Jim Shepard - Lights Out in the Reptile House

He asked Kehr if that was one of the reasons Kehr was in town, and Kehr said no. The rival Security Service was handling the visit. He would not be attending the festivities and did not recommend Karel did so, either. Karel was surprised and a little impressed at his independence. Leda would have told him they all thought the same way and acted completely predictably.

Kehr told him that this was not an element of the Party of which he was particularly proud. In the old days they were signing people up wherever they found them. Still, the lowest agents fostered an anarchy that the higher ones were then pledged to eradicate, the way a doctor might give you a disease so he could cure it.

Karel went anyway. Soldiers formed a cordon around the square, and Security Service men, dressed in a way they hoped was unobtrusive, drifted through crowds that pretended not to notice them. They were immediately noticeable as the only people acting casual. One kept a close eye on a string of four-year-olds brought out to hear the speech. The four-year-olds hung on to a rope tied between two adult leaders and shuffled along like a miniature chain gang.

There were only a few booths, near the entrance to the square, with canvas flaps that could be tied shut once Wissinger began to speak. One advertising a butcher’s consortium said UNITED MEAT FOR ALL and featured a line of pale calves’ heads holding lemons and carnations in their teeth. One booth was called SUPPORT FOR THE MASSES and displayed a pyramid of hernia trusses tied with little flags and colored ribbons.

He recognized a lot of classmates. Besides the local NUP most of the people in the crowd were children and teenage boys. The smallest children milled around a fenced-off area entitled ORIGINAL VILLAGE OF THE RACE in which two men in blond wigs and winged helmets banged on an anvil and a woman scratched at a washboard. All of this was over-looked by a painted backdrop depicting a sunset with nomad hordes on the horizon.

Nearer the stage there were tables set up with pamphlets and Party publications that were free. Karel paged through them, keeping an eye out for someone he knew (who was he expecting to see go by? he wondered. Leda? Albert?). He kept three: a comic book called Secret Service with a naked girl in a waterfall on the cover and two pamphlets called Investigations into Science: The Nomad Race and Torture: Why Not?

Wissinger arrived in a car hooded in black cloth with its headlights painted over with blue calcimine. He saluted some children before he mounted the stage. He introduced a huge man by the car as Freddy the Crusher, his bodyguard. The crowd applauded.

He announced this would become an annual event of the Party. He added as if it followed that the Praetor was angry at the disturbances in the cities, the results of delinquents. He promised that those involved or thinking of becoming involved would feel the nation’s anger when the war was settled. The crowd applauded again. Karel started threading his way out, thinking he’d go by Leda’s on the way home. Somebody bumped him, and he felt protectively for the pamphlets in his back pocket. The Praetor, Wissinger said, like his nation, knew the emotion of anger, of being insulted. The teenage boys closest to the stage roared. Karel took a lemon from one of the calves’ mouths on the way out of the square, and had it checked carefully by a young soldier taking no chances when he passed through the cordon.

When Karel left for the zoo that morning Kehr asked him where he was going. He looked at Karel soberly over his coffee like an attentive father. He was wearing his full uniform. Karel tried to indicate by his tone that where he went was his decision. Kehr said, “The zoo is a good idea.” Stasik opened the door and held it.

Albert hadn’t left any instructions, and it took a while to track him down. When Karel found him in Maintenance, Albert handed him a flat rock and continued rinsing out a rag in a pail. Karel hefted the rock and told Albert he had news for him.

Albert nodded. It wasn’t clear he heard or cared. He had by his feet in a deep dish covered with a warped piece of screen a pair of flat-bodied lizards. He was cleaning and rearranging the emptied cage. In the dish one of the lizards placed a leg on the back of the other, gently indenting the pliable skin.

“These are granite night lizards,” Albert said.

Karel knew that. Albert had apparently given up testing him.

He was aligning the granite slabs so that the spaces between them made corridors facing the front of the cage. They liked to hide in some pretty tight crevices, he told Karel, which was fine, except then nobody saw them. Which was a bad situation for a zoo. The trick, he said, was to expose them without making them feel exposed.

Karel was interested despite himself, and got angry. He had big news. He needed advice. He could wait until he dropped for Albert to ask how he was doing.

“I still haven’t been paid for my last weeks,” he finally said irritably. Albert looked at him. “I mean, you know, the stuff I did a while ago,” he said.

Albert said, “I don’t think your heart is in this work anymore. I think you’ve got other interests.”

Sure, you do this, too, Karel thought. He was surprised at his bitterness.

“Did you hear what I said?” Albert asked.

“How would you know?” Karel said. “You ever asked me?”

Albert looked at him again and continued to shift the rocks. He leaned more into the cage. Good-sized pieces of flat rock, preferably granite, he said. Slanted and supported so the spaces were a half inch with the openings facing the front, and gravel as ground media. When you had decent gravel. The lizards stirred in the dish as if in appreciative interest.

“It’s like I’m not even talking,” Karel said. “I might as well not be here.”

Albert stopped what he was doing. “I’m trying to teach you something,” he said. “I’ve been trying since you came to me.” They were looking at each other, and Karel had the uncomfortable feeling that Albert suspected him of something. After a minute Albert went on about the lizards.

Karel shrugged. It’s my life, he thought. Why should you care about it?

“I’ve got the Civil Guard at my house,” he said. “A man named Special Assistant Kehr. They moved in.”

Albert set the granite down and continued to gaze at it. “What do you mean, ‘moved in’?” he asked. He sounded as if it had been Karel’s idea.

Karel gave him another shrug but Albert was looking into the cage. Did Karel mean they were searching his house?

“I don’t think so,” Karel said.

They were billeted there?

“That’s it,” Karel said. “Kehr took my father’s room.”

Albert was quiet, and disturbed, he could see. It gave him some satisfaction. What had they talked about? Albert wanted to know. Had they asked a lot of questions?

Not really, Karel said. They hadn’t done much of anything, as far as he could tell. He didn’t know whether to tell about his father. He was going to get some version of I-told-you-so if he opened his mouth, he knew.

“My father joined the Civil Guard,” he said.

Albert put the heel of his hand on his forehead and rubbed it as if erasing something. “Who told you that?” he asked. “Kehr?”

The question shocked Karel. “You mean you think he might not have?” he said.

“What bureau?” the old man said. “Did he say?”

“The Fifth, I think. I got a letter from him.”

“A jailer,” Albert said. “Perfect.”

“You think it’s not true? You think somebody made him write the letter?” Karel asked. “ What? Nobody ever talks to me.”

“I don’t know,” Albert said. “I don’t know your father. I don’t know what Kehr’s up to.”