“Yow’re right barmy!” Cuthbert interrupted, laughing a bit. “Yow’re silly as a pie-can.”
Yet he had to admit that he felt quietly moved by Muezza’s words. He was drinking himself to death, and now, if nothing else, a considerate kitty was looking in on him, trying to help. And he felt responsible for making sure Muezza got some food. He said, “Yes, well, I suppose you must chobble a few rats then. If it’s your fittle and all. But I don’t want to see it, right?”
“If you would not mind terribly, brother. Time, my saliq, is short. The end is near. Still, you see, there are certain absolutes one cannot avoid. Al-Khidr or not, I must on English soil eat rats. And I would like to pay my respects to the Shayk, and you must, you really must, too. And I want to take you there. We must go now.”
two rats for every londoner
BUT CUTHBERT FELT A NEED TO REST. THE CRAWL into the zoo, the gap-making in the fence, the catastrophic tumble in the Penguin Pool, the freeing of the cats—it was all knackering him. And now more strange lights were appearing outside the zoo, along with sirens and faint human voices. Was there something in the sky, besides children’s cloud-doodles? Had the suicided cultists completely gathered in their comet ship? Had their California cocktails of death “released” them from their bodily “vehicles,” and soon their hordes would be in London?
As much as Cuthbert felt affection for Muezza, along with no small dose of bewilderment, he wondered how much more he could take. He leaned against a rubbish receptacle meant to resemble a hippopotamus with a gaping, dust-devouring maw. Wasn’t he already spoken for? The poor penguins had already tasked him with helping them find their Gulls of Imago, and he was failing them.
Cuthbert said to Muezza, “If I go with you to see your ‘shayk,’ I’ll lose more time. I’ve already promised meself to these blunky penguins, see?”
“The penguins?” gasped the cat. “Oh, saliq! Why waste time with them? Don’t you know that their pool is the Altar of Lost Chances? They cannot be harmed or helped, nor can the prophecies surrounding them be changed: the Altar will stir.”
“Well, I wouldn’t know about that, would I?”
“You will. It is beyond us,” said Muezza. “Only Allah understands it. But the Altar, no single thing could be more dangerous to animals. It is a contraption of promises not kept. You watch—your Luciferians, oh, they will admire the Altar, you will see. It is part of their technology.”
“But it’s a lovely thing, it is. This Tecton chap, he won a big award for it.”
“It’s white cement. No one ever asked the penguins what they thought of their yoghurt-colored house of amusement. And it wouldn’t have been so hard. But now, the penguins are brainwashed. They are ciphers of design. They are waiting to perform for someone who will never come. They wait every night, in their secret chambers, singing their verses to the Gulls of Imago.”
“Well, what’s so terrible about that?”
“I’m surprised at you, wise brother,” said the cat. “The poor penguins are merely very clever decor, and when the aliens bring the Altar to life, the little jackarses will also perish. Don’t you see? The Altar is a monument to what should be but never quite will be? The penguins wait to perform a ballet of collectivist magnificence that can be danced nowhere else but in the mind of an architect.”
Cuthbert said: “You said—you promised—to tell me about the gulls, then. They’re important, to me, and to the penguin muckers. I’m in a real palaver with all this penguin stuff. There’s this Tecton fellow—’e’s been ghosted into birds. But I distinctly heard you say you would help me if I got you out of your—your cat capsule. You did say that, didn’t you?”
“If that is what you say, if you must say it, I will believe it,” said Muezza. “But that is not what I said.”
“Ah, cat!”
“Calm your heart, saliq. Listen: I suppose you have already done what is necessary to bring the ‘Imago gulls’ upon you; we will see—in time. But, really, how can you bother with these”—he spoke as though a bolt of dead worms had gushed into his mouth—“these birds? Birds eat garbage, not good, warm, beautiful blood, as cats do. When I am talking to you about the True Path, to Allah, you want to talk about a socialist museum piece. Did you not hear me? You are about to meet the Shayk of Night.”
“I heard it, cat! Now what about the thing I said?”