'I've got to call you something, friend. What's on your credit card?'

'I don't have a credit card, Bat.'

'Uh-huh... then let's stick with plain "Zookeeper". You catching this, Mrs Rey? And your contribution to our vox populi vox populi tonight is?' tonight is?'

'I have a question. And the law obliges me to be accountable.'

'Ask your question, Zookeeper.'

'By what law do you interpret laws?'

'...Traditionally, lawyers have cornered that particular market.'

'I refer to personal laws.'

'...er, you'd better run that one past me again.'

'Personal laws that dictate your conduct in given situations. Principles.'

'Principles? Sure, we all have principles. Except politicians, media moguls, albino conger eels, my ex-wife and some of our more regular callers.'

'And these laws underscore what you do?'

'I guess... never have affairs with women who have less to lose than you do. Don't jump red lights, at least not if there's a cop waiting. Support gifted buskers. Never vote for anyone crooked enough to claim they are honest. Acquire wealth, pursue happiness. Don't take the handicapped parking s.p.a.ce. Is that enough?'

'Do your rules include the preservation of human life?'

'Zookeeper, you're not climbing onto a born-again soap-box on my show, are you?'

'I've never been on a soap-box, Bat. I wish to ask, how do you know what to do when your one law contradicts another?'

'Like?'

'Tomorrow morning, driving home, you see a hit-and-run accident. The victim is a young girl your daughter's age. She requires medical treatment, and will die within minutes if she doesn't get it.'

'I'd deliver her to the nearest hospital.'

'Would you jump red lights?'

'Yeah, if it wouldn't cause another accident.'

'And would you park in the disabled s.p.a.ce at the hospital?'

'Sure, if necessary. Wouldn't you?'

'I've never driven an automobile, Bat. Would you agree to be her medical fee guarantor?'

'How's that?'

'The hospital is a private clinic for the very rich. The doctors need a signature on a form to guarantee that you will pay medical costs of the emergency surgery, in the event that n.o.body else pays. These could run to tens of thousands of dollars.'

'I'd have to check my position here.'

'The position is straightforward. In the time it takes for another ambulance to come and take her to a city hospital, the girl will die from internal haemorrhaging in the lobby.'

'Why are you asking me this?'

'Two principles are contradicting each other: preserve life, and acquire wealth. How do you know what to do?'

'It's a dilemma. If you knew what to do, it wouldn't be a dilemma. You choose one of the options, make your bed and lie in it. Laws may help you hack through the jungle, but no law changes the fact you're in a jungle. I don't think there is a law of laws.'

'I knew I could rely on you, Bat.'

'Huh? Rely on me for what?'

'May I be accountable, Bat?'

'Uh... sure, why not?'

'Hey, Zookeeper, you still there?'

'Yes, Bat. I was uploading some buried files.'

'What files?'

'EyeSat 46SC was designed to track hurricanes from the Caribbean to the States on the Gulf of Mexico. It was later modified to combat drug trafficking, and fitted with the most powerful terrestrial-facing electronlens ever sent into s.p.a.ce.'

'I'm definitely missing something here. Where is your treatise on practical ethics?'

'Twelve hours ago I altered its...o...b..t towards the Gulf Coast of Texas. Its sub-optic imaging spectrum was indeed formidable. I could read the name on a yacht anch.o.r.ed off Padre Island, I could see a scuba diver ten metres down, I could follow a Napoleon fish hiding in the coral. I scrolled north by north-west. A tanker had hit a reef off Laguna Madre. Crude oil spilt through the gash in the hull. Seagulls, black and shining, lay in piles on the sh.o.r.e.'

'Yeah, we know about the Gomez Gomez spill. You a tree-hugger?' spill. You a tree-hugger?'

'I've never considered myself in those terms, Bat.'

'Uh-huh... go on.'

'A coastal road led into Xanadu, south of Corpus Christi. A row of chrome motorbikes. The streets were deserted, dogs lay in shady back yards. Green lawns, hissing sprinklers, revolving rainbows. A woman on a hammock was reading the Book of Exodus.'

'You could see all this by satellite?'

'That's correct, Bat.'

'And which chapter was she on?'

'The tenth. I carried on scrolling. An industrial zone. The workers lolled in the entrances to workshops during their lunch-hour. A gla.s.s office block on the very edge of town, on the roof a teenage girl sunbathed in the nude.'

'Hey! And a fuse blew in your microlens?'

'Microlenses do not have fuses.'

'My bad.'

'I scrolled north-west, as the land grew arid towards Hebronville and then high and crumpled towards the Gla.s.s Mountains. Have you been to Trans-Pecos, Bat?'

'Nah, I heard it's big.'

'The rocks are huge, like bubbled-up tombstones. They sparkle with mica. Pacific firs, mesquite, juniper. Stones transform into pelico lizards when a desert vole strays too near, munch and swallow, and turn into a stone again. Its belly pulses for a little while.'

'Say, are you really a zookeeper?'

'I cannot wilfully deceive. A pipeline on stilts pumps oil from Bethlehem Glutch three hundred kilometres away. The temperature is in the forties in the open, and there is no shade. Cacti become common. The land rises higher, and riven. The last golden eagles climb on the thermals, scanning. Highway 37 scrolled into view, bitumen black and straight from Alice to the Mexican border. Saragosa scrolled into view, and there was a square kilometre of cars, windscreens aglint. An airshow. I listened to the pilots of the aerobatic corp. A blimp's shadow slid over the crowds. I transferred the continent's retinal scan records into my active files, and practised ID-ing people as they stared up. I scored 92.33 per cent. A paddock of horses. A row of camphor trees. South-west of the town the track to Installation 5 turns off past a disused gas station. The station is wired to scan for terrestrial intruders. The outbuildings scrolled into view. From the air they look like any dusty farm building in the state, but inside they bristle with technology from only one generation before me. The compound's perimeter is tripwired, and littered with fried rattlesnakes. The reptiles have not learned to avoid the area.'

'You're a local peacenik with a muskrat up your b.u.t.t about the military?'

'I've never had a mammal up my a.n.u.s, Bat. The outhouses guard the entrance to a tunnel that runs five hundred metres to the north. This is the centre of Installation 5, buried under ten metres of sand to deflect EyeSats, five metres of granite to deflect nuclear strikes, and one metre of lead cladding to deflect electron-heat probes.'

'So how come you knew where to look?'

'I accessed the blueprints to the site.'

'You're a hacker I knew it!'

'The nearest suitable PinSat of sufficient power orbits above Haiti. I programmed in a new trajectory, longlooped its monitoring console, and transmitted data from its original orbit. In the seven minutes it takes to rendezvous I ran through the guest list for my birthday, and checked there were no absent visitors.'

'Your birthday? Now you've lost me.'

'All the designers were present. I powered up the PinSat.'

'A WhatSat?'

'A PinSat.'

'What does one of those do?'

'That's cla.s.sified information, Bat.'

'And the rest of this isn't?'

'It is only for my actions that I am accountable, Bat.'

'Uh-huh... sure. What happened next?'

'The fireball rose up a quarter of a kilometre above the crater, over a hundred metres in diameter and over thirty metres at its deepest.'

'This is getting very ugly.'

'Uglier things are considered beautiful.'

'How could a fireball be beautiful to anyone 'cept a pyro?'

'Your language is non-specific, Bat, but I will do my best. A chrysanthemum, twisting up until it buckles, blackens and plummets. Fine white sand is raining in the dry desert air.'

'Very poetic. And n.o.body noticed this little boom?'

'The shockwaves. .h.i.t Saragosa thirteen seconds later. I had a second EyeSat in position to monitor reactions and effects. The blimp swayed, the horses looked up, startled. The ebbing shock waves stroked the leaves of the camphor trees, china teacups rattled. The field of cars at the airshow was filled with the megadecibels of thousands of car alarms all triggered simultaneously.'

'Okay! You made it to third base but no further, friend! A line drive, a throw to the plate and you are out! You're a drama student, trying to pull an Orson Welles. Am I right? I gotta admit, you reeled me in back there with that basket-case intellectual horses.h.i.t, but that was just to buy time for your main stunt, right? You've got a movie script, right? Well, it was good while it lasted, friend. But no way, not on the Bat Segundo Show. You hear? Friend, I'm talking to you... On live radio, silence is guilt. Well folks, due to this week's dispatch from the Delta quadrant, we only have time for Bob Dylan's "World Gone Wrong". Coming up at 4 more on the strikes against the North African Rogue States and the weather. The Bat will be back.'

'Kevin!'

'He just said he was a zookeeper, Mr Segundo. I thought it sounded zoological. Animals, y'know? Pandas' mating problems. Chimpanzees. Koala bears. Ooh that's the phone again. I'll, uh, get it.'

'Quite a performance, Bat. Was it scripted, do you think, or was she making it up as she went along?'

'Who cares, Carlotta? This isn't the New York School of Radio Drama!'

'Chill, Bat! We're a chat show. It takes all sorts. You complain when they're too dull. You complain when they're too colourful.'

'Self-publicising is not a colour! Deranged is not a colour! And what do you mean, "she"?'

'I'm sorry to interrupt, Mr Segundo... Er, excuse me, Carlotta?'

'What is it, Kevin?'

'There's a woman on the phone. Line three.'

'Keep your voice down or all the engineers will want one. Vet this one properly.'

'She wants the producer, Mr Segundo. Not the DJ. She says she's from the FBI.'

'...Yeah, anyway, Bat... I was walking through Central Park today, trying to hack out my baked potato and Croatian curry with one of those hopeless little plastic sporks, y'know, they're about as useful an eating utensil as a shoelace, right? Never sit opposite no one trying to eat a potato with a spork.'

'Where are you going with this, VeeJay?'

'Yeah, anyway... so there I was, scrolling for bouncers on babes, scanning for rollerblader collisions whoosh! Do those beauties ever come tumbling down! Then it happened.'

'What happened, VeeJay?'

'I happened to look... into the sky.'

'And?'

'I saw how... how blue blue the sky was.' the sky was.'