Cuthbert shook his head. He said, “The chimpanzees did not need to kill him. There’s a war about to start, there is, and you need friends.”
“Hah!” said Kibali, rousing out of his chronically depressed torpor a bit. “What planet are you on? Have you forgotten that there is another war going on?”
Cuthbert considered this. His entire arms were tremoring and his neck ached badly. There was a peculiar barrenness in his head. He felt that at any moment he might flop down onto the ground and convulse, as though he had become unrooted from all concrete things, depersonalized. He watched the police lights, revolving yellow and blue glimmers, and the frantic solarcopter searchlights, hoping they would hook into him somehow, tangle him up in their stabbing points. He turned and glanced around. The macaque cage was empty, he noticed. The chimps had spirited the body away, and vanished. It occurred to him that, indeed, he was losing track of the war.
“Why do you keep saying this ‘Drys Stan’ thing?” asked Kibali.
“He’s here—in the zoo. My brother. My poor brother. He called me here, you know.”
“He is magic, human?”
“He’s more than that. He’s sacred,” said Cuthbert. “It’s what my gran said—or something like that. ’E’s the Christ of Otters—the Green Lord of Animals.”
“I want to know him,” said the gorilla.
He looked at the gorilla, and said: “You will, Kibali. If it’s the last thing I do in my life, I’ll find him. Do you know about Heaven’s Gate?”
“Yes. Of course,” said Kibali. “They are anyone, anyone, who hates themselves so much that they try to kill off their own nature. Follow them like a doorway to paradise—that’s what they think. But the humans treat us, even in their so-called humanity, with the same contempt and fear. That is your war on us.” The gorilla touched his index finger to the fencing. “It is time that you remove this. The chimps, they will not come back. You are safe, for now.”
Cuthbert hesitated for a moment. He was not worried much for his own well-being—after all, his whole life had been about damaging his well-being, and chopping out his own violent inner “gate” to the stars.
“You must promise me something,” said Cuthbert. “You’re strong, really strong, you know?”
“I know what you’re going to say,” said Kibali. There was a look of despair on the gorilla’s wrinkly dark face, and he groaned. “You want me to wait. Yes, I will wait here.”
“No, that’s not it. There will be no more waiting, ode bab.” Cuthbert began to cut the fence open. “Do not hurt any animals, right? No more of that. I can’t take it anymore, right? You are being freed to stop an expected attack from the comet people, so you can protect yourself. You cannot die, Kibali. But you can’t kill, either.”
The gorilla did not say anything in response at first. After a while, he said, “Hah! Friend! There is blood all over you. I did not cause the deaths. I warned you. And I didn’t hurt you. You’re your own worst enemy.”
Cuthbert said, “Ah, that’s nothing.” He could not see that he was now badly disfigured, missing one entire nostril, and still indeed bleeding profusely. All he could see, really, was that slick patch on his jumper.
“Tell any animal you see. Tell them tonight. Tell them no animal is safe. But tell them the Lord of Animals is coming.”
Kibali nodded and rubbed his chin. “I suppose we would not be talking like this, human, if not for some cause. I want to know this Lord.”
“You will,” said Cuthbert.
“I must. Do not years and years of dark gorilla wretchedness add up to something? Is their worth so far below that of human suffering? Shouldn’t animals like myself—I am so alone, in every world on earth—shouldn’t I be allowed to see this Lord just once?”
“Arr,” said Cuthbert. “Sweet gorilla, yes—but beware of the night. And I have a question: have you heard of the Gulls of Imago?”
“Ah,” said Kibali. “You’ve been to see the penguins. They are stubborn things. I know nothing about the gulls, except that, I am told they’re white—and not very beautiful, and that they like to eat chips and rubbish.”
When there was a hole of sufficient size in the cage, the animal stepped daintily out and made for one of the lime trees beside the zoo’s perimeter fence. Cuthbert watched the beautiful animal heave itself up to a thick low limb, pull itself across the fence, and drop out of sight. Kibali did not need to be shown the opening Cuthbert had made earlier. Nor had the chimpanzees, who had already crossed Regent’s Park and reached Baker Street. But when Kibali crossed the perimeter fence, the whole night went public. More Met and autonews Skydrones would be dispatched. The Red Watch, undoubtedly, would begin a general crackdown on any nearby Indigent “disorder.” There was now a four-hundred-pound gorilla loose in the city. It was the stuff of King Kong and “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” Even King Henry would have to be awakened.
canonization of a drunk