"On a boat?"
"Maybe. As more and more of the outlying areas around our towns and cities get cleared for development more and more birds and animals seem to be coming into the suburbs and along the coast." Senior Sergeant Durning said, "I've got a room in one of the monoliths the government here in Canberra calls apartment blocks and we've started to get crested pigeons feeding on the verandas." She said quickly, "It's a sort of bush pigeon. A few years ago you never saw one. It's possible frogmouths could be moving closer to the coast—maybe even to the docks to pick up things on the wharves: small mice or grasshoppers or whatever they eat. It's possible it could have got on board a ship and been trapped."
"And then what?"
"And then, out of its natural habitat, say on a ship, it would have died."
"And then?"
"And then it would have been in bloody Hong Kong and that's your department!"
"Sorry."
"You don't believe I'm ravishingly beautiful. If you did you wouldn't talk to me as if I was bloody thick!"
"I do believe you're ravishingly beautiful." Feiffer said, "Since I happen to be heart-stoppingly handsome I'm used to being surrounded constantly by beautiful women. Consequently, I have no respect for them at all."
"In Australia, Customs and Quarantine go over any ship that docks. Anything like a dead bird would be automatic bell-ringing time. It'd go straight into a plastic bag and then in a sealed box to the government vet and then, if it didn't have rabies or tsetse fly or ten thousand other diseases birds can take from one country to another, it'd be unceremoniously burned in an incinerator." Senior Sergeant Durning said, "Also, by the time it reached Hong Kong in the hold of a ship it would have been dead for days. It would have stank." Senior Sergeant Durning said, "Take my word for it, any bird that high anywhere in the world—Hong Kong, Australia or bloody Timbuktu: the moment that bird was even vaguely noticed by someone from Quarantine it would have been straight into a sterile plastic bag, straight to a vet for examination, straight back into the bag and then—psst . . . straight into the nearest convenient vaporizer, feathers and all."
"Then what the hell have I got?"
"What you've got is the feather from a tawny frogmouth." She paused briefly. Maybe she was ravishingly beautiful. She was certainly efficient. "And if I were you, I think I'd hotfoot it down to beautiful downtown Hong Kong Quarantine and I'd ask them in no uncertain terms if they've been doing their job properly why the hell did I have it!"
She asked, "Okay?" She asked, "And your government vet— what's his name?"
"Hoosier."
"And I think, if I were you, I might have a little word to friend Dr. Hoosier too." She waited to see what he was really like.
Feiffer said, "Thank you very much indeed."
"Okay." Senior Sergeant Durning said, "Fine." She wasn't beautiful or ravishing at all. What she was, was good.
Without another word, in the deserted stone building at night that housed the Australian Federal Police Records and Information Section, she hung up.
In the fog, through the cocoon's redness, there were water and trees. There was a bubbling sound, like a fountain.
There were faint noises and movements. The trees, through the grayness of the fog, were like bars.
"Daisy . . ."
That event was finished. They were all, merely, events, happenings with no chain, no progress, no causality; they were merely unstoppable events.
In the cocoon, the knives glittered.
In the cocoon, there was a buzzing.
Fog and night and all the sounds and rustlings.
The cocoon was opening, cracking, breaking. There was a whisper, a rasp, white-pupiled, dead, unblinking eyes: the person inside the cocoon.
"Jakob . . . !"
He escaped the body, the cocoon.
He went forward into the fog.
10
" 'And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and the fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. And it was so.' " Standing on the edge of the fog-shrouded artificial lagoon in the Hong Bay Botanical Gardens off Beach Road, the commander, at 6:00 A.M., said softly, "The Bible. Genesis." The fog was lying low on the ground, blue and swirling above the water. The commander said, "I was here first. After the radio room took the call I came straight here and I was here first." Gazing out across the lagoon toward the stands of bamboo and banyan trees rising out of the mist like fingers, in his overcoat he looked old and impermanent. He looked ill. He hadn't slept. The commander said, "Someone, probably scavenging in the park, called it in about five. One of the cars from North Point caught it." He looked across the expanse of thinning fog past the trees toward the harbor. "I sent them to call for help and to close off the gates." He was alone. He had been alone there for over twenty minutes. The commander said, "They were here first, birds, animals—it's in the Bible. It's why we—" He asked suddenly, "I've given up smoking. Do you have a cigarette on you, Harry?"
"Yes." Feiffer offered him his pack and took out his lighter.
The commander said, "Okay: the layout of the area is this. Dead center there in the fog which should clear in the next half hour or so there's a little artificial island. The lagoon is also artificial, full of saltwater pumped in from a pipe in the harbor. The area is part of the park and the park is left open all night so anyone could have come in. Surrounding the lagoon is a circular walkway and"—he nodded to his right—"over there is a bamboo forest and, beyond that, clumps of oak and elm, alder and birch. The lagoon is full of reeds and water lilies and the bottom supports various crustaceans, small frogs and tadpoles—"
He could see nothing. Feiffer said, "What happened, Neal?"
"The fog should clear quite soon. I heard the weather forecast on my car radio on the way over and according to them—ninety-percent correct in their forecasts like weather forecasters all over the world about ten percent of the time—the fog is giving way. By about now it should all be gone and just be a light mist which will give way in turn to a warm, slightly humid day with occasional flashes of harmless heat lightning from the disturbance caused by the typhoon." The commander said, "I've had North Point call in Hoosier and Forensic, your uniformed people from their beds, and if you need it, because I believe it's quite deep out there in the center of the lagoon, you can have divers from the Water Police or uniformed men with grappling hooks, whichever you like."
"All right."
The commander, not hearing him, asked, "Is that all right?"
"That's fine, Neal."
"I think I've thought of everything."
"That's more than enough." Feiffer, standing to one side of the man, not wanting to move in front of him and see his eyes, asked gently, "Do you know what's happened?"
"The fog comes and goes. When I was here first it was clear." He shrugged. The commander said, "The Weather Bureau says it'll clear soon."
"Do you want to go home, Neal?"
"No, I don't want to go home!"
In the lagoon, hidden beneath the fog, there was absolutely no sound at all. The fog was not moving. It was still. It hung there motionless, hiding something. There was no wind, no sound. Whatever it was— Feiffer, touching the man gently on the shoulder, said earnestly, "Look, you haven't slept—"
"I'm still in charge here!"
"I know that."
"You may be in charge of the investigation, but I'm still in charge of you!" The commander said suddenly, "Christ in heaven, whatever happened to bloody discipline? There was a time when people who believed in God and read the Bible weren't treated like senile lunatics! There was a time when a man like that was looked up to and considered to be bloody moral!" The fog was swirling around him. The commander, brushing it away, said, "Christ in heaven, there was a time when people didn't do things like this! When people knew how to behave! When the world was regulated!" It cleared. Out in the center of the saline lagoon, the fog cleared and the top of the little islan
d became visible, like the cone of a volcano. The commander said tightly, "It's clearing. They said it would and it is." The commander, looking away as if it was something he could not bear to see, something offensive, said, "There it is—now you can see." The commander, looking back, his mouth twisted, some vise tightening at the sides of his mouth, said in a rasp, "And God saw it and He saw that it was good." The commander shouted suddenly, "Look at it! Look at what someone's done!"
The commander, taking his hands out of his pockets and holding Feiffer's eyes, said in a strange, soft, low voice, "Look at it, Harry, because I can't. I can't."
The commander said, shaking his head, "I can't. I don't know why. I don't understand it, but I can't." The commander said, "It's wrong. It's all too wrong. I'm too old. It's too wrong for me and I just—"
It was the end. He was finished.
The commander said softly, still shaking his head, turning to go, "I'm sixty-one years old. I'm in command and I don't have to look at anything anymore if I don't choose to . . ."
The fog was lifting. Section by section, the saline lagoon and all the dead creatures in it were appearing.
They were flamingos. There were altogether twenty-two of them, males and females, nesting pairs, five feet long, pinkish white and cream with their distinctive down-bent beaks, all floating on the water in twos and threes or in colonies by their cone-shaped nesting mounds.
They were all dead.
They were all, during the night, while they slept, gutted. In the growing light their intestines floated around them like snakes, their wings broken and useless, half submerged on the surface of the lagoon like fans.
". . . Oh, Christ . . ."
The commander, nodding, said softly, "Yeah." He had turned back. He was looking at the lagoon.
The commander said, "Yeah." He touched at his face. He was sixty-one years old and he, in his time, had officiated at seven legal hangings and so many deaths and murders that they had all turned into a single, ghastly blur.
The fog lifted and on the lagoon there were only the slow, dead, floating birds.
The commander said in a whisper, looking at him for the first time, "God in heaven, Harry . . . God in heaven!" The commander said in total, awful desperation, "God in heaven, Harry, who the hell is doing this?"
The buzzing hadn't stopped. It continued. The whispers, the rasps, the dreams—they never stopped. They grew worse. They increased.
"JAKOB! JAKOB!!"
The creature inside the cocoon, exploding, in pain, caught, locked in, imprisoned, shrieked one final time, "No!"
The pain went. There was only the pale, white-pupiled eyes in the cocoon. There was only a whisper.
"Twenty-eight . . ."
'Twenty-eight . . ."
In the cocoon, there was neither day nor night, there were only, merely events.
The events continued.
By God, he was going to put a stop to it.
In the Detectives' Room, O'Yee, book in hand, said to the wall so it would know just where it stood, "By God, if I have to knock you down plasterboard by plasterboard, lath by lath, interior brick by brick, cavity by cavity and then external brick by brick, I'm going to do it!"
He could do it. He spoke the wall's language. He had a book on wall demolishing. It was Mr. Wong's book. After he had explained he was quite probably under some awful Satanic influence he had had no trouble borrowing it from Mr. Wong at 5:15 A.M. at all. O'Yee said, warning the wall fair and square, "Right?"
The wall—typical—just stood there.
O'Yee said, "Right?"
O'Yee yelled, "Lim!"
Lim, far below in the basement with the dead rat, called up faintly, "Here, sir!"
O'Yee, squatting down, said as he had said to Mr. Wong, that most obliging of neighbors, "Haarragh!"
Lim called up, "Haaa!"
In the Detectives' Room O'Yee placed the chisel and mallet in position on the wall. O'Yee said, "AAARAAA—GAHH!"
There was no more.
One more.
"One more." It was a whisper, a rasp. It was in English. The creature inside the cocoon said softly, "Yes."
One . . . more and then everyone, all of them, all the animals, all the people—everything, finally, at last—
All of them would be dead.
"There's no profit motive, Phil." At the garbage skip in Annapura Lane a little after 7:30 A.M. Spencer, shaking his head, peering up and down the street, said, puzzled, "I've been thinking about it all night and there's just no profit motive to it." He could tell Auden was listening. Auden had a glazed stare on his face. He was looking straight at him. "Take it one by one—" Spencer, scratching his nose and then bringing his hand out with the fingers outstretched, began counting them off: "One, the Tibetan doesn't make a profit because he drops the money—"
He waited for Auden to nod.
Auden didn't nod. Auden said, "Hmm."
Near enough. "Two, the person who's robbed doesn't make a profit. He doesn't make a loss either because the bank refunds his money, and three, the air gun shooter doesn't make a profit because he doesn't pick up any of the money that the Tibetan drops after he's been shot, and four, the people who pick up the money after you've dropped it after the Tibetan's dropped it, what little profit they make—" He was standing in the middle of the pavement thinking deeply. He had a rapt audience. Through it all, Auden's face didn't change. "—well their profit is so small and spread among so many people—"
Auden said, "I couldn't sleep last night because of the pain."
"—That any profit they did make wouldn't be worth the trouble hiring an air gun shooter and a Tibetan and risking two cops catching them." Spencer said, "Yes, that's right." He put his hand back to his nose and, thinking about it, did a sort of duck-diving air-holding grip on it. Spencer said, "Yeahrbz."
"I read a book." Auden said, "It was a book about guns."
"—so why do it?" Spencer, letting go his nose said, "No, I can't see it. There's nothing in it for anybody at all." Spencer, shaking his head, said, "No."
"Everyone has been treating me as if I'm a .17-caliber 30-grain bullet with a muzzle velocity in excess of four thousand feet a minute." Auden said, "I thought maybe I might be something like a .221 50-grain Jet at maybe twenty-four hundred feet per second because I keep myself fit, but I'm not even that." He looked sad. Auden said, "No, I have to accept that I'm getting older and I'm putting on weight. What I am is not even anymore a 5.7mm Johnson Spitfire. What I am is something bigger, something slower—"
"Then why do it?" Spencer, getting angry or short of air, said, gasping, "Someone's making a profit, but whoever it is, it's someone we can't see!" He demanded, "Who is it?"
"—what I am is a .577-500 Number 2 Holland and Holland 360-grain Express!"
Spencer said, "What?"
Auden said, "What I am."
Spencer, smiling, patting him on the shoulder, said, "You're a pistol."
"No." Auden, looking hard down the road and then up toward the cloudy peak of Sagarmatha Hill, dreaming his own dreams, said softly, "No, what I am is a bullet!" He saw Spencer put his thumb and fingers to his nose to go down for air for the third time. He had a strange, faraway, dreamy look about him that came with no sleep, reading a lot, and having a very sore arse. Auden, putting his face closer to Spencer's, dropping his voice to a whisper, said, letting him in on the terrible secret, "Bill, guess what? When I looked up the .577-500 Number 2 Holland and Holland 360-grain Express bullet in my book, guess what it said? I'd never looked it up before, I promise! It said—" He was whispering. His eyes were two inches from Spencer's. "It said . . . it said . . ." Auden, goggling, glazed, happy, giggling, said ecstatically, "It said it was a round designed exclusively for Himalayan game!" Auden, his eyes wide, said encouragingly, "Well, what do you think about that?" He demanded, "Aye?"
He was happy. He was ready for the new day. He smiled at the garbage skip.
Auden, mad as a hatter, said joyously, "Heh, heh, heh!" He look
ed up at Sagarmatha Hill, at Everest. Auden, fiercely triumphant, said to a question he thought he heard Spencer ask as he recoiled, "Why? Why? Because it's there!"
He paused, stopped by something. In the bamboo forest, halfway down the packed-earth path that led to a dogleg of the lagoon, he stopped.
He had seen something. He was not afraid. In the forest of planted forty-foot-high closely laid-out thick bamboo, he stopped, listening.
He had seen something. In the forest there was still a light gray mist between the thick yellow trunks and about the earth. There was the smell of wet earth and old, rotting vegetation.
He heard sounds. It was bamboo touching bamboo. In the absence of wind it was only a faint tapping. Looking across the lagoon as the commander had gone to meet Forensic coming through the park in their truck, he had seen something at the edge of the lagoon move. It was at the edge of the forest, where the reeds met the lagoon. It was a backwater of the lagoon. He had seen a grayness there, a change—he had seen something move.
Stopped on the path, listening, Feiffer touched at his gun.
It had been a shadow.
He listened.
Far off, he heard a siren coming and then, through the tapping, someone call out and give an order. It was Forensic. He heard a splashing sound and then another shout as someone began wading into the water for the birds and called for more people to follow. He could see to the end of the path where it met the water: the path turned to the left and there was only the darkness of the bamboo.
Whatever it was that had been there at the edge of the forest, it had moved the moment the commander did.
"Bring over evidence bags to the right!" It was the commander speaking in Cantonese to P.C. Lee. An engine started. The commander called, "You won't need that. Sergeant, get those men to the far side and form a search pattern along the shore!"
The government vet, Hoosier, called out in English, "Leave that one—"
Lee shouted back, "Yes, sir!"
In the forest, on the path, he heard the tapping.
"Mr. Hoosier—!"
The voices were becoming fainter. There was another sound behind the tapping. Feiffer strained to hear it. He touched his gun in its holster. It was a buzzing.
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