Night of the Animals (25 page)

ASTRID CLUNKED EACH POT ON A HEAVY TABLE.
She put out the sugar and Smile and milk. She quickly dealt out a couple cylinders of Jaffa Cakes, organizing them in two concentric circles on a pretty, ancient piece of Wedgwood she had found in the basement. In the center of the plate was a bucolic scene of a shepherd and shepherdess cuddling by a brook-side while a dairy cow and two lambs looked on. On the rim of the plate were wildflowers—a light purple marsh-mallow, a butter-colored primrose, tight white coils of Irish lady's tresses.

Next, she put out a small plastic tray with a pink and yellow Battenberg. One of the Indigent fellows who still slept rough, Ed, who'd come to London from Galway in the early '20s and claimed that the homeless were suffering from a contemporary, secret holocaust in London (“the Watch are killing thousands of us, I tell you!”), almost immediately cleared half the plate of Jaffa Cakes, stuffing more than a few into his reeking coat pocket. Astrid said nothing.

Then she remembered her orange-freq. She'd better find out
exactly what Atwell wanted. Must be more than zoo lights. Later though—the moment the meeting ends. The guv wouldn't mind that.

THE SUBJECT OF THE MEETING
was “honesty,” a standard FA meeting topic. Astrid was glad for the meeting's start because she actually wanted to tell people about how much pain she was in as the crisis of second withdrawal deepened. Here was one last chance to describe her sense of hollow loneliness, her shameful feeling of not fitting at Indigent-dominated FA meetings, her new cravings. If I let it out, she thought, the monsters would be out and free and down to size. A problem shared is half a problem, promised the old twelve-step adage.

She found her mind wandering, to the water. How she loved to plunge into the lapping lanes at Highbury, with something nearing desperation. The marks of stress would wash off her back like wet bandages. She swam with power, a salubrious self-centeredness, and a kind of aggression that was very different in tone from anything anyone ever saw at Highbury. She was thirty-two years old, and her arms and legs looked more robust than those of many of the men in the constabulary.

About a dozen Flōters and addicts were at the meeting now, and most were people Astrid actually felt deep affection for: there was Gerard, the ex–economics professor with a thick accent who had been banned, literally and, somehow, legally, from his hometown in the obscure farmlands of Alsace. The lovely pensioner, Tom P.—the one second-withdrawal survivor she'd met—was on hand, too. He seemed educated, but he wore the torn clothes typical of Indigents. He also claimed to be a former Dominican brother from County Kerry who, having slept in cemeteries during his homelessness, said he pined for graveyards even yet: “They're the only
quiet in London,” he would say, “like gifts from God, and larger by the day.” Astrid liked Tom—loved him even. As with many of the people at the meetings in East London, Tom had little money. But he was no skiver. When he first got sober, years before, he had worked his way up the ladder at a Catholic social services agency. He was handy with wood. He built intricate dollhouses for his granddaughters, and he had one expression he had become locally famous for in FA: “The best is yet to come.” Because he was the only addict at the Seamen's Rest past second Flōt withdrawal, the adage was freighted with irony.

An irate Irish single mother named Louisa, whom Astrid felt unaccountably intimidated by, was taking her turn to rave about how she wanted to stab a man at another FA meeting who had told her to “work the steps.” With her thick, curly blond hair and freckled skin, she was dreadfully gorgeous. Like Astrid, Flōt-recovery anger was strangling her, too, but unlike Astrid, Louisa was nowhere near second withdrawal, and sometimes Astrid wished she knew what she was in for—an anger that would crush rubies like grapes and stab more than a few errant Flōtheads.

Louisa said, in a mock ladylike tone, “Oh, I just need to examine myself. That's right, how could I be so thick?” Then she said, “I'm being honest: I wanted to top this prat.” Louisa was always right up front about people who bothered her, whom she placed in the ignominious categories of “gits” and “prats.” She scared the bejesus out of Astrid, but she often felt she shared her rage, and was comforted that so many others accepted her. Louisa gave her a sense of hope. She wished she would be so open.

When Louisa finished, Astrid tried to speak up. She wanted to start in with the orange-freqs driving her crazy that week—yes, fucking
bloody
lights on at the
fucking
bloody zoo, for fuck's sake—and the stupid useless constabulary wouldn't know a terrorist from a hippofuckingpotamus, and the filthy teapots, and
Sykes watching her, and his spiteful little skin-screen, and how none of you cunts know a fucking
thing
about withdrawal because you stupid
twats
always
use
before you get within a decade of it, you
fucking cunts
!

But it suddenly seemed awkward to talk at all, and Louisa had just sounded so confident, and then Astrid, at that moment, couldn't see how her thoughts even
vaguely
related to “Honesty.”

“I feel a bit off at my job,” she began, “and I've these wicked new cravings for the stuff. And I've got this naff alarm tonight, again, another naff, time-wasting alarm, and this time it's at the zoo, right?” She hesitated. “I'm just trying to be honest, right?” It was a moronic beginning, she felt.

She continued: “See, it's a bit of a bore, really. I actually feel like I understand why so many people are killing themselves in those cults and all. I'm not doing that, but I understand, right? Again, I'm trying to be honest, right?” She paused and noticed that all the friendly chatter in the room had stopped; when others spoke, people still felt free to carry on a bit in whispers. But Astrid, in second withdrawal, after all, was
so serious
. It was oppressive.

“Let me offer a bit of . . . context, first?” she said.

She heard Burt whisper moistly, “What's that mean? What's ‘con-tex'?”

Right beside her was Tom P., who had been carefully dropping bits of tobacco into his old Golden Virginia rolling machine. Tom put the device on his knee and sat up, as if he had been misbehaving while a schoolmarm intoned facts. Astrid was swept with stomach-churning self-consciousness. Why did she always have to sound so stiff at FA meetings? she asked herself miserably. But she went on, she had to: “Oh dammit, how do I put this? You all know I work for the Royal Parks Police. I have a staff of twelve PCs and three sergeants who cover the Hyde and Regent's parks. Well, my Opticall panels are going off even tonight and I just can't answer this time,
and I don't think I'll ever go back to work again—I'm packing it in. I feel as though I want to act out, if you understand?” She looked down into her hands, and opened and closed them into limps fists. “There are lights on—at the fucking zoo. The zoo! I need to tell you about that. Does that make sense?”

Tom leaned forward in his chair, and twisted to one side. He looked directly at Astrid with a strange expression, raising his eyes and gritting his teeth, and then it struck: a magnificent, darkly pneumonic, arse-splitting fart. It was loud and proud, though poor Tom instantly turned crimson.

“Oh, I'm sorry.”

The whole room exploded. A few people stood up, slapping their legs and doubling over. The chairperson of the meeting, a wintry-souled Glaswegian named Fred, started banging a tiny wooden gavel. “Oooo-kay! Oooo-kay!” he kept saying. “Let the laaaaaaaay-dee have her say.” But then Fred's face broke into a helpless grin. He still banged the gavel, but no one, least of all himself, was able to pay attention to anything other than the complete hilarity of the situation.

Just then, a small, tightly built Indigent named Marcus, whom she didn't care for, goaded, “Keep talking, Astrid. Keep it up!”

Astrid was mortified. She pretended to laugh, too, but the impulse had to be entirely, and not easily, faked. Here she had been trying to discuss an important issue in her life, one that involved economic security and moral impropriety and the society of peers and madness and depression, and she had lost the floor to juvenile crudeness. It seemed to her that with the stink had also come a total disillusionment with this meeting. She instinctively blamed people like Marcus—but part of her knew this wasn't the problem. She was the problem. The zoo was the problem.

Fred said, “Go ahead, Astrid. You finish what you were saying, lassy.” A rivulet of milky tea had spiked out from beneath her chair;
someone had knocked over a cup. She heard Louisa say, “Fuck! Get a tea towel! Get that stuff sopped up now!”

Astrid said, “I think that's it. I said what I needed to say.”

“No it's not, out with it,” someone said. “Please, Astrid.”

“Shouldn't a copper be answering her Opticalls,” another person cracked.

“Hey, listen,” Astrid said, irritably.

The silence came on again. All the snickering ended—it was as if Astrid Sullivan was a scythe of sternness, mowing down every sign of good humor in the room. By the time she felt, after a long silence, that she might start in again about her job, and perhaps broach the more important subject of her deadened emotional life, Marcus jumped in, not even waiting for the traditional “thank you” FA members said after another member spoke.

Marcus said, “Me ex-wife is trying to keep me from seeing my kid, in little, sneaky ways.” Shaking his long brown hair mullet, and sniffing, he gazed around to see if anyone was paying attention.

Astrid could almost physically feel the room lighten up and take earnest interest in Marcus's plight. “I bought the boy a bicycle, a three-wheeler trainer thing, and—I'm just going to say it—the two-bone bitch sold the bicycle on that OpticAuctions business!”

Everyone seemed stilled by the intensity of Marcus's words; many bowed their heads.

“I'm sorry,” Marcus said, his Dublin brogue coming in. “I'm just angry. I know it's not good but I
hate
her.” Several listeners nodded. Louisa put her hand on Marcus's shoulder.

Astrid felt envious and sad about the Seamen's Rest lot's embracing of the hotheaded Marcus over her, then felt angry at herself for her jealousy.

Tom leaned close to her. He said, in a kind, low voice, “Astrid, I'm so sorry. Don't mind us. You
know
an open meeting at the Seamen's Rest isn't necessarily the best place to bring up anything too
personal; they'll chew you up here. We
love
you, Astrid, we do. Let's go have a chat after the meeting, OK?”

Astrid usually felt great affection for Tom, but at that moment she wanted to grab one of the pots of tea and dump it on his head. Instead, she smiled. Of course she smiled, and said distantly, “Thanks for the input.”

Never had she felt so convinced that she was ready to stop attending FA meetings, something she had never dared do since her first meeting in Houston in 2041.

“Arseholes,” she said quietly, tearing up.

Tom nodded, and said, “You're right. But there are other meetings that are much more—you know—civilized and just, er,
intelligent
.”

She felt that, at last and unforeseeably, she understood something that had escaped her since 2041: FA's problem is that it's full of Flōters.

ASTRID LEFT THE MEETING EARLY. ASTOUNDINGLY,
it was the first time she had ever done this in eleven years of FA meetings. She was going to let the others clean up the tea. Fuck 'em! She heard old Tom calling after her as she walked outside; it was as though he knew something quite awful was happening to Astrid.

“Can I have a word, Astrid?” Tom was saying. “Wait up, girl!”

She pretended she didn't hear and walked toward the wobbly old Docklands Light Railway station at Poplar. The rotting elevated walkways toward the crumbling skyscrapers of Canary Wharf, covered in 3D graffiti and louche adverts, always confused her, but apart from Canary Wharf itself—where half the offices were shuttered or tee-hee 5-5
^*
dens—the DLR station was the one place within half a mile where one could find a quiet nook to make a private audio Opticall. An orange-freq's flames were again whipping across her eyes, and new shrieking had begun. She felt an odd sen
sation, something new, as if the zoo itself were sucking her in, swallowing.

The area near the station displayed the usual roaring ugliness of a late midweek evening. Cartons of unsold market produce—brownish clementines, scores of lychees spanned with white mold—overstuffed the rubbish bins along with the day's discarded food wrappers. She felt compelled to duck beneath a giant, purple holographic penis jutting from the station wall along with scads of other obscene 3D images and tags and Army of Anonymous–UK slogans. Spread around the entrances were splayed drink boxes of Ribena, Cokelager orbs, and Lucozade bags.

She found a disused, old phone box with broken windows, across from a train ticket window, and she ducked inside and Opticalled PC Atwell, ignoring the video option and sticking to audio only.

“Hello?” asked Atwell.

Astrid cleared her throat. “Sullivan here. Hope you don't mind if I kill the camera.”

“Oh, no, thank you, ma'am,” said Atwell. “I actually appreciate it. I smoked a cigarette, and I feel like my head's on Neptune. I can't believe I did that—a stupid git, I am.” She gave a little cough. “I'm sorry to disturb you, ma'am. Very sorry. Are you all right, guv? It took awhile. You sound . . .”

“No worries, Atwell,” she said, trying to sound weary (but not too weary).

“Well, ma'am, at first I was thinking it's probably nothing, yeah? But now I think it's—a something. A potential emergency.”

“I'm sorry? What?”

Atwell continued, “I'm parked on the Broad Walk, in the pandaglider, of course—I'm not getting out alone—and several sets of lights have come
on
at the zoo and—are you sure you're OK, ma'am? And there's an occupied autonews glider here, with its dish set up, and at least one solar-frightcopter.”

“A frightcopter?” said Astrid. “Bloody hell. Probably triggered by the autoreporters. That's how these things go—lights trigger autonews, autonews triggers Watch, Watch sends up frightcopters, then we beg Watch to go home, and the bastards blame us for everything.” She needed to put a stop to this nonsense. It was rarely good to draw scrutiny from the Watch. You never knew how it would end up—with a demotion, a new title, reclassification, or a Nexar hood, or dinner with the king. “Did you call the night keeper? That's protocol.”

“Night keeper, ma'am?”

“At the
zoo
, Atwell. There's this legendary weirdo. He's in the old Reptile House—name's Dawkins.” Astrid knew every centimeter of the three thousand hectares in the royal parks, and especially those she was charged with policing—Hyde, Kensington Gardens, and Regent's. Directional details were a point of pride. She could explain every curve of the Serpentine, or navigate blindfolded through the fifty thousand roses of Queen Mary's Garden. But the zoo. Now that was a bit of a blank for Astrid. It was part of the royal parks, but not, too. It was in her constabulary's domain, but not
really
. The police ignored it. It wasn't even wholly London, not when she thought about it.

New Parkies were required to attend zoo crisis drills, but no one took them seriously. Astrid recalled her own training sessions on the zoo several years back when she hired on; and three years ago (through a special arrangement with the Metropolitan Police), she herself had been allowed to help train the keepers to use their neuralzingers, which were kept in a locked case at the security office. The guns were effective against even the largest mammals, but no keeper had ever used one that she recalled.

Like the Open Air Theatre, the zoo was fenced in and required a fee, and generally, you didn't worry about it from a policing perspective. Jurisdictionally, it wasn't parkland, and constables normally
would have required explicit permission to enter the zoo, even if in hot pursuit. In fact, the zoo had developed its own security squad, sanctioned by Royal Parks bylaws, and this included an animal recovery team. The team members were all very specialized but very relaxed. One man wore dreadlocks, another a beard as puffy and long as Karl Marx's. But they knew how to coax a lion, how to calm a zebra, or call to an escaped eagle, and now how to kill one of these animals if necessary.

Dubbed the AnimalSafe Squad, it was headed by a very tall, passionate man named David Beauchamp. Astrid didn't particularly like him. Beauchamp didn't fit in with the others, who could have passed for hemp farmers or festival-following crusties. He talked a great, great deal. And he seemed to have zero respect for the constabulary. Chief Inspector Omotoso described him to Astrid as “self-serving, pompous, manipulative, and hostile.” Omotoso claimed that Beauchamp secretly wanted to see the parks police taken over by the Watch.

“My team are pros,” he once said to Astrid, his voice entirely gravied-over with a rich, thick condescension. “We take our roles seriously. We're not some PC Plods force arresting litterers. Not that the RPC is that—of course not.” The not-so-subtle dig at the constabulary was stinging, but Astrid could only wince and get on with work.

The AnimalSafe Squad had had their firearms training, and they now trained their own. Few in the constabulary seriously contemplated any one of the AnimalSafers ever gunning anything down.

“Inspector?”

Astrid stared through the phone box window onto the walk.

“Inspector, you were saying . . . about the night keeper?”

“Right, yes, Atwell, let the standard zoo staff—not their security detail, mind you—handle this one. They've got their own way of doing things. They're animal-friendly. And see that the Watch
knows
we
know. They'll blow up the whole zoo if we don't stop them.”

“I'm sorry, ma'am, but I think—you with me?—the problem
is
actually an emergency—of some sort, yeah?” She was sounding exasperated, and Astrid felt her guidance wasn't proving genius. She said, “The thing is, the second time that I freq'd you, it wasn't simply the light. It was the bizarre sounds, ma'am.”

Astrid was genuinely perplexed by Atwell's alarm.

“It is a zoo, Atwell, right? I don't mean to be funny, but . . . and who said it wasn't an emergency?”

“I appreciate that, ma'am, but it sounded beyond
that
—Inspector—I mean, past what a zoo
should
sound like.” Atwell spoke now in a snappish, annoyed tone.

“Maybe it's because it's the night before the General Election,” Astrid said. “Animals are constitutionally liberal—and the polls don't look good.”

Atwell groaned. “Right. Ma'am. Damn it. With respect, and I know it's not my place, but I feel you're not taking it seriously. You should. It sounded like murder. Then a man half-dressed came sprinting past the car. He looked crazy, with hair all sticking up, and a head that looked—it looked
compressed
. He was pounding my window, ma'am, then he ran off, toward Albany Street. He was saying the
jackals
were loose. He said he was the night watchman but . . . I don't know . . . for some reason, I didn't believe him, to be frank, guv. He said there was someone in the zoo. He wanted into the pandaglider, but I wouldn't do it, ma'am. I wasn't scared, ma'am. It just didn't seem advisable, yeah? But, well, I believe we have an incident here that goes beyond my regular training, ma'am.”

Astrid felt a chill on her neck. She said, “Jackals loose—that's new.” No wonder the autonews was on the prowl. “Stone the crows. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to put you off, Jasmine, but you can surely
understand . . . this is all . . . it's just . . . never before, not in my time.” She scratched her nose. “What did the man look like? I've met the night watchman—he's the night keeper, too—Dawkins. Odd fellow. He's quite a fat biffa.”

There was a pause. “This man wasn't fat at all, ma'am. He was a string bean.” Atwell didn't say anything for a moment. “I don't know now. I'm actually hearing something new now. I'm staying where I am, ma'am. Something's making a terrible row over the fence, ma'am. You know—GBH of the earhole,
^*
yeah? It sounds like a
thousand
jackals. I've not seen one, however. But ma'am, I don't know what a bleeding jackal looks like anyway.”

“I'm sure they're all bark,” said Astrid. It still seemed likely that some drunk or Flōter sleeping rough in Regent's had spotted Atwell patrolling by herself and decided to lark about. Atwell was an attractive young woman, second-generation English (her mother and father were from New British Guyana's modest middle class, a schoolteacher and a chemist, respectively), with lovely very dark green eyes and dark, clear skin the color of burnt honey. No doubt such a man would enjoy any sort of attention she would deign to offer him.

“There's one other thing, ma'am,” said Atwell. “The man said his
mother
was still in the zoo. His mother! That took the prize, Inspector. Honestly, I felt nearly desperate. I wanted to open the glider—I felt desperate to—but I would have been defenseless, yeah?”

Astrid turned with a jerk of annoyance in the old phone booth, and noticed that old Tom was standing next to her, looking sad and concerned. He must have followed her from the meeting. Astrid felt embarrassed.

“Atwell, I'll come down, OK? I'm certain you've been had is all,
and if it's not that, it's nothing to worry about. You're on the Broad Walk?”

“Yes, ma'am. But ma'am, I think something
is
actually wrong. I have a feeling this is rather serious, ma'am.”

At the best of times, certain young probationers occasionally got on Astrid's Flōt-frazzled nerves, but she found herself now feeling an ugly, confusing irritation toward Atwell, and she hated it.

“Well, perhaps,” said Astrid. “I've got some feelings, too, PC. We've had—what?—a dozen ‘spectacular nothing' alarms at night this week? Right. Of course something's wrong, of course it's possibly
serious
. . . Jasmine. I'm afraid I'm sounding condescending, PC. Sorry. But stay there. I'll take a cab. Give me twenty-five minutes or so.” She looked at Tom directly and raised her eyebrows. She pointed at her eyes to indicate she was on an Opticall. She shook her head, as if she were talking to an insane person. “Make that thirty.”

“Good, Inspector. Thank you, Inspector. And Inspector?”

“Yes?”

“Should I make sure the chief inspector is aware of all this?”

“Oh, no. Let Omotoso sleep.”

There was a pause. She said, “Are you quite sure I shouldn't at least
notify
the zoo's security team? Mr. Beauchamp and all?”

Astrid shook her head. “Oh, for fuck's sake, no, Atwell. Not Beauchamp, no. I'd like to assess things, with you, before we proceed.”

“Right, ma'am. Number thirty-two out.”

Astrid blinked off, and turned toward her fellow FA member.

“Oh, Tom, I'm sorry I didn't clean up the tea,” said Astrid. “I'm having some troubles, Tom. Work. It's this orange-freq, see?” She pointed to her eyes. “I've been a right cunt with my colleague.”

Tom gazed at her eyes carefully and frowned, then looked into them anew, scrutinizing. “That's a demeaning expression. It only degrades you.” Gone was the tobacco-scrounging farter; arrived was the Dominican brother who had slept with London's dead.

“Who cares about cleaning up tea? Are you all right, Astrid? I'm worried about you.”

“I'm all right, Tom, really. I won't drink. I promise.”

The tightened skin around Tom's eyes and mouth slackened a bit. He said, “I didn't mean to be offensive, at the meeting and all. I'm just a grubby street Flōter, Astrid. That's my bottom line.”

“No, Tom, you're all right.”

“We don't want to lose you, love.”

Tom scratched his neck, where he had a sort of soft-whiskered dewlap. “I've never seen you walk out of a meeting. We're just teasing you a bit, you know. This isn't some King's Road meeting. We're on the front lines. It don't make us better or worse, but we're what we are, aren't we?” He looked down. A loud group of young West Ham United supporters, fresh-shaved and dressed in ironed vintage Ben Shermans, reeking of bergamot cologne, came storming around a building at the corner, across the street.

“Astrid, the pool—in Highbury. Didn't I say you would feel better if you swam? It's how I made it past second withdrawal. I'd see liquid ghosts, shining in the water beside me—water angels.” Tom had been the one who'd turned her on to swimming.

“Oh, I wish I could. You don't know how badly.” It was true. In the pool at Highbury, she would melt away and still be herself, sort of, and sort of not, a creature not quite of the water and not quite terrestrial—and transcendently powerful. Whatever the sensations of Flōting and withdrawal were, swimming was their opposite.