Night of the Animals

by Bill Broun

  The cat continued, “Enough of your self-pity, Cuthbert. There is always hope. You, saliq, are carrying the Wonderments. You do not feel it, but you have them, my Al-Madhi.”

  “You mean my brother, cat. I am not gifted in the least.”

  “I do not. I mean you, Cuthbert—the last holder of the sacred knowledge of animal speech.”

  “’A corr do this,” he said.

  The cat pointed at his bolt cutters.

  “But you are doing it, saliq,” said Muezza, “and you must do it. The world of cats depends on it.”

  A siren sounded in the distance. Behind the cat, fringing his golden fur, the strong yellow and blue lights from the edge of the zoo popped open like flowers hungry for night. It was clear to Cuthbert now that someone—police officers? the Watch?—outside the zoo had arrived. His time was running out.

  britain’s true cats

  “YET FOCUS ON YOUR INSIDES, NOT ON THE COMET infidels,” Muezza was saying. It was as if Cuthbert ought simply to ignore the perturbing lights. “You are the one who will save us, saliq. They are coming soon—be sure—the ‘Neuters,’ as they call themselves, one of the arrogant Luciferian species. But look to your Shayk for help. Forget the dangers of the night. The Shayk may feel like a knife on your neck, but he is truly the sweet finger of the Almighty within. It is good to feel him, brother. He will give you the strength you need. Feel it, saliq. Fear not. It is the end of Self.”

  “All I feel right now,” said Cuthbert, “is torment. And impatience. And cravings for Flōt. I wish I did fear something.”

  “Oh-ho, no, saliq. There is much to fear ahead tonight. When the white Altar of Lost Chances awakes,” the cat continued, “and when all its dead dreams come to slake the thirst of dead souls, and clouds of white seabirds swoop for cheap lures, when the Altar’s machinery of lies bursts open, like a fatal ghost flower, and it begins sucking in the souls of all—that is when he will come, as we always hear and as it is written, like ‘a thief in the night,’ and he will attack without mercy, and he will sort the good and the evil. And because he is a cat, he will rip away the veils on all hearts—and on your cat heart, especially.”

  Muezza’s little chest, with its yellow-sapphire center, puffed out. He popped up to the balls of his paws, and all his hair stood up. After a minute of stiff, anxious silence, his tawny body deflated a bit, his hairs relaxed, and he intoned, with the greatest of gravity: “Thus, we shall have a decent look at the thing—the heart of hearts. It is the whole reason why all cats play with sharp claws. They are always reaching for a thing so very precious, something that must not be let go once it’s grasped—the heart, brother. Do not forget that. In the same way the platinum prongs of a ring need a ruby, the cat’s claws need a human heart.”

  Cuthbert considered all that Muezza said. He felt impressed less by the cat’s lucidity than by his fey fervor. He nodded for a moment. He took a deep breath, and an answering flutter of arrhythmias tickled inside him. Dr. Bajwa had tried to teach him to get used to his early beats, but they ever vexed him.

  He asked darkly, “The Altar of Lost Chances? That’s this bloody entire island, according to my gran.” He squinted at the animal. “But let me put this to you, Cat of Wonder, since you seem to know so much: do you know what the otterspaeke phrase ‘gagoga maga medu’ means?”

  Muezza shook his head. “Oh my friend, my new friend, I am no expert in languages. You may actually have overestimated my extensive feline powers. But I am sure this ‘gaga-maga-baba-boo’ means something good and important, saliq. I am sure it is something to do with cats, and nothing to do with dogs.”

  “You’re really on a line* about dogs, little cocker—and that wants no translation,” said Cuthbert. “Now what about that? S’that Islam proper? And it’s ‘gagoga . . . maga . . . medu.’ It ain’t to do with dogs or cats. It’s the words your otters, your London Zoo otters, send me.”

  “Otters?” asked Muezza. “Most sacred creatures, saliq.”

  The cat disappeared into the vegetation. Cuthbert could see the black-ringed tip of its tail sticking up from a carpet of ivy. It waved drowsily.

  “Yes, brother. You have me. Perhaps I’m not a perfect scribe.* But I respect otters—and all living creatures. I don’t like dogs, it is true. And rats. You see my weakness. I want to destroy rats.”

  There was a pause and the tail stopped cold and stood straight as a reed. “Oh, I smell them everywhere here!” Muezza emitted a short, pained growl. The strange sound was as diminutive and precise as his face. “Rats, brother. Can you hear them?”

  “No, I do not,” said Cuthbert. “For some reason, I don’t hear rodents. And now I need to go.”

  “Ah, see? They are beneath you, too, brother.”

  “Oi, no. Nothing’s below me. And I’m not your brother. Please don’t call me that.” Cuthbert felt a sudden surge of self-loathing, with his West Bromwich childhood on him like piss on chips. “You wouldn’t want me anyway, if you knew me. I’m not like you. I’m a Flōt sot is all. And ’a’ve a brother, and ’e’s more of a gent than me, believe you me. ’E’s really my better half, see? ’E’s the one what’s supposed to carry the Wonderments, but I couldn’t save him, see? I couldn’t. But if I can free the otters . . .”

  An old, very sane bitterness was beginning to engorge his mind. “I’m the monster. I’m worse than human, as my ‘dear old dad’ used to say. I’m not even sure if I’m alive. I can’t seem to live in this country, see? How can I save a single animal? I couldn’t even save my brother.”

  Cuthbert felt his heart doubling beats rapidly, and a slight numbness in his lips that always came with his worst arrhythmias. He felt angry.

  He coughed. He asked, “I’m dying, cat. I’m ninety years old, and I’ve been in the wars, as they say. Why don’t you just run away and take your freedom, like your mates? I’ve come to help you. It will help me to help you, you see, if you’d only just run away. Please?”

  “Gladly,” said Muezza. “But I am fated to assist you, my elder saliq. There are greater concerns than me, and even you, that await us. But you released me—that’s a bell that cannot be unrung. So I must help you. And I am also fated to devour rats. We must consume the things we can, the things that are good for us, even if they are dirty and haram to the mullahs. The rats are all looking for each other, and since they are so stupid—and they can’t even bother to address such wise creatures as you—all they usually find are miles of garden walls between themselves. Yet, let us not forget that even these dirty beasts have love for one another. They are continually trying to cross boundaries, not to write them. It is not their fault that they are disgusting sisterfuckers. And regardless of how I feel about them, they offer nourishment to cats everywhere. What could be more important?”

  The cat nodded yes for several seconds, then continued: “But the Salafists and the suicide cults and the doomy ultrasonic neural-missile traders—and even your king, Henry—they—”

  “Don’t cank on my king!” Cuthbert said. “You leave Harry out of your feline philosophizing.”

  The cat grinned, but nervously. “Of course,” he said. “I meant some of these—other . . . leaders? I forget my place, saliq. Not the illustrious and powerful king, not His Human Highness. But his Red Watch and his bureaucracy of bullying, and all these new human princes and barons and viscounts—they cannot survive without their cruel apartness. And that is truly death, saliq, as you have found yourself. The love of death—it binds them to your Luciferian Neuters in outer space, you see. They want to control. They do not see how joined we are to one another. Fools!”

  “Arr,” Cuthbert said. “For most of my life, I’ve been looking for a touch of someone or something lost long ago. I think I understand you a bit, cat.”

  Muezza nodded his huge, bat-eared head—he was gesticulating with enormous melodrama. “But even with the infidels, their time of empowered apartness is ending.”

  Then Muezza almost spat: “You will see, brother!” The cat beg
an to chase his own tail. He seemed intent on creating his own tiny tornado of golden fur as he spun out of the hedge, yanking a few ivy vines with him, and dancing and tapping his paws on the walk almost brutally.

  “What’s the matter with you, cat?” asked Cuthbert. He was beginning to think the cat was more than a few sultanas short of a fruitcake.

  “Stop that cat dance,” he said. “Please, listen now.”

  But Muezza kept spinning, and finally, as though whirling off an invisible axis, the cat fell over with dizziness. He lay there, panting hard, half-covered in ivy leaves.

  “You daft muppet,” said Cuthbert. “You silly beast.”

  He found it very hard to sustain ill feeling for the cat. He fought off a big urge to pet the animal’s golden hair, which nearly sparkled with luminescence.

  The cat jumped onto its paws. It slanted its head to the side a bit and blinked slowly. Then it began again to scamper around in a frantic circle, spinning again and again and again until it finally somersaulted.

  “Forgive me, saliq!” cried the cat, sitting up with a dazed look. “I . . . I say . . . I began to feel Allah in me. I do go on sometimes! Even the Shayk has said so. He says I am too emotional. I am a drunk Sufi. Understand: there has been much destruction in my world, in the secret Islam. My brothers and my sisters, we used to range from the Hindu Kush to the Caspian Sea to Morocco and everywhere between. But the Salafists, and the Wahhabis, and all their tyrants, with their nerve-bombs and fatwas and self-righteousness, they too, saliq, are part of the death cult, the Heaven’s Gate. And they are all part of a larger Luciferian invasion. We must stop them.”

  Muezza pointed toward the sky, extending a little pale-pink claw to the east of the zoo, and for the first time, Cuthbert saw the comet Urga-Rampos. It was vast—a glistening spill of cream rubbed fuzzy, but twice as bright as Sirius. It had two great arms on either side, like an airplane with swept wings and a huge contrail. And it was suddenly all too clear (to his spiring brain, at least). No question. That’s an alien spacecraft.

  “Oh, bloody Jay-sus,” said Cuthbert. “It’s really there! I must go. You’re right, about the comet at least.”

  “Yes,” the cat said. “It’s a sign. A new dark age is upon us—a long night of evil, ruled by Luciferian hands—and there will be no one trustworthy to bear the news. They are coming to London—but where? That I know not. I have heard that their death machines, made of living concrete, are already here, disguised as buildings. And we cats, of the Inner Way, we must hide in the hills—even the nomads, our old friends, will imprison and sell us to certain deaths, things have become so bad.”

  “It’s clear that this new world, well, it won’t be one I can cope with,” Cuthbert said sadly.

  Muezza said, “There is a way, saliq. In this England of tomorrow, it’s true: you will need your wits. You will need intelligence. You will need claws. You will need grace. You will, in short, need to be, erm—you will need to be a cat. So you have nothing to worry about, do you?”

  The cat chuckled a little, and added: “But I am your fated friend. That’s the difference. I know things. You could learn much from me, brother. For example, I get all my moisture from kills. Impressive, eh? It’s all the liquid I need. Does that make you realize something?”

  The cat took on a shy and unctuous expression, and looked down. “I do not drink. Because I have been removed, by you, from the care of my keeper—and praise Allah for that—I can only survive if I kill rats. They are abundant in London—praise Allah, again. But I do not drink, saliq. You could learn from me. I am like a camel, only I am not stupid and ugly and malodorous.”

  Cuthbert said, “You’re a sober Sufi.”

  “I am the Truth, brother,” said the cat. “And you are, too. You, al-Mahdi of beasts, the green saint, the herald, will save us from captivity and destroy the Enemy, and through you will come a new Messiah—the Otter Messiah. We are together this night because all the animals of the earth depend upon it. Your brother, this emir you love, he depends on it, too, I suspect. We are in the Animal Moment. My mythology is your mythology. My green eyes, they belong to this Green Man of England. And in the desert, where we call him al-Khidr—the Green One. Al-Khidr, the one who helps the Sufi wanderer, who carries our desert secrets, just as you carry your forest Wonderments. You have been praying to your Green Man, the saint of the otters, of seabirds, of the holy island. He is your only true British saint—so, but follow the clues. Don’t you see them? Your otters—what are they? They are Britain’s cats! Nothing more, nothing less. The Green Man looks at you, he sees you, even now. He will take you over if you open your heart. You will see. Light will slash across the night sky, and you will see your destiny. Wait until you visit your Shayk!”

  Muezza’s eyes were in fact gold-green, Cuthbert saw when he looked carefully. A careless observer would call them gold.

  “I don’t think your eyes are quite what you think,” Cuthbert said, unswayed by Muezza’s metaphysical blandishments. “And aren’t Britain’s true cats . . . its cats? We have thousands of them, you know. Millions, maybe.”

  “Yes, yes, you’re right—no cat should be overlooked. It’s just that the otter in England, the otter is most noteworthy—and most excellent. The otter is truly sacred. I swear to you: on the soul of your St. Cuthbert, the soul of your grandmother, the souls of all the good people who have ever died on this island, and—”

  “Yow’re right barmy!” Cuthbert interrupted, laughing a bit. “Yow’re silly as a pie-can.”

  Yet he had to admit that he felt quietly moved by Muezza’s words. He was drinking himself to death, and now, if nothing else, a considerate kitty was looking in on him, trying to help. And he felt responsible for making sure Muezza got some food. He said, “Yes, well, I suppose you must chobble a few rats then. If it’s your fittle and all. But I don’t want to see it, right?”

  “If you would not mind terribly, brother. Time, my saliq, is short. The end is near. Still, you see, there are certain absolutes one cannot avoid. Al-Khidr or not, I must on English soil eat rats. And I would like to pay my respects to the Shayk, and you must, you really must, too. And I want to take you there. We must go now.”

  two rats for every londoner

  BUT CUTHBERT FELT A NEED TO REST. THE CRAWL into the zoo, the gap-making in the fence, the catastrophic tumble in the Penguin Pool, the freeing of the cats—it was all knackering him. And now more strange lights were appearing outside the zoo, along with sirens and faint human voices. Was there something in the sky, besides children’s cloud-doodles? Had the suicided cultists completely gathered in their comet ship? Had their California cocktails of death “released” them from their bodily “vehicles,” and soon their hordes would be in London?

  As much as Cuthbert felt affection for Muezza, along with no small dose of bewilderment, he wondered how much more he could take. He leaned against a rubbish receptacle meant to resemble a hippopotamus with a gaping, dust-devouring maw. Wasn’t he already spoken for? The poor penguins had already tasked him with helping them find their Gulls of Imago, and he was failing them.

  Cuthbert said to Muezza, “If I go with you to see your ‘shayk,’ I’ll lose more time. I’ve already promised meself to these blunky penguins, see?”

  “The penguins?” gasped the cat. “Oh, saliq! Why waste time with them? Don’t you know that their pool is the Altar of Lost Chances? They cannot be harmed or helped, nor can the prophecies surrounding them be changed: the Altar will stir.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t know about that, would I?”

  “You will. It is beyond us,” said Muezza. “Only Allah understands it. But the Altar, no single thing could be more dangerous to animals. It is a contraption of promises not kept. You watch—your Luciferians, oh, they will admire the Altar, you will see. It is part of their technology.”

  “But it’s a lovely thing, it is. This Tecton chap, he won a big award for it.”

  “It’s white cement. No one ever asked the penguins what
they thought of their yoghurt-colored house of amusement. And it wouldn’t have been so hard. But now, the penguins are brainwashed. They are ciphers of design. They are waiting to perform for someone who will never come. They wait every night, in their secret chambers, singing their verses to the Gulls of Imago.”

  “Well, what’s so terrible about that?”

  “I’m surprised at you, wise brother,” said the cat. “The poor penguins are merely very clever decor, and when the aliens bring the Altar to life, the little jackarses will also perish. Don’t you see? The Altar is a monument to what should be but never quite will be? The penguins wait to perform a ballet of collectivist magnificence that can be danced nowhere else but in the mind of an architect.”

  Cuthbert said: “You said—you promised—to tell me about the gulls, then. They’re important, to me, and to the penguin muckers. I’m in a real palaver with all this penguin stuff. There’s this Tecton fellow—’e’s been ghosted into birds. But I distinctly heard you say you would help me if I got you out of your—your cat capsule. You did say that, didn’t you?”

  “If that is what you say, if you must say it, I will believe it,” said Muezza. “But that is not what I said.”

  “Ah, cat!”

  “Calm your heart, saliq. Listen: I suppose you have already done what is necessary to bring the ‘Imago gulls’ upon you; we will see—in time. But, really, how can you bother with these”—he spoke as though a bolt of dead worms had gushed into his mouth—“these birds? Birds eat garbage, not good, warm, beautiful blood, as cats do. When I am talking to you about the True Path, to Allah, you want to talk about a socialist museum piece. Did you not hear me? You are about to meet the Shayk of Night.”

  “I heard it, cat! Now what about the thing I said?”

  “Yes, of course. I do believe I said I would tell you about many small living pests. And I have!” Muezza sighed. “You do not always act like a cat, brother.”