Some of the regular embassy personnel queuing at the table didn’t appear rankled at all and required no abuse—indeed, they politely waited their turns.
Astrid herself felt the allure of the Flōt and the champagne. She was convinced that little of what she saw before her was really happening. Could a drink or two hurt? It would end the anxieties of the Death in an instant, and as she saw it, end this entire phantasmagoria of a night. Couldn’t she just get a sip, a little taste, of some Glenfiddich, and stir in a splash of Flōt, and a bite of cheese, without the downers? She pulled her hair into two thick tails and twisted it into a splayed chignon. The humidity of the chancery had given it waves, and it was as flyaway shiny and distracting as ever.
Marshall Applewhite III glided right in front of Astrid.
“Yes, it’s sooooooo OK,” he said, in a sibilant, not unfriendly voice. “We’re inside you, after all. We know you. We know about your unhappiness and your loneliness. And all those years of having no one but your mother, and now she’s dying of Bruta7, poor dear one, and it’s become so hard to believe in anything in . . . in this . . . this dirty world of petty kings and animals running amok and people acting like animals. Go ahead—drink away. It’s liberating, Astrid.”
Applewhite frowned a little. He showed Astrid a purple orb of Flōt and two shot glasses. She put her hand to her mouth, as if guarding it.
Out in the square, she heard a loudspeaker babbling about King Henry’s sins, and the death-groans of neuralpike victims, and the screams of an elephant. She was still without panties or trousers, her muscular legs still dripping with green sticky sap. She felt appallingly exposed but almost beyond embarrassment.
“This corrupt manimal,” said the loudspeaker in a nasally, bloodless tone, “this selfish manimal—this earth-bound manimal—this corrupt manimal—he has—corrupt manimal—he has appealed to Britain’s worst nature. Corrupt manimal. Let Harry9 die. Let him be gone with the rest of earth’s animals. Let him—” and on and on the voice droned. In the distance, Astrid could also just make out a new and alarming sound, both musical and corrosive, like the gold-throated shrieks of hundreds of dragons. Applewhite, too, seemed to hear it, and squinted suspiciously.
“Oh,” she said. “Oh, god.”
After a long pause, she said, “But there’s St. Cuthbert.” She began shaking her head, taking a few steps back from Applewhite. “He thinks I’m his brother. Or some kind of forest messiah. He says I’m the Christ of Otters.” She turned away from Applewhite. “Cuthbert’s crazy, but he means something . . . to me, at least.”
“What’s he to you? He’s a stranger. He’s nothing. He’s a part of your second withdrawal from Flōt. Your unnecessary withdrawal. Your unnecessary ‘struggle’ with your human container.”
“But he’s not. Leave me alone. You don’t care about me. Cuthbert—he’s no stranger. I’ve even an idea that he might be my granddaddy. He shouldn’t be a stranger. Not to anyone in England.”
“But you don’t realize,” said Applewhite, beaming smugly, holding one of the glasses toward Astrid, “that this saint is merely second withdrawal? Don’t you see? There is no Saint Cuthbert. He’s just another city drunk.”
Astrid pulled her hair down again and shook it out.
“I don’t care,” she said. “For all I know, we’re all just the ghosts of one another’s deepest needs. But there is this helpless old Indigent who says he has come to save Britain’s animals, and he may be crazy, but tonight, this first of May, in the reign of King Henry the Ninth, in 2052, in London, England, he is Saint Cuthbert.”
“But you . . . what about you? What are you to him?”
“I am . . . I am the Christ of Otters.”
Applewhite grimaced sadly. “Oh, child,” he said, chuckling. “You’ve been, well, between withdrawals for so long—and that’s such a scary thing, I know!—that you’re easily taken in. And that’s OK. We’ll help you. I really, really, really, really think you’re at the Evolutionary Level Above Human. You’re as unanimal as they get. And you’re so special. That’s why you’re not being forced . . . like the others . . . see? We know you well, Astrid. I’m sorry, but I have to say this: you’re completely ready to shed your container. You are ready to ascend to our home in the comet. Drink, friend, drink.”
Lifting a filled shot glass in his wrinkled pink hand, Applewhite drank one of them, wincing slightly.
Astrid said, “I will not, cunt.”
“Then you’ve wrecked yourself, Astrid,” he said, gasping a bit. “You can stay in your world of giant vaginas and shit. You will die tonight. If the Death doesn’t get you, my Neuters will.”
There was a kind of popping sound, and a flash of red lights, and Applewhite, mysteriously, was gone.
rage of the leopard