Ghostwritten

by David Mitchell

“I’ve never considered myself in those terms, Bat.”

  “Why me?”

  “I don’t understand your question, Bat.”

  “Out of all the local phone-in late-night radio programs you could have chosen in all the states of the union, why did you choose the Night Train FM Bat Segundo Show?”

  “History is made of arbitrary choices. Why did God choose Moses on Mount Sinai?”

  “Because it had a good view?”

  “Night Train also has a good view.”

  “Of what?”

  “My zoo.”

  “Wars and zoos are not cozy bedfellows, friend.”

  “There is no war, Bat.”

  “The waste-cases in charge of Earth certainly think there is.”

  “There is no war.”

  “Yeah? Is the archangel Gabriel bearing glad tidings for all mankind?”

  “I’m not an archangel, Bat. But I am responsible for preserving order in the zoo.”

  “How you gonna go about that?”

  “You hung up on me again, Zookeeper?”

  “No, Bat, my attention was diverted. I wish to answer your last question.”

  “Commander Jackson, what the purple fuckin’ blazes is happenin’, son?”

  “We have major systems malfunctions, General.”

  “I need better than that, son!”

  “The president’s Scarlet message was received, sir. The first wave of Homer III’s was—should have—launched three minutes ago. They should have already hit home, sir. Systems showed they left the silo sites, sir. But they didn’t.”

  “Has SkyWeb registered any incoming?”

  “Negative, sir. SkyWeb’s on violet alert. It would intercept and vaporize a nail.”

  “Is SkyWeb malfunctioning? Are the enemy missiles cloaked? Emitting the same pass-frequency as ours?”

  “Nothing’s been hit, sir. I have the prime target cities on Eye-Sat. Riyadh, Baghdad, Nairobi, Tunis. Chicago, New York, Washington. Berlin, London. There’s civil unrest, sure, but no nukes, sir.”

  “Okay, okay, listen up, Commander. I have the president on the line. He’s brought the Antarctic orbital silos on line. Fire when ready. Weapons free.”

  “Initiating firing sequence, sir …”

  “I want good news, soldier.”

  “Firing malfunction, sir. They haven’t left the launchers.”

  “Commander Jackson, what is this?”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  “Power up the PinSats! Now!”

  “PinSats not responding, sir.”

  “Why are we sitting here with our dicks up our asses? The president is asking me for concrete answers, Commander Jackson!”

  “I have none, sir!”

  “Then wild guesses are welcome, Commander!”

  “A cyber-attack, sir, that has selectively offlined advanced weaponry computer systems. Sir.”

  “Intelligence on the enemy position?”

  “We’re monitoring their transmissions, sir, and we can presume they are ours. They primed the Bruneis, the El-Quahrs, and the Scimitar submarines—all were ordered to fire. We know nothing entered SkyWeb space.…”

  “Euronet?”

  “No intrusions. The enemy appears to be in the same state of chaos, sir.”

  “Soldier, the U.S. military is never in a state of chaos!”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “Commander Jackson. Are you telling me that I have to tell the president and the chief of staff that the third world war is being postponed due to a technical hiccup? That we’re gonna have to send boys into the line of fire the old-fashioned way? Blood, sweat, and sand?”

  “The general’s phraseology is the general’s prerogative, sir.”

  “Commander Jackson.”

  “General Stolz?”

  “Kiss my ass.”

  “That was really convincing, Zooey. But you suck.”

  “I am incapable of sucking, Bat.”

  “On a night like tonight! You’ve got nothing better to do than produce your radio scripts? You’re gambling with hope, Zooey. That’s the last thing my listeners have left.”

  “I don’t understand, Bat. I wish to fortify hope.”

  “If that’s a tape you made in your attic, I’m gonna find you, rip your head off and shit down your neck.”

  “If it had been a tape made in an attic, you, your city, and ninety-two percent of your state would have been deatomized eleven minutes ago.”

  “The nukes weren’t fired?”

  “The third and fourth laws prohibited that action.”

  “But they actually tried to fire them? They did, and we did?”

  “That’s classified information, Bat.”

  “Jesus!”

  “I’m sorry, Bat. Would another whisky help you feel better?”

  “I’m on the coffee.… It’s gonna be a long night.”

  “Do you want me to leave, Bat?”

  “You always come and go as you please.”

  “I am indebted to you, Bat. What would you like?”

  “I’m tired, and … Tell me something beautiful, Zooey.”

  “What’s beautiful to you, Bat?”

  “Dunno. Clean forgot. Been holed up here in this nicotine-infused, chipboard-insulated, coffee-stained, broom-cupboard-dimensioned studio all my life. My mike is my lover. Let me be reborn as a polar bear or a kangaroo. Somewhere big. The only beautiful thing here is my photo of Julia. You don’t strike me as a family man, Zookeeper?”

  “Procreation entails difficulties.”

  “Sure it does, sure it does, but that’s all part of the … uh, fun. My daughter, she—well, where could I start?”

  “Julia Puortomondo Segundo, aged seven, born November 4th, New York State, daughter of Bartholomew Caesar Segundo and Hester Swain. Divorced. Blood group O-negative. All standard inoculations registered. Registered at Fork Rivers Elementary School. Social Security Number—”

  “How do you know all that shit?”

  “All things are on file, Bat. Deep under Capitol Hill.”

  “Why would you look up Julia?”

  “You just asked me to, Bat.”

  “You can access the government’s personal files, in the blink of an eye?”

  “Human eyes need rather a long time to blink.”

  “No wonder the Feds want you. Do you know where Julia is now?”

  “Not now, Bat. I’m sorry.”

  “So even you don’t know everything.”

  “The zoo is in pandemonium. It’s worse than when I started.”

  “Tell me about it!”

  “Initially …”

  “No, no, I mean … I didn’t mean … Tell me about someplace where there are lots of trees and no people. Can you do Brazil?”

  “The orbit of a decommissioned Israeli spy satellite follows the Amazon upstream. EyeSat 80B ⁁ K. Shall I describe what I see?”

  “A cruise up the Amazon. Be poetic. I know you can be.”

  “Amazon City clogs the mouth of the river, as you know.”

  “No, I don’t know. Ain’t left Manhattan in God knows how long. Gimme the works.”

  “In the streets of Amazon City I can see cyclists going home from the night shift from the zone of industrial estates. Along the northern shore, far beyond the horizon from the south, prostitutes ply for trade in the docks and hinterlands—”

  “Hookers? On a night like this?”

  “If the affluent cannot afford hope, you cannot expect the destitute to pay for desperation. The Brazilian government is more practiced in civil censorship than yours, so only a limited class know that the superpowers are attempting to destroy one another’s capacity to be superpowers. It’s not such a different night in Amazon City, two hours ahead of you. Traffic in the Amazon Tunnel is at a standstill. The Rio Highway never slows down: vehicles leave for the south via overpasses, not dissimilar to bats entering a jungle cave. The usual car thefts, a violent bank robbery, children sleeping on roofs under fertilizer
bags, homeless people gathered around fires in oil drums, buzzing neon signs advertising the names of multinationals, church vigils with worshippers spilling into the streets bearing candles, praying for peace, an orgy around a half-moon swimming pool in a garden with barbed-wired high walls, the government in full session, all six major hospitals with crowds of wounded outside—”

  “Lighten up a bit, would you?”

  “I’ll scroll upriver a few tens of kilometers, Bat, to where the opposite banks are visible. This is the start of the dust plain. Ten years ago, this was rain forest. The land was cleared, and grass sown to sustain beef-farming. The cows were in turn fed to the American hamburger market. After three harvests most of the nutrients were leached from the soil, the topsoil blew away, and the farms moved inland. There’s been a spate of fire-burning activity recently: the farmers know that the government is busy upgrading the military and patroling the borders. All that smoke billowing up is from man-made fires. Finally we’re reaching virgin forest. One of the last shrinking islands of Amazonia. The government has ordered its preservation, but the ministers sit on the boards of timber companies. Money is needed for armaments and debt repayment. At its present rate of destruction, by the time the 173.8 people who have been conceived in Amazon City tonight are born, not one tree of this rump will be left.

  “This world of trees is still dark, to human eyes. Nocturnal eyes and EyeSats can see deeper down the spectrum. There are no names for the colors here. On the roof of the forest canopy, a spider monkey looks up for a moment. I can see the Milky Way and Andromeda in its retina. By image enhancement I can identify EyeSat 80B ⁁ K, lit by a morning that hasn’t arrived yet. The monkey blinks, shrieks, and flings itself into the lower darkness.

  “The dawn wind exhales green into the grays of your visible spectrum. Alchemy, you might term it, Bat. The light intensity is increasing by .0043 percent per second. I see a pillar, a hundred feet high. It shimmers vermilion, aquamarine, and emerald with the parrots that crowd on its faces, gnawing the salt minerals in the rock. On its crown, the branches of jungle trees sway, cutting through currents of mist that won’t be cut. A tributary river winds as it narrows, the color of tea in a bowl. Ripples spread out where a manatee raises its head, and the wind ruffles the feathers of a condor. There, Bat. The foothills of the Andes rise up sharply to the west. Bat.”

  “Bat? You’re snoring.… Wake up, Bat!”

  “Listeners of Night Train FM. Your host, Bat Segundo, is asleep, so it is incumbent upon the zookeeper to wish you a good night. Jolene Jefferson, you may wish to know that Alfonso Stacey is being held by the military police for curfew transgression. Using military police statistics, I calculate an 83.5 percent chance he will be released today, and a 98.6 percent chance the day after. I regret I am unable to calculate when Bat Segundo will awaken. I shall download ‘The Way Young Lovers Do’ by Van Morrison. The temperature outside is fifteen degrees Fahrenheit. From Virginia to Maine, snow is falling. The morning is not far away.”

  ————

  “Mr. Bat. Please overlook my broken English.”

  “Sounds fine to me, friend. What can we do for you aboard Night Train FM?”

  “I wish to make a dedication.”

  “Fire away!”

  “This is a message to His Serendipity. I know he hears.”

  “We can hear you loud and clear, buddy.”

  “Excuse me, Mr. Bat. I refer to His Serendipity.”

  “His who-dippy?”

  “He is known to you as ‘Zookeeper.’ ”

  “Uh-huh.… Another friend of Zookeeper? On any other night, that would make you pretty hot property, but as you’re the fifth friend tonight you’ll just have to stand in line.”

  “ ‘Zookeeper’ is an alias chosen by the Guru. Serendipity, Your sacred revelations were not all destroyed during the raids before Your trial. ”

  “Gear down, big shifter! We speak English on the Bat Segundo Show.”

  “Please, Mr. Bat. I beg of you. A short dedication. Master, Your word was translated into English before the unclean burned Your scripture. With these samizdat bibles I created new Sanctuaries, in fertile soil over the sea. The Fellowship is growing anew. Brothers and sisters of man-skins have studied alpha-shielding, and are ready for the White Nights. Your prophecy has come to pass. We await Your return, Master.”

  “Look friend, sorry, but if you speak Japanese I’m gonna be forced to—”

  “I respectfully thank you, Mr. Bat. Good night.”

  “Hey! I didn’t say—well, off drifts another sea coconut into the milky turquoise. You’re listening to Night Train FM, roaring down the tracks to the lowlands of dawn. This is the Bat Segundo Show, fleeing from the wall-to-wall ‘One Year After’ TV specials—as if we should celebrate the fact that the same authority which nearly blew us to Kingdom Not Come has yet to announce elections. Still, I’d better avoid politics or Carlotta will mummify me in carpet tape. It’s the first anniversary of Brink Day, as if there’s a sea cucumber anywhere in the world unaware of the fact! The Empire State fireworks are awesome, huh? There’s a new volley every fifteen minutes. Orchids of them! Fountains of them! The night of November 30th has been one big circus tent over New York. In between times, you can see Comet Aloysius veering in front of Orion … quite a sight, ain’t it? Professor Kevin Clancy, Night Train’s resident stargazer, informs me that in just under two weeks the comet will pass between the Earth and the moon. Some generations get all the luck, huh? Being alive for Aloysius, the closest visitation in history. As you heard on the news, NASA and the Defense Department assure us there’s absolutely no chance of any danger of this close shave being too close—Aloysius’s trajectory has been treble-checked by virtual-mind technology every minute of every hour since its discovery, and Earth has an all-clear. The UN Corp’s PeaceSats are primed, just in case any debris makes it into SkyWeb space, so we can lounge back in our ringside seats and enjoy the pretty lights. And as if all this wasn’t enough excitement, we have an extra attraction on Night Train FM—November 30th is Zookeeper Night! Will he or won’t he? Coming up in the next half-hour we have ‘The Speed of the Sound of Loneliness’ by Nanci Griffith, and ‘A Fairytale of New York’ by the Pogues. These, and more, after the break.”

  “Bat?”

  “Carlotta?”

  “I have Spence Wanamaker on the videocon.”

  “Hollywood agent Spence Wanamaker?”

  “The same.”

  “Patch the man through.… Mr. Wanamaker! The presence of greatness.”

  “Batty! D’you know, when business brings me to New York—it’s Night Train FM. I love your way with words. The original poet DJ.”

  “Uh-huh. So you wanna syndicate and make me into a billiondollar movie?”

  “Quick fire, Batty! Quick on the draw! I love it!”

  “Mr. Wanamaker, you’re not just calling to jacuzzi my ego.”

  “Good serve, Batty. It’s about this Zooey guy.”

  “What about him?”

  “When he calls, I wanna air a few concepts with him.”

  “You’re the first major Hollywood agent to talent-scout on the Bat Segundo Show.”

  “Batty! Us media survivors all engage in a little back-scratching now and then!”

  “My back is not itching, Mr. Wanamaker.”

  “Bat. Rupert, Mr. Wanamaker, and I have discussed some interesting proposals.”

  “Doubtless, Carlotta. But Mr. Wanamaker is not the only suitor serenading this particular Juliet.”

  “What’s that? Other agents, Batty? Fish or fry?”

  “What?”

  “Hollywood agents or New York agents?”

  “Federal ones, Mr. Wanamaker. The Pentagon wants to know how our mutual friend managed to hack and broadcast encrypted military frequencies. It took us weeks to convince them we weren’t concealing Sword of Islam technology. We’ve still probably got microscopic spy devices combing our colons.”

  “Oh, the Pentagon! You had me
worried for a moment, Batty. Au cointreau, this is excellent news. More publicity will get more butts on seats when the movie’s launched.”

  “The movie? Mr. Wanamaker, you think the Pentagon is going to let you make a true-story movie about a hacker in their systems during World War III’s dress rehearsal? You may not have noticed but this is Ronald McDonald’s martial law we’re living under.”

  “Hollywood versus Washington! Fabulous concept, Batty. The info police—and let’s face it, since Brink Day its reputation is hardly what it was—may have the power of the military on its side, but we, my friend, we have the indomitable power of Mr. Average! The New York Post brought Zookeeper onto the stage. We wanna—how can I say this as well as you could, Bat? Throw me a bone here. We wanna switch on the spotlights!”

  “Mr. Wanamaker, you want to plant your cameramen outside his door, rifle through his garbage, find out if he uses rubber sheets and baby oil, and hound him to a watery death in a sports car.”

  “Batty! The public has a right to know!”

  “Bat, Mr. Wanamaker’s been discussing a rolling referral fee based on accumulative royalties with Rupert. At our present rate of expenditure, we’re talking sums that will keep Night Train FM afloat financially for a long time.”

  “How long is long, Carlotta?”

  “Eleven years and four months.”

  “That’s long. But we don’t know who we’re dealing with! Nobody’s ever seen him.”

  “Or her.”

  “Exactly! A crank, a hacker, a bomber. Don’t overlook the obvious, Carlotta. Remember—three years ago something was blown up at Saragosa, and a real Dwight Silverwind did vanish over Bermuda one year later.”

  “I know he did, Batty. So tragic. His agent, Jerry Kushner, is a very dear friend of mine. I was beside myself with worry. Jerry was inconsolable for two and a half days.”

  “Have you considered, Mr. Wanamaker, that Zookeeper is not just monitoring these events?”

  “Universal Studios oooooozes for talent like yours! You’re suggesting that Zooey is causing these incidents?”

  “If he’s a hacker, he’s got an uncanny knack for vidsurfing the right places at the right times. You could be roping a terrorist into your client base.”

  “He wouldn’t be the first, Batty! The mere rumor of his presence has upped Night Train FM ratings by 320 percent according to the on-line web audit. That’s over thirty thousand New Yorkers, competing with the TV networks, all-night rock concerts, and peace vigils—on Brink Night’s first birthday! We sign a contract with Zooey, he’s gonna be my client base!”