IT WAS NOT SURPRISING THAT ANYONE, ESPECIALLY a hallucinating man, might imagine humanlike shadow figures and soulful monkeys in the area Cuthbert had finally reached. He had unwittingly made his way to the geometric center of the zoo, to the core of a long-established district of primates.
Cuthbert came to a set of double doors, the main entrance to the “pavilion,” which seemed no more to him than an ugly black cage that had “caught” a loose brick-pile. Only a few decades old, it was hard to see how it improved much on the poles and pits and cement-poetry of yore. Like many other parts of the zoo, heavy steel grid fencing and red brick predominated. Each species of primate had a sign with a phrase. There were SPIDER MONKEYS—THE TAIL HANGERS; GORILLAS—VEGETARIAN GENTLE GIANTS; SQUIRREL MONKEYS—SOCIABLE AND CHIRPY; ad nauseam. Debarked climbing logs and draping ropes crisscrossed each cage, and yellow straw covered the floors. The zookeepers worked hard to make this cramped, leafless penitentiary happy for the animals, but no exhibit at the zoo was so uniquely degrading.
In the central building, zoo guests could glimpse at the apes through glass windows that looked into the apes’ night rooms.
Cuthbert examined a brass, embossed evolutionary tree on the way, showing how Homo sapiens and apes shared a common Homininae limb. There was a raised silhouette of a naked man and woman. Someone had rudely stuck a piece of chewing gum on the man’s head. Cuthbert pulled it off and scratched it clean with his thumbnail. Below the naked people was a photograph of a prehistoric skull, Australopithecus africanus. It was yellow and long, with a tiny brain case and a protruding maxilla with big squarish teeth—it had no mandible. Cuthbert felt as though the human animal in this form could be comfortable—a place for thoughts no bigger than a tea mug.
Nearby, to his right, a brightly painted wood sign bore the message: THE GREATEST DANGER TO ANIMAL LIFE. There was a hole in the sign for a human face—unabashed guests could put their heads in the opening and ask a mate to snap a naff “picky” on their retina-cams.
The happiest of the apes Cuthbert could see was the life-size bronze statue of an old dead London Zoo celebrity, Guy “Fawkes” the Gorilla, set near the entrance of the pavilion. Leaning forward on his knuckles, surrounded by leafy vines, and blessed with plenty of room, Guy looked ready to spring downward and away, out of gorilla heaven, to dole out exploding bananas for all takers.
Cuthbert gave the double doors a jiggle. They were locked tight with a key, it seemed. But the noise roused the smaller residents. The monkeys suddenly cried out with a furious astuteness. Cuthbert was instantly animated by the whole, simian keenness of the pavilion; he could feel it, physically. The “monkeys,” he hoped, were doing their part to prepare for the Heaven’s Gate war. He would do his.
He was beginning to see much larger numbers of flashing yellow and blue lights blooming in the west, and more sirens. What he thought were the death cult’s mini-spacecrafts in the sky—ordinary police and autonewsmedia aerodrone, along with a Red Watch frightcopter, investigating an intrusion and rumored animal release at the zoo—beat their wings of liquid titanium like huge dragonflies. He didn’t understand why they didn’t begin to attack. The motion-sensitive security lights he had tripped earlier inside the zoo, he noticed, were turning back off, and a pitch darkness enveloped everything near him, except for light beams coming down from the “spacecraft.” A blue-black spindly bird flew past above him; it was enormous, and Cuthbert stood with his mouth gaping. It was one of the famous herons from the park’s heronry on the lake.
“You,” he called toward the bird. “You! Get the Gulls of Imago, will you? Can you help, can you?” But the bird was gone.
The greater apes, late to the noise making, started in just then with a fresh vociferousness. First, a cartload of four chimpanzees, already wide awake in their night room, stormed out into the outdoor exhibit area and began hooing at Cuthbert, sticking their golden, soft fingers through the spaces in the grid-fencing. It was as unusual for them to encounter an interested human at night as it was for Cuthbert. Whenever the night watchman, Dawkins, came through—and that was rare—he typically tapped their cage, listened for a moment, and walked on. But like many of the animals, the chimps were no longer confined to night rooms and holding cells after hours. (In the years before all the other zoos on Earth closed down, many had conceded that since nearly all animals are nocturnal, it was inhumane to keep them locked up all night. And no one had seriously worried about the possibility of a zoo invader like Cuthbert.)