“So, you’ve caught us,” said the cat, “but before you tell the other baboons—”
“Caught you?” said the baboon. “Cat, you’ve got it wrong. I haven’t caught you. I want to join you. To help you.”
“I smell a double agent,” growled the dog. “Cover his flanks, bear.”
“When they heard from the crows that you were with a human, many of the baboons went in search of you. They wanted to tear your arms off. It is wise you took an underground route back. But many baboons are not all the baboons. Baboons are not a monolith. Species does not determine what an animal thinks. You see, I am with … the baboon opposition.”
“What’s the baboon opposition?” asked Edgar, thoroughly confused.
“There is always an opposition. Even within oppositions. Even within a single baboon. Some of us did not want to send anyone to the animal council at all! We saw no need. The whole idea—kill all humans—was ridiculous. Why would we participate? Especially without the participation of our insect and arachnid brothers?”
The scorpion dipped its tail in acknowledgment.
“Now,” said the baboon, “the baboon opposition has made inroads with the majority, and they are willing to reconsider the vote. And since it’s true you have a human who speaks grak, I think they’ll reconsider! I think we can win.”
“How can we trust this baboon?” growled the dog.
“Dog, you do me wrong,” said the baboon.
“We have no choice,” said the cat.
“We do!” growled the dog. “The bear and I can make a chew toy out of this lying ape.”
The cat held up a paw. “We came to change minds. This baboon offers his support. We can’t turn away from new friends because of old grievances.”
“But—”
“Dog, listen. It is as he says. Not all baboons are of a single mind, any more than all dogs are.”
The dog reluctantly quieted his growl.
“Thank you, cat,” said the baboon, smiling, “for your trust. Shall we go? We must speak with the rest of the animals as soon as we can, before they set off for the human camp.”
The cat looked from the bear to the moles to the scorpion to Edgar to the dog, who reluctantly saluted.
“Let’s go.”
Outside the cave, the dusk.
The animals wound up the cliff side in single file.
Reaching the top, some ways from the end of the promontory, they beheld an incredible sight.
Chapter 31
The cliff where the animals had voted was packed with baboons.
The smell was phenomenal.
A thousand baboons, perhaps more. Ten thousand!
Learned readers may say, “Impossible!”
But, I assure you, at least a thousand baboons. This stretch of seaside woodland was thick with them, a great whooping, hacking, arguing, feces-throwing, fur-rending maelstrom, much engaged in lovemaking and arguing and pounding of the earth as they waited for … the signal.
And in the trees above them, crows. These outnumbered the baboons three to one, perhaps more. It was an unholy racket they were making. Caw caw caw! A whole battalion singing their tremendous hymns, which had driven off the other birds for miles. And not just the other birds. Though the crows and the baboons had, per the agreement at the council, spread the word about the decision to eat all the humans, no other species had massed with them. The original baboon emissary, whom we came to know earlier, was frustrated by this, but finally he decided it did not matter. He was certain the baboons would finish off the remaining humans. They didn’t need any other species’ help! And he, personally, would be certain to approach the battle from the rear. Plenty of idiot baboons to go ahead of him. He started a chant, to rile them up:
“Eat the children! Eat the children!”
Other baboons joined in.
“Eat the children! Eat the children!”
Shocking?
But why should it be?
Why, indeed, this historian would ask, are we continually surprised by the rapacity, violence, and arrogance of those creatures who ascend to leadership? Do we not recall, throughout animal history, the despots and fools who have so handily outnumbered the saints? History is a dark tale that doesn’t wag. Which is not to endorse that sad bear. Oh no! Only to remind you, reader: look to history before you cast your vote. And to you readers who are unsurprised, who have looked to the history, I say: Bravo! Do not falter in your work. The barbarians may tell you writing is a waste in these post-Calamity times, mere entertainment, the frivolous misdirection of resources, a lost cause. Ignore such animals. History is as vital as water.
But I digress.
“Eat the children!”
Now the horses arrived. Not so many as the baboons, but several hundred at least, a great herd, trotting and then slowing in the simian crowd. The grass on the promontory was thinning rapidly. Hundreds of tails whisked away clouds of flies. The flies were uninterested in joining the attack on the humans, they informed the horses, but would come along when it was finished and lay eggs in the bodies.
“Eat the children!”
* * *
Edgar and our band of creatures watched the crazed baboons chanting from a ways off. The dog remembered well the mood of incipient mayhem from his days at war.
“Maybe,” said the cat, “we should revise the plan.”
“Many of them are baboon opposition,” said the curly eyebrowed baboon. “You will be safe among them. Keep a circle around the boy until he is at the council safe zone, and all will be well.”
“The baboons tried to rip you apart, cat, don’t you remember?” interjected the dog. “What’s to stop them from ripping us all apart if we walk up there? This is a bad plan!”
The cat looked at the curly eyebrowed baboon, taking his measure again.
They’d come this far.
“Keep your nerve, dog,” said the cat. “It’s not us they’re after. It’s humanity.”
“Edgar is human!” cried the dog.
“And when they hear him speak their language,” said the cat, “they’ll listen. You said so yourself. If we can only get him to the council safe zone, by that yacht.”
“I’m not afraid,” said Edgar.
“Then neither are we,” said the cat.
The bear put a heavy paw on Edgar’s shoulder.
“I’ll go first,” she said.
The animals formed a circle around the boy and walked into the sea of baboons.
* * *
At first, the baboons didn’t notice. They were expecting, per the agreement at the council, contingents of bears and cats and dogs to join them in the attack on the camp, and the moles exploded smoke bombs to further confuse them.
Edgar stayed very close to the bear as baboons gnashed and growled all around him. The bear swatted the baboons away, clearing a path to the smashed helicopter where the council rules held.
Finally, they arrived and broke the circle. As the moles’ smoke cleared, the first baboons caught sight of Edgar and howled.
News rippled across the cliff side, and the noise redoubled.
“Baboons!” cried the cat, leaping up to her old seat in the cockpit of the smashed helicopter. “Listen! This boy can speak grak! He’s come to speak for the humans!”
But the cat could not be heard over the din of furious primates. They were hooting, leering, teeming across the cliff.
One jumped at Edgar, but the bear smacked him down.
The crowd shrank back, then surged.
The horses had seen the commotion and were trotting over. Crows were flying in as well. They had left the trees and were settling thick upon the yacht overhead, cawing and screeching.
“Listen,” shouted the cat again, to no avail. “Bear, dog, help me!”
The dog barked, loud as he could, that the boy could speak grak.
“Listen to him,” barked the dog.
“Listen!” roared the bear.
“No, YOU listen,” screamed a
baboon back at them. “Eat the children!”
“Kill the human lovers!” shouted another baboon.
“Eat the children!”
“Praise to The Egg!” shrieked a vast murder of crows.
“Wait!” cried the cat. “Council zone rules! We voted, we were civil with one another, we can be again! Where is the baboon opposition?!”
The cat searched desperately for the curly eyebrowed baboon.
For a moment, she couldn’t find him—then she spotted him in the crowd.
He was standing among a contingent of mice.
Mice who, at that very moment, were passing him … a shining bell.
The curly eyebrowed baboon took it and regarded his reflection happily. He rang the bell and hooted, arms in the air.
“Down with cats!” he shouted.
The mice raised their tails and locked eyes with the cat.
“Eat the children!” chanted the baboons.
And Edgar was frozen with fear.
As the baboons closed in around Edgar and his friends, the dog howled. Several of the baboons had him by the tail.
“Wait!” cried the cat, as baboons rocked the smashed helicopter. “Wait, just talk…”
The moles were now engaged in fierce paw-to-paw combat. A pile of baboons grew around them. But the moles knew they were outnumbered. They prepared themselves for death.
The bear kept batting away baboons as they lunged at Edgar, but she was tiring. Soon she would fall.
The sky was darkening with crows.
But then: a roar.
At the base of the promontory, the giant cave lizard.
“SQUEAK ON!” roared the lizard.
He was charging toward them, flapping his arms like they were bat wings. And riding on his scaly back, a creature Edgar had never seen before: the goda.
The dog caught sight of the goda too, between the mass of baboons, and his heart leapt.
“Goda!” he barked, tail wagging madly. “Watch out, my darling!”
But before the giant lizard and goda could reach him, the horses stampeded. The baboons had driven them into a frenzy. The herd charged the lizard. It went down in a crush of hoofs, and the baboons were upon him next. The goda fell, and the dog lost sight of her.
“Aaaaoooooo!” howled the dog, as a baboon bit him to the bone.
He felt the blood begin to seep away.…
With the last of her strength, the bear lifted Edgar upon her shoulders.
“Speak, boy!” pleaded the bear, “if only to these nearest creatures.”
But Edgar was too frightened. He couldn’t make his mouth work. Everything inside was shaking and cold. The cat leapt upon the bear beside him.
“What do I say?” said Edgar, in a voice so small no one could hear him except the cat and the scorpion on his shoulder.
“The truth!” said the scorpion.
“Fine, truth,” said the cat, “but also you must give them something! Make them a promise!”
“But what?”
As the baboons closed in, the cat remembered life before The Calamity.
She remembered what humans were really like.
And she gave Edgar an idea. She knew what to promise.
She wasn’t a kitten anymore.
* * *
At first, it was only the baboons closest to Edgar who stopped howling. Once they stopped, more could hear him shouting from his perch on the bear. Some were so surprised to hear a human declaiming in grak that they instantly froze. Others took longer, but then they crowded in, shushing each other. Those closest sat down around the bear’s paws, looking up at the boy, and others sat behind, until soon many dozens were sitting in silence. Edgar yelled to reach those at the edge of the seated circle. The horses quieted too, leaving the giant cave lizard and goda bloodied but alive.
All around, baboons and crows on the backs of the horses strained to hear the little boy.
And Edgar shouted, as the cat had advised:
“I speak your language!” he cried. “And I promise, I promise…”
Postscript
Just after sunset on March 19, in this Post-Calamity Year 81, I climbed into the Professor’s treehouse. Professor Edgar was seated at his desk. It was, as usual, strewn with bark paper and books, quills and pots of the various liquids he used for ink. At first I thought he was asleep, peaceful as he seemed, chin on his chest, eyes closed. As though he had simply paused in his studies for a nap. Alas, our beloved Professor had passed away.
Amidst the clutter on his desk, I discovered this unfinished manuscript. It was with love for my old friend, humility, and some trepidation that I took on the task of editing what the Professor had begun and offering this modest context.
As the oldest human in The Zoo—to our knowledge, the oldest human on earth—Professor Edgar enjoyed great respect not only from his fellow humans, but from the many animals who visited, viewed him and his species through the fence, and studied with us. I know firstpaw their respect was not simply for his age and erudition, but for his generosity. Though he could certainly be verbose—and became more so in old age—his mind was clear at the end as it had been throughout his long life. It was the Professor, more than any other creature, who turned The Zoo into the center of learning it is today.
Those of us born after the establishment of The Zoo often asked the Professor to tell the story of how it came to be. The cat, dog, bear, moles, and other creatures directly involved have all since passed away, and their species’ accounts—recorded in The Zoo archives, passed down through the generations—are conflicting. The Professor promised he would put it all down on bark—or at least tell us the story so we could remember it—before his demise. We can be grateful for the start of it he made here, even as we mourn all that he left unwritten.
Professor Edgar often said that humans were the animal least suited to life on this planet. What other creatures arrive to life so helpless, and without claws or wings or other useful adaptation? And what creature does more mischief? Humans’ only saving grace, he said, is that they are good scholars. And what makes a good scholar? The question was the subtext of our whole life together, but I only recall asking him directly once. Professor Edgar had furrowed his brow.
“Imagination,” he had replied, “and working well with baboons.”
Which brings us to the final pages of the Professor’s unfinished account. Impressed though the gathered baboons, horses, and crows were, they were not ready to grant mercy to humanity solely on the Professor’s fateful promise: that humans would confine themselves to The Zoo. For their own safety as much as all of ours, the humans were required to build a fence around their camp. They did so rapidly, under threat of death.
Thereafter, life inside consisted, mostly, of what the Professor liked to do—read, listen to stories, recite them aloud, and write them on tree bark. As he grew up, Professor Edgar systematized the written and oral traditions of The Zoo in which I write now. The early days were difficult. Most animals, back then, came only to throw feces at the humans and ogle them. But as years passed, many more came to speak with Professor Edgar and the other humans who, under his tutelage—and the threat of violence from baboons at Zoo’s edge—finally learned to speak grak. Even the Professor’s aunt.
Professor Edgar’s account provides invaluable context for this history. Still, when I finished reading, in the moonlight of that early spring night, I was consumed with curiosity. The Professor had promised humans would live in a zoo, but was that promise really enough? What exactly did the Professor say that day, so long ago, when he stood on the bear’s back? One promise hardly seems enough to have convinced a mob of angry baboons. But then, what could a child have said to account for humanity, given The Calamity? To prove its goodness? To prove, in the face of so much evidence to the contrary, that humans are decent animals?
Sadly, direct knowledge of the speech has also passed away with the Professor. We are left to piece it together from other sources—not a simple task. The P
rofessor’s account suggests the baboons began to sit down and listen when they heard him speaking grak, but several near-contemporary accounts dispute this characterization. In the Birdist histories, Professor Edgar is seen flying over the baboons (with the help of a supernatural feather), and he convinces all present in that miraculous manner. Several insect accounts draw our attention to the rules of The Zoo as evidence that the Professor and the baboons were engaged in classic mammal realpolitik. The moles, as usual, are silent on the matter.
The issue is more than academic. I am certain those of us who remain sympathetic to humans could make use of the Professor’s long-lost arguments, as debates on humanity continue. One rages even today—regarding several humans’ recent attempt to escape The Zoo. Apprehended by alert baboons, the accused have pled for their lives, and we are in council again to decide their fate. The would-be escapees insist that their fellow humans, by hoarding the available nuts and berries, forced a choice between flight and starvation. I suspect this defense will wither under guinea fowl cross-examination and the accused will be fed to a pack of wolves. In the Professor’s spirit, however, several foxes and I will be arguing for understanding, for mercy, and even—trying though it may be—for loving the humans.
What else, after all, can we do?
Top Goda-Dog in Charge of the Library
Post-Calamity Year 82
The Zoo
Acknowledgments
At Henry Holt and Company, I’ve had the good fortune to work with Natalia Ruiz, Janel Brown, Helen Carr, Chris Sergio, and the inimitable Sarah Crichton; thank you all. Thanks also to my agents, Eric Simonoff and Bob Bookman, for their ongoing counsel and many years of friendship. Thanks to Rozina Ali and Musab Younis and for their notes, especially on bacon and scholarship of the body. And thank you, Thomas McDonell and Alice Whitwham, for close reads, animal wisdom, and much else besides.
ALSO BY NICK MCDONELL
FICTION
Twelve
The Council of Animals Page 10
