“What are your exact names, now, eh? Are you lot gonna say something now?”
He squinted at them. They were dirty and weird—real animals, and not genomic clones. They were not like the wavy-haired spaniels he saw on Sundays at the park. They had short, tawny hair and narrow skulls. Their large, sharp ears were filled with white hair. A cape of black hair spread down their backs. Their oddest trait was their lean, elongated legs. They looked like foxes on stilts. The placard on the fence read: GOLDEN JACKAL (CANIS AUREUS), TANZANIA.
Of course, a jackal hadn’t been seen in East Africa for thirty years. Much of the region was entirely given over to colossal biomesh and “green fuel” farms.
He tapped the fence. Cuthbert said aloud, quietly, “’Allo-allo, chaps. Don’t want to talk now?”
One of the jackals rolled over and yawned. Cuthbert got out a piece of his diatom-cinnamon chewing gum. He rolled it into a hard little nut and pushed it through the cage. It fell onto the ground. Like magic, and wraithlike, the jackals all stood up and faced him. A young, lean one thrust its head forward and picked the gum off the dirt with its fore-snout, then jerked its head back to take the gum deep into its maw. The animal backed a few steps away from the other four jackals. It began to chew. It was obviously a strange, difficult food for the jackal. The movement of its jaws scared Cuthbert. It was too rapid and repetitive, and it seemed as if the jackal couldn’t make the process stop. He regretted giving it. The chewing jackal’s eyes stayed on the other four jackals, who looked interested and apprehensive. Cuthbert put his palms against the cage. A larger, fatter jackal gazed up at him, panting with a “happy” face. Its mouth was partially open and its glistening long tongue quivered. A sudden, lively feeling, a kind of élan, pushed up from Cuthbert’s abdomen, into his neck. He felt his cheeks grow warm and tingly.
“Hi, hi,” he said to the animal.
He decided to have a go at setting his marked finger on a strand of fencing, and the black 9 mm mark he’d scored, he noted, was at least five times the width of the thin fencing. It was evident that his bolt cutters could free the jackals easily—and take on much thicker-gauge fencing, too.
A yellow isosceles triangle on the fence displayed a black silhouette of a hand with an orderly half-circle cut out of its palm. It read:
These
Animals
May Bite
“Better not hold my donnies in the cage,” he said to himself; but he felt that he probably could keep his finger there and no harm would come to him.
“You’re only a dog, aren’t you?” he said. “I’ve been off my head, puppy!”
After a few minutes, the jackals began to lurk around their long enclosure, except for the one still chewing the gum. They moved with an awkward grace, as if they might fall off their own legs and yet make it look purposeful. One animal held its head low to the ground, trotting around like a police sniffer dog. It seemed disturbed by something. Much of the grass inside their prison was worn away, exposing long tracts of dirt patted shiny by paws. A few coarse, raw roots sprung from the soil, like the pale elbows of underwater swimmers in a dark lupine lake.
Cuthbert knew the Red Watch was after him, but he hadn’t noticed what the jackal had: one tall, unmantled Watchman striding in their direction, from near the hyacinth macaws.
Some of the jackals began barking in their high-pitched, melodious yaps.
Cuthbert realized that he hadn’t moved for a long time. It was time to get going.
As he began stumbling along, he stopped to steady himself with his hand on a short brick wall, then lurched against a small elm tree. There was supposed to be a line painted on the walk somewhere for a self-guided tour, but he couldn’t see it. If he tried to follow a line painted on the path, anyone with sense would see instantly that he was stewed. He began berating himself for succumbing to the impulses that had brought him here. “Fuck me,” he said. “Fuck me!”
The lone Watchman bumped against him hard and scowled; he carried his golden neuralwave pike, but he seemed distracted and rushed.
“Stay the fuck to the side of the path,” the Watchman hissed, stopping for a moment. “Indigent shite!”
“Ay, sir! Sorry, sir!”
“Haven’t you heard? The whole bloody country’s on fucking King’s Alert tonight. What’s the matter with you? You look like a slapped arse, mate.”
The jackals snarled at the Watchman, who sneered at them, “Dirty dogs—is this your little filthy mate?”
One of the jackals, a large male, hurled itself toward the Watchman and smacked against the fence. The Watchman jumped back, reflexively.