Chapter 6
She waited until after dinner to show it to me, perhaps thinking I’d be in the best mood with a full stomach. What she didn’t realize was that a full stomach didn’t matter if it’s filled with corn and filler as opposed to the steak meat she and her brother ate. Certainly, stomach envy did little to instill graciousness. But she used her human-style debating techniques and presented me supporting evidence to strengthen her arguments. She showed me a letter on a screen:
Primary Network: United States Dept. Defense (gov. public)
Sender: Aika Tess-Erin (reg.)
Recipient: Tiamat Cusaris (reg.)
Protocol: ICN-L v2.3a
Encryption: PSL.2A
Timestamp: 3933s,23413
Additional Information Hidden
Hey Tia,
Have you visited the city's zoo lately? Arlene told me the
renovation for the "Reptiles of the World" is complete. The new
exhibit is supposed to be wonderful.
You and your brother should go and check it out for me. I would
love to visit you guys and go along too, but they're assigning
me back out to the Garden again. More desk jockey work, I
imagine. Oh well. Maybe one of these days we'll meet up with
each other.
Oh, and tell Basil that, yes, I'm still working on the Zeus
project, but I can't give him the specifications for the launch
systems. Government secrets and all that.
Take care, Tiamat. Give your brother a hug for me.“The zoo? You guys want to visit the zoo?”
“Yes,” Tia said. “Please, Ly-lee? Please?”
“Why?”
“Why else? Animals!”
“Lots of cool ones!” Basil said.
“I don’t know, guys,” I said. “I really don’t think that’s a great idea.”
“Haven’t we been good, Ly-lee?” Tia asked. “We listened to everything you said.”
“We have!” said Basil.
“Yes, but that still doesn’t mean I think we should go,” I said.
“But have to,” Tia said. She held the screen higher. “I mean, not just because we want to, but because Aika wants us to see it for her, and then tell her all about it.”
Basil tapped at Aika’s name. “See, she doesn’t get to see lots of things. We have to do it for her.”
“She’s one of our best friends.”
“And since we’re your friend, that means she’s your friend too, right?”
“Do it for your friend, Ly-lee. Please?”
“Pretty please?”
Rock-solid logic. Combined with a show of eyes that could made puppies cry, I couldn’t formulate a rebuttal. So I agreed, which got me a knock onto my back and a face of saliva. There we went. We were going to the zoo. Just an ordinary outing to see some cute and interesting animals, right? I wished.
Even though I told them I’d take them, I tried to find a loophole around it. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t do it because I felt like being an asshole or anything, but because it was a plain bad idea. I’ve tried my damndest to keep them away from the public, and now they wanted to go straight into the city-fucking-zoo? Yeah, why not? No one goes to that place at all. Nope, no one. Why the hell not?
I contacted Arlene about the plans in order to pry a response out of her. Masochism at work: I really wanted to her to deliver a dose of that Neuman rage, to screech and demand what the hell I was thinking promising them such a thing. If she did, I could be honest with the twins. “Bad news guys. Arlene said no and she threatened to neuter me if I took you to the zoo. Sorry!” Case closed, end of story, everyone’s happy.
“Oh sure, take them, please!” she said. “It’ll be good for them. They’d love the new reptile exhibit, it’s amazing.”
“What about all the people there?”
“They’ll be fine. It’ll do Tia and Basil good to be around more people.”
“But—”
“I’ll send a tram to your place Tuesday on the seventh. It’ll take you to the zoo and you can get in free.”
That’s why I wasn’t a lawyer.
Tuesday morning, the Isians passed on the ham breakfast I made and ate anticipation instead, babbling on about the zoo and making pre-trip sightseeing plans. The Wyvern autotram arrived at 8:30, and the twins spared no time dragging me out and stuffing me headfirst into the vehicle. “Oh, it’s nice being out in the open and out of that room, isn’t it Ly-lee?” Basil said as he pushed me into the car. After we seated ourselves, the tram closed its door, pulled into the street, and started its preselected route to the zoo.
The tram was a twelve-seater with a pair of seats turned to the road and the rest in two rows facing each other across an aisle. We stayed in the rear. I sat in the middle seat on one side and the twins tangled on the seats across, but even five cushions weren’t enough to contain their excitement. They chittered, clicked, chirped, and squeaked to each other in that impenetrable language of theirs.
Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, I thought. Mark always got on my case about my social life and repeatedly pressed me as a partner on his quests to wreck the nightlife. I always declined, but he wasn’t wrong. Getting out into the open would be a good thing for me. Sure, it was a zoo with a pair of lizards and not a hot nightclub with Mark “Pussy Magnet” Ellis, but I was less likely to come home with a fractured skull or a mystery organism in my pubes. Besides, the Isians have been good for the past couple weeks. Quite damned good. I’d like to reward them.
I lounged in the seat and let the vibrations of the road lull me into slumber, until a commotion broke stirred me up. Basil was bellowing so hard that he was a heave away from falling off his seat. “No, no, no!” he squealed. Tia humored him a bit before she pulled him back to the seat and patted his stomach.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
“Oh, Tia’s being silly,” Basil said after catching his wind.
“It’s a perfectly fine idea,” Tia said.
Basil poked her and stuck out his tongue. “You think so? You think they’ll be good with each other?”
“Yep. Why not?”
“Be-cause.” He rolled his eyes as if it explained everything. Tia dismissed it with a wave of her claw.
“So who’s good with each other?” I asked. Juicy gossip? Eh, didn’t care. Juicy Isian gossip? Hell, that’s new.
“Well…” Tia started. She smiled and looked down. “Well, I just think that Arlene should really find a mate. And I think I know the perfect one for her.”
“She thinks it should be Mark!” Basil said in squeals.
Ha, God! I held in my laughter with my hands over my mouth. Mark and Arlene, together? Perish the thought! You put an explosive Mark plus a volatile Arlene together and you get what’s called a warhead, and we use such things to blow up third-world countries. As silly as the idea was, I could imagine it. Hours of screaming, thrashing, and hitting would lead to unimaginably hot and sweaty porno sex. Pondering it, it’d probably be a match made in heaven, though heaven help us if they manage to produce offspring.
I coughed and choked in some spit to bottle the giggling from the thought of it. Tia noticed, and I couldn’t contain it anymore. It came loose in a clump that re-infected Basil. She glared at us.
“Oh God, I’m sorry Tia,” I said, trying to restrain myself again. “It’s just hard to see those two together, that’s all.”
Basil calmed himself enough and smirked at his sister. “See? Told ya!”
“Well!” Tia said and crossed her arms. “I think it’s a great idea!”
“It’s an interesting idea,” I said, “but I don’t think it’s the best.”
She clicked her tongue and twisted around to stare at me. She nodded her head a few times.
“Well, how about you then?”
“What? Me?”
“Yeah. You don’t have a girl yourself, right?”
“Well I… it’s…”
I wasn’t prepared for my personal life to be probed like this, much less from a lizard. I couldn’t say anything and sputtered until Basil came to my rescue.
“What are you talking about?” he asked her.
Tia jumped to my side and bowed over me. “Well, I never see Ly-lee with a girl or anything, and I always wonder why.” She pressed her hands against my cheeks and massaged them. While she rubbed, she peered around my head like she was judging a plastic surgery contest. I froze in place and let her move my head around so she could examine it. “He’s such a handsome human, I think, but I don’t know if he has a mate or not.”
“Oh don’t be silly,” Basil said. He jumped to my other side and patted my chin up. “Look at him, he’s Ly-lee! Of course he doesn’t have a girl!”
Gee, thanks Basil.
Basil tapped my chin excitedly and chirped. “He has, like, ten of them!”
Woah. Thanks, Basil!
Tia dropped her hands from my cheek. “Ten girls?”
“No, not ten,” I said.
“Really?” said Basil. “So, you have more than ten? Like twenty? Wow!”
“So twenty then?” Tia said.
“Yeah, twenty! He has a whole bunch that he keeps to himself.”
“How come I never seen them?”
“Well, he keeps them hidden in a secret place that only he knows, because if anyone found out they’d get jealous. He doesn’t want to hurt anybody’s feeling, so he doesn’t tell anyone.”
Tia eyed her brother and then me with a judgmental gaze. I shook my head. She sustained the stare for a moment, then smiled.
“Well, Ly-lee sure is a lucky person,” she said.
“Yeah, lucky and considerate. I wish I could be like him.” He sighed.
“Me too.”
She giggled, winked at me, and jumped back on her seat across the aisle to sit out the rest of the trip.
The city had inherited the zoo as a relic from an older time, and for decades, it was the stepchild in the city’s family of public works. The zoo’s land was originally undeveloped private property owned by local businessman Mr. Hamilton. There, the grass grew wild and wildlife such as birds, small mammals, and hobos made themselves home, and it was where young children spent their days lost from their parents. As the story goes, Hamilton became tired of the plot draining money in property taxes, so in a stroke of inspiration, he gated the place, brought in animal curiosities, and charged people (mostly gullible kids) to see the wild critters. Exotic creatures like the amazing African arctic penguin and the Asiatic capybara presented themselves in makeshift cages. He later christened the zoo as the “Hamilton World of Wonder.”
To feed the increasing popularity, Hamilton brought in larger and more dangerous beasts to install some excitement. The operation grew, and there wasn’t a kid around the neighborhood that didn’t visit the zoo to feed mice to crocodiles at the end of a stick or ride on a neutered lion. But the operation still slipped underneath official notice, or maybe the city didn’t care. At least, until a grizzly bear broke loose and mauled five people to death (and injured a dozen more), a rampage that ended when a police sniper team flew in. Graphic video of the frenzy haunted local and national news for days.
After the city possessed the land and the zoo, it had more animals than it could send to the pound, but also a business model already in place. It put the effort getting the World of Wonder up to the minimum standards of safety and animal welfare—just enough to keep the feds off its back. It turned out that the renovations were more expensive than the city had anticipated, to say nothing of its underestimation of operating costs. The Hamilton Zoo didn’t recoup the cost of investment, and the governmental resentment surrounding it kept it in perpetual disrepair for years.
Enter the I.C. Wyvern Institute. When the city appointed Wyvern to administrate the zoo, controversy broke out. The institute wished to reinvigorate the place into a “world-class” zoo and add a research center. Lobbies erupted to demolish the lot and repurpose the land for commercial zones. It intensified when local journalists revealed that the deal allowed Wyvern to own the zoo’s plot scott-free. The outrage spilled through city hall for weeks under the sentiment that Wyvern worked the city over for free land, and consensus believed the zoo would remain a failure. Several incumbents lost their jobs from the firestorm.
Miraculously, Wyvern managed to keep on the project owing to some sort of legal voodoo. Several years of renovations and marketing later, the Hamilton-Wyvern World Zoo shot up as one of the best zoos in the world. The tourists poured in, and the city got a nice chunk of recognition from the scientific and conservation communities. The awards, plaques, and money rolled in soon after. And the rest as they say is history yadda yadda yadda, you get the idea. Point is, the city made out like a whore at a political convention, and everyone here will tell you they always supported the zoo.
A line of visitors had already formed at the gates when we arrived at the zoo’s opening time. A statue of Bazaar the Bear, the zoo’s mascot, welcomed us at the junction of the main entryway. It was a chubby thing, with its paws wrapped around a jug of honey and its rump stuck against a log. The caricature of bear froze in marble, forever greeting visitors with an ursine smile warped with human lips. The tram didn’t pull into the main entrance Bazaar guarded, but veered into a service road closed to the public. The gates yielded and allowed us to roll straight into the restricted road. We snaked through a grove of trees to a part of the complex seemingly untouched by maintenance crews. Our tram finally parked between a pair of other vehicles at an entrance.
“You have arrived at your destination,” announced the tram’s computer.
We exited and came to the entrance, a beige door on a wall infested with vines. If it weren’t for the blue logo of a stylized wyvern on the door, I wouldn’t have known we were still at the zoo.
“Well c’mon,” Basil said. He scampered to the door, and it opened without argument.
Past a hallway capped with another door, the zoo welcomed us proper. The Tuesday morning crowd was thin, but still enough to make me nervous. I could at least count one blessing: these were mostly elderly couples and the odd foreign tourist group; most people had work and school to worry about. I didn’t look forward to dealing with greasy-palmed children harassing the lizards.
“The reptile exhibit is over here,” Basil said, pointing to the northeast corner of a map on an information kiosk. “We can turn to the left path and get there.”
Tia shook her head. “No, no, don’t go there yet. Save it for last.”
“Why?”
“Because you always save the best for last, silly. That’s how you’re supposed to do it.”
They took a moment to study the map with clicks of their tongues. Then, they grabbed my hands and tugged me along the journey to see the pretty little animals.
I’ve already visited the zoo a few times in all its versions, from Hamilton’s to the city’s and then Wyvern’s. Truthfully, I liked it less and less with each renovation. Sure, the old Hamilton version was dangerous and horrifically unethical, but that was the whole fun of it. It was homely, the way a farmer’s market is compared to a megastore—you’re more likely to contract salmonella, yes, but Farmer Joe is a goddamned riot to talk to. Even the city version retained some of that charm with its half-assed quality you couldn’t replicate intentionally.
The current zoo featured architectural styles from top-class designers with names longer than my street address. They polished the zoo to a fine mirror, one that reflected away the griminess of animals. Shiny, high-tech, elegant, and surely a superior environment for the critters. Nonetheless, I couldn’t help but feel they lost something in translation. Gone was the charm and homeliness. Wyvern was all about design. A home without a bent nail isn’t the same.
Now reading information holographs and watching animals lounge in automatic pens that fed them with robotic arms, I still felt the same way.
It didn’t matter to my lizard friends, though. Like six-year-olds at a candy factory, they gobbled one animal exhibit after another. We went to see damned near everything on God’s green earth: flamingos, black bears, brown bears, polar bears, monkeys, pygmy monkeys, elephants, foxes, boars, penguins, emus, ostriches, rodents of all sorts, and who knows what else. The twins picked them off one-by-one right off assembly line: no rest, all animals. You’d be surprised to know how exhausting it is just to see a roadrunner chase about in its dusty enclosure.
Fortunately, the other visitors left us alone. Some gave confused gazes here and there, and sometimes a clump of people gathered around the Isians when they were viewing an animal’s exhibit, but the crowd kept a good distance. I guess they figured the twins were part of the zoo’s menagerie and that it was some sort of gimmick. I was glad to play along.
“What times do you take them out the cages?” a mother asked me while the Isians chirped away at sleeping grizzly bear. A small child grasped her hand with a thumb in his mouth and his eyes fixated on the lizards.
“Oh, every morning around ten. They need to get a good exercise.”
“Are they dangerous?”
“Completely harmless, ma’am. They’re vegetarians.”
“Oh. I thought they ate meat, since there’s so many dangerous predators in Africa.”
“Pardon?”
“Africa. These African lizards of yours. What were they called again?”
“Yes, right. The Bolo-Striped Great Saharan Lizard. From Africa.”
“Oh, I knew it. Do they fight with the pandas that eat their bamboo?”
“Pandas?”
“Yes, pandas. The live with pandas in the wild, don’t they?”
“Yeah.”
I fielded dozens of similar questions, and the crowd would nod and hum in understanding, stay a few minutes to observe the lizards, and disperse to find more interesting sights. In between, I made damned sure to avoid the real keepers.
“Look Tia, they kinda look like chipmunks,” Basil said when we reached the meerkat den. The rodents (or rodent-like things) scampered in and out of their lairs and sat upright on their haunches to the coos and adoration from observers. The twins peered over the wall to take a closer view.
“Woah, there’s a lot of them,” said Tia.
“Oh, there’s a small one right there!” He pointed to a youngling clinging to its mother.
Tia cooed. “Aw, it’s a baby.” She licked her lips and dripped some spittle into the dirt. “They look so tasty.”
“That one over there looks fat and juicy.”
That was enough for me. I pulled them away from the exhibit before they figured that a whole lot of other things in the zoo looked good to eat. It was my turn to drag them along behind me. “Come on guys. It’s time to see the reptiles,” I said. I got no complaints save for disappointed whimpers and hanging gazes to the delectable meerkats we left behind.
An archway marked the reptile section of the zoo with a marquee reading “Reptiles of the World” in glowing green letters that morphed, grew legs, and then ran off the sign when various scaly creatures lumbered into the frame. Different themes catering to specific creatures divided the exhibits: Camp Crocodilia, The Land of Lizards, Serpent Isle, and Tortoise Turf.
“Camp Crocodilia is this way,” Basil said. He tugged my left arm toward a holograph of a sombrero-wearing crocodile that stood upright and greeted “hola amigos” to visitors.
Tia pulled my other arm the opposite way. “No, no, we’re going to The Land of Lizards.”
Upon feeling resistance, they began playing tug-of-war with my body.
“I want to see the crocs, Tia!”
“Lizards first! Lizards first!”
I tore my arms away from their grips, causing them to fall down on their hands to the ground.
“Enough guys! Here’s what’s going to happen: we’re going to see the lizards first and then go to see the crocodiles. All right? Come on, let’s go.”
Tia retook my hand and held her head high. She smirked at Basil, who kept on his fours and brooded alongside.
“Fine,” he said. “If Ly-lee wants to see them first, then I guess we’ll go.”
“I don’t want to see them first,” I said. “We just have to save the best for last, silly.”
In an instant, they swapped expressions. Basil chirped and said, “Oh right!” and took the hand that Tia had dropped. He took her place in leading to The Land of Lizards, and Tia trailed behind us.
“Ly-lee, I changed my mind,” she said.” Let’s go to Camp Crocodilia first.”
I whistled and pretended I heard nothing.
Just my luck, The Land of Lizards turned out to be the largest of the four sections, and it took some commit to get through all the way. You figured since you (or your friend) kept a green anole for a pet as a kid that you’ve seen them all, right? Maybe you were a cool kid and had an iguana instead, which qualified you as a reptile expert. Not on your life. Wyvern wasn’t fucking around when they put the exhibit together. We ran through all sorts of chameleons, Gila monsters, iguanas (green, marine, and in between), monitors, geckos, skinks, agamids, and at least three different creatures with the word “dragon” in their names. And that’s just the reptiles I could remember.
I didn’t have a particular thrill seeing these lizards though. Pardon, no offense to all of scaly-kind everywhere. I’m sure that they were all fascinating and unique creatures. It’s just that after you’ve been around Isians for months—and lived with them for weeks—it got old watching these creatures lounge on their damned rocks with the same expressions on their scaled snouts. God had a limited supply of perkiness when he created earth’s creatures, and between mammals and strippers, reptiles got the shit end of the deal. The Isians spoiled me when it came to lizard things.
Of course, my compatriots didn’t share the sentiment. I found my only break when they spent ten minutes trying to converse with a Nile monitor through clicks and chirps. The last lizard we visited was a komodo dragon. It was a spectacular thing, but not for outward reasons. It wore a plain brown coat and seemed like a nun to the Mardi Gras of other lizards. It was sedentary even by reptilian standards. And neither was it a particularly attractive creature, with its body a reptilian version of a bulldog. Besides those, the komodo was striking because it was huge. I’ve always referred the Isians as “giant lizards,” and that was a proper term in my experience. But this beast was a shipping barge in comparison.
The single dragon lounged in its pen among dirt, moss, and rocks. A willowy tree grew in the enclosure, which the animal took advantage of by wallowing in its shade. Even with its size and girth, it melted into the dusty earth and made itself difficult to spot. I couldn’t find it for the longest while.
Basil squealed at the information holograph at its pen. “A real-life dragon? A dragon! Sis, a dragon!”
“Oh, let me see!” Tia said. She stretched on her toes over the rails.
While Tia was hunting for it, Basil read aloud the text of the information panel.
“‘Komodo dragon. Varanus komodensis. The komodo monitor lizard, commonly called the komodo dragon, is the largest living species of lizard in the world. Indigenous to the South Pacific islands of Indonesia, the carnivorous komodo feeds on a large variety of prey, such as deer, boars, and carrion. With lengths of up to three meters long, komodos have been known to kill and eat prey as large as water buffalo. The saliva of the dragon—’”
“Oh, oh, I see it!” exclaimed Tia when she took sight of the creature loafing underneath the tree. She punctuated her excitement by reaching over the railing and waggling her finger toward the lizard. “The dragon! Right over there. The big brownie!”
Basil scanned the pen. “I see it. Huh. Doesn’t look like the picture at all.” He swayed back and forth between the dragon and the picture on the holograph.
“He’s so big. And so strong. And so handsome.”
“He? It’s a girl.”
“No he isn’t.”
“I’m pretty sure she is.”
“It’s a boy, trust me.”
Basil frowned at her. “How would you know?”
“’Cause I can tell. Just certain things I know about. Those strong muscles, those handsome scales, those sharp teeth… oh, it’s a boy all right. A strong, handsome one!”
She folded her arms on the railing, rested her head on them, and exhaled a fanciful sigh. When she began to purr, I felt something wrong about it. Purrs are methodical and uniform—a honeydew would elicit a purr, a steak would cause an identical one, and a rat for dinner the same still. However, a vibrato wove through Tia’s purr and tuned it almost to a singsong, as if a vocal cord bootlegged a hum inside and gave it a silky quality unlike anything I’ve heard before. I didn’t understand, or couldn’t understand, what it signified, so I tapped on the railing and remained silent.
Tia stopped purring and, with a vibrant chirp, hoisted herself atop the beam. She gripped on her perch with all four claws and leaned into the pen. “I’m going to go talk to him,” she said. “Dragons probably have all sorts of wonderful things to tell.”
“That’s not a dragon,” Basil said.
“Sure he is. The sign even said so.”
“That’s just a name. It doesn’t mean she’s actually one.”
“Why would they call him a dragon if he isn’t really one?”
“Because humans named her. They love naming things that make no sense, like watermelons. They do it for fun or something. Besides, even if she was really a dragon, what makes you think she’ll want to talk to you?”
She smirked. “Because, I’m a dragon too.”
“No you’re not.”
“Well, I’m named after one.”
“That doesn’t count.”
“Sure it does!”
Basil snapped his tongue and banged on the railing, causing Tia to wobble on it, but she rebalanced herself without trouble. He sat back down, snorted, and crossed his arms. His sister grounded back and forth, re-gripped the rail with her claws to optimize her perch, and eyed the komodo. Her tail swished behind her and batted me away inadvertently.
“Well, let’s go see the next lizard,” I said. “Come on, Tia, let’s get down from there.”
“Yeah, come on,” Basil said. “I’m done with this one.”
Tia ignored both of us and hunched forward some more. She brought her hindquarters down, spread her legs apart, and coiled the limbs together like a spring. The tail stiffened behind her and she locked herself with an arched back. Her head poked deep over the side. She looked serious.
“All right Tia, let’s get down from there.” I tugged at her tail to coax her down, but she resisted. I gripped and pulled harder. “Come on, don’t do anything silly. Don’t… don’t!”
The tail slipped through my hand, and I clawed on empty air until my ass met the ground. When I got up, the railing was empty except for a metallic whine.
With limbs outstretched and a tail sailing behind her, Tia glided into the pen and right into the path of the tree. Dozens of leaves rustled and fell when she latched onto the closest branch. She dug her claws into the bark and pulled her body onto the tree’s arm, and the wood creaked in protest and buckled under her weight. The branch sprung back to normal as she moved closer to the trunk. Now over the komodo, she ogled down at the lazy reptile.
“Tia! Tia! Get out of there!” I cried, gripping the still-vibrating beam.
Basil grabbed my pants leg and tugged me away. “Forget about her.”
“But she’s still in there!”
“She’ll be fine,” he said without a single glance back. “I wanna see the crocodiles.”
The beasts that inhabited Camp Crocodilia looked right at home in the crocodile pit, a large system of interconnected water holes submerging most of the area. Concrete islands with observation decks dotted the pit in the mud, shallows, and deep water, and they connected with each other through a series of suspended bridges. Basil and I settled on a platform hovering over of a group crocodiles basking near a shore. It provided a candid view of the dozens of crocs lounging in the mud just a couple meters away (any closer would be too candid for my comfort). It provided a candid smell, too, from the bloated air wafting from the bog. The air and moisture baked together and carried the scent of the swamp and beasts in a way I imagine a sewer would be like. It didn’t much help my digestion of the Burrito del Cocodrilo I just ate.
Basil lounged on his belly on the viewing bench and was mimicking the primitive reptiles with an open maw that waited for something to stick its head in on a drunken bet. Just paint him green and bat him ugly with warts and bumps, and you would never know the difference.
Crocodiles weren’t the reptiles on my mind though. That honor belonged to a certain female Isian and her new Indonesian expatriate friend. Let’s leave her alone with some huge meat-eating lizard to make small talk, why not? What’s the worst that could happen? Christ, some caretaker I was. Most sane parents would be screaming bloody murder and trying to call the National Guard by now, but not me, no sir. To be fair, Tia certainly wasn’t defenseless. If I were a betting man, I’d take the odds for the white lizard in an Isian vs. Komodo fight. Too bad I wasn’t.
A commotion broke out in the pit when something tried to wade ashore. Another animal, one larger by half than the newcomer, suddenly became territorial and snapped at it with its enormous pegged-teeth jaw. The fight splashed a cascade of water that reached the platform and almost to my feet. The scuffle was curt, though, and resolved itself when the smaller reptile retreated back to friendlier waters. The dominant crocodile posed at the water’s edge and bellowed as the loser swam away. I changed my mind: I should be glad she took an interest to the komodo because, had she not, she might’ve jumped in with these goddamned things.
“Geez, that’s a freaking mean one there,” I said. “What’s his problem, anyway? It’s not like there’s no more room for another crocodile.”
“Her,” said Basil.
“Eh?”
“That’s a girl crocodile. They don’t keep any males in there because then little baby crocs start appearing, and they don’t like that for some reason. Besides, that other one was an alligator, and there’s no more room for alligators.”
“Really? I can’t even tell the difference.”
“Yeah, these are all crocodiles here. There’s some alligators on the other island with about ten caimans, I think.” He pointed to a far corner of the pit. “I saw a pretty gharial somewhere there too.”
“Hey, maybe you should consider working here, buddy. You seem to be an expert on these things.”
He shook his head. “Not really. Na-tal-ia,” he said, drawing out the name, “taught me. She knows a whole lot about reptiles and stuff, way more than I do.”
“She’s some kind of reptile biologist at Wyvern, I take it?”
“No, but she does study them. It’s her hobby. She keeps a lot of them, too. A lot. I don’t know how she takes care of them all, but she does. She’s pretty amazing.” He frowned a bit and then sat up. “Hey Ly-lee, can I ask you for a favor?”
“Sure. What’s up?”
Basil opened his mouth, but then clamped it down. He bit his lip and kept still like he was debating what to say. He shook his head and finally blurted, “Can you teach me how to sing?”
Sing? The hell did this come from? I couldn’t even keep tune to an electrocuting crow, to say less of teaching anyone how to do so. They would hang me in front of a tribunal for war crimes. “I can’t teach you to sing, little guy. I can’t even sing.”
“Oh.” He looked down in disappointment, sighed, and lay back down on the bench. “I thought you look like someone who could.”
“I’m really bad, Basil. You can probably sing much better than I can.”
“No, I’m horrible. I can’t sing.”
“Hey, don’t say that,” I said. Why was he suddenly concerned with his singing, of all things? But he looked genuinely disappointed, so I patted his frill and rubbed his neck to console him. “Remember when you were singing in the bathroom? That was pretty nice. I think you have it in you.”
“That wasn’t singing at all. That was just humming. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Humming is just a step away from singing. All you need is a little practice to get it up there.”
“I’ve been trying to practice. I just never get any better.”
“You always get better with practice.”
He shook his head.
“Look, why don’t sing something for me?” I asked. “I’ll tell you whether it’s good or not.”
“No, you don’t want to hear that.”
“How can I help you sing if you won’t give me an example? I won’t judge you, I promise. I just want you to sing, just a little bit.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure! Give it to me, please.”
He sighed, stiffened up, and placed his feet and hands on the edges of the bench. He leaned onto the backrest with his tail coiled around his body and eyed me with an uncertain glance. I nodded. He breathed out with another sigh and refilled his chest with the breaths to power the song. And then he sang:
Oh muse, thou dear one, sing to me, Commence and order my song. Cool breezes blowing from thy groves, Inspire my breast and rouse my heart.
Calliopeia thou wise Principal of the muses delightful, Thou too, wise mystery guide, Leto’s child, thou Delian Paean, Be propitious and stand by me.
Basil sat with an uneasy expression after he sung the last note and waited for my approval. I couldn’t say anything. I expected squawks, clicking, whistling, and other Isian noises that I was familiar with, but his vocals bewildered me into silence. His voice struck the notes with engineered precision, and although the song was short, it enraptured me like a cobra charmer. Singing! Actual, honest-to-goodness singing! And it was wonderful. The little song left me confused as all hell.
“Told you I wasn’t good,” he said after mulling over my silence.
I broke out of my awestruck reverie. “Oh Basil! That was beautiful!”
“No it isn’t. I saw your face.” He looked away. “You’re just saying that to make me feel better.”
“Listen,” I said, taking his head beneath his ears and making him face me. “I am one-hundred-percent completely serious with you. That was some of the singing I’ve ever heard. I swear, I’m not lying. Honest.”
He placed his hands over mine and clicked. “You think so?”
“Yes! Absolutely!”
He thought to himself for a moment, then took my hands off his head and smiled and said, “Thanks Ly-lee.” A deep breath escaped his snout. “But you’re the only one that likes it, anyway.”
“Who could possibly hate your singing? Because I’m telling you right now, anyone who does is an idiot and isn’t worth talking to.”
“Girls. Except one, but she kinda doesn’t count.”
He went back to the crocodiles after leaving the revelation like it was some universal knowledge, and he began humming echoes of the prior song. I didn’t know how else to respond, so I just enjoyed the encore.
“Let’s go get Sis,” he said after finishing. “I wanna go home now.”
It’s astonishing how much an Isian can accomplish in an hour once they set their minds to something. Finish a dozen engineering units, eat an entire roast pig, or converse with a zookeeper while leaning over a giant brown lizard.
“… so that’s why we used titanium alloys for the intake pressure valves.”
Tia mimicked the form of the valve with one claw while scratching the komodo’s neck with the other. Somehow, they were both outside the enclosure. Her conversation partner was obviously a Hamilton-Wyvern zookeeper from what he wore: khaki shorts, a brown shirt, and the most bewildered face in the world. The man’s confusion grew more distorted when he saw Basil leap next to his sister.
“Time to go,” Basil said.
“No, no, not yet,” Tia said. She brushed her brother side and called out to me. “Hey Ly-lee! Come meet our new friends!”
I stepped cautiously to the group so I could gauge the keeper’s reaction. He ignored me and stood transfixed on the twins. Tia took my arm and brought me in front of him.
“This is Brian,” she introduced. “Brian, this is Ly-lee, our best human friend!” She chattered and clapped her hands like a mother introducing her single son to a new girl at dinner.
I waved my hands to greet the keeper, but he looked right past through. Tia tugged at his shorts.
“Say hello to Ly-lee, Brian. He’s real nice!”
“Oh. Hi. Ly-lee,” he said in a confused monotone. I greeted him back.
“Brian’s the reptile keeper at the zoo,” said Tia. “He takes care of everything here, including the dragon. Hey!” She stepped over the komodo and shooed away her brother, who had been amusing himself by repeatedly poking into the dragon’s hide. The twins took to either side of the dragon and squawked over it. The komodo didn’t seem to mind.
“So… these lizards. They’re yours?” Brian asked me while fixated on the arguing Isians.
“They’re kind of on loan.”
“Isians. Isian lizards? I don’t… I don’t believe it.”
“Me neither, buddy.”
Failing to withstand his sister’s determination, Basil slunk away from the dragon and crossed his arms. He stuck his tongue at it when Tia brought her attention back to us.
“And this handsome dragon’s name is Sydney,” she said, stroking the komodo’s head. She nosed the dragon’s snout and giggled when its forked tongue brushed over her nostrils. “Dragons are so nice.”
“I’m glad you made some new friends here,” I said. I wasn’t sure if I really was.
“Oh yeah. Sydney lives in such a lovely place. Brian actually designed the pen. Can you believe it? Isn’t it beautiful? There’s a tree, a warm rock to sleep on, lots of comfortable grass and stuff, isn’t it pretty? I think it’s so pretty.” She stood against the railing and took in the view of the pen. “So pretty.”
Brian muttered an obligatory gratitude, apparently still unable to shake away his shock. I figured it was about time that we stopped tormenting the poor guy.
“Well Tia, let’s say goodbye to Brian and Sydney and head on out.”
“Already? We can’t we stay a bit longer? I wanted to play in Sydney’s pen for a little bit. Please?”
“No, it’s time to go. Your brother wants to go back.”
“He always gets bored early. He doesn’t know how to have fun!”
Basil’s long tongue migrated toward her back.
“Time to go, Tiamat,” I said. “Right now.”
She sulked and exhaled a reluctant “fiiiine.”
Tia took a good five minutes saying her goodbyes to her new human and lizard friends. She thanked Brian for his time with a lick to the nose and focused on Sydney. She clutched the sides of the dragon’s head and, purring, brushed her tongue to his snout, which he happily returned. Basil, meanwhile, snorted and tapped his tail restlessly against the ground. He and I were honorary brothers, as it happened.
On the ride back home, Basil rolled on my lap and rested his head on a plush of Bazaar the Bear I had bought at the gift shop, having drained his energy from exploring the zoo and enduring his sister’s spiel. She sat across the aisle from us and was relentless—stopping only to eat in shallow breaths as she waxed poetic on the wonders of the Hamiliton-Wyvern World Zoo and its animals. Most of the time she just blathered on about Sydney. Meeting the dragon had truly been the highlight of her day.
“Ly-lee, I think I’m done with the zoo for a while,” Basil said to me. I stroked his head and nodded in agreement.