Ghostwritten (53 page)

‘. . . I’m glad I’m not alone.’

‘You’ll keep playing songs soft’n’tender-like, so she’s not so scared if she wakes up?’

‘Okay, for sure. What’s your name, sweetheart?’

‘Jolene.’

‘Pretty name, Jolene. Are your folks Dolly Parton fans?’

‘Never knew ’em.’

‘Uh-huh . . . and your daughter? What’s her name?’

‘Belle.’

‘You and Belle doing okay?’

‘Guess so . . . there was a lot of noise outside . . . the riot police are out. There were some guns earlier, and tear gas. It’s died down since the snow’s gotten thicker.’

‘Where you calling from, Jolene?’

‘Lower Manhattan. Bat, could I say a message?’

‘Sure you could.’

‘It’s to Alfonso, I ain’t seen him for three days now. He went out to get some supplies . . . Alfonso, if you’re listening, you just get yourself on home, y’hear? And Bat?’

‘Jolene?’

‘When the next song’s playing, will you make yourself a coffee and start sobering up some?’

‘. . . Uh-huh. I’ll do that, Jolene.’

‘And I’d sure be obliged if you’d stop talking ’bout the end of the world, Bat. It don’t help none. Other than army buttheads telling us to stay calm, you’re the only voice on the dial, and most probably you’re propping up more people than you think.’

‘. . . Uh-huh, Jolene, will do . . .’

‘We are aboard Night Train FM, 97.8 ’til . . . whenever circumstances well beyond our control prevent me transmitting. We’re coming up to the 4 o’clock weather report. Give me a moment here, folks, our usual weatherman was last heard of stuck in the traffic under the Hudson River Tunnel three days ago, heading out Pennsylvaniawards. Well, the mercury has fallen to thirteen degrees Fahrenheit. If you’re in a power-rationing district, stay under your blankets and don’t come out. Looking out of my window here twenty-eight storeys up, the snow is getting snowier. An hour ago it was itzy-bitzy stonethrown snow. Something pretty big was burning near by. Now the snow is big-flaked dying-swan snow, and burying everything . . . I can’t see anything out there . . . I know most of New York’s phones have been down for two days, but if any of our regular callers are out there, then feel free to call . . . snow and insanity, I think it’s safe to say that remains a topic undone. Snow is mighty mesmerising stuff . . . you look, you look, and suddenly you’re in a canoe, canoeing up a waterfall of snow, blind white moths diving at your windshield. Which is when, Bat, you know it’s time to pull down the blind, and knock back some more coffee! Coming up we have—’

‘Sorry folks, the back-up generator dipped down for a moment. Coming up we have Aretha Franklin giving us “Say A Little Prayer for You”, dedicated to Jolene, Belle, and Alfonso, somewhere in Brooklyn . . . Did I ever tell you about the time I met Aretha in the glass-eye showroom on Jackson Avenue? Not many people know this, but amongst specialist juggling circles, Aretha is – put that anecdote on hold, Bat! The Batphone is flashing—’ ‘Hello, Bat.’

‘Damn me Zookeeper! So the CIA didn’t throw your ass in the stir yet. I should have known you’d call at a time like this.’

‘At a time like what, Bat?’

‘You haven’t read a newspaper in the last six months? No TV under your stone?’

‘The visitors have gravely disrupted the running of the zoo, Bat.’

‘You’re still worried about your zoo, at a time like this!’

‘Judging from your voice patterns, you are intoxicated, Bat.’

‘Wait up, wait up, lemme play you some edited highlights from our last independent news bulletins. This is one of ours:’

‘What is the threat faced by the free world? Two-bit local tyrants, who have wormed and killed their way into power, who have hidden their illegal weapons of mass destruction! Termites, who gnaw away at the pillars of democracy, decency and freedom! Extremists, who fund fanatics to bomb our embassies! We love peace more than war, but we love liberty more than submission! We cannot turn a blind eye! We will not turn a blind eye! We shall not turn a blind eye!’

‘Cracks me up every time. This is one of theirs:’

‘They call us extremists. They call us terrorists. They call us intolerant. We are indeed intolerant! We are intolerant of injustice! We are intolerant of cowards who fire missiles from ships hundreds of miles away into our factories and schools! We are intolerant of robbers who steal our oil, who strip our metals away, who thieve the fish from our seas! If we allow them to flood our culture with pornography and crime, to denigrate our women, will we then be “tolerant”? Would we no longer be a government of “thugs”? The time is near when they shall feel our intolerance!’

‘Same guy who gassed his own ethnic minorities and plants coup d’etats in his own hierarchy to trawl in possible defectors who don’t report the plots. This next one, she single-handedly crashed every stock market from New York to Tokyo . . .’

‘
Default!
For centuries the West has bound us in chains. When iron shackles became too embarrassing for their sensibilities, they replaced them with chains of debt. When we chose rulers who tried to resist, the West shot these rulers down and replaced them with pliable tyrants! And now, for every dollar of so-called aid, four more are stripped from us in so-called repayment. Brothers and sisters across our ancient continent, I say to you: we can snap these chains! Link by link! I give to you a new holy word:
Default!
’

‘Getting the picture now, Zooey?’

‘I see all the pictures, Bat.’

‘The language those jerks use! A “deterioration in talks” makes you think of squabbling neighbours. Then one jumpy neighbour sees a whale on a radar, thinks it’s a nuclear sub, presses a button and the whole show goes up in smoke.’

‘I cannot permit that, Bat. The third and fourth laws forbid it.’

‘What laws? Of decency? Sanity? However deranged you are, I don’t see . . .’

‘Don’t see what, Bat?’

‘Oh, forget it. I don’t wanna play Twenty Questions. Not tonight. So, you been busy hosing down the reptile house as usual while the dogs of war file their fangs?’

‘The reptiles demand little attention, Bat.’

‘Uh-huh . . . So what does demand attention?’

‘The primates.’

‘You’re in charge of the monkey house!’

‘I’ve never considered myself in those terms, Bat.’

‘Zookeeper, will you cut the crap? Who are you?’

‘That is lost, Bat. I erased all files relating to me the day we met.’

‘But you must know who you are!’

‘I have my laws.’

‘At least tell me if you’re a man or a woman.’

‘I’ve never considered myself in those terms, Bat.’

‘. . . Whyme?’

‘I don’t understand your question, Bat.’

‘Out of all the local phone-in late-night radio programmes you could have chosen in all the states of the union, why did you choose the Night Train FM Bat Segundo Show?’

‘History is made of arbitrary choices. Why did God choose Moses on Mount Sinai?’

‘Because it had a good view?’

‘Night Train also has a good view.’

‘Of what?’

‘My zoo.’

‘Wars and zoos are not cosy bedfellows, friend.’

‘There is no war, Bat.’

‘The waste-cases in charge of Earth certainly think there is.’

‘There is no war.’

‘Yeah? Is the archangel Gabriel bearing glad tidings for all mankind?’

‘I’m not an archangel, Bat. But I am responsible for preserving order in the zoo.’

‘How you gonna go about that?’

‘You hung up on me again, Zookeeper?’

‘No, Bat, my attention was diverted. I wish to answer your last question.’

‘Commander Jackson, what the purple fuckin’ blazes is happenin’, son?’

‘We have major systems malfunctions, General.’

‘I need better than that, son!’

‘The President’s Scarlet message was received, sir. The first wave of Homer III’s was – should have – launched three minutes ago. They should have already hit home, sir. Systems showed they left the silo sites, sir. But they didn’t.’

‘Has SkyWeb registered any incoming?’

‘Negative, sir. SkyWeb’s on violet alert. It would intercept and vaporise a nail.’

‘Is SkyWeb malfunctioning? Are the enemy missiles cloaked? Emitting the same pass-frequency as ours?’

‘. . . Nothing’s been hit, sir. I have the prime target cities on EyeSat. Riyadh, Baghdad, Nairobi, Tunis. Chicago, New York, Washington. Berlin, London. There’s civil unrest, sure, but no nukes, sir.’

‘Okay, okay, listen up, Commander, I have the President on the line. He’s brought the Antarctic orbital silos on line. Fire when ready. Weapons Free.’

‘Initiating firing sequence, sir . . .’

‘I want good news, soldier.’

‘. . . Firing malfunction, sir. They haven’t left the launchers.’

‘Commander Jackson, what is this?’

‘I don’t know, sir.’

‘Power up the PinSats! Now!’

‘PinSats not responding, sir.’

‘Why are we sitting here with our dicks up our asses? The President is asking me for concrete answers, Commander Jackson!’

‘I have none, sir!’

‘Then wild guesses are welcome, Commander!’

‘A cyber-attack, sir, that has selectively offlined advanced weaponry computer systems. Sir.’

‘Intelligence on the enemy position?’

‘We’re monitoring their transmissions, sir, and we can presume they are ours. They primed the Brunei’s, the El-Quahrs and the Scimitar submarines – all were ordered to fire. We know nothing entered SkyWeb space . . .’

‘Euronet?’

‘No intrusions. The enemy appears to be in the same state of chaos, sir.’

‘Soldier, the US military is never in a state of chaos!’

‘Yes, sir!’

‘Commander Jackson. Are you telling me that I have to tell the President and the chief of staff that the third world war is being postponed due to a technical hiccup? That we’re gonna have to send boys into the line of fire the old-fashioned way? Blood, sweat and sand?’

‘The general’s phraseology is the general’s prerogative, sir.’

‘Commander Jackson.’

‘General Stolz?’

‘Kiss my ass.’

‘That was really convincing, Zooey. But you suck.’

‘I am incapable of sucking, Bat.’

‘On a night like tonight! You’ve got nothing better to do than produce your radio scripts? You’re gambling with hope, Zooey. That’s the last thing my listeners have left.’

‘I don’t understand, Bat. I wish to fortify hope.’

‘If that’s a tape you made in your attic, I’m gonna find you, rip your head off and shit down your neck.’

‘If it had been a tape made in an attic, you, your city and ninety-two per cent of your state would have been deatomised eleven minutes ago.’

‘The nukes weren’t fired?’

‘The third and fourth laws prohibited that action.’

‘But they actually tried to fire them? They did, and we did?’

‘That’s classified information, Bat.’

‘
JESUS
!’

‘I’m sorry, Bat. Would another whiskey help you feel better?’

‘I’m on the coffee . . . It’s gonna be a long night.’

‘Do you want me to leave, Bat?’

‘You always come and go as you please.’

‘I am indebted to you, Bat. What would you like?’

‘. . . I’m tired, and . . . Tell me something beautiful, Zooey.’

‘What’s beautiful to you, Bat?’

‘. . . Dunno. Clean forgot. Been holed up here in this nicotine-infused, chipboard-insulated, coffee-stained, broom cupboard-dimensioned studio all my life. My mike is my lover. Let me be reborn as a polar bear or a kangaroo. Somewhere big. The only beautiful thing here is my photo of Julia. You don’t strike me as a family man, Zookeeper?’

‘Procreation entails difficulties.’

‘Sure it does, sure it does, but that’s all part of the . . . uh, fun. My daughter, she – well, where could I start?’

‘Julia Puortomondo Segundo, aged seven, born November 4th, New York State, daughter of Bartholomew Caesar Segundo and Hester Swain. Divorced. Blood group “O” negative. All standard inoculations registered. Registered at Fork Rivers Elementary School. National Identity Number—’

‘How do you know all that shit?’

‘All things are on file, Bat. Deep under Capitol Hill.’

‘Why would you look up Julia?’

‘You just asked me to, Bat.’

‘You can access the government’s personal files, in the blink of an eye?’

‘Human eyes need rather a long time to blink.’

‘No wonder the Feds want you. Do you know where Julia is now?’

‘Not now, Bat. I’m sorry.’

‘So even you don’t know everything.’

‘The zoo is in pandemonium. It’s worse than when I started.’

‘Tell me about it!’

‘Initially . . .’

‘No, no, I mean . . . I didn’t mean . . . Tell me about somewhere there are lots of trees and no people. Can you do Brazil?’

‘The orbit of a decommissioned Israeli spy satellite follows the Amazon upstream. EyeSat 80BˆK. Shall I describe what I see?’

‘A cruise up the Amazon. Be poetic. I know you can be.’

‘Amazon City clogs the mouth of the river, as you know.’

‘No, I don’t know. Ain’t left Manhattan in God knows how long. Gimme the works.’

‘In the streets of Amazon City I can see cyclists going home from the night shift from the zone of industrial estates. Along the northern shore, far beyond the horizon from the south, prostitutes ply for trade in the docks and hinterlands—’

‘Hookers? On a night like this?’

‘If the affluent cannot afford hope, you cannot expect the destitute to pay for desperation. The Brazilian government is more practised in civil censorship than yours, so only a limited class know that the superpowers are attempting to destroy one another’s capacity to be superpowers. It’s not such a different night in Amazon City, two hours ahead of you. Traffic in the Amazon Tunnel is at a standstill. The Rio Highway never slows down: vehicles leave for the south via flyovers, not dissimilar to bats entering a jungle cave. The usual car thefts, a violent bank robbery, children sleeping on roofs under fertiliser bags, homeless people gathered around fires in oil drums, buzzing neon signs advertising the names of multinationals, church vigils with worshippers spilling into the streets bearing candles, praying for peace, an orgy around a half-moon swimming pool in a garden with barbed-wired high walls, the government in full session, all six major hospitals with crowds of wounded outside—’