The Last Zoo Read online

  8

  BARGAINS, BARGAINS

  Pia borrows a breather, leaves Ark One, and zephyrs back to the celestials. Ishan is gone. That’s about the only good news.

  Her absurd hope that the angels might have returned is crushed the moment she looks at the garden. The apple tree looks like something from a haunted forest, its scraggly branches clawing at the sky. The beams of sunlight holding up the angels’ house have started to scatter and fade.

  The sight makes her want to cry. She tries to hold in the tears, but in the end she gives up. Maybe letting everything out will make her feel better.

  Nope, she decides after a few minutes of sobbing. Some things – tears, secrets, vomit – are better bottled up.

  Pazuzu unfurls from her aerosol can and tries to comfort Pia. ‘The heroine is tormented by her McGuffin?’ the genie asks.

  Pia’s Tellish isn’t good enough to understand what that means. She forces her tears to stop and thanks Pazuzu and goes back to her cabin to calm down. Then she scribbles a message on a scrip of pink zookeeper paper, and goes back to Pazuzu so she can zephyr it to Ishan.

  Downside, I threw up everywhere. Upside, I now have room for lunch. Every cloud, hey? Rek in 10 and I’ll tell you all? P

  A few minutes later, another slip, this one green for Seamster messages, flutters suddenly in the air as Ishan zephyrs back his reply.

  Pia snatches at it. He’s written It’s a date! which he had obviously then realised was a massive mistake, because he’d tried to cross it out completely. The words still show through, though. See you in 20 – got some nanite updates to run! he’s written instead.

  That’s good. If she’s going to work out a way to summon the angels back, she needs to think about this more logically. Ishan’s brain can help with that. He always thinks about things in a real step-by-step way.

  I’ll have to be careful not to make him suspicious, though, she thinks. I don’t want to actually confide in him.

  Pia goes back to her cabin before she leaves. She scribbles out a few other messages to the rest of her Rekker crew. She wishes Gowpen good luck (he’s in the Seam today), and tells Wilma to move Weevis up their league table of enemies (it’s a thing they do). There’s still a few minutes to kill, so she listens to some pip-pop tunes on her goggles’ tinny speakers whilst she reads everything there is on file about angel behaviour.

  ‘Nine bil, ten bil, girl you know the world’s ill.’

  She starts singing along to the chorus (it’s super sweary; if Threedeep was here she’d bleep it). She gets so into it that she doesn’t notice Weevis has zephyred on to the ark until he raps on the cabin window with his knuckles.

  Oh facepalm! She tears off her goggles.

  ‘You shouldn’t be here,’ she says through the glass. ‘Hygiene procedures.’

  Weevis gives her a look. ‘I’ll stay on this side of the window.’ His muffled voice drips with sarcasm. ‘Because you look so contagious.’

  Pia scowls, but her heart is racing so fast she feels she might faint. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘You forgot this.’ Weevis holds up Siskin’s busted lamp. The cord is looped around the base; the plug dangles down by his elbow.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘The Director wants to try something. Do you think the angels can miracle this fixed?’

  They could if they were here. Pia shrugs. ‘Why not get a genie to do it, if you’re in a rush? That little one on your desk has a pretty long beard.’

  Weevis raises his eyebrows, which are the size and shape and colour of dirty fingernail clippings. ‘Because the Director wants to try something,’ he repeats in a tired voice. ‘Genies can’t wish without a ’genieer, and the ’genieer needs a good knowledge of electricals to figure out how the lamp is broken, and the way to mend it.’

  Weevis is right, of course. That is the whole problem with wishes. The more complex the problem, the more detailed a wish has to be in order to contain it and minimise unexpected consequences. It is why Threedeep is taking so long to fix, and why a genie can’t just wish the world’s problems away. Not only would they need a beard a mile long, but problems like climate change, overpopulation, pollution, and mass-extinctions are all too enormous and complicated, and too intricately linked with the ten billion humans living here.

  A few years back, Siskin trialled wishes as a way to save the world. He sent his most powerful genies and best’genieers – the most logical, thoughtful writers of wish-scripts in the zoo – to one of the drowned cities on the east coast. There, the ’genieers crafted a wish so detailed it took three hours to speak. The wish was designed to make the swamped streets habitable again for the thousands trying to survive there.

  Upon the wish’s granting, a cacophony of thunderclaps echoed through the city.

  The wish succeeded – in a way. The genies and their ’genieers made the drowned city liveable in again. But not by draining the flood waters. Nor by raising up the houses. The wish simply zephyred away two thirds of the city’s population, freeing up enough food and resources for the other third to survive.

  Two hundred thousand people, missing in an eye-blink. No one has ever discovered where they zephyred to.

  After that, development of new wish-scripts was put on hold.

  ‘The Director wants to see how miracles cope with problem-solving, without all the wish-scripting and research,’ Weevis continues. ‘It’ll be a good indication of what the angels might be able to achieve when they grow up.’

  ‘If,’ Pia corrects, because no one knows how angels age, and they’ve been kids for twenty years, ever since Mum brought them out of the Seam. Whatever causes an angel to grow up, it isn’t time.

  Weevis just sniffs impatiently. ‘Call them over, then.’

  ‘Huh?’ Pia actually gulps.

  ‘The angels. Summon them, or whatever it is you do.’

  ‘Yeah, OK, I will, but... it’s just that they’re resting.’

  ‘Well, wake them up. This lamp is an antique, you know.’

  ‘You’ll have to leave it with me,’ Pia says desperately.

  ‘Why?’ Weevis looks at her with narrowed eyes.

  Behind him, there’s an enormous crack. A branch from the apple tree breaks off the trunk and falls on to the angels’ house, caving in the roof, which disappears the way sunsets do.

  Weevis turns. ‘Is that supposed to look so dead?’ His tone suggests that he clearly thinks not.

  The lie comes instantly to her lips: ‘I’ve told the angels to let the garden go into autumn.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So I’m giving the angels a break. They’re tired out. No way they’re doing any mending until tomorrow at least.’

  What the Seamstress just happened? Pia’s brain is usually way too slow to come up with excuses. That felt like someone whispered them in her ear...

  Wait a second.

  Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  ‘Bagrin,’ she mutters.

  ‘What?’ says Weevis through the glass.

  Pia is too furious with herself to answer him. She must not have sealed the lead door’s peephole properly in her panic this morning. Bagrin has probably been listening in on her thoughts since she got back to the ark.

  Which means he knows about the angels.

  That’s why he just fed her those lies: he knows he has some knowledge to bargain with.

  She looks up. Weevis is looking at her like she might actually be crazy. And up to something. ‘Where are they, anyway? I don’t see them.’

  ‘Over there,’ Pia says, as Bagrin slips another lie into her head. She adds a little bit of scorn into her voice. ‘What, can you not feel them or something?’

  It’s an Emperor’s New Clothes moment. No one wants to be known as the guy that can’t feel angels. That would be embarrassing. Weevis has enough trouble making friends at the zo
o as it is.

  ‘Of course I can feel them,’ he says after a moment. ‘You’re right – they, uh, do seem tired.’

  Pia is too relieved to say anything back.

  Weevis puts the lamp down on the deck. ‘OK. I’ll come back. Don’t break it any more.’

  Pia watches him hurry off. She waits for the clap of air that signals he’s zephyred, then she heads down to the infernal prism and tells the devil to lay off the temptation.

  You owe Bagrin, says the voice from behind the lead door. The devil sends her the image of Dibsy, his round yellow face glinting like a gold coin. Big time.

  Don’t phrase anything as a question, she reminds herself. Questions give devils power.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she says.

  Oh, really? Maybe Bagrin should send a whisper to Siskin that his precious angels are gone.

  ‘Good luck with that.’ Pia grips the peephole. It’s open just a fraction, just as she suspected. ‘I’m shutting this now. Your whispers won’t get through.’

  What about when Weevis comes back? We will scream and scream and scream.

  Pia grits her teeth and goes to slam the peephole shut. Then she dongs her head on the metal with a groan. She can’t do it. Too risky. The devil has nothing to lose, and she has everything. She just needs to buy enough time to find the angels. Until then, she needs to keep Bagrin quiet.

  ‘Tell me what you want,’ she mutters.

  Bagrin’s presence on her shoulder moves up and down, in what Pia assumes is an attempt at a shrug. Just to observe.

  ‘Observe? What does that mean?’ (Ugh, dammit, don’t ask him questions, stupid.)

  Just that you leave the lead door open, just a crack. And agree to let Bagrin listen in as you search. Who knows? There might come a time when Bagrin might be – and now the cunning creeps into his voice – of assistance.

  Pia turns from the lead door in disgust. Facepalm, facepalm, facepalm! What a morning. The angels have been gone a few hours, and already she is in league with a devil.

  ‘I’ll give you until sunset,’ she offers. ‘If I haven’t got the angels back by then, I’m raising the alarm.’

  Deal, Bagrin says, and Pia feels a weird warmth upon her shoulder as his presence settles there.

  Oh well. At least she hasn’t signed anything.

  Yes. Bagrin is an evil little whisper in her ear. This is a good deal. A real steal.

  ‘Stop talking and let me think,’ she tells him.

  You’ll have to work out a way to bring the angels back. Summon them.

  ‘I don’t want your help, Bagrin. I just want you to shut up.’

  The devil is probably right, though. The angels might be absolutely anywhere on Earth now. Anywhere in the solar system, actually. Pia won’t ever find them; she’ll have to find a way to bring them back to her.

  To summon them.

  Perhaps she ought to try praying again. Or give up entirely. Or she could always head down to Bagrin’s prism and throw herself in. All three might genuinely work. Prayer, despair and impending doom: these things summon angels.

  Sometimes.

  Because Pia has already tried prayer, hasn’t she? Maybe she didn’t do it properly. Maybe prayers are like wish-scripts: you need an exact sequence of words. Or maybe it isn’t what you say, but how you say it, or whether you deserve what you’re asking for.

  Who knows. Pia has prayed a lot in her life with exactly zero return, so whatever the answer is, she’s doing something wrong.

  There are other ways, Bagrin dangles temptingly. We can tell you of them. And all we ask in return is—

  ‘Get out of my head, Bagrin!’ she yells, and he flees on to her shoulder and settles there.

  Stupid devil.

  And now she’s late for Ishan.

  Rummaging around in her dungarees for the wish-script that will take her to the Rek, she rushes to see Pazuzu.

  9

  THE SMELLEPHANT IN THE ROOM

  The Rek is a small i-era military ship, abandoned after the detonation that created the Seam. Unlike the rest of the zoo, it doesn’t move. It only just about floats. The island’s mountain rises sheer from the sea, except on the southern side, where it dwindles down to a bed of black sand and rocky reefs. That’s where the Rek lies, slightly to one side, its lower decks filled with seawater.

  The Rek is too small to be an ark, and too rusted and full of holes to be much else too. Back in the years when the air was cleaner, Siskin tried encouraging keepers to zephyr here and picnic. The whole top deck was painted and parkified: benches, bright plastic turf, a few replica trees. There had even been a ceremony with a ribbon, and a period when Siskin insisted everyone call it the (P)ark. He loves hip little names like that.

  But after all that dressing up, the (P)ark was still just a half-sunk hunk of junk in a cove of bumpy scab-coloured rock. And for the grown-ups, terrified of getting mind-frayed, it sits way too close to the Seam. So eventually they stopped coming, which meant the genies stopped mending, which meant the paint peeled and the rust came back.

  But Pia and her friends have stayed.

  It is her favourite place in all the zoo. There’s something about it. She loves how the tilted deck makes everyone clumsy. More than that, she loves how it is theirs. Their Rek, which stands for Wreck and Recreation and Recklessness.

  The Rekkers (which at the moment are her, Ishan, Wilma, Gowpen, and Zugzwang when he can be bothered – and with his dad being the Director of the whole zoo and always so busy, Zugzwang can pretty much do what he wants) head there whenever they need to joke or gossip or bicker. The Rek’s genie Karratakirattaki has basically become their own personal butler, wishing them up endless supplies of sweets and stim drinks, until curfew comes and their nanabugs order them all home.

  It was here that Pia heard about the prism explosion; here that she came to sit and cry in the months after. It was here that Ishan tried to kiss her.

  He is waiting on the same bench where it happened. Pia shakes away the memory. Part of her wants to start discussing how to summon angels right away, but Ishan’s nanabug Sixtip is a hovering black blot in the blue sky above them, monitoring from a distance, logging all their conversation. She’ll have to be sly about this. She’ll have to be patient.

  So she sits and tells him the story of the appraisal instead: the hot dog, Weevis, the puke.

  ‘Throwing up isn’t so bad,’ Ishan says. ‘In my first appraisal, Siskin called me Buttercup throughout the whole thing.’

  ‘Whaaaat?’ Pia grins for what feels like the first time that day. ‘How is that even possible?’

  ‘He looks down at his desk a lot. His secretary mixed up our files. You know Buttercup, who works with the phoenixes? Siskin sat down, reading through her report instead of mine, and he didn’t look up the whole time. Not once. “Take a seat, Buttercup.” “I’m impressed with your fire hazard assessments, Buttercup.” I was too scared to correct him. When he said, “You’re doing an exemplary job,” I just said “Thanks” in a high-pitched voice and ran off quick.’

  In spite of everything, Pia starts to laugh. ‘How did I not know this?’

  ‘Maybe I’ve been saving it for a day like today, when I needed a real toe-curler of an embarrassing story to make you feel better.’

  Pia slumps her head and lets her shoulders shake as she sniggers. Her whole friendship with Ishan is built on just this sort of story. You’re a klutz, I’m a klutz, let’s laugh about it before we cry about it.

  They chat for a bit. Ishan technobabbles about his nanites and the upgrades they are going through, and how he is trying to program them so they won’t upgrade into some evil robot consciousness that wants to destroy the world, like a version 2.0 of Megalolz.

  Pia listens out for a chance to introduce the angels into the conversation. She lies on the deck and closes her eye
s. The sun’s heat has soaked into the metal all morning and that warmth seeps into her back. The Rek always has this weird relaxing effect on her, no matter what.

  ‘It’s hard,’ Ishan is saying. ‘The nanites keep asking me questions about humans, so I do my best to explain what we’re like, and then they come back with, “You are illogical”, “Your species makes no sense”, and I’m like, “Yes, I know, we’re gadj-damn crazy”. ’

  ‘You are such a human-hater, Ish. These nanites better not grow up just like you.’

  Ishan grins. ‘Hey, they’ve worked it out themselves. We are totally insane.’ He points at the mountain. It is shimmering lightly, as if radiating waves of heat. ‘Would a sane species invent a reality bomb that blows up the laws of time and gravity and whatever, and then send kids into the weird hole it makes to see if they can imagine new animals into life?’

  Pia shrugs. ‘No?’

  ‘Exactly! A sane species would probably decide that it was easier just to look after the planet they lived on, instead of polluting it and ruining everything.’

  Pia gets up on her elbows. Now might be a good time to ask him about the angels. Ishan’s in one of his theorising moods. If she just starts pondering how to summon angels, he’ll surely come up with a dozen different possibilities for her.

  ‘Soooo,’ she begins. ‘I was thinking...’

  Pia really thinks she sounds casual as she says this, but Ishan instantly goes into nervous mode. His eyes go big, his fidgeting stops, and he gets an expression on his face like he’s about to sneeze.

  ‘Ah. I know what you’re about to say.’

  ‘Umm, I don’t think you do.’

  ‘Sure I do, Pia. It’s the smellephant in the room.’

  Oh, great. Is Ishan talking about the massively embarrassing thing that happened last week? Does he really think she wants to talk about that?

  So much for being all subtle and stealthy. Now he’ll be scrutinising absolutely everything she says. Pia groans. ‘Forget it.’

  Now he looks confused as well as nervous. ‘But you brought it up. It’s the smellephant in the room.’

  ‘I know. And I’m happy for us to just ignore it and pretend it isn’t there.’