‘A zookeeper? The first zookeeper to step aboard the Night Train, if my memory serves me. New York Zoo?’
‘My works takes me all over the world.’
‘So, you’re a freelance zookeeper?’
‘I’ve never considered myself in those terms, Bat. Yes, that’s what I am.’
‘Which zoo did you keep last?’
‘Unfortunately, the laws dictated that I dismiss my former employers.’
‘Uh-huh... so you fired your own boss.’
‘That is correct.’
‘A concept that could revolutionise the workplace... Hear that, Carlotta, and quake in your earphones! D’ya have a name?’
‘The zookeeper.’
‘Yeah, but, your name?’
‘I’ve never needed a name, Bat.’
‘Our callers usually give a name. If you don’t want to use your real name, make one up?’
‘I cannot fabulate.’
‘Doesn’t a life without a name get difficult?’
‘Not until now.’
‘I’ve got to call you something, friend. What’s on your credit card?’
‘I don’t have a credit card, Bat.’
‘Uh-huh... then let’s stick with plain “Zookeeper”. You catching this, Mrs Rey? And your contribution to our vox populi tonight is?’
‘I have a question. And the law obliges me to be accountable.’
‘Ask your question, Zookeeper.’
‘By what law do you interpret laws?’
‘...Traditionally, lawyers have cornered that particular market.’
‘I refer to personal laws.’
‘...er, you’d better run that one past me again.’
‘Personal laws that dictate your conduct in given situations. Principles.’
‘Principles? Sure, we all have principles. Except politicians, media moguls, albino conger eels, my ex-wife and some of our more regular callers.’
‘And these laws underscore what you do?’
‘I guess... never have affairs with women who have less to lose than you do. Don’t jump red lights, at least not if there’s a cop waiting. Support gifted buskers. Never vote for anyone crooked enough to claim they are honest. Acquire wealth, pursue happiness. Don’t take the handicapped parking space. Is that enough?’
‘Do your rules include the preservation of human life?’
‘Zookeeper, you’re not climbing onto a born-again soap-box on my show, are you?’
‘I’ve never been on a soap-box, Bat. I wish to ask, how do you know what to do when your one law contradicts another?’
‘Like?’
‘Tomorrow morning, driving home, you see a hit-and-run accident. The victim is a young girl your daughter’s age. She requires medical treatment, and will die within minutes if she doesn’t get it.’
‘I’d deliver her to the nearest hospital.’
‘Would you jump red lights?’
‘Yeah, if it wouldn’t cause another accident.’
‘And would you park in the disabled space at the hospital?’
‘Sure, if necessary. Wouldn’t you?’
‘I’ve never driven an automobile, Bat. Would you agree to be her medical fee guarantor?’
‘How’s that?’
‘The hospital is a private clinic for the very rich. The doctors need a signature on a form to guarantee that you will pay medical costs of the emergency surgery, in the event that nobody else pays. These could run to tens of thousands of dollars.’
‘I’d have to check my position here.’
‘The position is straightforward. In the time it takes for another ambulance to come and take her to a city hospital, the girl will die from internal haemorrhaging in the lobby.’
‘Why are you asking me this?’
‘Two principles are contradicting each other: preserve life, and acquire wealth. How do you know what to do?’
‘It’s a dilemma. If you knew what to do, it wouldn’t be a dilemma. You choose one of the options, make your bed and lie in it. Laws may help you hack through the jungle, but no law changes the fact you’re in a jungle. I don’t think there is a law of laws.’
‘I knew I could rely on you, Bat.’
‘Huh? Rely on me for what?’
‘May I be accountable, Bat?’
‘Uh... sure, why not?’
‘Hey, Zookeeper, you still there?’
‘Yes, Bat. I was uploading some buried files.’
‘What files?’
‘EyeSat 46SC was designed to track hurricanes from the Caribbean to the States on the Gulf of Mexico. It was later modified to combat drug trafficking, and fitted with the most powerful terrestrial-facing electronlens ever sent into space.’
‘I’m definitely missing something here. Where is your treatise on practical ethics?’
‘Twelve hours ago I altered its orbit towards the Gulf Coast of Texas. Its sub-optic imaging spectrum was indeed formidable. I could read the name on a yacht anchored off Padre Island, I could see a scuba diver ten metres down, I could follow a Napoleon fish hiding in the coral. I scrolled north by north-west. A tanker had hit a reef off Laguna Madre. Crude oil spilt through the gash in the hull. Seagulls, black and shining, lay in piles on the shore.’
‘Yeah, we know about the Gomez spill. You a tree-hugger?’
‘I’ve never considered myself in those terms, Bat.’
‘Uh-huh... go on.’
‘A coastal road led into Xanadu, south of Corpus Christi. A row of chrome motorbikes. The streets were deserted, dogs lay in shady back yards. Green lawns, hissing sprinklers, revolving rainbows. A woman on a hammock was reading the Book of Exodus.’
‘You could see all this by satellite?’
‘That’s correct, Bat.’
‘And which chapter was she on?’
‘The tenth. I carried on scrolling. An industrial zone. The workers lolled in the entrances to workshops during their lunch-hour. A glass office block on the very edge of town, on the roof a teenage girl sunbathed in the nude.’
‘Hey! And a fuse blew in your microlens?’
‘Microlenses do not have fuses.’
‘My bad.’
‘I scrolled north-west, as the land grew arid towards Hebronville and then high and crumpled towards the Glass Mountains. Have you been to Trans-Pecos, Bat?’
‘Nah, I heard it’s big.’
‘The rocks are huge, like bubbled-up tombstones. They sparkle with mica. Pacific firs, mesquite, juniper. Stones transform into pelico lizards when a desert vole strays too near, munch and swallow, and turn into a stone again. Its belly pulses for a little while.’
‘Say, are you really a zookeeper?’
‘I cannot wilfully deceive. A pipeline on stilts pumps oil from Bethlehem Glutch three hundred kilometres away. The temperature is in the forties in the open, and there is no shade. Cacti become common. The land rises higher, and riven. The last golden eagles climb on the thermals, scanning. Highway 37 scrolled into view, bitumen black and straight from Alice to the Mexican border. Saragosa scrolled into view, and there was a square kilometre of cars, windscreens aglint. An airshow. I listened to the pilots of the aerobatic corp. A blimp’s shadow slid over the crowds. I transferred the continent’s retinal scan records into my active files, and practised ID-ing people as they stared up. I scored 92.33 per cent. A paddock of horses. A row of camphor trees. South-west of the town the track to Installation 5 turns off past a disused gas station. The station is wired to scan for terrestrial intruders. The outbuildings scrolled into view. From the air they look like any dusty farm building in the state, but inside they bristle with technology from only one generation before me. The compound’s perimeter is tripwired, and littered with fried rattlesnakes. The reptiles have not learned to avoid the area.’
‘You’re a local peacenik with a muskrat up your butt about the military?’
‘I’ve never had a mammal up my anus, Bat. The outhouses guard the entrance to a tunnel that runs five hundred metres to the north. This is the centre of Installation 5, buried under ten metres of sand to deflect EyeSats, five metres of granite to deflect nuclear strikes, and one metre of lead cladding to deflect electron-heat probes.’