‘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 ’til 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 1363 per cent. Twenty-five kilograms of botulin concentrate have poisoned the Nile. Released in the aftermath of Brink Day, Stryptobaccus Anthrax 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 3000 square kilometres. East Timor has been firebombed by Indonesia. Famine is claiming 1400 lives daily in Bangladesh. A virulent outbreak of a synthetic bubonic plague — the red plague — is endemic in Eastern Australia. In Canada autosterilising-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 stabilised 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 pick-axes.’
‘Sure, we’re all moonhowlers in a moonhowling world. What of it?’
‘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, 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 meagre 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 travelling in a convoy of three jeeps, a truck, and an armoured 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 harbouring Stryptobaccus; ethnic cleansing; Christian fundamentalism. Or just addiction to violence.’
‘Where are they going now, Zookeeper?’
‘There is a village over one hundred kilometres 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 Dobermann 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 kilometres.’
‘Can you zap it?’
‘PinSat ATˆ080 is primed.’
‘Can you zap a prop or a strut, Zookeeper? Without destroying the structure?’
‘PinSat ATˆ080 can bore a one-millimetre hole through a one-dime bit.’