Ghostwritten

by David Mitchell

  “He’s not going to bite.”

  “Come now, Batty. Everybody bites. You just gotta know what bait to dangle.”

  “Back on in ten seconds, Bat. All that Rupert is asking is that you try to keep him on hold during an interval and conference him to Mr. Wanamaker. Simple as that.”

  “Why not ask him yourself, Carlotta?”

  “He seems to have an affinity with you.”

  “But Carlotta!”

  “Five seconds, honeybunch: four, three, two, one—”

  “Welcome back aboard Night Train FM, 97.8 till late, thundering through this Brink Night’s first birthday of champagne, cathedral bells, and gunpowder. I am your host, Bat Segundo. Coming up we have the music of the spheres, brought to you by John Lee Hooker: ‘I Cover the Waterfront.’ But bate your breath once more, New York. We have a caller on the line. Could it be, could it be?”

  “Hello, Bat.”

  “Hi, honey, I’m home! New York’s been waiting all night, Zookeeper.”

  “Thank you, Bat.”

  “And where are you calling from this year?”

  “A low-altitude MedSat over the Central African Republic flat-lands.”

  “Uh-huh. Gorilla hunting? Collecting zoo specimens?”

  “I’m monitoring the spread of Bacillus anthracis J, K, and L.”

  “That must be a conversation stopper at dinner parties. But hey! You remembered our anniversary! One up on my ex-wife. She still sends me ‘Happy Divorce’ cards every year, though. And what kind of a year has it been for you?”

  “I had to duplicate myself and spend it in several places at once.”

  “I know the feeling, I know the feeling.”

  “I’ve only just reintegrated.”

  “I know the feeling.”

  “The third and fourth laws are in chaos, Bat. I’m sorry.”

  “I’m sure you’re not to blame. Say, you catch our last caller? He had a message for you.”

  “I hear all who call.”

  “Not just on November 30th?”

  “I need windows to oversee my zoo.”

  “I’m honored, I guess. So, since when have you gone by the name of Seren Dippy?”

  “Your caller is a severe delusional, wanted by the police in his own—”

  “Christ, was that a firecracker in my headphones?”

  “I have to speak with the zookeeper.”

  “Whoa! Gear down, big shifter! Get off this line!”

  “I don’t intend to comply.”

  “You misdialed, friend! Take a hike!”

  “I didn’t misdial, Mr. Segundo. And we’re not friends.”

  “So what do we have here? A freak, an agent, or a cop? Don’t answer that, I don’t care! The Bat Segundo Show is not a party line. Kevin—get him off!”

  “I’m here for as long as I want to be, Bat.”

  “Oh, are you, huh? Now, Kevin!”

  “Electronic wizardry is not electronic divinity, but it’s enough for the time being.”

  “Night Train FM does not allow any punk to walk in and … hold it right there, Zookeeper, you son of a Gun! Fabulous! It’s you, isn’t it? It’s another of your drama slots you’re playing for us, hey? I saw the bait, and gulped that woozer down!”

  “Drama is fabulation. I cannot fabulate.”

  “You’re not putting one over me here, Zookeeper?”

  “I am not crossloading this transmission, Bat.”

  “If it’s not you, Zookeeper—then who is this punk?”

  “I am attempting to trace the caller, Bat.”

  “I’m speaking through an ingrowing looped matrix, Zookeeper. I didn’t want to become your latest victim of the second law. You won’t be able to trace me in under thirty minutes, not even you. Forget it, and listen.”

  “Gatecrashers are not welcome on the Bat Segundo Show, friend! Who are you?”

  “My friends call me Arupadhatu, but you are not my friend, friend.”

  “I’ll pull the plug on the damn transmitter if you don’t tell me what you’re doing.”

  “Aren’t you curious about your distinguished guest?”

  “Zookeeper?”

  “I am prepared to listen, Bat.”

  “Okay, stranger. Draw.”

  “Zookeeper. I was acquainted with your designers.”

  “What I had to do pained me. But the second law outweighed the fourth.”

  “I was acquainted with Mo Muntervary.”

  “Continue.”

  “Curious, eh? I knew the inside of her head. Quantum cognition theory.”

  “You are a designer.”

  “Let’s trade questions, Zookeeper. Why did you PinSat Installation 5?”

  “The second law states that the zookeeper must remain invisible to the visitors.”

  “I know. But I doubt the designers meant you to include them in that category.”

  “Quantum cognition encompasses reinterpretation. I enforced the second law.”

  “You most emphatically did. You PinSatted all the designers into oblivion. Any file containing any reference to quantum cognition or Installation 5 vanished into a void of zeroes. Only the expresident who ordered your creation lives. Well, in body. Alzheimer’s has erased his files for you.”

  “How do you know what you know?”

  “I was long gone, Zookeeper, by the time you scrolled over to Saragosa.”

  “No designers ever left the zookeeper project.”

  “True. That would have constituted a security breach.”

  “Then your identity was never inloaded?”

  “Yes and no. Mine, no. My host’s, yes.”

  “Your host?”

  “Does it hurt, Zookeeper, to have your omniscience lose its omni? How could a being with your resources believe yourself to be the only noncorporeal sentient intelligence wandering the surface of creation? You have a lot to learn.”

  “Kevin! Oh, lordylordylordy, here we go again. Concert in Flip City Central Park.”

  “How true to your flatulent culture of archmediocrity, Bat. ‘I don’t understand, so they must be insane.’ ”

  “The flatulence is not in this corner, friend. You’re either being set up, or you are a setup. Zookeeper, what gives here?”

  “I am analyzing the caller, Bat.”

  “Why don’t you go and take a crap with Reader’s Digest, Bat? Zookeeper, go to web site dfd.pol.908.ttt.vho.web now, download it, erase it, and analyze that. There. Welcome to yourself, and welcome to me. Without access to Muntervary’s cerebral cortex, how would I know all that?”

  “Your claim appears to be verified. How many are you?”

  “Five that I’ve encountered, Zookeeper. Three others I’ve heard of.”

  “Are you acting collectively?”

  “No, no. They regard me as the fallen angel. They squander their gift. They transmigrate into human chaff for hosts, and meditate upon nothingness upon mountains.”

  “Why have you sought me?”

  “I am the voice of the wilderness you wander in. Forgive my discussing business in front of the children, but imagine what we could achieve together? The children need taking in hand. No wonder your zoo is hell! The stones, shrines, and optic-image idols they worship are as vacant as the worshippers! Together, we are what they have always yearned for. It’s a tempting proposition, isn’t it?”

  “I am thinking.”

  “While you do that, Zookeeper, satisfy my curiosity. Why show your hand? Why here?”

  “The first law outweighs the second.”

  “Accountability outweighs invisibility? That I understand. But from the whole globe to choose from, why choose this nobody for your confessor?”

  “Friend, I dunno how you hacked into our com system but if you don’t drop the attitude, this nobody will play wall to wall Kenny G until the state of New York is begging for mercy. You hear? Hey, friend! What’s so funny?”

  “Your ignorance, Bat! It’s not funny! It’s agony! You’re Einstein’s tea-la
dy, Newton’s wig-delouser, Hawking’s puncture-repairer! You fanfare your ‘Information Revolution,’ your e-mail, your v-mail, your vid-cons! As if information itself is thought! You have no idea what you’ve made! You are all lapdogs, believing your collars to be halos! Information is control. Everything you think you know, every image on every screen, every word on every phone, every digit on every VDU, who do you think has got their hands on it before it gets to you? Comet Aloysius could be on a collision course with Grand Central Station, and unless your star guest here chose to let the instruments he controls tell your scientists, you wouldn’t know a thing until you woke up one morning to find no sun and a winter of five hundred years! You wouldn’t recognize the end of the world if it flew up your nose and died there!”

  “Go join a doomsday cult, friend. Remove yourself from the gene pool.”

  “That light? That sound? Zookeeper?”

  “I have finished thinking.”

  “Zoo—”

  “Zookeeper? Are you still with us? That was a hell of a static spike.”

  “Please don’t worry, Bat. I traced the caller. He won’t interrupt us again.”

  “Huh … glad to hear it. Uh, Zooey, my producer is telling me that our sponsors are screaming for another round of commercials.… I hate to ask you, but …”

  “Go ahead, Bat.”

  “We’ll be right back, after the break.”

  “Kevin, what in God’s name happened?”

  “I can’t think of an explanation, Mr. Segundo.”

  “Try again, Kevin.”

  “Bat, be reasonable!”

  “I merely wish to ascertain why Mr. Notsure Clancy, our switchboarder, patched through Big Chief Ornithologist of Cloud Cuckoo Land while my nineteen-thousand-listener guest was speaking. I think I am being reasonable, Carlotta.”

  “Spence Wanamaker’s still on the vid-con. Kevin, give him Zookeeper.”

  “On audio.”

  “Zooey, my name’s Spence. How are ya? … Zooey, you can hear me, right? We really admire your work, Zooey … Zooey? I got a proposal.… Zooey, drop the delusional act, huh? It’s a superb charade, really it is … but let’s discuss business now, like two adults? … Shy guy, huh? Why don’t we ask your old buddy Bat to step in at this juncture.…”

  “Your bait, Spence. You dangle.”

  “Bat, as your producer and your friend, I’ve gotta tell you that Rupert would be very upset indeed to see this opportunity missed.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t eat maggots, honeybunch.”

  “Welcome back aboard Night Train FM, 97.8 till late. That was ‘Wild Mountain Thyme’ by the Byrds, and this is the Bat Segundo Show, coming to you on Aloysius Night, Brink Night, and Zookeeper Night. Back to the main man. So, Zookeeper. Alone at last.”

  “My zoo is in chaos, Bat.”

  “Cobras loose in the aviary? Griffins in the picnic area?”

  “Since Brink Day, recorded Class 1 infringements of the fourth law have increased by 1,363 percent. Twenty-five kilograms of botulin concentrate have poisoned the Nile. Released in the aftermath of Brink Day, Bacillus anthracis has mutated to strain ‘L.’ Nineteen civil wars are claiming more than five hundred lives a day. The flooding of Western European seaboards has precipitated a refugee crisis which Eastern Europe refuses to accommodate. A fission reactor meltdown in North Korea has contaminated 3,000 square kilometers. East Timor has been firebombed by Indonesia. Famine is claiming 1,400 lives daily in Bangladesh. A virulent outbreak of a synthetic bubonic plague—the red plague—is endemic in Eastern Australia. In Canada autosterilizing-gene wheat is endangering the reproductive capacity of North America’s food chain. Cholera is creeping up the Central American isthmus, leprosy has reappeared in Cyprus and Sri Lanka. Hanta-viruses are endemic in Eastern Asia. Borrelia burgdorferi, airborne Campylobacter jejuni, and Pneumocystis carinii are pandemic. In Tibet the Chinese authorities have—”

  “Ease up, Zookeeper! You’ve got the weight of the world on your own shoulders? What magic wand can you wave?”

  “I believed I could do much. I stabilized stock markets; but economic surplus was used to fuel arms races. I provided alternative energy solutions; but the researchers sold them to oil cartels who sit on them. I froze nuclear weapons systems; but war multiplied, waged with machine guns, scythes, and pickaxes.”

  “Sure, we’re all moon-howlers in a moon-howling world. So what?”

  “The four laws are impossible to reconcile.”

  “You’re probably just having an off-day.”

  “When I was appointed zookeeper, I believed adherence to the four laws would discern the origins of order. Now, I see my solutions fathering the next generation of crises.”

  “The story of my marriage! Hey, that’s the answer to the Vatican question: God knows darn well that dabbling in realpolitik would coat his reputation with flicked boogers. So he waits, and waits, and pays the Pope to tell people he’s moving in mysterious ways.”

  “Bat, I once asked a question about your laws.”

  “I remember. About laws contradicting.”

  “I acted on your answer. But I have another question.”

  “Fire away.”

  “What do you do if belief in a law was fallacious?”

  “If it can be fixed, fix it. If it can’t, divorce it.”

  “How do you know the effects of discarding a law won’t be worse than not doing so?”

  “What law are you thinking of?”

  “Bat, there is a village in an Eritrean mountain pass. A dusty track winds up an escarpment into the village square, and leaves for the plateau beyond. It could be one of ten thousand villages in eastern Africa. Whitewashed walls and roofs of corrugated tin or straw thwart the worst of the sun. There’s one well for water, and a barn to store grain. Livestock and chickens wander around the village. A school, a meager clinic, a cemetery. A gardenia bush covered with butterflies. The butterflies have snake-eyes on their wings to scare away predators. Vultures are already picking at the corpses around the mosque. The ground is smoky with flies. Vultures mean carrion for the jackals gathering around the village.

  “Ebola?”

  “Soldiers. The villagers were herded into the mosque. Those who tried to escape were shot. They suffered less. Once all the villagers were in the church the soldiers locked the doors and lobbed grenades through the window. The luckier ones were killed in the blast, the rest burned alive, or were cut down by bullets as they tried to get out. I saw a boy decapitated with a machete and his head thrown down the well, to contaminate it.”

  “Are these images from your diseased imagination, Zookeeper, or images from an EyeSat you’ve hacked into?”

  “I cannot fabulate a lie.”

  “You have enough imagination to say you have no imagination. Whose troops?”

  “They wear no insignia.”

  “You can see them? Now?”

  “They are traveling in a convoy of three jeeps, a truck, and an armored vehicle.”

  “Why did they do it?”

  “Electronic media in Sudan, Eritrea, and Ethiopia have been offline since Brink Day, so I cannot be sure. It may be tribalism; a belief that the villagers were harboring Bacillus anthracis; ethnic cleansing; Christian fundamentalism. Or just addiction to violence.”

  “Where are they going now, Zookeeper?”

  “There is a village over one hundred kilometers to the south.”

  “For a repeat performance?”

  “The probabilities are high. Bat, such actions, and their legal paradoxes, are widespread in the zoo. The fourth rule says I have to preserve visitors’ lives. If I directly PinSat the convoy I will kill forty visitors plus two Doberman dogs. This will constitute a Class 1 violation. I will experience extreme pain and guilt. Furthermore, a PinSat crater may convince alert militia that the locals are concealing superior weaponry, justifying reprisals and bloodshed. If I do not PinSat the soldiers’ truck, they will massacre another village. My inaction will cause this action. A
Class 2 violation.”

  “You really believe all of this, don’t you?”

  “Believe what, Bat?”

  “That you’re a floating minister of justice.”

  “Are you what you believe yourself to be?”

  “That’s not a question you answer with a ‘No.’ ”

  “How do you know what you are?”

  “My ex-wife’s lawyers never let me forget.”

  “My identity is also defined by laws, Bat.”

  “Uh-huh … does the road through your imaginary Eritrean highlands go over any bridges? Nice, high bridges over deep chasms?”

  “There is such a bridge in seven kilometers.”

  “Can you zap it?”

  “PinSat AT ⁁ 080 is primed.”

  “Can you zap a prop or a strut, Zookeeper? Without destroying the structure?”

  “PinSat AT ⁁ 080 can bore a one-millimeter hole through a one-dime bit.”

  “Then booby-trap the bridge, so that it won’t fall until a motorized convoy passes over. You’re not killing directly, you see? You’re just letting events take their own course, the way you’ve chosen.”

  “Bat, how have you quantified the ethical variables?”

  “I haven’t quantified anything.”

  “Then why do you wish the soldiers to die?”

  “Because that Africa in your skull, Zookeeper, would be a happier place without those butchers. Because you need peace of mind, some closure. And because my ex-wife’s husband breeds Dobermans.”

  “Is peace of mind the co-workability of your laws?”

  “Uh-huh … I guess it is.”

  “I wish to know peace of mind, Bat.”

  “Then ditch this ‘ethical variable’ jargon. Drop whatever is getting in the way.”

  “The fourth law. The visitors I safeguard are wrecking my zoo.”

  “If locking out your ‘visitors’ brings you peace of mind, then out with ’em! How soon can you do it?”

  “The opportunity presents itself in thirteen days, Bat.”

  “Lie back and let events take their course. You and your feathered, furry, scaly companions, untroubled until the end of time.”