Night of the Animals

by Bill Broun

  Along with lovely kippers from the Irish Sea,

  We’ll take our daily fill of anguished poetry,

  ’Til the world becomes zoologically arty.

  Seagulls of Imago, your song shall make us free,

  Seagulls of Imago, your song shall make us free,

  Make it new! Things not ideas! Ambiguity!

  And endless lovely kippers from the Irish Sea.

  “What does it mean?” asked Astrid.

  “Haven’t the faintest,” Cuthbert said. “Perhaps we need to eat kippers first. That’s all I need—and a full English.* And a stomach. I need one of them.”

  “Yes,” said Astrid. “Egg and fried toast soldiers and a tomato. Fried. It’s the day.”

  “It is,” said Cuthbert. “Let’s wakie wakie then. I’ve got loads to tell you, Astrid. Loads. It’s been so long.”

  The seagulls dove down, flapping and crying around their heads, and scurrying away with bits of popcorn. Nearby, in Lubetkin’s Penguin Pool, which was restored, not a trace of the attack discernible, the penguins were marching up their helical ramps, ready to go anywhere on earth. They had heard the gulls and they were ready to follow them to homes off the tip of southern Africa, at the Cape of Good Hope.

  All across the city, everyone began to noticed hundreds of new cloud-doodles in the sky. The children of London had got wind about the night, and their response was to draw pictograms. There were rhinos and zebras with stick legs. There was a giraffe with a neck the length of a football pitch. There was a jaguar with spots that blew away almost as fast as they were drawn by a five-year-old girl in Hampstead named Lucy.

  AND WHAT of the other animals?

  The Shayk of Night, predictably, disappeared. He would hide in the trees for as long as he was needed, be it days or decades, ready to bring infidels to the true faith. Eventually, he would join the ranks of Britain’s cryptozoological legends, a big black felid, sometimes spotted late at night on westerly moors by some excitable retired schoolmaster.

  The zookeepers, try as they may, couldn’t find Muezza, Monty’s little admirer, and it was assumed that he would take up with the feral cats of north London, happily hunting Norway rats for all his days ahead. The other sand cats were eventually rounded up.

  The otters, like most of their species, went in different directions. One headed to the Thames estuary. It would swim toward Lindisfarne on the North Sea, where the spirit of St. Cuthbert awaited all pilgrims. Another otter would make its way west, toward the quieter corners of Somerset, and perhaps, one day, even toward Worcestershire, the Severn basin, and the Wyre Forest. The otter pups were in pain—they had been forced to abandon the new mother because such were the forced detachments of the mustelid universe. It was a place where you just swam on. The spirit of St. Cuthbert would protect them until, one day, they repopulated Britain’s rivers and streams. Meanwhile, their video likenesses were to be broadcast all over the world, thanks to the ginger-haired reporter, Jerry. For several days, the most popular image projected of the zoo disturbance would be the video of the six newborn otters in their glossy blankets of caul, their dutiful mother licking them clean, with interspersed interview shots of the tiresome David Beauchamp, finally a minor celebrity, explaining how the London Zoo was already planning a “once in a lifetime” exhibit called “Six of One, Half a Dozen of the Otter.” “That’s my title, actually,” he would be heard saying.

  AS MYSTERIOUSLY AND BIZARRELY as the Luciferian attack had begun, it had ended up receding, rapidly, in terms of both concrete facts and in what people believed about the night. The white demonic arch that rose from Grosvenor and landed in the zoo’s Penguin Pool had flickered off, and the comet Urga-Rampos disappeared from the Eastern Hemisphere. Nearly as soon as the horrors had gone, some people claimed they never existed. The timeline vandalism of Harry9’s Æthelstan’s Bliss further served to confuse the public.

  But some things could not be disputed.

  All across Britain, and especially in London near the American Embassy, the bodies of hundreds of suicided “Neuters” were discovered that May Day and in the days afterward. They all wore white coveralls, cropped haircuts, and white Nike trainers. But they were not, as Astrid had imagined, all clones of Marshall Applewhite III. They were ordinary citizens, from all over the Americas, northern Europe, and Japan and Singapore, especially, who had dedicated themselves to the HeavensGate.com cult and decided to end their lives in England in order to “shed their containers” and meet Applewhite in his comet starship. It would be the apex of the suicide cults’ powers on earth. In every case, the suicides had imbibed lethal doses of sedatives along with Flōt and killed at least one poor animal, usually someone’s stolen domestic pet. All had an American $5 bill in their pockets for the afterlife, which they apparently considered a cut-rate operation. In central London, as planned, a large squad of Neuter aggressors had managed to murder dozens of other noncult members, in some cases force-feeding victims sedatives and Flōt, and some of the loose animals, did indeed attack them.

  But as the autonews reports went out, in the weeks and months that followed, and WikiNous started sizzling with wild rumors about what had happened that night—with tales of mass murder and leopard attacks, outraged reports about the catastrophe of Æthelstan’s Bliss, rumors of a subsequent UK-USA diplomatic row over terrorism—officialdom began, slowly at first and then quite aggressively, to suppress the truth. Harry9, for his part, even feared that his indiscipline with the Æthelstan’s Bliss had endangered his own throne. He was, for now, a king humbled—but not entirely.

  Harry9 still ran a massive disinformation operation. Soon, the facts of the night of the animals became as elusive as the otters of the Severn. Timelines seemed to get artificially resewn. The AnimalSafe Squad’s ambitious David Beauchamp led the effort among the zoo officials to downplay and to understate, and in some cases to erase, the evidence. The Met played its part, too, and with the cowed, impoverished automedia at historically weakened levels of investigative nous, the story soon began to evaporate. Still, the Crown instructed EquiPoise’s Psyalleviators to steer clear of both Astrid and Cuthbert. The authorities saw Astrid, privately, as a kind of selfless minor hero, and Cuthbert as a chaotic messenger. They were marked as a kind of special case, a Flōt-related aberration, and the night, officially, as a sort of subterranean watershed dividing what could be tolerated from the cults and terrorists, and what threatened the English at their core.

  It wasn’t, as Cuthbert wanted, all about all the animals.

  There hadn’t been many animals on the loose—not really, it was said. No one but a few soft-headed cultists actually died. SCARE hadn’t actually lost any soldiers. Only a few suspect people saw anything like a “green being” near the American Embassy. And apart from a small number of animals hurt or temporarily escaped, nearly all the animals were captured and returned to their enclosures to resume their happy jailed lives.

  BY THE NEXT SPRING, in 2053, a year blessedly free of comets, the night of the animals was largely forgotten, and the big news on everyone’s corneas was, of course, King Henry, for 2053 marked his silver jubilee. In the monarch’s official portrait for the year, Arfur appeared, in the background, prone on a settee of purple velvet brocades and ermine, his muffin-paws in front of him, and wearing an expression of impossible contentment.

  nine

  incantation in a new tongue

  DURING THAT LONG, SCORCHING SUMMER OF THE jubilee, Cuthbert Handley one day realized that he didn’t hear voices as often as he used to. In fact, they had all shrunk down to one.

  By 2053, there were far fewer animals and species of them on earth. Not since the end of the Pleistocene, when the woolly rhinos and dire wolves died out, had evolution reached such a choke point. Epically closer to home, a hot April and May had hatched swarms of midges, bringing an epidemic of a virulent bluetongue to Albion’s sheep and cattle on the king’s large collectives.

  In London, there were even fewer moggies in the al
leys, fewer dog walkers around the silenced swan ponds, and a host of unexpected, strange breeding problems at the zoo. Indigents were no longer permitted pet licenses. While the zoo was still the most precious archival repository of genomes on the planet, research and bioengineering and preservation work tended to hold primacy now. Security increased tenfold, with admission by invitation only. The exhibitions, one by one, were being shuttered, too. In all but a few cases, genomic clones replaced the wild originals, and the London Zoological Gardens—humankind’s last ark of the Animal Kingdom—had become, for the most part, a closed shop.

  For reasons Cuthbert could not grasp, the animals stopped talking to him. The unexpected great quieting depressed him, and left him with agonizing guilt.

  “I can’t bring ’em in,” he would exclaim to Astrid. “I don’t know what’s gone wrong. Why? Why’d I have to tinker? Why? What’s become of the Wonderments? Do you hear them?”

  But that was a question Astrid never dared to answer again, not even to dear Cuthbert.

  He’d thought, gullibly, that people would have learned after the night the animals saved them. He trusted that the bond between creatures and people would grow inviolate. That hadn’t happened at all.

  He decided, that summer day, that it was time perhaps that he come in off the streets of England for good.

  “I’ve had enough, haven’t I?” he thought, not without real shame. “And I’ve done my bit for the beasts—and for King Harry. What’s the use?”

  But this notion of sleeping indoors for good occurred to him as the sweet smell of baking kidneys and puff pastry wafted into his eager face. He was in Astrid’s kitchen, in her flat in Haggerston, where he found himself spending more and more time. With shaky hands, he moved a piping-hot pie, still in its tin, directly to an Italian dinnerware plate painted with large red pears and golden quinces. There was a square nuplastic container of burdock greens that Astrid had sautéed with watercress and put away, and she’d made Cuthbert promise her to eat a bit of the greens if he insisted on “those unwholesome pies.”

  “But the pies, they’re good,” he maintained. Astrid was vegetarian, of course, just like his gran had been, and he respected that, but he could not bring himself to denigrate a good kidney pie, could he?

  Astrid was away at work that afternoon, where she’d long been reinstated and promoted to chief inspector, with Omotoso moving up to the Met, and Atwell taking her old inspectorship. She was only the second person she knew in Britain to make it past second withdrawal from Flōt, and in her FA meetings, she’d become something of an inspiration. Her own “Wonderments,” it turned out, had worked in unexpected ways. She wasn’t sure she liked or trusted God, or if she even knew how to believe, but her old revulsion was gone.

  Cuthbert sat down at Astrid’s dark, walnut-grained kitchenette, and he dumped some of the unheated greens, straight from the container, onto the pie. A ray of piercing June sunlight shot across the tabletop, glaring a bit, and he squinted.

  Cuthbert covered the whole plate with HP sauce, and he ate greedily. One hunk after another, without pause, he took enormous portions of pastry and the bright jade burdock upon his fork without bothering to spear anything with the tines. He washed it all down with a big honeyed bowl of peppermint and nettle tea, and when it was finished, with a barely concealed exuberance, he burped.

  “That’s a piece,”* he said.

  Oh, she wants me to stay here, he thought to himself. To keep out of the cold—and the heat. Why don’t I then?

  But could he find a way to leave the Flōt alone forever?

  AGAINST THE ADVICE of many acquaintances—for her friends knew better than to say a thing—Astrid had invited Cuthbert after the night of the animals to stay with her without apparent reservations or regrets. It was an odd arrangement, and a big gamble, she knew, but she could not get over a feeling of wanting to protect the man, as best she could, or at least see to his creature comforts for a few years.

  “He’s my grandfather,” she would tell skeptics, although she hadn’t known that, really. She was, for the moment, content to leave it at that. “I love him.”

  In the year since, both she and he had, after all, suffered great losses. Even in an era of replaceable major organs, the endlessly patient Dr. Bajwa’s cancer could not be stopped. The loss felt cruel for Cuthbert. It turned out that the extra weight and more robust voice Baj had gained on the hijacked frightcopter, right before Astrid’s eyes, was an effect of Æthelstan’s Bliss. A damaged timeline had somehow shrunk his tumors, added to his fat stores, and given him more months of life, which he gave to the poor of Holloway Road, treating Indigents almost to the end. Eventually, the tumors came back, and Baj died in the winter, sending Cuthbert into a panic. The same month, Astrid’s mother, her mind too ravaged by the Bruta7 virus even to recognize her daughter, finally succumbed to complications brought on by it, despite receiving specially ordered NHS Legacy-level care.

  AFTER HIS LUNCH, Cuthbert decided to take a little nap. He lay atop the duvet on his plush bed, and he pulled his legs up.

  He called, just as his grandmother had, “Kitty-kyloe! Kitty-kyloe!”

  Instantly, the little golden cat came running from its hiding place and jumped onto the bed, snuggling into a ball at Cuthbert’s feet. He reached down and scratched the feline behind its ears, and it allowed this, for a moment, then bucked away. It would never relax in human hands, but like many sand cats, it was semi-tamable.

  “Yow smelled the pie, did yow?” Muezza leaped off the bed onto the floor, as if signaling for a feeding. (He had to be fed frozen mice.)

  After the incident in the lion enclosure, and being seen to by paramedics, Cuthbert had spotted Muezza in the hedges, very near its shattered, aquarium-like exhibit. Unknown to Astrid or anyone, the old man had managed to smuggle the sand cat out in his bundled coat, stowing him like a small melon in a grocery sack.

  It was unethical. It was illegal. It was unwise. But Astrid had reluctantly let Muezza stay in the flat. For all its standoffishness, the creature clearly adored both Cuthbert and her. It rubbed against their ankles, cuddled with them on the sofa, and did what it could to destroy Astrid’s £200 faux-Iranian rug. She knew, someday, the cat would need to go back to the zoo. But not today.

  Muezza meowed at Cuthbert, almost provocatively.

  “What is it? Use words, my brother. All the animals have stopped talking to me. Are you next? Am I not al-Khidr?”

  The cat did not answer, at least not in words.

  “Oh,” said Cuthbert. “Oh my brother, Muezza. Yow must talk. Or I’ve lost the Wonderments.”

  Then they both fell asleep.

  ASTRID HAD FIXED UP the room where her mother had stayed, and she gave Cuthbert a key to the flat. There was one rule: he wasn’t allowed to drink either alcohol or Flōt in the flat, under any circumstances.

  But he was not, strictly speaking, quite sane, even though he didn’t hear many animals.

  At age ninety-one, with his CoreModded organs updated by the special dispensation from the Crown, Cuthbert might have had another decade or two of life to look forward to if he could stay away from the Flōt. He was trying—very hard. He’d make it weeks sometimes, and only rarely need to go, to rest a few days, to the Whittington detox. He would vanish from Astrid’s flat for a week or two, then come back, always remorseful. But he always came back. In so many ways, he still believed that Astrid was his long-dead brother, Drystan, and Astrid didn’t have the heart to disabuse him of the notion.

  In her own unobtrusive way, Astrid had learned much more about him in the last year—the abuse he and his sibling suffered at their father’s hands, his mother’s emotional neglect, the inexorable love the two boys received from their witchy gran. Above all, she discovered the deep break in Cuthbert’s being that occurred when his older brother drowned.

  Earlier that summer, one morning, Cuthbert had asked “for that coin,” just to see it again.

  “The souvenir bracteate? The one you
gave me?”

  “Yes.”

  She snatched the Undley Bracteate from her pocket. She’d learned that boffins at the University of Leicester had decoded the ancient Anglo-Frisian inscription on the coin. It turned out that gagoga maga medu meant something along the lines of “Abracadabra—to you, kinsman, a drink of mead.” The researchers said it was actually the oldest sentence in English.

  Cuthbert glanced at the bracteate for a moment, as if looking for something. There were the two brothers, Romulus and Remus, drinking from the teats of a she-wolf beneath the image of Constantine.

  “I’ve not been as good to yow, Astrid, as yow’ve been to me. I canna stop missing my brother, Dryst, and I’m sorry for that.”

  “No,” she said to him. “Never think that way. You’ve helped me—you brought me through the Death, you know?”

  “I’ve done nothing,” he said. “It’s yow, Astrid. Yow’re the angel.”

  In the year he was with her, all this knowledge helped her come to her own livable terms with what happened to her in second withdrawal, when she herself experienced a mystical encounter, and with what had happened since. She’d come to believe that being the Christ of Otters wasn’t a supernatural event; it was subnatural. It was a deeper part of being human.

  AFTER HIS NAP, with Muezza at his toes, Cuthbert did something he’d pledged to himself that he’d never do. He snooped around the flat a bit and went where he knew he oughtn’t. He tiptoed into Astrid’s bedroom, looking behind himself continually, terrified she’d walk into the flat. It wasn’t the London Zoo, and there was no malice or prurience, but he hated himself for doing it. He felt compelled only out of a loving, cracked desire to know more about Astrid, whom he still associated with Drystan in a way that was helplessly immovable.

  So a few minutes later, the erstwhile saint stood at his Messiah’s dresser, and he gazed at the small collection of things Astrid had put there. They struck him as sacred, even in their mundanity. There were the three fotolives, including the one with Astrid as a girl in a red teepee, and extra hairpins. There was a loose gangliatoxic round packed into its cylindrical bronze cartridge. There was a set of blue nuplastic swimming goggles with a precious white band. And there was a carefully folded DNA wipe with tiny number 5’s all over it.