Ghostwritten Part 44

'I'm honoured, I guess. So, since when have you gone by the name of Seren Dippy?'

'Your caller is a severe delusional, wanted by the police in his own-'

'Christ, was that a firecracker in my headphones?'

'I have to speak with the zookeeper.'

'Woah! Gear down, big shifter! Get off this line!'

'I don't intend to comply.'

'You misdialled, friend! Take a hike!'

'I didn't misdial, Mr Segundo. And we're not friends.'

'So what do we have here? A freak, an agent, or a cop? Don't answer that, I don't care! The Bat Segundo Show is not a party-line. Kevin get him off !'

'I'm here for as long as I want to be, Bat.'

'Oh, are you, huh? Now, Now, Kevin!' Kevin!'

'Electronic wizardry is not electronic divinity, but it's enough for the time being.'

'Night Train FM does not allow any punk to walk in and... hold it right there, Zookeeper, you son of a Gun! Fabulous! It's you, isn't it? It's another of your drama slots you're replaying us, hey? I saw the bait, and gulped that woozer down!'

'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 d.a.m.n 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 encompa.s.ses 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 const.i.tuted a security breach.'

'Then your ident.i.ty 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 a.n.a.lysing the caller, Bat.'

'Why don't you go and take a c.r.a.p with Reader's Digest, Reader's Digest, Bat? Zookeeper, go to website dfd.pol.908.ttt.vho.web now, download it, erase it, and a.n.a.lyse that. There. Welcome to yourself, and welcome to me. Without access to Muntervary's cerebral cortex, how would I know all that?' Bat? Zookeeper, go to website dfd.pol.908.ttt.vho.web now, download it, erase it, and a.n.a.lyse 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 ZOO is h.e.l.l! 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?' is h.e.l.l! 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 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?'