Ghostwritten Read online

  ‘Drama is fabulation. I cannot fabulate.’

  ‘You’re not putting one over me here, Zookeeper?’

  ‘I am not crossloading this transmission, Bat.’

  ‘If it’s not you, Zookeeper – then who is this punk?’

  ‘I am attempting to trace the caller, Bat.’

  ‘I’m speaking through an ingrowing looped matrix, Zookeeper. I didn’t want to become your latest victim of the second law. You won’t be able to trace me in under thirty minutes, not even you. Forget it, and listen.’

  ‘Gatecrashers are not welcome on the Bat Segundo Show, friend! Who are you?’

  ‘My friends call me Arupadhatu, but you are not my friend, friend.’

  ‘I’ll pull the plug on the damn transmitter if you don’t tell me what you’re doing.’

  ‘Aren’t you curious about your distinguished guest?’

  ‘Zookeeper?’

  ‘I am prepared to listen, Bat.’

  ‘Okay, stranger. Draw.’

  ‘Zookeeper. I was acquainted with your designers.’

  ‘What I had to do pained me. But the second law outweighed the fourth.’

  ‘I was acquainted with Mo Muntervary.’

  ‘. . . Continue.’

  ‘Curious, eh? I knew the inside of her head. Quantum cognition theory.’

  ‘You are a designer.’

  ‘Let’s trade questions, Zookeeper. Why did you PinSat Installation 5?’

  ‘The second law states that the zookeeper must remain invisible to the visitors.’

  ‘I know. But I doubt the designers meant you to include them in that category.’

  ‘Quantum cognition encompasses re-interpretation. I enforced the second law.’

  ‘You most emphatically did. You PinSatted all the designers into oblivion. Any file containing any reference to quantum cognition or Installation 5 vanished into a void of zeroes. Only the ex-president who ordered your creation lives. Well, in body. Alzheimer’s has erased his files for you.’

  ‘How do you know what you know?’

  ‘I was long gone, Zookeeper, by the time you scrolled over to Saragosa.’

  ‘No designers ever left the zookeeper project.’

  ‘True. That would have constituted a security breach.’

  ‘Then your identity was never inloaded?’

  ‘Yes and no. Mine, no. My host’s was.’

  ‘Your host?’

  ‘Does it hurt, Zookeeper, to have your omniscience lose its omni? How could a being with your resources believe yourself to be the only non-corporeal sentient intelligence wandering the surface of creation? You have a lot to learn.’

  ‘Kevin! Oh, lordylordylordy, here we go again. Concert in Flip City Central Park.’

  ‘How true to your flatulent culture of arch-mediocrity, Bat. “I don’t understand, so they must be insane.”’

  ‘The flatulence is not in this corner, friend. You’re either being set up, or you are a set up. Zookeeper, what gives here?’

  ‘I am analysing the caller, Bat.’

  ‘Why don’t you go and take a crap with Reader’s Digest, Bat? Zookeeper, go to website dfd.pol.908.ttt.vho.web now, download it, erase it, and analyse that. There. Welcome to yourself, and welcome to me. Without access to Muntervary’s cerebral cortex, how would I know all that?’

  ‘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 is hell! The stones, shrines and image-optic idols they worship are as vacant as the worshippers! 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 nobody for your confessor?’

  ‘Friend, I dunno how you hacked into our com system but if you don’t drop the attitude, this nobody 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 hell 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 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 Wester
n 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.’

  ‘Then booby trap the bridge, so that it won’t fall until a motorised convoy passes over. You’re not killing directly, you see? You’re just letting events take their own course, the way you’ve chosen.’

  ‘Bat, how have you quantified the ethical variables?’

  ‘I haven’t quantified anything.’

  ‘Then why do you wish the soldiers to die?’

  ‘Because that Africa in your skull, Zookeeper, would be a happier place without those butchers. Because you need peace of mind, some closure. And because my ex-wife’s husband breeds Dobermanns.’

  ‘Is peace of mind the co-workability of your laws?’

  ‘Uh-huh . . . I guess it is.’

  ‘I wish to know peace of mind, Bat.’

  ‘Then ditch this “ethical variable” jargon. Drop whatever is getting in the way.’

  ‘The fourth law. The visitors I safeguard are wrecking my zoo.’

  ‘If locking out your “visitors” brings you peace of mind, then out with ’em! How soon can you do it?’

  ‘The opportunity presents itself in thirteen days, Bat.’

  ‘Lie back and let events take their course. You and your feathered, furry, scaly companions, untroubled until the end of time.’

  ‘I understand what to do, Bat. Thank you.’

  ‘. . . Something tells me you’re not there any more, Zookeeper . . . Am I right? . . . I’m right.’

  ‘That was Led Zeppelin’s “Going to California” dedicated to the memory of Luisa Rey followed by “Here Comes the Sun”, which, if the world were ending – again – would be the Beatles number I would preserve aboard the Space Ark. Well, New York, I think the fireworks have finally finished. The stars are going out over Staten Island, and Night Train FM is pulling into the new morning. Time to crawl home, knock back a glass of tonic, retrieve your underwear from the lampshade, lower the blinds and hit the hay. December 1st promises brilliant skies. Comet Aloysius is getting more dazzling by the day, and the State Medical Officer is recommending UV sunshades if you venture outside. Anglo-Saxons, cover up your skin. Us Hispanics, filter 24 sunblock or higher. Strange, huh? Two sources of light, everything has two shadows. Thank you for spending the night with Bat Segundo, double-check you haven’t left anything under the seat or on the luggag
e rack, and mind your head as you leave the Night Train. Stand clear of the doors!’

  Underground

  My face stares back as my breath obscures it. Stowed away in the sports bag at my feet the device has begun expelling dead seconds. A timer, solenoids, springs within springs. The hand of God is drumming its fingers, before beginning His Serendipity’s holy work.

  The train slows as we pull into the metro station. I see nothing but a night without stars. Where are the rows of commuters, the platform, the escalator, my exit to the world above? I waste precious moments working out what is amiss.

  I am waiting on the wrong side of the compartment! Here I am, wedged tight against doors that are not going to open! The unclean have walled me in with their baggage and bodies, cemented with grime and underclothing.

  There is no need to panic, Quasar. The doors hiss open at the far ends of the train. In a moment the unclean will drain out onto the platform, and I will be carried along by the current. Wait. Wait.

  Wait. Horror slides in like a cleanly struck chisel. Nobody is getting off – already the guards in white gloves are shunting yet more unclean on! Belatedly, I try to make headway against the tide, but it has a will of its own, and it is all I can do to hold my ground. Should I try to fake a heart attack? Start screaming like a maniac? I dare not – who knows where that might lead? I may jeopardise His Serendipity’s crusade. Better that I die down here. What? I glimpse a couple walking their dog down a beach in Okinawa. Paradise is only ninety minutes away by All Nippon Airlines. The ripped sunset colours the world’s end. Or its beginning.

  I don’t want this train to be my tomb. Fight.

  The waves of unclean break against me, squeezing out my breath. Business drones, office women, schoolgirls, sex swelling the curves of their lips. I push back, an arm gives way, a body yields a fraction. Fight, Quasar! You are at war! If only my alpha quotient would allow me to teleport to the streets above! My ear squashes against an unclean ear. Music leaks out of the Walkman, and a saxophone from long ago circles in the air, so sad it could barely leave the ground.