Bestiary

had been caring for the creatures forever, and even though al-Kalli had his doubts about Rashid’s intelligence and abilities, the man still knew more about them than anyone else could ever know.

And how, given the nature of his menagerie, could al-Kalli recruit anyone more knowledgeable, or trustworthy?

He picked up the phone to make a quick call to the Getty to tell them he was coming over to see how the work was progressing, but then put the phone back down. No, why alert them? Why not catch them unaware, and discover in that way how diligently they were pursuing the project he had entrusted to them?

The armored limousine was waiting outside in the porte cochere, and Jakob opened the passenger door as soon as al-Kalli stepped out of the house. “The museum” was all al-Kalli had to say.

On the drive over, al-Kalli gazed out the tinted rear window at the hot, sunny day. It wasn’t really so different from the Middle East. Without all this constant irrigation, even in the teeth of a drought, all of Los Angeles would retreat to what it naturally wanted to be — a desert. All but the palm trees would die, the lawns would turn sere and brown and blow away, the roses would wither and the bougainvillea would die on the vine.

And the people? The people would disperse to other, more hospitable climes.

A dog-walker with half a dozen different dogs on a tangle of leashes was walking along the opposite side of the street. The dogs’ tongues were hanging out, and a couple of them stopped to lap at something on the ground.

So why, al-Kalli wondered, could his animals not thrive in this foreign, but not so very different, environment? He had saved all of them that he could, given the danger and the constraints at the time. He had spared no expense, he had done all that he could do to provide them with a safe and secluded and comfortable home. He had, in the larger sense, done everything he could to preserve the legacy of his ancient family, and to maintain its mysterious power… for he believed that all of these things were tied, in some ineffable way, to the beasts themselves.

And now the beasts were in jeopardy.

He knew, for instance, that Rashid had lied to him in the library. He wasn’t blind. He could see that the other creatures were languishing, too. Their cries were not so loud, their eyes were not so bright, their fur was not so thick or their hides so tough. Something was happening, and he had to find a way to stop it.

At the Getty, his car was automatically waved through to a reserved area for distinguished visitors and guests. The plaza of the museum was crowded today with tourists clutching maps and cold drinks and their children’s sticky hands. But as with most such people, they knew to make way for al-Kalli. There was something about him — his impeccable clothes, his regal bearing, his aura, he liked to think — that caused them to stand back and pause as he strode past. That Jakob, clearly his bodyguard, followed two steps behind was probably not lost on them, either.

When he entered the Research Institute, where Beth Cox worked, there was a flurry of interest and attention as he strode down the hall, past all the other offices and cubicles. Her door was open, and she was sitting next to a very pale boy who looked not much older than al-Kalli’s son, Mehdi.

“Mr. al-Kalli,” Beth said, startled. “I didn’t know you were coming.” She stood up, smoothing her skirt, while the boy continued to click away at the computer keyboard. “Elvis,” she said, nudging him on the shoulder, “this is the owner of The Beasts of Eden.”

Elvis ran off a quick trill on the keys, then looked up and said, “Hi. It’s an extremely cool book.” Then he went back to studying the screen.

Al-Kalli looked at the cluttered surface of the desk, but saw no sign of the book itself. What he did see were Latin dictionaries, rafts of printouts, and colored photocopies of various, random pages that he recognized from The Beasts of Eden.

It wasn’t hard for Beth to read his mind. “The book is with the conservators right now,” she said. “It’s just one building away.”

“What are you doing with these?” al-Kalli said, gesturing at the photocopies.

Beth hadn’t really wanted to get into this so fast; she always liked to complete her research and come to some firm conclusions before sharing her discoveries with the world. Or, more to the point, with Mohammed al- Kalli. He was not a man you wanted to offer partial accounts to, or whose questions you wished to duck.

But he was already turning the photocopies around on her desk, and trying to ascertain why these particular pages were being worked on. Had he noticed that these were all the pages on which the quires had ended and the catchwords, pointing to the next quire, had been entered? Beth didn’t really know how much al-Kalli knew about his treasure. He had never said very much, apart from conveying his obvious attachment to the book and his fear that, during the restoration process, it might suffer some injury. For all Beth knew, he was a scholar of eleventh-century manuscripts and was just waiting for her to make some small misstatement before pouncing.

“We’re collecting the catchwords and putting them together,” Elvis suddenly volunteered. “It’s amazing how they’re coming together into a kind of sentence.”

Beth could have killed him.

“The catchwords?” al-Kalli said, in his dry, upper-crust English accent.

“The little words that run at the bottom of each section — Beth figured out that they were all connected.” Clearly, he thought he was doing her a service. “It’s like a treasure map or something.”

Al-Kalli’s eye brightened, and he fixed his gaze on Beth. “Is this true? You have found something in the book that no one else has ever discovered?”

Beth blushed and said, “It’s possible.” With one hand that was out of al-Kalli’s sight, she pinched Elvis, hard, between the shoulder blades. He squirmed, but had the sense to say nothing more.

“What does it say so far? What have you learned?”

Elvis pretended to be absorbed in the computer screen, while Beth, reluctantly, drew out the stapled sheets on which the catchwords had been assembled. “It’s not entirely complete, there are some words we might have misread or mistranslated, and I have not yet had a chance to—”

But al-Kalli had already snatched the pages from her grasp and was studying them. She glimpsed Jakob, the ever-present Jakob, loitering in the hall outside.

“These words connect, you say?” The catchwords, their rough English equivalents, and Beth’s interpolated queries, were highlighted in yellow, and he began to put them together and read them aloud as he flipped the pages. “Brought here [question of volition] / to this land / an honored guest / now a prisoner / laboring in obscurity / my name to sleep [vanish?] / beneath a cloth [blanket?] / blue sky and white clouds / pity the [too faint to decipher at present] / beasts [demons?] / in our Lord [Christian god? temporal employer] / for eternity / ivory grave [sepulcher?].” Al-Kalli flipped the last page again, looking for more, then raised his eyes to Beth. “I’m not sure I understand. What is this?”

Beth quickly explained the use of catchwords — so he wasn’t secretly an expert in these matters, after all — and then added that these were possibly, or even apparently, a message encoded by the scribe, to be read —“possibly, again, we can’t really say for sure yet”—by other scribes who later came into possession of the book.

“But who was he?” al-Kalli said, his enthusiasm visibly waning. “And why did he claim to have been a prisoner of my family?”

Funny, Beth thought, he spoke of his family — some distant ancestors from a thousand years in the past and half a world away — as anyone else might speak of his own parents or kids. He was indignant at the scribe’s imputation.

“Is he implying that we forced him to create The Beasts of Eden? That he was ill used?”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Beth replied. “It was common practice for scribes and illuminators to complain about their patrons.”

But al-Kalli’s feathers still looked ruffled, and he appeared disappointed at what he had just read. What, Beth wondered, had he been hoping to read or find? A clue to some other treasure? From what she could surmise, the man was already as rich as Croesus. “I want to see the book,” he said.

“Of course,” Beth said. “I’ll take you right over there.” She was just as glad to get him away from Elvis, who might unwittingly start some other trouble. “Elvis,” she said, before leaving, “would you call Hildegard and tell her we’re coming over?” She didn’t want what had happened to her — a surprise visit — to befall her favorite conservator.