Never had she felt so convinced that she was ready to stop attending FA meetings, something she had never dared do since her first meeting in Houston in 2041.
“Arseholes,” she said quietly, tearing up.
Tom nodded, and said, “You’re right. But there are other meetings that are much more—you know—civilized and just, er, intelligent.”
She felt that, at last and unforeseeably, she understood something that had escaped her since 2041: FA’s problem is that it’s full of Flōters.
“where’s my miracle?”
ASTRID LEFT THE MEETING EARLY. ASTOUNDINGLY, it was the first time she had ever done this in eleven years of FA meetings. She was going to let the others clean up the tea. Fuck ’em! She heard old Tom calling after her as she walked outside; it was as though he knew something quite awful was happening to Astrid.
“Can I have a word, Astrid?” Tom was saying. “Wait up, girl!”
She pretended she didn’t hear and walked toward the wobbly old Docklands Light Railway station at Poplar. The rotting elevated walkways toward the crumbling skyscrapers of Canary Wharf, covered in 3D graffiti and louche adverts, always confused her, but apart from Canary Wharf itself—where half the offices were shuttered or tee-hee 5-5* dens—the DLR station was the one place within half a mile where one could find a quiet nook to make a private audio Opticall. An orange-freq’s flames were again whipping across her eyes, and new shrieking had begun. She felt an odd sensation, something new, as if the zoo itself were sucking her in, swallowing.
The area near the station displayed the usual roaring ugliness of a late midweek evening. Cartons of unsold market produce—brownish clementines, scores of lychees spanned with white mold—overstuffed the rubbish bins along with the day’s discarded food wrappers. She felt compelled to duck beneath a giant, purple holographic penis jutting from the station wall along with scads of other obscene 3D images and tags and Army of Anonymous–UK slogans. Spread around the entrances were splayed drink boxes of Ribena, Cokelager orbs, and Lucozade bags.
She found a disused, old phone box with broken windows, across from a train ticket window, and she ducked inside and Opticalled PC Atwell, ignoring the video option and sticking to audio only.
“Hello?” asked Atwell.
Astrid cleared her throat. “Sullivan here. Hope you don’t mind if I kill the camera.”
“Oh, no, thank you, ma’am,” said Atwell. “I actually appreciate it. I smoked a cigarette, and I feel like my head’s on Neptune. I can’t believe I did that—a stupid git, I am.” She gave a little cough. “I’m sorry to disturb you, ma’am. Very sorry. Are you all right, guv? It took awhile. You sound . . .”
“No worries, Atwell,” she said, trying to sound weary (but not too weary).
“Well, ma’am, at first I was thinking it’s probably nothing, yeah? But now I think it’s—a something. A potential emergency.”
“I’m sorry? What?”
Atwell continued, “I’m parked on the Broad Walk, in the pandaglider, of course—I’m not getting out alone—and several sets of lights have come on at the zoo and—are you sure you’re OK, ma’am? And there’s an occupied autonews glider here, with its dish set up, and at least one solar-frightcopter.”
“A frightcopter?” said Astrid. “Bloody hell. Probably triggered by the autoreporters. That’s how these things go—lights trigger autonews, autonews triggers Watch, Watch sends up frightcopters, then we beg Watch to go home, and the bastards blame us for everything.” She needed to put a stop to this nonsense. It was rarely good to draw scrutiny from the Watch. You never knew how it would end up—with a demotion, a new title, reclassification, or a Nexar hood, or dinner with the king. “Did you call the night keeper? That’s protocol.”
“Night keeper, ma’am?”
“At the zoo, Atwell. There’s this legendary weirdo. He’s in the old Reptile House—name’s Dawkins.” Astrid knew every centimeter of the three thousand hectares in the royal parks, and especially those she was charged with policing—Hyde, Kensington Gardens, and Regent’s. Directional details were a point of pride. She could explain every curve of the Serpentine, or navigate blindfolded through the fifty thousand roses of Queen Mary’s Garden. But the zoo. Now that was a bit of a blank for Astrid. It was part of the royal parks, but not, too. It was in her constabulary’s domain, but not really. The police ignored it. It wasn’t even wholly London, not when she thought about it.