But not a soul dared approach the beasts, who indeed did find themselves without permits.
At Portman Square, Kibali’s pounding heart rose. There were trees, at last. He could hardly catch his breath now, but he wanted to go home, to the northeastern Congo, and at that moment the enormous lime and plane trees seemed the closest thing. Just as he approached, the unpredictable elephant Mahmoud stood back on his haunches and trumpeted the kind of powerscream he had not heard for years.
Kibali whipped around to look, in terror and in glee. Now the fighters would come for him, wherever he went, he thought. Perhaps the shadow-creature he had sensed earlier would make itself known, too—perhaps as an ally, if not a friend. In any case, he felt driven away from Portman Square, and funneled southward, toward the unknown.
As he lurched onward in Baker Street, his chest aching, the confidence of the aristocratic and moneyed world confronted him. There were restaurants called Texture and Blueprint North; a toy shop known as Petit Chou; a beauty shop named Elemis Spa. It all struck him as refined but oddly lifeless. There were no good urine stenches. There was no hair on the necks of the mannequins he saw. Soon, running as fast as he could, he crossed Oxford Street, which was mostly deserted, over to Orchard Street. He could see, farther ahead, a beautiful green-blackness—no gliders, no machines, no buildings, just dark sanctuary. It was Grosvenor Square, of course, the home of the American Embassy. (A replacement chancery had been built in south London in 2017, but it had been twice flattened by terrorists.) Grosvenor was the only other big patch of forest in the vicinity, and beyond it the treetops of two great royal parks, St. James and Hyde, yoked together into a giant green-brown sky-arcade. Follow the Green Line, he found himself thinking, in gorilla, as if the spirer Cuthbert’s thinking was now spreading to other creatures. Mahmoud had stayed at Portman Square, to fight perceived aliens and to trample cars and to bellow for justice (until he was shot by snipers), but Layang had followed Kibali, sensing the growing threat behind their little herd.
the lions warn st. cuthbert
CHANDANI AND THE THREE OTHER LIONESSES stalked the central court of their dirty enclosure, cutting back and forth like tongues of blown fire. They looked enlivened by the return of Cuthbert, but angry, too, to be stuck. The haggard male, Arfur, sat in their midst with his paws extended, as smugly inert as they were uneasy. As for St. Cuthbert, he was tired. He felt the stumpy-legged daze of fading Flōt. There was, again, that peculiar, disassociated sense that the entire night was unreal. He leaned up against the main wall of the enclosure.
Behind the enclosure, the gathering lights of dozens of emergency gliders set the lime trees and hazel shrubs and ivy banks aglow like green lamp shades of all sizes and sorts. The entire horizon burned with yellow and blue radiance, and the two colors, striated through the shrubbery, combined into a distinctive emerald green.
Since Cuthbert left them earlier, the lions had also caught glimpses of the Neuters, and instinctively, they recognized them as a somewhat detestable prey for the hunt—but prey indeed.
“I said I would return,” St. Cuthbert was telling the great felines.
“The hour’s late,” said Arfur, shaking his great, tawny head. “Let us out, holy man. The Gate—the Heaven’s Gate—is soon to open.” Arfur jumped to his feet, and he continued: “One side is here, beside us, somewhere in the zoo, and the other is somewhere south—near Grosvenor Square, we are told. Once the Gate opens, it will destroy us all. We must stop it!”
“Calm down,” Chandani instructed Arfur, approaching the old male with a limber, menacing gait. “It’s almost late.”
“Late? Or early?” said St. Cuthbert. “It must be three in the morning. And I still . . . I’m not sure. I know what will happen. Or I know what’s supposed to happen. And if you’re free, I will surely be the first to die. I am still waiting for him—for the Christ. Of Otters.”
“Ha!” scoffed Arfur. “I would’ve thought that a saint cannot perish.”
Chandani snarled at Arfur. “Show respect,” she said. “This blessed man can help us.”
But Arfur held his colossal paws up toward the huntress, baring pinkish-yellow claws. He threw his head back. “While Rome burns, you and this old man are talking about otters?” The other three lionesses sneered at Arfur. St. Cuthbert feared a fight was about to erupt.