Night of the Animals(91)

He motored away in reverse, the broken-fan sound audible even after the cabcab’s headlamps vanished into the city.





oliver cromwell’s got a jumbie, too


WHEN ASTRID GOT TO PC ATWELL, THE YOUNGER constable hesitated a bit before switching off the pandaglider’s imagiglass windows. This peeved Astrid, a little more than it ought.

“Come on, Atwell. We haven’t all bloody night, have we?”

Astrid knew she was being cruel and highhanded, especially since she’d so delayed responding to the initial orange-freq, but there was a prowling anger in her again after the brief respite in the cab. Cigarette smoke and the scent of crushed almonds poured from the pandaglider. Atwell wore a dazed expression that suggested to Astrid she’d had a tough time waiting alone. A sheen of perspiration covered her forehead. Atwell didn’t say anything, and she wouldn’t look at Astrid. She merely held her arms crossed, rubbing them as if cold.

“Didn’t you see us? Behind you? Smoking, Atwell?”

“I know,” said Atwell. “I just, I—”

“I saw your little jackal dogs,” Astrid interjected. “You called them in?”

“Yes, ma’am. At least half a dozen different units, on their way.” The younger constable leaned forward in her seat for a moment, took a deep, fretful breath.

“Jesus, I’m sorry, Atwell. I am sorry. I’m . . . well, I’ve been. Things aren’t good. You all right?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She found herself feeling worried about Atwell, and about her own apparent incapacity to help. She wondered whether one of the new viruses might have Atwell.

“You’d said there were some people about, too, right?” asked Astrid. “They’re always the most difficult animals, aren’t they?”

“Yes, some autoreporters—I’ve left them alone, ma’am.” Atwell was finally looking up at her. There remained an odd languor in how she moved, with liquidy arms and a heavy-necked torpor, and she coughed a few times.

“Are you ill?”

“Maybe,” said Atwell.

She wondered whether Atwell herself might be Flōting, though she didn’t have quite the right signs of that.

Atwell said, “Two souls—inside the autonewsmedia glider-truck.”

“Good. They’re safe in there.” Astrid stood on tiptoes for a moment and peered across the glider’s roof. Powerful limbs of plane trees, festooned with bunches of white blossoms, bowered the area where she and the constable spoke. Distant city lights twinkled through the branches. “I would have thought you’ve done just about all you can. All right?”

“Yes, ma’am. I do hope. And there was that strange man I mentioned.” She hacked in a wheezy cough again; she was careful to turn away and cover her mouth. “But I—I had to decide on my own what to do—and I decided not to give chase.”

“Never,” said Astrid. “That wouldn’t have been too clever, I would’ve thought.”

“That’s what I thought.”

Astrid asked, “What did this . . . this funny chap . . . what did he look like?”

“I don’t know. It was dark, ma’am. Like a crazy man. A long face. He had ginger hair sticking up all over, like his head was going in twenty different directions at once.”

“These rough-sleepers,” said Astrid, “and I don’t say this in judgment, but they can be quite, well, tricky, god bless ’em. Trust me—this man’s OK, as much as any Indigent can be these days. And the jackals—the fact is, they seem, PC Atwell, . . . they’re small. We’ll sort this.”

Atwell, taking a breath, looked as if she wanted to interrupt Astrid, whose patronizing tone had made things awkward.

“The man,” said Atwell, “he was quite distressed. Really, ma’am, I don’t think he was sleeping rough. Like I said before, he says his mother’s in—”

“Yes, his mother. I heard you the first time.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

There was a hesitation, and then Atwell looked straight at Astrid. “Guv . . . it’s not my place to say, but we all admire you, guv. What’s the matter? What’s got you? You seem . . . frustrated. We’re on the same team, yeah? And I really like you. What’s wrong?”

Astrid began working her mouth, slowly. Her lips were quivering a bit, but no words came out. After a few more seconds, she said, in a husky whisper: “I can’t say.” She couldn’t very well list the litany of second withdrawal’s horrors to the officer she supervised.

Frustrated—that was a funny word for it.

“Inspector, I hear you. All is well.”

But nothing was “well,” Astrid thought. Indeed, she might at that moment half enjoy some errant tiger burning bright, in the park’s forest of the night, springing upon her, thrashing her withdrawal apart like a dirty pangolin. For if being near the zoo had initially eased the horrors inside her, new anxieties now seemed to be unhatching, and fast. And she felt sure of a terrible fact: she was going to end up drinking Flōt that night. Her life of sobriety was ending. FA could f*ck itself. She’d had enough of being strong.

Just one orb, Astrid tried to tell herself, ruefully. She knew that even a mouthful of Flōt would restart her addiction in all its ugly fury. A drink of Flōt would be the beginning of the end of her life. She couldn’t escape that reality.