. But, really, how can you bother with these”—he spoke as though a bolt of dead worms had gushed into his mouth—“these
birds
? Birds eat garbage, not good, warm, beautiful blood, as cats do. When I am talking to you about the True Path, to Allah, you want to talk about a socialist museum piece. Did you not hear me? You are about to meet the Shayk of Night.”

“I heard it, cat! Now what about the thing I said?”

“Yes, of course. I do believe I said I would tell you about
many small living pests
. And I have!” Muezza sighed. “You do not always act like a cat, brother.”

Cuthbert wished he could gently clasp the fur between Muezza's ears and hold it until the cat began talking a bit of sense. Clearly, Cuthbert's idea of “a bit of sense”—locating a brilliant architect's ghost, which had morphed into white birds—wasn't straightforward. But Cuthbert
was
losing his mind, after all. He leaned down and reached for Muezza, and the cat leaped back violently, hissing and growling, puffing its tail.

“Don't touch me! That is where the Prophet pets cats,” said Muezza. “You see the
M
mark on my forehead? Where his finger painted all small cats?”

The sand cat ventured a few steps closer to Cuthbert, but he looked frankly scared.

The mark was apparent enough, Cuthbert saw. Like on any old tabby cat, there was indeed an
M
in dark fur. It astounded Cuthbert.

“The sign of Mohammed,” said the sand cat.

Cuthbert said, a little nervously, “But that could just as well stand for Mary the Virgin, or some Saxon war god whose name
starts with
M
—Mugnor or Muglund or some such. Or what about Muezza?”

“Yes, brother, you may be right. But I doubt it. You should be careful not to jump to conclusions. And since you're not able to stop drinking, it is probably best for you to turn my
M
upside down, and make it a
W
. Consider: all things bright and green and strong to you—Worcestershire, Wyre, the Whittington, and your granny Winefride—are also on my face, and merely inverted. I have it all. The
M
is the version of the
W
which can walk upright.”

“I can walk,” Cuthbert slurred.

“You shamble, brother. You do not walk.”

Finally, Cuthbert mumbled: “I don't think
M
or
W
has much to do with anything.” He bit his lip, then spoke more confidently: “I think you're a bit too clever for your own good, cat. And for the last time, I'm not your brother! My brother is Drystan. 'E's a real boffin, believe you me!” He sighed, and said: “Now, what about the gulls?”

“I never said
gulls
specifically. All that I meant were
rats,
” said the cat.

“Gerrout!” Cuthbert screamed, his frustration peaking. The sound was as loud as that of any of the animals in the zoo. The cat seemed puzzled, but unfazed.

“Do you hear them?” said Muezza. “They are everywhere. Squeaking and squeaking and gnawing all of bad Britain.
Squeak, squeak, squeak
. I have been freed by you so that I and my friends can kill them.
Squeak, squeak, squeak
.”

“The seagulls?”

“No, the rats,” said Muezza. “
Squeak, squeak, squeak
.”

“Cat, you're trouble, yow am. I hear no such thing.”

It dawned on him that Muezza was acting no different from any small cat he had ever encountered in Britain. Cats were, after all, famously intractable. He suddenly felt, quite unwillingly, tender
toward the myopic, rodent-obsessed cat. He felt that he wanted to rock the animal like a baby, but he knew Muezza would wriggle out from his arms, and possibly scratch or bite him badly.

“Oh, I wish I could touch you, Muezza, and hold you, and carry you 'round the zoo. You're a perfect cat. A'm sure that every person who comes to the zoo thinks the same.”

“Not everyone,” said Muezza. “Many visitors—and many other animals here—would like to strangle me. Your comet cult, well, you know what they want to do to me! No, I will walk by myself. I don't like to be mollycoddled, if you don't mind, brother.”

The cat circled around Cuthbert's legs, his tail quivering. “Besides, I am famished. The zookeepers, they pretend to know Africa, but they out-starve even the Magreb. They are fanatical about weighing us and keeping us trim. They do nothing to stop the rats from getting into the zoo, but they have never given us even
one
skinny one. They torture us with them, I tell you. And the rats, they're everywhere, you know. Millions of them. Two for every human in London. Do you smell them?”

Cuthbert gazed around. He had indeed seen dirty little shadows moving in a holly bush. And there was that rustling noise.

“Doesn't the scent make you thirsty?” asked Muezza.

Cuthbert said, “I don't smell anything. And a'av no interest in rats. I want seagulls, a'do. And I'm losing my marbles 'cause of it.” He took a deep breath but reeled backward, almost falling. “Or maybe it's because I'm not drinking Flōt. That. And if I could only make it a few days off the sauce, you know, I would be past the difficult bit. It's actually something I planned to bring up with you, though I don't see the point now. I had the naff idea that
you
might be able to help me to stop drinking, with your Allah and shayks and whatnot.”

“Don't lose hope, brother!” Muezza rolled onto his back, and again stretched out his short, stout legs. He whispered, “You are
the correct one always. You
will
be forgiven tonight in a way that you'll feel, and you
will
stop drinking, and you
will
free the animals, and your brother, too, your wondrous emir—Drystan, is his name?—he
will
be brought forth into the land of the living. And . . . he may be. Drystan
could
be . . .”

“What? Who?”

“The Otter Christ.”

“Oh, please,” slurred Cuthbert. “He is my brother, not the world's. I do want to see him. Just once. It has been so many, many years.”

“And since all is hope and happiness now, would you like, first, to hunt a rat with me?” asked the cat.

Cuthbert shook his head, rolling his eyes.

“No, of course not,
saliq
. Though if you do not want to hunt for rats, I am surprised once again, I have to say.”

“You shouldn't be.”

“Yet, we have so much else in common, brother.”

“No.”

“But where was I? Yes, yes, yes—I still must show you the Sacred Trail to the Shayk of Night. You are my brother, but he is my sovereign. He is one who may be able to help you to stop drinking your fermented insect drink, that refreshment of thieves and the memory of prisoners.”

“You mean the tipple?” asked Cuthbert. “You say ‘booze,' awlright? Flōt.”

“The Flōt
jinn,
” said Muezza.

“Gin is fine, too.”

The cat trotted away toward one of the main zoo paths, and stopped and turned around to face Cuthbert. When Cuthbert got to where he was standing on the path, he saw for the first time one of the Green Line markers, painted on the path, which he'd seen on the sign during his day visit. It was the same flat, broccoli green as
the animal-group signs, the shirts of the zoo staff, and any of the cafés' serviettes.

Muezza said: “I should tell you: this is an incomparable night for me, too. It is just as all the cats of the zoo have always said, brother. There is the line painted the sacred color, and if we follow it from here, it takes us to the Shayk. I also believe this line, if you follow it farther, will take you to the otter friends you wish to free, and,
inshallah,
to the Gulls of Imago, and ultimately to your wondrous lost Drystan. Naturally, because of my entrapment, I have never seen these things or the line myself. I never thought this night would come!”

Cuthbert did not know what to think. He said: “Let's see this Shayk then. He offers a cure, for my—condition?”

“The Shayk can do many things. I can make no promises.”

“Well, on then, anyhow. A rat or two for you, and a cat for me.”

Cuthbert knew he would see this Shayk, one way or another, no matter what he did. So he would go with Muezza. He would seek out the otters, and help them get into the Regent's Canal. Perhaps the otters would know where to find the Gulls of Imago. He thought of the disused canals of the Black Country, how the water turned green and luminous as one passed through the abandoned industrial landscapes toward the rural west. He did not mind following green lines—for a while, anyway. At the very least, it was somewhere to go. It was away from the aliens, away from the Black Country, and away from the Red Watch. Most of all, it was away from himself.

WITH THE SAND CAT TRAILING, CUTHBERT—STILL
spiring, still in a state of Flōter's hallucinosis—paced west and then north, and ended up passing the flamingos. The birds were all sleeping on little islands. They looked like he felt on Flōt—leggy, sleepy, solitary, needing nothing. Cuthbert thought they were shaped like beans, and he kept repeating a phrase, in his head, “Them's like beans, they are. Them's like beans. Them's like beans.” For a moment, he waved his bolt cutters back and forth like a giant pair of conductor's wands. Oh, he liked those concrete islets. “Them's like beans!” he sang aloud.

Muezza looked at him and shrugged.

“You are funny sometimes, brother. You act
human
.”

The flamingos' necks curled back like shepherds' staffs, and their beaks rested upon nests made of their own pink-feathered backs. Cuthbert did not see how they could be so peaceful, nor why they stayed on their islands (there was no cage or netting anywhere), but he resisted his urge to awaken them. He did not often care for birds, especially the genomic clones people often thought of as posh. Pi
geons, magpies, seagulls, and starlings—dowdy city birds were what he liked best. But he liked these things.

“How do you talk to a flamingo?” he said aloud, half-hoping that Muezza would offer some animal-world answer. The cat was watching the sleeping birds charily. The question seemed a critical matter to Muezza.

The cat answered: “I would not bother, really. These are ugly, self-important creatures. I have heard that lawn-worshippers in America, the kind of people who poison neighborhood cats, put effigies of them on their lawns. Blasphemous!” He paused, and looked down, speculatively. “When I was a kitten, I saw them in the reeds, near a great dying lake, but they stopped coming. But the nomads never liked them, nor did the camels or cattle or foxes. And then all the water dried up. My grandfather said thousands used to come, long ago—but no more.” Muezza snapped out of his contemplation and gave a little chirping laugh. He said: “It is said they are pink because they are so vain, and they are already beginning to burn in hell, at the command of Allah.”

Cuthbert did not like to think of them this way. This strain of moralism in Muezza was a challenge. He said, “I find them rather sprucy, myself. But I agree, there is something wrong with flamingos. They've got 'em in Birmingham, too, you know. Genomic clones, of course.”

“But these birds, they are real. Among the last on earth,” said Muezza. “Still, they
are
not a blessed color. As I said. Let's move along now, and you will thank me eternally for taking you to the great angel of all animals. I believe he is going to end all your problems.”

Cuthbert did not like the sound of that.

“I don't know,” he said. “I feel you're not telling me something. And I still need to find the otters, and the Gulls of Imago.”

The cat said, “As for these birds you keep harping on about,
dear
saliq,
you might just ask another bird. Try one of the local herons or mandarin ducks. And be faithful, Kitten-Man.
You
mustn't fear the Shayk. Through the Shayk, and through you, all things are possible now.”

“Kitten what?”

“Oh, never mind,” hissed Muezza, aggravation splintering his voice. “Brother.”

THE TWO OF THEM
walked a bit faster now along the Green Line trail. It curved back from the flamingo pond past a big, open plaza and then toward the other big cats. The plaza, with its potted junipers, precision-cut rows of yellow and pink peonies, and abstract bronze-cast of two baboons (with trapezoids meant to resemble ears) stood in contrast to the steel mesh, dirty cement, and scratchy glass of the big cat enclosures. The paws painted on either side of the Green Line, every few meters and as large as footballs, seemed distinctly feline now to Cuthbert. It was almost as if the London Zoo management's contrivance to help guests “not miss a thing!” was in fact designed to appeal especially to an escaped sand cat with the soul of a ninth-century Islamic warrior. The thought disturbed Cuthbert. At one point, as they walked, Muezza encountered the paws and skipped from one to the other, as though playing hopscotch. The cat seemed not merely happy, but full of a
hajji
's ecstasy.

The Green Line took Cuthbert and the sand cat past the angular enclosures of Joseph the jaguar, who had been born in the zoo, and who, for a time, garnered much publicity, and also the tragic Sumatran tigers.

The tigers were long-waisted, potent creatures who spent much of their time circling back and forth in a corner, over and over, demonstrating the captive animal reflex known as stereotypy.

These big felids lived their lives out in convoluted, shelf-life residences with low ceilings. There were no impressive moats or ha-has, no tiered daises, no lion-head bollards, no geometrical points of interest. Cuthbert tried to get a glimpse of a tiger or Joseph and saw only the empty, concrete-and-dirt slots they inhabited in the day.

“Where are they?” he asked Muezza, tapping his bolt cutters against his open palm.

“We zoo cats all ask that, too. The keepers used to put these wonder-beings away at night, but they stopped that, years ago. Nonetheless, the cats—hunters of the night—now
sleep
at night. It's unholy.”

“Yow'd bloody think they'd get better digs, wouldn't you?”

“Such cruelties remind people of their own power all the better.”

At last they arrived at the exhibit of the black leopard. Like all the big cat areas where the enclosure lay close to the footpath, a steel fence of a meter high stood between the trail and the caging. This existed for no other reason than to keep guests at arm's length from the cages. It would have been too easy, otherwise, for an aristocratic hand to be bitten off. Almost no light shone in this section of the zoo at night, and Cuthbert could not easily read the brief description of the leopard on the sign, though he made out something about genetic mutations and pigmentation.

“We are here!” said Muezza, and immediately rolled onto his back and drew in his paws. “You must crawl!”

“I won't,” said Cuthbert. “I don't do that for anyone.”

The sand cat said, “You really must, brother. The mercy of the Shayk of Night is not boundless. He is not Allah!”

Cuthbert looked into the cage, but it was impossible to see a thing. He did not understand what the “Shayk of Night” meant precisely, but he felt now a need to meet the animal that, if nothing else, held his little friend's spirit in thrall. (In fact, the zookeepers had
made a point recently of allowing their big cats to wander their exhibits at night instead of keeping them in old-fashioned night rooms. Somewhere, an ebony mutation of
Panthera pardus
watched.)

Muezza said: “It's written that the Night,
Al Layl
, holds the glory of Allah in it, somewhere within it, always, like a bright star. If you let the Shayk free, he
will
be the harbinger of the Judgment Day, you
will
see. He is part of the preparation period. As are you.”

Cuthbert felt shaken by the cat's words, and the hairs on his neck stood up. What Muezza said was just the sort of eschatological banter that could pick up Cuthbert like a scrawny lamb on Armageddon's Valley of Jezreel, and lurch him away to utter craziness.

Cuthbert asked, in a wavering whisper, “Can he help me to abstain from the Flōt?”

The cat said: “In his way, yes. There is no question.”

Cuthbert felt encouraged, but the cat's vagueness, again, concerned him.

“But I don't see him, Muezza,” he said, still speaking quietly, his voice going husky. “I don't see any star either, for that matter. Just the comet-craft. I don't like all this Judgment Day talk. Do not forget: y'am a cat.”

“I? Forget
that
?” asked Muezza. “I see him as clearly as I see you. What do you think you are? And the star—it's just a comparison,
saliq
.” That Muezza could suddenly talk as if metaphors could be metaphors and nothing else, as if their long discussion was not a figurative exploration, had the effect of calming Cuthbert. It was as though a creature in a Flōt dream had said to him, “I'm here because you're smashed, bloke, and that's that.”

“A'm sorry,” said Cuthbert. “I'm . . . having mind trouble.”

“That is a most excellent way of saying it, brother. You have nothing to be sorry about, not tonight. You possess the same fatal grace our kind all do. Why wouldn't you?”

With that, he finally realized that Muezza, from the moment
they met, actually considered him feline. He did not see the point of disabusing him of the notion; he wondered whether, perhaps, on some level, he had indeed become cat.

Cuthbert grasped his bolt cutters with both hands and stepped over the steel fence. He cut open the leopard enclosure. As far as he could tell, there was no leopard there anyway.

“You think a'm a cat, don't you?”

“Funny,
saliq
. You are blessed. And whatever else would you be? You are not just any cat. You are the Mahdi. You will soon meet your Shayk.”

“A'm scared, Muezza. I don't believe I'll be hurt. But I don't like this feeling of fear—it tears you apart. Why can't I hear him? Perhaps it is better if you take me to the otters. I know about otterspaeke—
that
I can grasp, at least a bit.
Gagoga maga medu
and all that.”

“The Shayk is silent,” said the sand cat. “Forget about your zoo otters for a while. We are
cats
. The Shayk is more vital, for the moment, to us all. However, he may not need, perhaps, to
speak
with you, not here, not now. He is here to take you, in ways you need not imagine, to Allah. What could there possibly be to say, even with someone as capitally important as you?”

In the deep murk of the enclosure, several shadows seemed to burst to life for a second or two. It was as if little dark doors were swinging open to reveal silhouettes of lost souls.

“Oh, now I see something!” said Cuthbert. There was a kind of sirocco of dark heat that stole past him. “That something? That it? Am I seeing it?”

“I do not know,
saliq
. It's not so simple. But something is wrong, I sense. This is not how I expected this to go. The Shayk, he is disturbed, I fear. We must leave now. You will see him, I promise, before the night ends.”

“The
darkness
—it's fucking roasting, like boiling oil.” Cuth
bert stuck his head into the gap in the enclosure, ignoring Muezza. He slurred, “A'm ready, ready, ready. To stop killing myself. With booze, right? Help me, Shayk.”

Muezza said, in a severe tone, “We really must leave. He can kill you,
saliq
. He is not . . . easy to predict.”

“I don't care,” said Cuthbert. “Not really.”

“Your insect juice speaks now. We do not want to anger him, and you are too important to endanger. You—you caged Kitten-Man—you are more to Allah than even the Shayk. He prepares to stalk upon endless fields of urban darkness, to tear great secrecies, flesh from bone, and we must accept that. It is a powerful thing to be blessed to behold, but we don't want to behold it now.”

“Why is he angry?”

“I don't know,” said Muezza. “Perhaps because of the invasion of the comet cult. Something is wrong. He left before we could talk with him. That is sometimes . . . his way.”

“But I don't ‘behold' anything! I want to stop. To stop the Flōt!” Cuthbert beseeched. “I want my fucking otters. And my brother! For England's sake, they really must be found.”

The cat didn't seem to hear him. “We must go,” said the cat. “This is how Allah's will has worked! If you wish to find Drystan, let's go.”

Muezza began running ahead in the direction he wanted Cuthbert to follow, then trotting back to goad him on when Cuthbert hesitated, craning his head around to look back at the opened cage, several times, like Lot's wife. He felt bitterly disappointed in the failure of the meeting to lead to a sense of imminent hope over his Flōtism, or even to get him closer to finding the Gulls. He stumbled after the cat, not knowing where precisely to put his feet, reeling a bit.

“I don't believe you!” said Cuthbert. “Look at your Shayk. When we came to pay our respects, he offers nothing. No sounds. Noth
ing. I still will drink, won't I? Just glimpses of something dark—and possibly asleep?—moving inside its box? This is the end of your Green Line, your One True Path? D'yow think I'm saft?”

Muezza stopped trotting along in his fussy cat prance, and shook his head. He said, “So narrow, so ephemeral, so small is this way of thinking! Surely you are in pain and suffering, because this could not be our Mahdi talking. This is your Flōtism, poor one. It wants you to want everything now, now, now. I will tell you once more, the Shayk will take you to Allah. He is your ally. He will have a part in grave future events, but you, not he, are the key. And Drystan, too—he
will
appear. Do you not understand what just happened?”

Cuthbert said, “Oh, I understand too well now. You have tricked me into doing something very very stupid. I understand it perfectly.”

“I did not trick you, most assuredly I say to you. But stay on the Green Line. I warn you.”

“Ha! Let's not talk, OK?”

For a while, they did not. Then Muezza said, “Cuthbert, my
saliq,
you have just released the Shayk. He is without question the most important one of our kind on the earth, except for you, of course. The moment we stepped away from his sight, I assure you, he left his prison. A new era has arrived! The Dajjal will perish, in a pool of fire. Don't you comprehend the consequence of this occasion?”

The cat lay on its side for a moment and looked up at Cuthbert, with a sort of smile on its muzzle. “I do not know precisely how he will get you off Satan's milk, but it will come about, just as surely as the day follows the night. He is the Shayk of Night. He controls all things of the dark. He will prise you away from your Flōt orbs, somehow.”