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them,’ said Preacher. ‘You do realize that, don’t you?’
    Of course I do.
    ‘Not you: I’m talking to them. I’m telling you what I told them. I told them, it’s a clever algorithm, sure, but it’s the chip you’re talking to.’
    If the lion could talk, Preach, we would not be able to understand it.
    ‘Exact-cisely. What we need to do, I told them, is work on augmenting the natural animal capacity for mentation. Oh they didn’t like this! A crazy set of maternal copulators, those Greens. Closed minds, the lot of them. Faith, not proof. It’s easy to believe the dog is talking to you, if you want to believe the dog is talking to you. And after all, it doesn’t really matter if people understandwhat the chip means, or not. That’s not what matters.’
    What does really matter?
    ‘What matters,’ said Preach, ‘is that humankind leaves the natural world alone .’
    After venting his anger, he would mellow, and talk in more positive terms about the Greens, and about the world. Preacherman would settle himself down, his belly filled with bean casserole and wine, and smoke a roll-upcigar. Not a roll-up cigarette, but a cigar of his own manufacture: a turd-shaped monstrosity whose smoke smelled of gangrene and scorched tyres. ‘Fools, not knaves,’ he would say. ‘Kings Stork, not Kings Log. Or is that not the correct plural?’
    We had this conversation several times. Plurals are not my natural area of expertise, Preach , I would say. Not true, though. Language is a field.Farmers know how to work fields.
    ‘They mean well,’ Preach said. ‘The worst I’d say of them is – they don’t know their backside from their elbow. And factions? Oh, ho! Oh ho, factions! More splinter groups than a—’ And he’d wave a hand vaguely a few inches above his horizontal chest. ‘Wood. Than a piece of wood. Sixty per cent are Moral Force Greensters. Of the remaining forty, not all aremad-dog types.’ And he chortled. ‘I’d get a telling-off at caucus meets for using that sort of phrase. Mad dog? Unreconstructed doggism! ’ Puff, puff. ‘But you don’t need very many. If we’d stopped at giving the ruminants speech it would have been fine. But giving the predators speech – that was asking for trouble. Foxes and rats and wolves.’
    Dangerous , I would agree, meditatively.
    ‘I’ve seen the footage – from your farm. The security camera footage. That rat!’
    It’s not my farm any more . This, glumly said.
    ‘I’ve read your piece, too.’
    It was all over the web.
    ‘You say that thing at the end: you say, rats are chewers, you’re right, there.’ Puff, puff. ‘They would never just swallow these chips, they’d chew it to crumbs. Or maybe not. Ha!’
    Ha?
    ‘You ever seen one of these chips?’
    No .
    ‘From your account, you’d think they were an, I don’t know, 1970s silicon chip the size of a postage stamp.’
    What – rice-grain sized?
    ‘Much smaller. Smaller – than – that! Small enough not to slip into the rat’s stomach, but to adhere to the roof of its little ratty mouth and it not even notice. Not that it matters.’
    Oh,it doesn’t matter now? This, in the tone of voice that implies a raised eyebrow.
    ‘It’s self-limiting. I mean, obviously it matters. It’s been a step change for humanity. But – you know. In the long term. Long term.’
    Tell me about the long term.
    ‘In the long term it will correct itself. It’s not like we’ve altered the animal genome. This isn’t something that can be passed downthe genius gene -line, from parent to child. When we grow tired of hearing a clever machine inside kitty purring human words to us, we’ll stop disseminating the chips and the whole sorry phenomenon will die out.’
    Some people will never get tired of disseminating it. Some people love the talking of the pets .
    ‘Yeah,’ Preacher Jazon agreed, closing his eyes and breathing one long ectoplasmictentacle of smoke. ‘But most will. The whole animal kingdom talking