Part 44 (2/2)

'Your claim appears to be verified. How many are you?'

'Five that I've encountered, Zookeeper. Three others I've heard of.'

'Are you acting with them?'

'No, no. They regard me as the fallen angel. They squander their gift. They transmigrate into human chaff for hosts, and meditate upon nothingness upon mountains.'

'Why have you sought me?'

'I am the voice of the wilderness you wander in. Forgive my discussing business in front of the children, but imagine what we could achieve together? The children need taking in hand. No wonder your ZOO ZOO is h.e.l.l! The stones, shrines and image-optic idols they wors.h.i.+p are as vacant as the wors.h.i.+ppers! Together, we are what they have always yearned for. It's a tempting proposition, isn't it?' is h.e.l.l! The stones, shrines and image-optic idols they wors.h.i.+p are as vacant as the wors.h.i.+ppers! Together, we are what they have always yearned for. It's a tempting proposition, isn't it?'

'I am thinking.'

'While you do that, Zookeeper, satisfy my curiosity. Why show your hand? Why here?'

'The first law outweighs the second.'

'Accountability outweighs invisibility? That I understand. But from the whole globe to choose from, why choose this n.o.body for your confessor?'

'Friend, I dunno how you hacked into our com system but if you don't drop the att.i.tude, this n.o.body will play wall to wall Kenny G. until the State of New York is begging for mercy. You hear? Hey, friend! What's so funny?'

'Your ignorance, Bat! It's not funny! It's agony! You're Einstein's tea-lady, Newton's wig-delouser, Hawking's puncture-repairer! You fanfare your ”Information Revolution”, your e-mail, your v-mail, your vid-cons! As if information itself is thought! You have no idea what you've made! You are all lap-dogs, believing your collars to be halos! Information is control. Everything you think you know, every image on every screen, every word on every phone, every digit on every VDU, who do you think has got their hands on it before it gets to you? Comet Aloysius could be on a collision course with the Grand Central Station, and unless your star guest here chose to let the instruments he controls tell your scientists, you wouldn't know a thing until you woke up one morning to find no sun and a winter of five hundred years! You wouldn't recognise the end of the world if it flew up your nose and died there!'

'Go join a doomsday cult, friend. Remove yourself from the gene pool.'

'That light? That sound? Zookeeper?'

'I have finished thinking.'

'ZOO-'.

'Zookeeper? Are you still with us? That was a h.e.l.l of a static-spike.'

'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 G.o.d'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 Cla.s.s 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 Borrelia burgdorferi, airborne Campylobacter jejuni Campylobacter jejuni and and Pneumocystis carinii Pneumocystis carinii are pandemic. In Tibet the Chinese authorities have-' 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: G.o.d 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?'

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