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Fairman didn't think he could endure her sounds for however long that would entail—perhaps an hour. He dropped the newspaper on the table and made for the hall. "I'm nearly at your zoo, aren't I?" he said. "I think I'll kill my time there if you don't mind."
    There was no reason why the receptionist should, and her unassailable expression might have been telling him so. "Would you mind letting me know when the doctor's free?" he said. "I'll give you my number."
    "We have it, Mr Fairman."
    As he stepped out of the porch he saw the zoo at the top of the hill. He thought he wouldn't care to live so close to it, but perhaps the neighbours took it as part of living in a holiday resort. Or perhaps they were determined to ignore it, since all the windows he passed were curtained, as if there had been a death or the houses were occupied by night workers catching up on their sleep.
    The signboard for the zoo had broken out in lumps of moss, one of which transformed the name into Byword. Beyond a small gate in the wire fence a man sat in a wooden booth that was piebald with lichen. His long pointed chin rested on his gloved hands, and he wore a floppy hat so nearly shapeless that he might almost not have known how to fit it to his cranium. As he saw Fairman he lifted his head, which seemed to elongate while his eyes took their time over widening, and the hat sagged backwards to reveal the slogan GULSHAW BY GUM. Fairman was reaching in his pocket for the fee posted on the booth when the man waved at him so vigorously that his fingers appeared to writhe—just the glove, of course. "Sorry?" Fairman said.
    "Keep it." The fellow poked a greyish tongue between his lips as if rediscovering his mouth and muttered "It's on the town."
    Perhaps this was a concession they made at the end of the season. Before long Fairman thought he wouldn't have been too happy if he'd paid. The exhibits weren't identified by signs, so that he couldn't tell what he was supposed to look for in the cages and concrete pits beside the winding mossy paths. Did the pits contain bears or big cats? None of those were visible, and the trees along the paths blocked off so much of the hazy sunlight that he could see nothing except darkness inside the bunkers in the pits. If the cages were for apes or monkeys, why weren't the enclosures roofed? Fairman could imagine their occupants leaping from the trees into the forest to make their escape. Even the windowless aquarium and reptile house didn't offer much; once his eyes adjusted to the dimness he had to conclude that most of the glass cases were presently disused, unless their tenants were lurking behind the rocks inside. Several panes bore large greyish fingerprints or more probably some other kind of marks, since they lacked whorls and appeared to be on the other side of the glass. He couldn't help recoiling when a boneless hand stretched out its pallid fingers to him from behind a submerged rock, but of course it was a squid or octopus, even if he couldn't see any suckers on the tentacles that darted back as though imitating his retreat. He shivered with the stony chill of the building and made for the open air.
    It was less open than before. The haze had crept closer, dousing the grey sun. No wonder the animals had taken refuge wherever they could. He'd pretty well abandoned looking for them, and had begun to think of returning to the surgery, when he glimpsed movement in a cage. An ape was hiding behind a tree, gripping it with a large grey hand disconcertingly reminiscent of the object that had seemed to gesture at him from the tank in the aquarium. As he peered at it the fingers wormed away around the trunk. He watched for it to reappear until he grew cold with the dank stagnant air, and then he headed for the exit. He'd taken just a few steps when he seemed to hear a murmur behind him. "So much more to see," it said.
    Nobody else was on the path. Were those fingertips or fungi on the glistening tree trunk in the