The Last Zoo Read online

  ‘He just gets away with it?’ Wilma’s mouth purses tight with fury.

  Siskin looks at her in surprise. ‘You think Zugzwang was the only one who did any wrong? We all did, Wilma. Will you make Pia pay for trying to cover up the angels’ disappearance? Will you make Urette pay for her deal with the devil Bagrin? Will you make Ishan pay for his foolish theories? Or what about Gowpen, who created a unicorn not because it would save the world but just to make his own mother happy?’

  Gowpen blushes. They all do. Wilma juts her jaw and stays silent.

  ‘We all did wrong.’ Siskin steeples his hands. ‘All of us. But you’re right. Someone has to pay.’

  Behind Pia, the door to the office opens. The two security guards standing there don’t speak. They just let the bluebottle hover into the room, raise up its jabber and crackle it once.

  Will you comply? it chats.

  ‘Yes,’ says Siskin. He turns and put the picture frames down on his desk. ‘I’d hoped to clear the office before you came, though.’

  That is not necessary. You will follow now.

  ‘Dad?’ Zugzwang takes a step forward. ‘Dad, what’s... Dad?’

  Siskin looks at his son. Something passes between them, something like an angel’s presence, something that cannot be spoken, only felt. Then Siskin nods and steps past them, holding up his wrists for the guards.

  Wilma gawps. ‘What the actual? They’re arresting Siskin?’

  Siskin nods, his face expressionless. ‘Of course. I was the one who ordered Zugzwang to voilà a doomvirus.’

  The sentence seems to make time stand still. Pia is stunned. Siskin? Siskin ordered Zugzwang to make the doomvirus? For a moment, she can’t believe it, won’t believe it.

  But then she thinks: this is the man who once zephyred away two thirds of a city’s population to save the rest. What if that wasn’t by accident? What if Siskin has always known the suffering and sacrifice required to truly save the world? Pia imagines him talking to his son, telling Zugzwang, giving him the seed of the idea to take into the Seam.

  And wouldn’t Zugzwang do it? Zugzwang, the boy who would do anything to please his father?

  Or maybe – maybe this is one last lie. Because Siskin is right – someone has to pay for this. There’ll be trials, and prison, and shame. And perhaps Siskin can’t bear to see his son go through that. Perhaps he is taking the blame.

  Looking at Zugzwang’s face, Pia can’t tell. Siskin’s face too is a mask.

  ‘Goodbye, everyone,’ he says. The two guards cuff him and take him by the elbows. ‘Look after the lamp,’ he tells Weevis, nodding over at his desk. ‘It’s antique.’

  Then they lead him away and the door slides shut and the Rekkers and Urette are alone.

  ‘Is that true?’ Wilma says to Zugzwang. ‘Did Siskin tell you to make the doomvirus?’

  Zugzwang just stares behind the desk, at the emptiness his father occupied just moments before. ‘Dad got my name from chess.’ His voice is strangely quiet, as if talking to himself. ‘It’s a position players sometimes encounter during a game where all moves are bad. Move this piece you lose, move that piece you lose.’

  They all stare.

  ‘What the null is that supposed to mean?’ Wilma asks.

  Zugzwang doesn’t look away from the desk. ‘This whole thing has been one zugzwang after another. Even now. Whatever I tell you, you’ll still hate me. What difference does it make?’ He shakes his head. ‘Game’s over. Game’s over.’

  The floor beneath the office begins to shudder and tilt. It is the autopilot, adjusting course, heading for the shores of San Silicio.

  ‘Wait, wait,’ Wilma says, turning to the Rekkers. ‘That’s it? It’s over?’ She shakes her head. ‘Null this. Null this, you hear me? We didn’t save the zoo, we didn’t save the voilà, we didn’t save anything. All we did was survive.’

  It’s hard not to feel like she’s right. It’s all ending. No more Seam, no more zoo, no more Rekkers, no more miracles. And what about hope? Is that gone too? What do they live for now, if not that?

  32

  THAT LAST SLICE

  That night before they reach the city, with the ocean churning in their wake, Pia stands on the deck of Ark One and looks up at the tiniest sliver of a crescent moon in the sky and sees the shape that she saw in her dream. The one given to her so long ago now, by angels long dead. She understands it now. She gets it at last.

  ‘It was a birthday cake.’ She says it aloud to herself, over the engine and the wind and the waves.

  They are still a few hours from San Silicio. The coast is not yet in sight, but all evening the city’s yellow glow has spread slowly up from the horizon more and more, like a fungus, to blot out the stars. Once she sees the moon, once she feels what is about to happen, Pia goes quietly to her temporary cabin, an old ’genieer lab on the lower levels, and unclips Threedeep’s numinous lamp.

  (눈_눈) Pia? Are we there yet?

  ‘No. Go back to standby.’

  We intelligence prefer the term—

  ‘Asleep. Sorry, yes. That’s what I meant. Go to sleep.’

  (-_-)ゞ

  Pia takes the lamp and heads back up on deck. Some part of her knows that it must end as it began. In moonlight.

  On her way through the corridors, she passes a few zookeepers and ’genieers. Most of them ignore her. A few shoot her dark looks. They probably still blame her for everything.

  Out on deck, the city glows brighter than ever. Pia makes her way carefully to the stern, where the horizon is still black and starry and the moon casts its silver spell on the waves rippling out to infinity behind them. She stands there for a long time. It is very beautiful. The night. The sea. This Earth and her moon. She feels the beauty as a kind of pain in her heart. As a kind of grief.

  And then that feeling swells and changes. It becomes triumph instead, and relief. And Pia knows then that it is here, and she switches the numinous lamp on, and looks up.

  The halo has gone.

  And in its place:

  ‘Hello,’ she says to the angel.

  It is sitting in her hair like a newly hatched bird in a nest. Gently, she tips her head forward and lets it slide down into her cupped hands. It has no shape yet. Just fuzz and radiance and feeling. She cradles it in her palms, all fluffy and warm in the violet of the numinous lamp.

  Maybe being made of light means angels are outside of time. Maybe they experience past and present and future all in one moment, and know how their end will come even as they go to meet it. Maybe they saw Pia holding this newborn angel beneath the crescent moon, even as they wove her the dream on the night they left. And perhaps they had decided to celebrate, and cut her a slice of the moon.

  A birthday cake.

  ‘Hum wove you in the Seam,’ she tells it. ‘And gave you to me to look after.’

  The angel shapes itself ears to listen to her words.

  ‘Hum,’ it says, forming a voice that is just like hers. ‘After.’

  We didn’t save anything, Wilma said, back in Siskin’s office. All we did was survive. Like that was nothing, less than nothing. But look. A new life. A second chance. Sometimes, just surviving is miracle enough.

  ‘You’re the start of a brand-new zoo,’ Pia tells it. ‘I’ll raise you and teach you and make you strong, and one day you’ll miracle the whole world back to life.’

  She feels giddy with the possibilities. Pia looks around, to see if anyone is watching. Who does she tell about this? Who is in charge, now Siskin is gone? She has to find out. She has to show them. They have to sail back to the Seam and—

  Her thoughts stop dead.

  The second angel is there. Hum’s sister. Hovering above the ocean waves.

  She is older now, and bigger. The angel is clearer than Hum, with none of his fuzz. But she has her brother’s lustre. Th
e same pearlescent glow. And on one side, like a scar, is a dim circle of light.

  ‘You,’ Pia breathes.

  ‘You of the yew,’ answers the angel. ‘Me of the tree. And the little makes three.’

  ‘Yoomeethree,’ echoes the baby angel.

  ‘I thought you were dead.’ Pia steps up to the rail. ‘By the doomvirus. Or in the Seam, with Hum. But you’re alive.’

  Not just alive – the angel has grown up. How? They both stayed as children for two decades. Ever since Mum brought them out of the Seam. What changed? Maybe, for angels, growing up is a choice.

  The angel floats closer. ‘We were watched pots, children seen but not heard through the grapevine.’

  The words are just as cryptic as ever, but there is something different about the way this angel speaks. If Hum is a pane of frosted glass, this angel is clear. Somehow, it is easier to see through the riddles and allusions, and glimpse the meaning.

  ‘We kept you kids!’ Pia cries out. ‘The numinous lamps, the constant monitoring...’ She thinks back to one of the first lessons Dad ever taught her. ‘Angels draw most of their power from being unseen.’

  The angel glows with satisfaction at her understanding.

  ‘But if that’s true, why have you come back?’ Pia looks down at the baby angel in her hands. ‘Oh.’ Suddenly she is ashamed of her previous thoughts. There will be no new zoo. No turning back towards the Seam. For a moment, she has an urge to hold on to the tiny baby. To at least show it to a few others first, to bring back some hope. Then she realises the ludicrousness of trying to hold on to a being of light, and she laughs aloud.

  ‘Go on.’ She opens up her hands. ‘Look, there!’ she says to the baby angel. ‘She’s just like you.’

  The angel shapes itself a pair of eyes to see, and a pair of wings to fly. It floats up and away from Pia to the older angel waiting for it.

  ‘Did you come to stop me?’ Pia says to the older angel. ‘I was going to show it to everyone. Did that put the little one in mortal peril? Is that why you came?’

  ‘Savings plan,’ says the older angel. ‘Safety deposit down and listen, they’ll last if all’s lost.’

  Pia processes what that means. ‘A plan for saving? A plan for saving what, though?’

  ‘Less whatnot, more hoodoo, a new Q!’ says the older angel.

  ‘Less what?’ Pia snaps her fingers. ‘Oh! You mean the right question is: a plan for saving who?’

  ‘And there we are! The there it is.’

  What? Who are the ‘there it is’? The realisation blooms in her like one of Solomon’s and Bertoldo’s fireworks.

  ‘Voilà!’ she shouts into the night. ‘There it is... that’s a literal translation of voilà! Are you saying you took them? Oh Seamstress, you are. They weren’t being poached, they weren’t being killed off by the doomvirus... they were being rescued by you. From us.’

  Pia facepalms, utterly flabbergasted. Of course. As the zookeepers began to fall into madness and violence, the angel came to each voilà to miracle it to safety.

  ‘We were the danger,’ she says to herself. She thinks back to what Siskin said once. ‘We’ve always been the danger.’

  She thinks about the mass-extinctions. The seas drowning in plastic. The land eaten by sprawls. A problem of humans. Suddenly she knows why Zugzwang said that.

  But unlike his gloominess, Pia is filled with hope. The zoo had been wrong. Siskin had been wrong. All this time spent looking elsewhere for a magical solution to save the world. But the answer doesn’t lie in angels, or genies, or hummingdragons, or any voilà. It is in people. They have to change people. Not for the worse, like Zugzwang’s doomvirus: for the better. Not with despair, but hope. Not with madness, but sense.

  ‘The problem must solve itself,’ agrees the angel gravely.

  ‘Are they all safe?’ Pia leans against the railing of the ship, her face wet with spray and tears. ‘Even the mirrorangutangs? The genies? Where did you take them?’

  The angel gives no answer, which is a reply in itself.

  ‘You don’t want us to find them, do you?’ Pia nods. Then her throat goes tight, and she can hardly bear to ask the question in her head. ‘Are Yisel and Estival... are my parents OK?’

  When the angel finally replies, it is not with words. Words fall short when it comes to such a question. The answer is in song, and it is on a loop, cycling through Pia on endless repeat. And it is the song of a spring afternoon, four years ago at eight minutes past three. And it is the song of two people and the love in their hearts.

  That is the beat of the song. That is its soul. The very first note, the refrain at the end. There when it finally loops back again. It is love, it is love, it is love, it is love.

  This is the song of the ghosts of her parents. This is what lingers. This, their remains. Love is what lasts. Love haunts hearts. That’s what the angel sings.

  Yisel and Estival are more than OK. Have been, always, and always will be. Pia thought of them as trapped. Now she finally understands. Wherever they are, it will forever be spring, they will for ever be laughing, and for ever in love.

  • • •

  Surely the angels are leaving now. With each eye-blink, Pia expects them gone. But they linger. There, between the churning water and the serene sky. They seem to be waiting on her to do one last thing for them, though she doesn’t know what it might be.

  ‘Hum,’ says the older angel eventually. With its left hand it points at itself, with its right it gestures at the baby. ‘Who waits in a queue? Queue waits for the who?’

  ‘Who?’ Pia feels her throat tighten. ‘Yes. OK. I understand.’

  The first glimmering lights of the city rise behind her, as Pia faces the moon and names the angels.

  33

  YES

  After they are finally gone, Pia switches off the numinous lamp, heads back to her room, climbs into the cot set up by Threedeep and sleeps. This time she has no dreams. Not of the angels, nor the ghosts she named them after. Not even of the voilà, wherever they are right now. Her world is blank and featureless until Ishan comes and wakes her with a hand on her shoulder.

  Once upon a time, that would make her yell and fall out of bed and quite possibly punch him in the nose.

  Now she just opens her eyes and stretches. ‘What are you so nervous about?’

  She can just tell. He has that look on his face, like he is about to sneeze.

  ‘It’s not big,’ he whispers. ‘And it’s not in a great part of the city. There’s pollution and noise from the transit and roaches the size of your thumb. But my big sister is moving out of her pod, and the government still want me to do nanite stuff even when I go back, so Mum and Dad don’t need to rent it. What I’m trying to say is, I think you’ll like it. I mean, they can be grouchy sometimes and there’s arguments and stuff, and don’t expect either of them to thrint you a meal like you used to get at the canteen, but it’ll be OK. Maybe not amazing, but OK. At least until you figure out somewhere else you’d rather be and—’ He sneezes and stops talking.

  Pia gets up on to her elbows. ‘Are you saying I can come and stay with you and your family, Ish?’

  He blinks. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Even though I thought you’d created the doomvirus?’

  He blinks. ‘Yes.’

  ‘And even though—’

  ‘Null it, Pia, yes! Yes!’

  Threedeep’s screen flickers on. Am I invited too?

  Ishan blinks. ‘Of course. I’m looking after a city of seven trillion nanites and I need your parenting advice.’

  ᕦ(ò_óˇ)ᕤ Let’s do this.

  Pia finds herself grinning. There are so many reasons to, despite everything. She lists them in her head.

  I still have a best friend.

  My parents are at peace, and I’m about to get a new family.

 
; Angels exist.

  They’re out there, alive. And the devil is too, but hey – so are the voilà.

  And the world might be dying, but there’s hope. I can feel it. Not a foolish or deluded thing, but fierce and real. Echoing through me like an angel’s song.

  Hope.

  ‘So what do you reckon?’ Ishan pulls at his fringe with one hand.

  Pia smiles. ‘Did I ever tell you that, for me, angels feel like getting away with a fart in an elevator?’

  ‘Umm.’ Ishan frowns. ‘No. You didn’t. Did you... did you hear what I said about coming to stay with me?’

  And Pia laughs and tells him yes, yes she will go with him, at least for now. Then she goes back to sleep, knowing that somewhere, beyond the ship and beyond the sprawl, a hidden pocket of the world hums with life. A place that still holds miracles, in many and wondrous a form. Where tiny jewelled dragons flit and giant rabbits dig and hippopoperas drift through the air.

  Where two angels are building their house from the sunsets and dawn.

  Where a single unicorn called Moonbim treads delicately across the ground, her silver horn sparkling.

  Where the ghosts of her parents remember themselves, in a loop of laughter and love.

  And where genies sit, pulling boons from their beards, talking in Tellish about new beginnings; about hope-not-lost; and about the last threads of life, running endless and stubborn, through the ever-weaving tapestry of the Tale.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Eloise Wilson and Becky Bagnell – who brought this story out of the Seam with me.

  Sue Cook, whose copyedits are eagle-eyed and crystal clear; Kate Grove and Tomislav Tomić, who are cover-wizards of the highest order; Erin, who planned out times for me to skulk off to my writing cave; Mum and Dad and Mazda, who took over when it was my turn.

  With love and thanks!