The Last Zoo Read online

  The others look at each other.

  ‘Ding ding ding!’ says Wilma. ‘We haaave a winner.’

  ‘Plan C it is,’ says Ishan.

  Pia squints. ‘Sorry, what? I thought I just said I don’t have any answers?’

  She looks at Ishan, who grins. ‘You said it yourself. We need a fly on the wall. Threedeep, you still got that vid-link with that bluebottle?’

  Please, Ishan. They prefer to be called security drones. But yes, I do.

  ‘OK, get ready to ping it.’

  (b^_^)b

  ‘How high up is your authorisation, Weevis?’ asks Wilma, calling over to the secretary.

  Weevis looks insulted by the question. ‘Very, very high.’

  Gowpen grins crookedly. ‘Is that a surveillance-authorising level of high, or...?’

  And suddenly Pia understands.

  ‘Oh,’ she says suddenly. ‘You’re right. Plan C is pretty clever.’

  [QUARANTINE SHIP]

  Urette stands on the deck of the Quark in the aftermath of the battle. Around her, the splattered shells of bluebottles squelch under the feet of her followers. As she watches, another of the security guards aims his rifle at another security drone. The air shimmers and wobbles as the heat beam builds and boils. The bluebottle tries to fly out of range, but it melts mid-air into a black gloop and hits the deck like tipped paint. Even with a breather on, the air smells thick with the stink of burnt plastic.

  Urette’s followers cheer. Now the security forces have joined her, the bluebottles have retreated. There is no one left who can stand against her now. She hasn’t just built a movement: she has built an army.

  An army that has conquered the zoo.

  Victory is bitter, though. In her mouth, she can still taste it: the iron tang of her blood, spilled during her battle with Siskin. The Whisper has taken away all the pain from the bruising, though. It can do things like that. Take bad feelings away. Sorrow. Fear. Loneliness. Doubt.

  Whenever it happens, Urette’s followers call it a miracle. But it isn’t. She knows. A miracle is given freely. What the Whisper does has a cost.

  What else happened, up there on that deck? It was less than an hour ago, but already the memory is hazy, as if her thoughts are covered with cobmist. All she can remember is the feeling of everyone listening. Of people around her. Of not being alone.

  All the things the Whisper promised.

  It was wonderful, at first. The way they listened. The way they looked at her. Not in a fearful way, like they had before. But with attention. Respect. Even worship.

  It hadn’t even mattered that the words tumbling from her mouth weren’t even hers, they were the Whisper’s. She barely even remembered them after speaking them. Something about darkness, about light, about a child. A load of doomsay, really. Who cared? What did a few lies matter, if they brought the zookeepers comfort?

  It became easier not to listen. To just stand there and bask in the adulation. One by one, the zookeepers came to her hourly meetings. She was amazed how quickly it happened. Within a day, almost all the zoo was with her. Going viral, they called it in the old times. She remembers. It is just like that. Viral.

  She even has followers now.

  But not friends.

  No, that isn’t true. There was a girl. When? It seems for ever ago.

  But she drank Urette’s tea and politely pretended to like it and asked Urette about the photos on her wall, and that memory isn’t fuzzy at all.

  None of her followers have ever done that. Not Vivi, not Wanda, not even the Whisper. Only that girl.

  What was her name?

  Pia.

  And Urette can’t remember what she has done to Pia, but she knows it is something terrible.

  But no, that wasn’t her. He did that. He said those words.

  Urette gets shakily to her feet. Enough. No more. She will go to the others, and tell them that this is all just foolishness.

  No sooner has she decided than He comes back.

  But we had a deal, Urette.

  He isn’t a Whisper any more. He is louder now. Stronger. A Voice.

  ‘I’ve done everything you wanted,’ she whimpers. ‘Just leave me alone.’

  You wanted to be listened to, says the Voice. You wanted to be heard. Didn’t you? Didn’t you?

  Urette’s skin goosebumps. Fear lays a thousand tiny eggs under her skin. ‘Not any more,’ she says.

  Ah, buyer’s remorse. We know it well. But a deal is a deal. A deal is a deal is a deal is a deal is a deal...

  And Urette feels herself slipping, feels the Voice taking control again, and she can’t stop it.

  ‘Leave the bluebottle,’ she hears herself say to her followers, who are trying to shoot one of the few remaining drones hovering nearby. ‘Get below deck. Get control of this ship’s autopilot. Direct it towards the celestial ark. To defeat the darkness, we must free the light.’

  28

  ALPHA QUEEN

  Urette’s words are picked up by the bluebottle in fly-on-the-wall mode, transmitted back to Threedeep and converted to text on the nanabug’s screen.

  Leave the bluebottle. [inaudible] Get below deck. Get control of this ship’s [inaudible] towards the celestial ark. To [inaudible] the darkness, we must free the light.

  ‘Free the light?’ Ishan turns to Pia. ‘What light is on the celestial ark? Does she mean those old genies you’ve got?’

  But Pia shakes her head. She feels a sick plunging feeling as she falls towards a realisation. It hits her with a smack.

  ‘Oh Seamstress,’ she whispers. ‘Oh no, oh no, he – he couldn’t have...’

  Wilma raises her eyebrows. ‘Who couldn’t have what?’

  ‘That’s why I couldn’t hear him,’ Pia breathes.

  ‘Couldn’t hear who?’ says Gowpen.

  ‘I led him right into the spider parlour, and he went and made a deal with her...’

  ‘Pia?’ Ishan takes her by the shoulders. ‘Let’s have some proper nouns please.’

  ‘Bagrin.’ Her heart thuds. ‘The zoo’s devil. It’s him. Urette’s just the puppet, and Bagrin has hold of her strings. She must have signed herself over. Now she has to obey everything he says. Like an employee obeys their boss. All this chaos: the doomsay, the disappearing voilà too, I’d bet... It’s Bagrin trying to get free from the infernal prism.’

  It seems almost obvious now. Back on the deck of the Quark, she noticed how Urette seemed to stand on a stage in front of them and read lines from a script. There had just been too many other weird things going on back then for Pia to zero in on it.

  ‘We have to stop the doomers,’ she says. ‘Bagrin’s been recruiting them like a personal army to bust him out of jail.’

  ‘Hold on, hold on!’ Weevis comes back over and butts in, bogging them down with questions, but Wilma pulls him aside and does the explaining: how the prism only keeps Bagrin’s body in one place, but that devils have the ability to project their voice, and send chimeras, and even make deals with people far away.

  ‘I thought the lead door blocks out his temptations, mostly?’ Ishan says.

  Pia screws her eyes shut with the shame. ‘It’s, uh, a little bit open at the moment...’

  Gowpen facepalms. ‘Oh, Catastro-P. Seriously?’

  ‘If he gets free...’ Wilma trails off. Everyone knows what happened the last time a devil escaped its prism, but no one wants to say it.

  ‘How is he kidnapping all the voilà, though?’ Ishan says.

  Gowpen shrugs. ‘Dunno, but he’s probably doing it to send everyone nuts.’

  ‘Not everyone. We’re OK.’ Wilma looks upwards, as if inspecting her own brain. ‘I think?’

  Ishan nods. ‘Yeah, how come he’s only sending the grown-ups doomcrazy? Why not us too?’

  Zugzwang coughs. ‘Dev
ils, man. Tricky, tricky.’

  ‘We can solve how and why later,’ Weevis snaps. ‘Bagrin cannot be freed. We have to get Blom and zephyr to the celestial ark to stop the doomers. Urette told them—’

  ‘Bagrin,’ corrects Wilma. ‘Bagrin told them.’

  Weevis glares at her. She smiles sweetly back.

  ‘Bagrin told the doomers to turn the Quark towards the celestial ark. That means they don’t have enough genies with them to zephyr there all at once.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s just Boppity-Boo on the Quark, I think,’ says Pia. ‘Other than that, there’re only genies with no beard length at all.’

  Weevis thinks. ‘If they zephyr there one at a time, the bluebottles will stun them. They need to swarm the place in numbers. That gives us time. But we have to hurry.’

  They all nod solemnly. An image flashes in Pia’s mind: a single blazing eye, sat burning in its crystal pyramid of a prison, waiting to be freed.

  They turn in the direction of the hummingdragon hive. To rescue Blom. To stop Bagrin. To finally put an end to this colossal mess.

  • • •

  The hive is quiet as they come close. A few hummingdragons flit from their rocks and zoom around them, but their curiosity wanes when they realise no one carries anything shiny. Soon the tiny creatures crawl back into their holes and are gone again.

  ‘They’re all sleeping inside those rocks,’ Weevis says sourly. ‘On little piles of trinkets.’

  Ishan regards the pile of rocks. It is twice as tall as any of them. ‘It’ll take hours to look inside all those holes.’

  ‘We don’t have the time.’ Weevis points at one singed eyebrow. ‘Plus I already tried that.’

  Why not summon their Alpha?

  ‘Threedeep!’ Pia hisses. She carries the drone in her arms like a child. ‘Turn your screen off! It’s too shiny!’

  ‘Hold it,’ Weevis put up a hand. ‘What does your nanabug mean, an “Alpha”?’

  ‘As in, the leader of the pack, right?’ says Wilma. ‘Like what you’re trying to be.’

  Weevis glares at her. ‘As opposed to what you are? Which is a total and utter—’

  ‘OK, OK, OK,’ Gowpen says. ‘We get it.’

  Weevis scowls, and Wilma blows him a kiss, which he doesn’t quite know what to do with.

  Hummingdragons operate on feudal principles, Threedeep chats, regardless of Pia’s attempts to quieten her. The specimens you saw are of the peasant caste. They pay a tithe of all riches gathered to their Alpha, who typically resides at the top of the hive with the warrior caste.

  ‘Could’ve told you that, if I’d had my goggles,’ says Zugzwang mournfully.

  ‘My mirrorangutangs have an Alpha too,’ says Wilma. ‘He’s a total pain in the neck. Thinks he’s the boss. I have to be super polite if I want them to do anything.’

  Yes, politeness will be key. Hummingdragons are very sensitive voilà. Nevertheless, I am sure we can bargain for Blom’s return. Hummingdragons speak in fire and smoke, not sound, but it is possible to replicate the flame patterns via my screen. I have Zookeeper Arlo’s translation files.

  Weevis narrows his eyes suspiciously. ‘Why have you got those if you were assigned to the celestial ark?’

  Pia knows the answer before it even rolls over the screen. ‘Threedeep is always well prepared when it comes to making new very good friends.’

  ‘OK,’ Wilma says. ‘Chat to these little fiery bird-things, get Blom back. This will be easy. Three cheers for the drone.’

  ✺◟(^ ͜ʖ^)◞✺ Hip hip hooray!

  Pia grins at the nanabug. ‘Is there a risk they’ll go for you though, Threedeep? You saw what they did to Zugzwang’s goggles.’

  ‘Don’t talk about that,’ Zugzwang moans. ‘It’s still too raw.’

  It depends on the nature of the hummingdragon Alpha, Threedeep chats.

  ‘We don’t exactly have many other options,’ Ishan points out.

  Very true. Pia nods. ‘Fine. But everyone get ready.’ She looks up at the miniature mountain. ‘If this Alpha turns nasty, they might send their whole kingdom to war with us. It’s going to take everything we have just to beat a devil. We can’t be battling dragons too. Even tiny ones.’

  Pia holds up Threedeep to the very top of the pyramid, and the drone’s screen lights up. A sequence of yellow pixellated fireballs appear, like a kind of Morse code.

  Seconds later, an emerald-coloured hummingdragon flits from its hole. It hovers in front of them, an arm’s reach away, and coughs out three fireballs that fizzle in the air. Pia wrinkles her nose from the chemical smell. Wilma puts her breather back on. The hummingdragon flies off towards one of the very top rocks in the hive.

  ‘Did you do it?’ Pia asks Threedeep. ‘Is the Alpha coming?’

  I hope so.

  Nothing happens for a moment. Then a dozen ruby-red hummingdragons shoot out into the air and hover in a formation of two straight lines.

  ‘What are they doing?’ Ishan whispers.

  Wilma grins through her mask. ‘Rolling out the red carpet. You did it, Threedeep: we’re getting a visit from royalty.’

  ‘Non-cybernetic organisms...’ Ishan shakes his head. ‘So weird.’

  Down the corridor of air between the red hummingdragons appears one of royal-blue. The honour guard spout rainbow-coloured flames as the Alpha passes, in what Pia imagines is a kind of fanfare. Unlike the rest of their species, the Alpha flies slowly. Almost lazily. All except for its wings, which are a rippling glow either side of its body.

  The Alpha flies right up to Pia and Threedeep, so close and stationary that Pia’s breath catches. The majesty of it. The perfect interlocking scales, the mouth filled with needle teeth, the eyes that burn with white-purple fury like peepholes to a furnace. Staring into them Pia felt that if in their squabbles for treasure one hummingdragon was to cut another, it would bleed molten fire from its wounds.

  The Alpha coils its neck. Its tar-coloured tongue licks the air and breathes out a long arc of blue flame.

  Threedeep’s node whirrs and a clunky translation comes up on the nanabug’s screen: [I is Queen Yrekk’n, Third One. Tribute, where is? Offer shiny.]

  Pia raises her eyebrows. A queen? That’s how the Alpha saw itself – herself? Not just as a leader, but as a monarch? So Wilma had been right in her interpretation of the ruby-coloured hummingdragons. A red carpet, huh? What other royal symbols might this dragon be interested in?

  ‘Tell her to give Blom back,’ Weevis tells Threedeep, whilst Pia is still thinking. ‘I’ll get Blom to thrint her a – I don’t know – a diamond or something. Whatever she wants.’

  Pia winces. That doesn’t seem like the right way to speak to royalty... But Threedeep’s screen has already translated Weevis’s words into flames and fireballs.

  Queen Yrekk’n reads everything with her head tilted sideways, one eye narrowed to a slit. Tiny threads of smoke and heat simmer from her nostrils as she replies.

  [I is Queen Yrekk’n, Third One. Mightiest of Three. Summit of the Mountain. Holder of {translation: error} Humans be unworthy mush-sacks! OFFER SHINY!]

  Weevis huffs irritably. ‘Tell her I will give her shiny. But she has to give me my genie back. And tell her we’re in a hurry.’

  This time, when Threedeep translates, Queen Yrekk’n erupts in fury. Her twelve ruby servants fly forwards in a blur, circling the Rekkers and belching fat sizzling globs of napalm. Ishan gets one on his collar that Wilma has to tear off and throw on the floor. Gowpen shrieks and ducks down with his hands over his head. Zugzwang roars out, ‘What the null, man?’ and brandishes his fists.

  ‘Wait! Wait! Everyone, stop freaking out!’ Pia tries to calm them. If anyone knows what an impending disaster looks like, it is Pia. The hummingdragons might be small, but there are hundreds of them, and they can breathe fire, and apart from Threedeep everyone
is highly flammable, so they do not want to annoy the queen any more than Weevis already has.

  ‘Zugzwang, don’t you dare! Gowpen, stop screaming! Weevis, shut up! Threedeep, tell the great and terrible Queen Yrekk’n that the unworthy mush-sacks beg for her mercy.’ Pia bows low as the drone translates her words.

  At once, the fireballs stop. Queen Yrekk’n turns her head and regards Pia with her other blazing eye.

  [Queen Yrekk’n has big fury with mini mush-sacks. No shiny given. Much rude. Other {translation: error} see.]

  ‘If you had just actually listened to my—’ Weevis gets no further, because Wilma clamps a hand over his mouth and says into his ear: ‘Shush now.’

  Pia gives Wilma a grateful look. A plan is forming in her head. If there’s one thing she has learned from Bagrin, it is this: in negotiations, you have to tailor your chimera. Find out what someone desires and offer it to them. Queen Yrekk’n already wants shiny – but she also wants something else too. The same thing every queen wants, no matter what their species: respect.

  ‘Threedeep,’ says Pia, ‘tell Queen Yrekk’n that we mush-sacks are very sorry. We are very stupid and unworthy, and wish to pay her a very great shiny indeed.’

  Queen Yrekk’n tilts her head. At once, her rage seems to cool.

  [Great shiny what is?] The colour of her flame is a coy pink.

  Pia ignores the question. ‘We would have given it sooner, but we did not recognise the great Queen of the Hummingdragons at first.’

  At this, Queen Yrekk’n puffs up her chest, and the ruby warriors behind her hiss and snap their jaws.

  [I is Queen Yrekk’n, Third One. Mightiest of Three. Summit of the Mountain.]

  ‘Yes, I realise that now,’ Pia says quickly, aware this is the riskiest part of her plan. ‘But where is your crown to prove it?’

  Queen Yrekk’n cocks her head.

  [Crown what is?]

  And Pia smiles.

  ‘A great precious shiny. It can only be given to a queen, who wears it on their head.’

  [I is Queen. Give crown now.]

  ‘We would be honoured!’ Pia is getting dizzy from all this bowing.

  Queen Yrekk’n cranes her long neck from Ishan to Wilma to Pia. She’s impatient. That’s a good sign.