Night of the Animals(125)

“It’s good advice,” said Astrid.

“I don’t understand,” said St. Cuthbert, pursing his lips. “You talk as if you don’t know a single thing about the Luciferian plan—thay aim to do in all the animals on earth. You’re the one we’ve all been waiting for.”

The officer and the physician shook their heads, wearing a similar pitying expression.

“It’s the Flōt, Cuthbert,” said Dr. Bajwa. “You’ve got hallucinosis, my friend. We can get help—at the hospital. We don’t hear lions speaking with words. We don’t hear otters. We don’t hear little cats. We’re not awaiting anyone. All we hear is a man desperately in need of looking after. A man almost destroyed by Flōt.”

“Flōt.”

“Yes, Flōt. It makes you see things.”

Astrid said, “But, Cuthbert. I know this will sound unbelievable. But I care about you. I don’t even . . . well, I think I may know why.” She smiled, but sourly, shaking her head in tight little wiggles. “Or not. A bit why. Maybe? But you’ve . . . you’ve drawn me here tonight. And I . . . I want to believe you. And I want to help you.”

Cuthbert felt his heart begin to gallop unevenly, and a vise-like pain shot up his chest. He looked up in the sky. There was the comet.

“The co-co-comet,” he said, in a daze. “Thar’s a spaceship in there. Hidden.”

Again, the officer and Dr. Bajwa looked at one another. From above, one of the Red Watch’s frightcopters trained its spot beams on St. Cuthbert and Astrid.

There was a voice from above: You are commanded by the Yeoman of His Majesty the King to remain where you are.

Astrid waved her hand, as if trying to swat midges away from her face.

“Cuthbert,” said Astrid. “Our time’s running out. You know, I came here tonight, and now I’ve lost everything, but I wouldn’t change it. You see, I don’t know who you are, but I knew I had to find you. I look like you. Anyone would see that. And I wonder if I think like you? And feel like you? I’m a Flōt sot, too, and I’m in second withdrawal, and you know there aren’t many of us, and the statistics for me are bleak, but I am here. I think, Mr. Handley, I think you could be my granddaddy. Maybe.”

St. Cuthbert gasped. “Yow? How can that be?” He stood tottering on the edge of the enclosure, knotting his fingers. “It’s impossible. Sullivan? Irish? You’re bold and brave, Inspector. Irish blood and English heart?”

“Oh, far better than that,” she said. “Are you from the Black Country? And your family’s from the Marches?”

St. Cuthbert nodded.

“Did you know a barmaid from Bermondsey? And you spent a night? A long, long time ago?”

The bits about the Marches and the Black Country made sense, but the rest was entirely foreign to St. Cuthbert. He never knew any barmaid from Bermondsey, at least not one he could remember.

“Do you see someone in me?” Drystan asked. “Someone else, too?”

But St. Cuthbert needed no further proof of a connection than to stare into the dark eyes of this woman, at something far deeper than genes. Her questions felt like a sweet vine pulling through him, even if, in his mind if not his heart, it kept hitting snags. She was, surely, looking through the same strong eyes he hadn’t seen since his gran Winefride Handley lived so long ago. And that meant there was another human being in Britain who would, one day, be able to speak animal. She would possess the Wonderments. She was a he was a she. She was Drystan. She was the Christ of Otters. St. Cuddy no longer would have to carry the burden himself. He was beautifully, perfectly, finally sacrificable.

A hot streak of Red Watchmen was now spidering down from their dark, hovering scarlet frightcopter on black nylonite ropes. When they touched down, they gathered themselves for a few moments, folding and unfolding their arms in arthropodal jerks.

Astrid, Baj, and the other officers watched anxiously as the ropes retracted like hissing black asps. The frightcopter remained rigidly in place, about forty feet up, its solar-electric engines thrumming in near-silence. Looking over his shoulder, St. Cuthbert leaned over the edge of the lion enclosure, peering down into the moat.

“Move back from there, Cuthbert,” said the doctor. “Please, Cuddy.”

The Watchmen—there were three of them—extended their extra-long golden neuralpikes. One of them cracked open a black nerve-bar instant prison at their landing site. The other two Watchmen began to stomp toward Astrid and Baj, their pair of pikes jutting ahead of them, the tips charging with red glows. The pair together were a single massive satanic head, swaying forward and back with ox-like unstoppability. They seemed to know exactly what—or who—they wanted—and only Astrid and a GP with lung cancer stood between them and their quarry.

“Cuthbert, run,” said Astrid. “Get out of here.”

“I won’t,” he said, smiling sadly. “I can’t.”

These were no ordinary Watchmen, Astrid fearfully realized. Suicide cultists and street-rousing republicans were generally left to the regular Watch. These Watchmen belonged to a special new unit, the Scots Coldstream Aristocratic Regiment, or SCARE. They were deployed for high-level political or strategic-level hits when Harry9 wanted to make a special, showy example. They wore the red and gold House of Windsor mantles of the regular Watch as well as the glossy scarlet body armor associated with the king’s own Yeoman Protection Command. SCARE’s distinctive, bulbous mantis-eyed helms hid their faces.