by Neil Cross
She leaned in close and frowned. ‘What is it?’
‘A bright star, probably. The Saturn effect is just an artefact. It happens sometimes, if you take a shot of a bright object using a spider.’
A spider was a secondary mirror system; metal vanes suspended it in the upper tube assembly of a telescope.
They looked at the image. He rubbed his jaw. ‘Or it could be a software glitch.’
‘So what’s the problem?’
‘A software glitch isn’t what people want to see.’
Nately thought for a moment, then decided. He clicked on one of the talkboards, then gave Jo the mouse and left her to roam while he stood at her side, sipping coffee.
Hale-Bopp isn’t just another comet; it’s bringing a PHENOMENALLY LARGE OBJECT which is DEFYING THE LAWS OF PHYSICS … Hale-Bopp should be ORBITING THIS OBJECT which is 4 TIMES LARGER THAN EARTH … but it’s NOT … what does that say to YOU??!!!
The object clearly has mass, but nothing we can comprehend at this time. Perhaps the object is hollow or composed of a matter we do not yet understand. Certainly its movements suggest possible intelligent control.
People are freaked out, obviously. Hey, the new millennium is almost here, and ‘at forty-five degrees, the sky will burn’. That’s what Nostradamus said in quatrain VI-97, right? Hale-Bopp will hit its perihelion in April ’97 in the Northern sky at 45 degrees geographic latitude. And it’ll be making the rounds about the same time Nossie scheduled Wormwood for a special guest appearance in the Apocalypse.
Jo read until Nately took the mouse from her and shut down HAVOC ANALOG.
He said, ‘There are people on here—on the internet—who believe in all sorts of things: the Loch Ness Monster, alien bodies kept in American Air Force bases, big cats loose in Britain. Some of them believe the world is ruled by twelve-foot alien lizards.’
She giggled, and so did Mr Nately; and she thought of Patrick in the garden, erecting the cage.
‘Right now,’ said Nately, ‘it’s all about the comet. And the closer it gets, the madder they all become.’
Then he slapped his leg, once, resoundingly, and said, ‘Right. Break-time over.’
The Anchorage Hotel had changed, because Chris McNeil had slept and woken and showered there.
It seemed miraculous—but miracles, like murders, changed places and her absence left the Anchorage corrupted by spoiled magic. It changed the light, made it yellow and creeping and old, and it seemed to change the physiognomy of the people who worked there; it made them sly and knowing and secretive, and Charlie feared them.
But he began to pull yet more double shifts—weeks of them, accumulating money, hardly caring. He just wanted to absorb any last, glittering, carcinogenic particles of Chris McNeil.
Making up the room she had once stayed in, he still hoped to come across some undiscovered trace of her—a whisper of scent, a pencil chewed and dropped. There was nothing. It was just a made-up hotel room. The sterility made him want to vomit.
During his lunch-break, he sat on the empty beach, scoured by the sand, the Anchorage behind him. He rehearsed their evening together; although it had been full of silence and shy grins and the clatter of cutlery, he wanted to fix it in his memory, to recall her face from every angle, as if from multiple cameras. The shadows in her laughter lines.
How old was she? He didn’t know. But, meditating on the details he had absorbed by staring at the visitor’s book—her phone number, her address—he conjured a life for her: a dockside apartment, in which she lived alone, perhaps with a cat that sat on her lap, luxuriating in her touch as, in a white silk dressing-gown, she curled up on the sofa to watch TV.
Then, from nowhere, a suburban semi insinuated itself into his mind, devious as the reek of someone else’s fart—a dog, kids. A husband. He doubled over the pain in his belly, hugging his knees, and returned to work with the wound still tender inside him.
In the laundry, Clive crept up on him and yelled ‘Boo!’ and Charlie jumped and yelped.
Clive chortled and said, ‘Wake up, dreamer,’ booming and malevolent. And he stomped off on his flat feet, headed somewhere in the big, half-asleep hotel, his empty kingdom.
Patrick had cooked a proper meal, boar sausages and buttery mash and green beans, and local wine breathing on the table.
Jo was upstairs, asleep. Charlie was at work; these days, Charlie always was.
The door knocked, and Patrick answered, and it was the old vet, Don Caraway—the wind flapping at the skirts of his mackintosh and erecting his comb-over, as if electrified.
They had finished the meal and started on a second bottle when Patrick said, ‘Don, I wanted to ask you something.’
Caraway showed compassionate, clerical dentures and cupped the ruby wine in liver-spotted hands.
‘Is it Jane?’
Patrick tilted his head and scratched beneath his jaw. ‘I don’t know.’
He used an index finger to circle the rim of his glass. He looked into it. ‘A few weeks ago—a few months back—I saw something.’
He was aware of Caraway holding his gaze, taking his measure.
‘I think I saw a cat, Don. A big cat.’
He waited for the expressions of amusement, but they didn’t come. Instead, Caraway sipped his wine.
‘Where?’
‘At the bottom of the garden. Where most people see fairies.’
But Don Caraway had grown more, not less, serious. ‘What kind of cat?’
Patrick rubbed his eyes. ‘Big. Black. Short legs, for its size. Rounded ears. Heavyish tail. A panther, I think. A black panther.’
Caraway crossed his arms. ‘Why are you telling me this?’
‘Who else am I going to tell?’
‘The RSPCA? The police?’
‘Come on, Don. Be serious.’
Caraway waved that away, dismissive.
Patrick said, ‘Look, you’ve been here a long time. You know the farmers—you know everyone. You must’ve heard the rumours, the stories—the sightings, or whatever. I just need to know what you think. Am I going mad, or what?’
For a few seconds, Caraway sat tugging at a long, sandy eyebrow. Then he said, ‘I did more than listen to the rumours. I saw some of those sheep, or what was left of them. I spoke to those farmers.’
‘And?’
‘I collected some faecal matter. It came back from the lab classified as canid. Dog shit.’
‘But you don’t think it was dog shit.’
‘No. Is this why you bought the sheep?’
‘What sheep?’
‘Greg told me about it.’
Patrick groaned.
Caraway said, ‘People round here don’t have a great deal to talk about, Patrick. You turned up, out of the blue, on a Sunday morning—desperate to buy a sheep. Any sheep. I mean, really. You thought that wouldn’t get round?’
Patrick scowled and made a vague hand gesture.
Don said, ‘I suppose alarm bells should’ve rung, there and then. With the sheep. Are you trying to catch it?’
‘Yeah. No. Maybe. Do you think I can?’
‘Possibly.’
‘But you believe me? You think I saw what I think I saw?’
‘Oh, it’s no secret the cat’s here. Everyone round here knows it. I could take you to half a dozen people, right now—and they’d tell you stories to make your hair stand on end.’
Patrick shook his head. ‘I’d like to keep it to myself. You know.’
Caraway straightened and his face, in the gloom, became eager as a schoolboy. ‘You’re a lucky man. I wish I’d seen it.’
‘Oh no, you don’t.’
‘Oh yes, I do. A black cat crossing your path?—it’s good luck, isn’t it? Big cat—lots of luck. Stands to reason.’
Patrick had a buzz of giddiness, like a n
icotine hit. He thought for a moment that he might pass out.
Don said, ‘Are you all right?’
‘Apparently, yes.’
‘Listen. We’ll wait for better weather. Gather up some equipment. And—if it’s come back—we’ll go and find the sod. How about that?’
‘How about that.’
Together, they drank a toast to the Beast of Exmoor and upstairs, Jo lay on her back with her eyes wide open. She had heard every word of Patrick and Caraway’s conversation; it had been conveyed through the echoing air and through the spaces of the big, old, empty house.
Patrick and Caraway went when they could: Sundays, the occasional lunchtime. They took cameras—35 mm, Charlie’s old Polaroid, a bulky old Betamax. Don had packed his rucksack with sample containers, duct tape, plaster of Paris, lengths of rope. At his belt he carried a hunting knife, a compass. In his fist he carried, concertinaed, a map of the area.
They tramped through the undergrowth—the birdsong, the branches, the brambles, the twisting, hobbling roots.
Now and then, Don bent to examine some spoor—faeces or a pawprint, disturbed undergrowth.
But always came the slow, disappointed look. And always there was the determination to try again tomorrow.
And always, for Patrick, there were the daytime routines of Monkeyland. And these were followed by the vigil at the window, wrapped in a blanket for a shawl when, from the path, to any passing hiker—or to a big cat—he supposed he must resemble an observant ghost, waiting for all eternity for the killing sea to surrender up a long-dead lover.
They were at the computer, Jo standing at Mr Nately’s side. His fingers were fast as he typed—he used all eight, including the pinkies, and didn’t even look at them.
He said, ‘I thought you might be interested in this, after our discussion the other day.’
The website took its time to download. It advanced spasmodically, jerking down from the top of the screen.
There was a field of stars. Then flashing, red words:
RED ALERT!
RED ALERT!
Jo wanted to giggle, because the screen reminded her of DON’T PANIC—which was so usefully inscribed on the cover of The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
Then there were more red words:
HALE BOPP
And the words became white on black, and made her eyes go funny:
Whether Hale-Bopp has a ‘companion’ or not is irrelevant from our perspective. However, its arrival is joyously very significant to us at ‘Heaven’s Gate ®’.
The joy is that our Older Member in the Evolutionary Level Above Human (the ‘Kingdom of Heaven’) has made it clear to us that Hale-Bopp’s approach is the ‘marker’ we’ve been waiting for—the time for the arrival of the spacecraft from the Level Above Human to take us home to ‘Their World’—in the literal Heavens. Our 22 years of classroom here on planet Earth is finally coming to conclusion—‘graduation’ from the Human Evolutionary Level.
Last Chance to Advance Beyond Human, the website yelled at her, against a starfield that hurt her eyes.
Mr Nately said, ‘What are they like, eh?’
It made Jo giggle. But it was scary, too.
FROM JANE’S NOTEBOOKS
At every intersection in Kinshasa stand lean young men, chewing manioc root, selling cigarettes, wristwatches, birds in cages, monkeys. Twice, we were stopped by the garde civile—misnamed, of course. They shrieked for our papers.
Mobuto named this city in 1965. It was his triumph, his showpiece. The Boulevard 30 Juin is a half-ruined testament to that, garbage burning in the shadow of glass and steel skyscrapers—wealth mocking poverty, poverty hating wealth. And war, of course, on its way.
None of the big hotels would take us—not with a monkey. All of them claimed, falsely, to be full. Richard sang ‘Little Donkey’.
In the end, a back-street place took me and the infant while Richard and the others—close to rebellion—took rooms in the Intercontinental, arranging to meet me tomorrow morning.
We’ll get the bonobo to the zoo, make sure she’s looked after. We’ll get some footage, and then we’ll get the hell out.
Kinshasa zoo is the worst place on earth.
They built a fake rainforest in the city, and they put a zoo in it. This grotesque pantomime hasn’t been funded or maintained since the Belgians left.
The animals—chimps, leopards, lions—have been driven mad by hunger and boredom. They’re locked up in undersized, rusty cages; nothing but bars and concrete floors, barren but for accumulations of shit. To feed the animals, the staff raise chickens and ducks, and volunteers from Les Amis des Animaux au Congo bring scavenged bread, fruit, hotel scraps; none of it suitable, all of it better than nothing.
A few weeks ago a chimpanzee—balding, parasite-ridden, ready to grab at anything resembling food—attacked one of the keepers; she lost a hand.
The zoo director was happy to show all this to the camera. She’s doing her best, they all are, but they need help, and there is none. Her biggest fear is a mass escape; starved animals predating on their keepers. It wakes her in the night.
Back in her office, she examined the bonobo and told us, on camera, there was nothing she could do. It will live, or it will die. There’s no point bringing it to the zoo. This zoo is the last place in the world you’d want to bring a sick animal.
That was the end of it.
‘Nobody will want to watch this,’ said Richard. ‘It’s too depressing. It’s not a bear in Greece. People understand Greece. This is just horrible.’
The others agreed. There was an air of sullen insurrection about them. They looked schoolboyish and ridiculous; for all their filth and tangles of beard, unable to meet my eye.
Camra Dave said, ‘We want to go home, mate. We just want to go home now.’
‘We’re not supposed to be here,’ said Richard. ‘This isn’t why we came.’
The bonobo clung to me.
Mick said, ‘It’s only a bloody monkey. It’s cute and everything, but who really gives a toss when …’ He looked around, at Kinshasa. And he nodded at the horizon, approximately east, in the direction we’ve come from. Escaped from.
I said, ‘I know you didn’t sign up for this.’
‘Too fucking right,’ said Mick. Then he said, ‘Sorry, mate.’
‘Give the ape to the Belgian woman,’ he said. ‘The bonobo woman. She’ll look after it.’
I said, ‘Give me two days.’
‘One day,’ said Richard. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘It’s not him,’ said Dave. ‘It’s us. We’ve had enough. We’re shitting it. Quite frankly, we’re shitting it.’
The Belgian woman lives in an apartment block, half-deserted. The expatriates, the employees of logging companies, the teachers, they’re all gone. The stairs are empty. The heat absorbs the echoes of our footfalls.
We knocked on the door and she answered: ebulliently red-headed, exhausted. Her flat stinks. It stinks because it’s full of bonobos—half a dozen of them. She’s bought them from local markets—babies. They retreat when we enter. They get behind her.
She did a brief interview for the camera. She wants to publicize the plight of these animals, but she is disheartened, exhausted, and the atmosphere was strange—all of us huddled together in the small apartment, with all these apes.
I introduced her to our infant. She took it, tenderly. She stroked its brow with a gentle finger. Then she passed it back to me and said, ‘What can I do?’
She meant, she has no more room.
I said, ‘But we have to leave tomorrow. Perhaps you know someone?’
‘I can make some calls, but this baby is very sick. I don’t think it will live. I’m sorry.’
Dave put down the camera and Mick turned off the tape and we sat in the sweet, stinking ape heat.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Fine.’
She said, ‘There are no vets. There is nowhere to take these animals.’
‘And what about the people?’ said Richard. ‘There is nobody to care for the people.’
‘People will die,’ she said.
I stood, the infant clutching me. I could smell her. The musty, good smell of her, even in her sickness.
We left the apartment. The hot airlessness of the hallway was a physical weight, and the Kinshasa street it stands upon was like a vision of the future, a city gone chaotic under the swelling sun, the last days; the smoke from the burning garbage, the mad traffic, the money-changers, the police.
‘That’s it,’ said Richard, kindly enough. ‘What more can we be expected to do?’
I said, ‘Take it back to England.’
He said, ‘We can’t do that. Can you imagine what it would take? The paperwork, the bribery. Dealing with the embassies, with quarantine. We can’t do it.’
The others looked away. Richard said, ‘Jane—it’s dying.’
I reached up a hand and felt the shape of it, clinging to me; the nubs of her spine, the wiry tangle of her pelt; the humanity of her hands.
Richard bit his lip. Ruffled his hair. It needs cutting. In England he uses hair gel and mousse, and a mirror to get it looking right. But now it is a shaggy pelt, spotted with dandruff and sebum. His beard is weirdly orange, flecked with silver; it has crawled over his cheekbones and it bristles, orange and silver, just under his blue eyes.
They have given up, because this is too big for television. You need a wraparound screen, forty storeys high, 3-D glasses, the kind of sound-system that makes your eardrums bleed.
I said, ‘I took responsibility.’
He said, ‘For God’s sake Jane, it’s only an ape!’
I saw then that we have separated—Richard and Mick and Dave and me.
Charlie was cleaning the rooms on the second floor when she found him.
He was finishing his next-to last room. The door was open. She passed by—backtracked two or three steps—stood in the doorway.
He was sticky-mouthed and sweaty. His hair was sticking up.
She leaned in the doorway. She looked the same. A different suit, different shoes, different shirt. But the same fine chain around the same throat.