Excerpt: …is as yet uncertain.

“Rights! Rights! Rights! Rights!”
Nick turned up his trenchcoat collar, watching indifferently as a large group of people began to fight their way down Palisade Avenue, waving their black and white hound’s-tooth flags as they marched across the bridge over the New Berigo River, beneath some representational statues guarding the bridge. Nick shook his head, leaning against one of the ubiquitous trees lined up along the road. “Here come the radicals again.”
Three young women in white led the march. They stopped, near where Nick was standing, and one screamed “Save the Penguins!”
The rest of the crowd took up the cry. “Save the Penguins! Save the Penguins!” They waved their flags with more intensity and hoisted their homemade signs. Nick looked up and read a few as the passed by. Two men held a wide banner showing a picture of a penguin, his flippers behind his back and his feet positioned as if he were trying to waddle back and forth. The caption to it was ‘we can wander, Why can’t the Penguins?” Another woman, leading a pet penguin on a lead, held a picket sign that screeched in bold “Peripatetic Penguins are People Too!” Many other signs held captions like ‘Reverse I-88! Free the Penguins!” and “Wandering New Berigo is a right, not a human privilege!”
The cry continued. “We want!”
“Penguins!”
“We want!”
“Penguins!”
Nick watched the people walk by. They seemed well adjusted if you just looked at them, mostly blue-collar men and women younger than thirty, and some that were even dressed fashionably against the wind, but it didn’t seem as if any of them were really all there.
“Save the Penguins!”
As he marched by, a man waved one of the signs in Nick’s face: “Legalize Peripatetic Penguins!” He led several penguins by leads. They looked up at Nick, squeaked, and continued waddling down the street, flapping their flippers to the beat of the chants rising in the air. Things were becoming more of a discordant din all the time.
“Walk With Us! Walk With Us!”
“Peripatetic Penguins!” A cheer went up.
“What about the rising number of penguin-related deaths about the city?” asked Nick of one well-dressed woman that was walking along with a penguin under her arm.
“Squee?” The penguin looked up expectantly at the woman holding it.
The woman stopped, smiling, “Yes, mister?”
“What about the increase in penguin deaths every year? Wouldn’t I-88 save lives?”
“But then the penguins wouldn’t be allowed to roam! How would you like it if you were confined to just the downtown area of New Berigo? Isn’t that what it’s like for the penguins, kept in the fish wharves?”
“What do the penguins need downtown? When they start working nine-to-five jobs and coming down to see the sights and shop in the stores, then we should think about allowing them into the area.” Nick fumbled for a cigarette.
“Issquee!”
“I know, honey, I know,” the woman murmured t the penguin. “But we can’t confine the animals!” She took up the cry. “Wandering is a right, not a human privilege!”
“Sorry, angel, but the penguins can’t think. They don’t have feelings,” Nick called to her. “We’re just sparing a few people a really, really weird obituary.”
The woman spun around, her chin trembling. “How…how dare you!”
Nick lit his cigarette “Sorry, but it’s the truth. Things just aren’t made that way. You don’t se penguins walking the streets with good intentions, do you?”
“Penguins are nothing but good intentions!” cried the woman.
Someone else side her thought that she was raising a chant. “Penguins are nothing but good intentions!”
Five other people took up the cry, then twenty others. Soon the din became one very loud voice. “Penguins are nothing but good intentions! Penguins are nothing but good intentions! Penguins are nothing but good intentions!”
Nick grinned. “You going to keep trying t persuade me or are you going to give up now?”
The woman turned way. “Penguins are nothing but good intentions!”
Three penguins came along behind her, waddling around. They looked up at Nick. They were brilliant black, with gleaming white undersides and a white stripe down their back. They were a species almost exclusive to New Berigo – the Peripatetic Penguin, best known for its high intelligence, its utter lack of common sense, its complete fearlessness around humans – shown by their willingness to waddle along with these freaks, and let them put leads on some of them, the others following because there was bound to be food downtown – and their unusual white stripe going down their backs, and their unusual green eyes. “Screepsrip ee squepsqueep skup skoop squisquippy!” one squeaked. The other two said so as well, coming up to Nick with eyes blazing. Along with the rest of their attributes, they had very definite personalities and were more volatile and temperamental than a band of drunken Irish sailors. The only reason anyone would ever think of trying to protect the blighters was that their natural sleekness, big green eyes, glossy feathers, impeccable neatness even in their stampedes, and their chubby bodies and their high, musical squeaks were really cute and adorable. If, if course, you had never seen them stampeding.
The penguins closed in on Nick. He watched them, indifferently. They hopefully would lose interest in a moment or two.