“I second that,” said Omotoso.
Soon, Astrid could see the oddly fatter Dr. Bajwa again, shaking his head, but smirking, too.
“You have been delivered, it seems,” hollered Dr. Bajwa. “I told you. I told you, didn’t I? It’s as plain as a pikestaff.”
Elbowing into the crowd came Mason, waving bystanders aside with authority, repeating the phrase, “Sorry, security, sorry.”
Then Suleiman glided in. For reasons known only to him, the Zanzabari man was wearing on his feet the speedfins one normally saw on kids playing dangerous games of hurtball around the IBs. He was smiling openly, with his American visa now inserted. It was a silver holographic eagle that popped up from the palm, beating its wings in its flight to nowhere.
Mason and Suleiman leaned far over the edge of the enclosure, and Mason called down to Astrid, winking, “Help’s on the way. Just hang tough, y’all.”
Eventually, Astrid also spotted Tom, her friend from FA.
She felt embarrassed to see him.
“I did not drink,” she said, looking down.
Tom seemed unfazed. “Of course you didn’t. But it’s a miracle. I was starting to think I’d be the only one who did the Death. And now I’m not.”
Astrid then took her Cuthbert’s hand and kissed it.
Soon, a detail of the king’s personal Beefeaters, the Yeomen of the Guard, took up positions near key “battle” sites—the Penguin Pool, the American Embassy—and showily stood sentry duty, all part of Harry9’s plan to “own” the night as an exemplar of Windsorian might. One Beefeater came to the edge of the lion enclosure and planted her neuralwave pike with a thud. Few loyal subjects could ever have been as pleased as St. Cuddy to see such an old-fashioned regal spectacle, apparently on his behalf.
The raw video feeds, broadcast from the autonews and spread on WikiNous, were already fashioning a kind of rough narrative—the hands of King Henry’s council were behind this—which presented Cuthbert and Astrid as fending off a terrorist suicide cult. Cuthbert’s release of the rare zoo animals was framed as a sort of stopgap “tactic.” As long as the cultists were dead and their gobs shut, Harry9 was happy.
“Tritty,” said Cuthbert as they lay beside the moat. “That’s your name? But I’ll always see Drystan in you, you know? I’m all done. My body’s shot. A’m done for. But you found me. You remembered me. It’s all I could have ever wanted. Never forget now, all right?”
Suddenly, a mass of white birds appeared above everyone’s heads, singing madly. Seagulls! It was as if a beneficent, reintegrated version of the Neuters had materialized. They had wings. They were not here to harm, but to inspire. They swooped down and began to gobble up the popcorn and crisps that Cuthbert had tossed into the lion enclosure during the night. They screamed for joy.
“Blastid,” said St. Cuthbert. “It’s the Gulls of Imago. They’ve come.” And finally St. Cuthbert himself sang in his croaking voice the penguin song, all to the tune of “A Hundred Years Ago”:
Seagulls of Imago, your song shall make us free,
From Cornwall to the Orkney, we dine on irony,
Along with lovely kippers from the Irish Sea.
Along with lovely kippers from the Irish Sea,
We’ll take our daily fill of anguished poetry,
’Til the world becomes zoologically arty.
Seagulls of Imago, your song shall make us free,
Seagulls of Imago, your song shall make us free,
Make it new! Things not ideas! Ambiguity!
And endless lovely kippers from the Irish Sea.
“What does it mean?” asked Astrid.
“Haven’t the faintest,” Cuthbert said. “Perhaps we need to eat kippers first. That’s all I need—and a full English.* And a stomach. I need one of them.”
“Yes,” said Astrid. “Egg and fried toast soldiers and a tomato. Fried. It’s the day.”
“It is,” said Cuthbert. “Let’s wakie wakie then. I’ve got loads to tell you, Astrid. Loads. It’s been so long.”
The seagulls dove down, flapping and crying around their heads, and scurrying away with bits of popcorn. Nearby, in Lubetkin’s Penguin Pool, which was restored, not a trace of the attack discernible, the penguins were marching up their helical ramps, ready to go anywhere on earth. They had heard the gulls and they were ready to follow them to homes off the tip of southern Africa, at the Cape of Good Hope.
All across the city, everyone began to noticed hundreds of new cloud-doodles in the sky. The children of London had got wind about the night, and their response was to draw pictograms. There were rhinos and zebras with stick legs. There was a giraffe with a neck the length of a football pitch. There was a jaguar with spots that blew away almost as fast as they were drawn by a five-year-old girl in Hampstead named Lucy.