Night of the Animals (36 page)

IN THE DAY THE SIX HECTIC LANES OF MARYLEBONE
Road—part of the central London Ring Road—presented a hazardous, ugly barrier for any rough beast seeking to cross between Regent's Park and the rest of the Borough of Westminster. It was the shell of a dying ovum of humane governance, and within lay Buckingham Palace, the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, etc.—none of which much interested any animal apart from
Homo sapiens
.

Cuthbert himself always made for the zebra crossings, such was the fearful alacrity of the taxigliders, commuters, and coaches on the thoroughfare, many on their way to Euston Station or to trendy Islington. At night, however, the road was sparsely trafficked and superbly desolate. The Green Line within the zoo seemed far, far away. It was just the sort of place a depressed gorilla such as Kibali, the silverback, might take a stand simply to breathe in the air beyond what he regarded as the small “forest” of Regent's Park.

And he had done just that, testing his new state of autonomy, and only a few shocked drivers passed.

Freedom
. He grimaced. He scratched his massive mandible with a long, shiny finger. He felt suspicious of what he saw.

Freedom—and where are the trees?

He was one of thousands of hurting creatures in the metropolis, but no one would ever know his story. He wished he could hide somewhere, under the green trunks of ayous trees. Were the Interahamwe militia nearby? He remembered everything from his last days in the wild. Obscured by foliage, he had seen the fighters cut open brown-eyed little ones, human and gorilla, like they were nothing more than papayas, and toss them aside. He did not expect better treatment here, for even his keepers had not respected him, he felt. They had often spoken to him impatiently. “Get
bloo
dy up and around, Kibali.
Please
, cocker.”

And there was something else—a kind of shadow, an umbrageous sleekness, following him. He turned around, several times, to look—nothing.

He finally crossed Marylebone Road to the west of where the chimps and jackals had. He had indeed been followed, too, and by beings not shadowy at all. Behind him, two of the three elephants released—Layang and Mahmoud—were thundering right along, treating him as a sort of guide.

Now he was knucklewalking down the middle of Baker Street, throwing forward his furry black arms, as big and strong as mastiffs, in perfect alternation with his legs. There were no trees on Baker Street, no green lines. He felt disorientated. He looked behind him—the elephants wagged their heads, angry or excited—he did not know, he did not care. He felt angry and unable to catch his breath. There was something more dangerous than these animals. There was a true hunter near—he could smell its hot, sweet urine. Where were the other apes of the zoo he sometimes called to in the night? Where was his old friend, Thin Lips? Where was his cousin, bred in captivity, Small Girl? Were they all dead?

That the jackals could still be mistaken for dogs was understandable, but the sight of a four-hundred-pound ape trailed by two Asian elephants was fairly distinctive outside the Sherlock Holmes Steak House. The light flow of late-night traffic on Baker Street rushed onto the pavements like waters parting. Doors were hurriedly locked, 999 calls breathlessly made, and escape routes worked out. The one exception, the N74 night bosonicabus operator, who truly had seen it all, after trying to Opticall in (the local networks were jammed), managed to navigate carefully around the animals, then speed on, extraordinarily unfazed—she had a schedule, didn't she, and she 'adn't time for these scofflaw Hollywood film people you get at night, or whoever it was goofing on her route with animals—without a proper permit, obviously. “Flaming Nora,” she hissed. “What's all this, now?”

But not a soul dared approach the beasts, who indeed did find themselves without permits.

At Portman Square, Kibali's pounding heart rose. There were trees, at last. He could hardly catch his breath now, but he wanted to go home, to the northeastern Congo, and at that moment the enormous lime and plane trees seemed the closest thing. Just as he approached, the unpredictable elephant Mahmoud stood back on his haunches and trumpeted the kind of powerscream he had not heard for years.

Kibali whipped around to look, in terror and in glee. Now the fighters would come for him, wherever he went, he thought. Perhaps the shadow-creature he had sensed earlier would make itself known, too—perhaps as an ally, if not a friend. In any case, he felt driven away from Portman Square, and funneled southward, toward the unknown.

As he lurched onward in Baker Street, his chest aching, the confidence of the aristocratic and moneyed world confronted him. There were restaurants called Texture and Blueprint North; a toy
shop known as Petit Chou; a beauty shop named Elemis Spa. It all struck him as refined but oddly lifeless. There were no good urine stenches. There was no hair on the necks of the mannequins he saw. Soon, running as fast as he could, he crossed Oxford Street, which was mostly deserted, over to Orchard Street. He could see, farther ahead, a beautiful green-blackness—no gliders, no machines, no buildings, just dark sanctuary. It was Grosvenor Square, of course, the home of the American Embassy. (A replacement chancery had been built in south London in 2017, but it had been twice flattened by terrorists.) Grosvenor was the only other big patch of forest in the vicinity, and beyond it the treetops of two great royal parks, St. James and Hyde, yoked together into a giant green-brown sky-arcade.
Follow the Green Line
, he found himself thinking, in gorilla, as if the spirer Cuthbert's thinking was now spreading to other creatures. Mahmoud had stayed at Portman Square, to fight perceived aliens and to trample cars and to bellow for justice (until he was shot by snipers), but Layang had followed Kibali, sensing the growing threat behind their little herd.

CHANDANI AND THE THREE OTHER LIONESSES
stalked the central court of their dirty enclosure, cutting back and forth like tongues of blown fire. They looked enlivened by the return of Cuthbert, but angry, too, to be stuck. The haggard male, Arfur, sat in their midst with his paws extended, as smugly inert as they were uneasy. As for St. Cuthbert, he was tired. He felt the stumpy-legged daze of fading Flōt. There was, again, that peculiar, disassociated sense that the entire night was unreal. He leaned up against the main wall of the enclosure.

Behind the enclosure, the gathering lights of dozens of emergency gliders set the lime trees and hazel shrubs and ivy banks aglow like green lamp shades of all sizes and sorts. The entire horizon burned with yellow and blue radiance, and the two colors, striated through the shrubbery, combined into a distinctive emerald green.

Since Cuthbert left them earlier, the lions had also caught glimpses of the Neuters, and instinctively, they recognized them as a somewhat detestable prey for the hunt—but prey indeed.

“I said I would return,” St. Cuthbert was telling the great felines.

“The hour's late,” said Arfur, shaking his great, tawny head. “Let us out, holy man. The Gate—the Heaven's Gate—is soon to open.” Arfur jumped to his feet, and he continued: “One side is here, beside us, somewhere in the zoo, and the other is somewhere south—near Grosvenor Square, we are told. Once the Gate opens, it will destroy us all. We must stop it!”

“Calm down,” Chandani instructed Arfur, approaching the old male with a limber, menacing gait. “It's
almost
late.”

“Late? Or early?” said St. Cuthbert. “It must be three in the morning. And I still . . . I'm not sure. I know what will happen. Or I know what's
supposed
to happen. And if you're free, I will surely be the first to die. I am still waiting for him—for the Christ. Of Otters.”

“Ha!” scoffed Arfur. “I would've thought that a saint cannot perish.”

Chandani snarled at Arfur. “Show respect,” she said. “This blessed man can help us.”

But Arfur held his colossal paws up toward the huntress, baring pinkish-yellow claws. He threw his head back. “While Rome burns, you and this old man are talking about otters?” The other three lionesses sneered at Arfur. St. Cuthbert feared a fight was about to erupt.

“You say,” St. Cuthbert asked Arfur, trying to understand, “that the second part of the Gate, that it will appear . . . at Grosvenor Square? Why? Near the American Embassy? And we're beside the first part—here, in the zoo? That bit makes sense, of course. But ah wouldn't have said Grosvenor—never that. Are you sure?”

“Grosvenor, it is,” Chandani said in her low, sweetleather voice. “Already, we
feel
the invasion under way, holy one. Not American soldiers, of course—but Americans nonetheless. Californian
comet-worshippers. So many have laughed at them, but they will do real harm, and it won't amuse anyone, and it—”

Arfur broke in: “No. No. No. No. No. Not since those dipsomaniacal French felons landed at Fishguard has British soil been under the feet of invaders—but
now
look. We English lions, you surely know—our blood would boil if even an Argentinian center forward stepped into Wembley. So—”

Chandani interjected: “What my husband wants to say is . . . we
are
under . . . quite some duress . . . now.”

Arfur nodded, looking satisfied. He said, “And I ask this: If you are a holy man, why will you not sacrifice something—or someone—for us, to stop the invaders? What are you waiting for? Where is this . . .
Christ
. . . of Otters? Mark my words: any great battle will end here, near us, the absolute omega of all earthly animal strife—where the lions live. Is anyone calling me the ‘Christ of Lions'?”

“Arfur!” Chandani scolded.

“Yes?”

“I must say,” said Chandani, “that the simpleminded Arfur is right about one thing. The equivalent of the Légion Noire
^*
will come to us, and they
will
come here.” She added, with a noble note of recognition for a dreadful enemy, “We must face them, bravely, first with devotion, then with our paws.
Here
. But someone still must go down to Grosvenor Square, I am convinced. Perhaps—that is where your Otter Messiah will be needed most. And His prophet—
you.
”

“I . . . I . . . I don't know,” said St. Cuthbert, filling with a new wave of self-pity. “This is all too much for me.” The lions' paws suddenly looked to him like huge golden pastries. “A'm a Flōt sot,
when it comes right down to it, and I doubt a'm going to be much of anyone's miracle-maker or giant-slayer. Oi can't even get me donnies on a seagull—and we're only an hour from Southend.”

“Let us free,” said Arfur, “and you will have all the winged beings you will ever need. Indeed, a great eagle will carry your savior to you.”

Chandani rolled her eyes.

“I don't want to see
them,
” said St. Cuthbert. “But I did hope to see my brother before I ‘shuffled off this mortal coil.' And I can't find Drystan anywhere. That's all I really cares about. More than the animals—no disrespect meant. More than England. I need to see him, see? There's summat I've got to tell him, right? My brain's deceived me. Or the Flōt.”

And then, as if on cue, something astounding occurred, at least from the perspective of one grubby saint, and the lions, too. Out of the narrow forest at the zoo's fence, out of the twinkling green lights and sparrow nests and bowls of darkness, out of his gran's porcelain thimble and deadly Dowles Brook, out of his drunkenness and sorrow and shame and a loneliness no one but a Flōt sot could know, out of an endless night of kitten games and enclosures drained—there came a being from St. Cuthbert the Wonderworker's deepest anguish—the Christ of Otters. The Lord of Animals came because, in the end, St. Cuthbert needed a Lord.

St. Cuthbert stared in wonder. His long lost brother's hair was longer, and his eyes more fearful and feminine, but here he was, risen from the dead, walking purposefully, and looking every bit like Drystan . . . if . . .

If
.

If, thought St. Cuthbert. If, if, if, if, if.

If he were a
woman,
in her late twenties or early thirties.

“Drystan?” asked St. Cuthbert. “I knew it. I knew it. I knew it. I knew it.”

Arfur roared with a bellicose grandeur that could have been added to the
Oxford English Dictionary
as the very definition of
leonine
.

It was, of course, a Royal Parks Constabulary inspector, a woman, and her physical resemblance to the Handley brothers was indeed, as Dawkins had put it, “the spit.” The black-brown eyes, the high cheeks, even the freckles taken from the dappled downs of Clee—she was as close to a doppelgänger as one got. It was the face that had that night launched a thousand scripts in St. Cuthbert's head.

But she was different, too, from the Drystan whom St. Cuthbert had been imagining all night. She was calmer, and more professional, and less delicate. And she had very long, wispy, obsidian hair.

“Drystan? Are yow the Christ of Otters?”

“I'm Inspector Sullivan,” the woman said. “And you're Mr. Handley, aren't you? Cuthbert?”

“Yow'm my brother,” he declared flatly to the woman, shaking his head, gasping to catch his breath. “
Gagoga maga medu,
” he said. His eyes were wet with tears. He nearly comprehended, in his rough way, that this constable, the utter stranger, wasn't the
boy
who had died so many, many years ago, but it was hard for him to accept that it wasn't somehow a kind of Drystan—changed, yes, hidden in the shape of a beautiful woman—but Drystan.

“Are yow 'im? Dryst?”

“No, I'm afraid I'm not,” she said. She felt tears slipping down her face. “But if you want to call me that, you should. I work for the Royal Parks. The constabulary. I'm a special sort of officer.”

“If I say something to yow,” he asked her, “does he hear me?
Does the Christ of Otters? Are yow ‘possessed' by 'im, loik, as it were?”

“I don't know—Cuthbert. I don't know if it works like that,” said the woman. “But I'm very interested to hear about all this. Are you hurt?”

“T'snothing,” he said. “But you must leave me now and get down to Grosvenor Square, if you're the Christ of Otters.”

With that, St. Cuthbert pulled the remake Undley Bracteate from his pocket, the talisman he had tried years ago to give to his cousin Rebekka. He placed it into Astrid's hand and closed her fingers on it.

“Treasure it,” he said to her. “The animals tell me I've become a kind of saint. St. Cuthbert. I don't know 'bout that. But this talisman, it
will
keep you safe, Drystan—or whoever you are.”

She looked at the medallion, long broken from its key chain. It showed the two brothers, Romulus and Remus, drinking from the teats of a wolflike creature. There was the inscription, in ancient Frisian runes,
gægogæ mægæ medu
, and Astrid rubbed her thumb over the ancient incantation, and smiled gently at the man.

She reached then into her own pocket, and pulled out her old pearl rosary. It was her own most precious possession, and she hung it around St. Cuthbert's neck.

“There,” she said. “Now you're a proper apostle, aren't you?”

She wanted now, dreadfully, to believe this homeless man might somehow be connected to her in a more direct way. And if she couldn't be “Drystan” or an Otter Messiah, couldn't she, perhaps, be the lonely granddaughter of the poetical drunkard who had spent a night with her grandmother, and vanished from her and her mother's lives, so long ago? Could that not be what drew her toward him tonight? Might this peculiar ancient sot not be her grandfather? Was it so impossible? In his state of inebriation and need, she observed,
he
seemed content to let such questions live
in golden unanswerability. But she reckoned she would need more of an answer.

“Why did yow come here?” he asked her.

“To help you, I suppose,” said Astrid. “And maybe for another reason. I don't know. You have caused an awful load of worry for many people, you know, Mr. Handley.” She put her arm over his shoulder to steady him, and unusually for him, he didn't fight it. “Do you understand that . . . Cuthbert?”

Just as the old man seemed poised to answer, an orange-freq unexpectedly flashed across Astrid's corneas, its flames whipping up in the purple-yellows of a gas fire.

Eep, eep, eep, eep! Zunga-gunga-gunga!

“Fuck!” she said, squeezing her eyes shut.

Astrid read the text.
Special notice: Detention and suspension order. RPC Inspector Astrid Sullivan, white female, aged 32, 5'10". Please detain. Considered armed and possibly dangerous. Caution. Possible tie to terrorists.

It felt like a punch in the stomach. Her career, now, was ruined. The orange-freq would have been seen by every law enforcement officer in Greater London.

“Am I . . . in trouble?” asked Cuthbert. “For trespass? And . . . quite a few other . . . things?”

Astrid touched her eyebrows and switched off all freqs.

“Let's not worry about any of that for now, Cuthbert.”

“But I'm not finished here. Nor are you. Really,
you
must get down to Grosvenor. Are you nicking me then?”

“Well, no,” she said. “I don't think that's quite appropriate.”

At that, the lion Arfur growled with approval.

“We need to get you to a safe place,” she said.

“A'am safe,” said St. Cuthbert. “
Yow've
come. But the animals of the world are not. Please—go to Grosvenor Square. I don't need yow—
thay
do.”

There was some movement in the same spot in the hedges where Astrid had come through, and a new figure came strolling from the shrubbery. He wore a dark orange
dashar
^*
on his head. He ducked through the branches, lifting them very high, and looking back a few times as he walked toward them, as if trying to verify that he had indeed just crossed the zoo's fence. He grimaced at St. Cuthbert and Astrid. It was none other than Dr. Sarbjinder Bajwa.

“Cuthbert!” he called. “You . . . it's you!”

It had been only a few weeks since St. Cuthbert had seen Dr. Bajwa, but the doctor looked noticeably thinner and less muscular. It was obvious that his cancer had worsened. There were no magic cures. His eyes were sunken, and there was a pastiness about his clove-colored skin. He wore a curved little
kirpan,
or ceremonial dagger, on his belt in a scabbard gleaming with purple and green garnets. In fact, he'd just come from his brother's wedding celebration, where the guests had reveled late into the night.

At least a dozen more constables and Met firearms specialists, tigered in green and black TotalCamou
™
suits, filtered out from the shrubs near the fence. They were hard to make out, presenting a visual facsimile of everything directly behind them (in this case, murky foliage). They carried glossy-white tactical autozingers as well as scoped neuralzinger rifles, both of which obviated TotalCamou's effects. (Indeed, the strange sight of guns apparently floating through the air by invisible beings tended to draw attention.)

“Let's stop this, Cuddy,” Dr. Bajwa said to his old patient. “Please. I have some—some rather extraordinary news, but it . . . it will take your cooperation, Cuddy.” He bowed very subtly toward Astrid. It was clear they didn't know one another, but the doctor must have heard about Astrid's gambit.

“Officer,” he said.

“Doctor . . . Bajwa, I presume? You're the flying GP?”

“Right. I suppose I am. It's just a hobby. I'm . . . I'm here . . . to help? If I can?”