“Only one other,” said Ulbasar, shaking his head. “Lord Gteris. He’s on his way. None of the rest were close enough to contact.”
“That’s better. So they sent Gteris, eh? It’s been a long time since Gteris and I hunted together, a very long time.” He looked up as the condor on the highest perch spread its wings and cocked its head toward the wire mesh roof of the cage.
Words burbled from Ulbasar, who still looked shaken. “The Nobles demanded that Lord Gteris come. The Science Council insisted that only our men handle it, and they’re considerably agitated. There’s been open conflict between Nobles and Scientists at the Sessions, and the tribunal is worried. They want you returned, and they want you returned quickly.”
“Politics, always politics,” said Kemper, letting loose his grip on Ulbasar’s arm.
“The Scientists are putting a lot of pressure on the tribunal. They feel there’s danger to us each moment you spend here in the future. They’re worried about the time-pattern.”
“That’s ridiculous. How can a man from the past affect the future? Besides, it isn’t our future; it belongs to the ape-people.”
“I know, but that makes no difference.”
“I’ve been to their libraries. There are no records of us, unless you count some foolish legends of continents sinking into the sea.” He looked at a man a few feet away who was throwing popcorn at a gull. A piece of popcorn bounced off the gull’s head, and the man laughed. People standing near by laughed too, and the man pitched more popcorn. Sighing, Kemper looked at his wrist watch. “When is he coming?”
“I don’t know, precisely, and that’s the truth.”
Kemper thought about it. It would take a while. After Gteris arrived there would be important details to occupy him, such as assimilating the manners and mores of this era and getting proper clothing. He said, “When he comes you’ll have no trouble finding me. I won’t leave the grounds; I give my word.”
“The word of a renegade and a fugitive?” Ulbasar was himself again.
“The word of a Noble,” said Kemper, turning away from him coldly.
“One thing more, Lord Kjem,” Ulbasar said. “The time rift. We have orders to go back with you along the rift you used, making certain that you seal it behind us. Is it close by?”
“That I will tell you when I have to,” said Kemper, turning completely around this time and walking away.
Ulbasar would keep close watch on him, he knew, until Gteris came. That they intended to make him close his time rift made sense; the rift was dangerous to the over-all pattern. When he had left hastily he had forced his way through time with his mind-matrix, knowing that pursuit would have been swift if he had taken one of the normal time paths. The rift he had made was obvious, but would respond to no one but him. Others could accompany him through it, however, as he led the way. Gteris and Ulbasar could go with him and, controlling his mind, make him close the rift behind him.
So he walked briskly, knowing he had much to do in an uncertain amount of time. The sun was higher, pale in the glazed sky. Disheveled, harassed-looking people passed him, sweat stains dark on their clothes, and with them were fretful children. Mr. Kemper walked, and the people went by him, on their way to laugh at the monkeys, throw stones at the bears, and call “Kitty, kitty, kitty” to the leopards.
At a stand opposite the polar bears, near the north wing of the central building, he stopped to get a cup of coffee, but there was none for sale, so instead he bought a paper cup full of a green drink. He sipped it, watching a big white bear loafing in the pool. A little to one side of him a young man was arguing with a boy who wanted cotton candy. From below them, and to their right, came a low rumbling. “What’s that, Daddy?” said the boy. “It’s only the lions roaring,” his father answered.
“They’re not roaring, actually,” said Mr. Kemper. “They’re grunting, and clearing their throats.”
The boy looked at Mr. Kemper with interest, but his father frowned. “It sounds like roaring to me,” he said.
Mr. Kemper smiled at the boy. “Oh, no. If the lions were roaring you could hear nothing else. It’s a sound you never forget, a sound that rips the wind and shakes the trees with thunder.”
“I could forget it, Mac,” said the counterman, leaning on his elbows and winking at the boy’s father.
“I want to hear the lions roar,” the boy said.
“For Pete’s sake, what do you want? Make up your mind; do you want lions or cotton candy?” The boy’s father looked exasperated.
“If you go to the lion cage at three o’clock today you’ll hear them roar,” Mr. Kemper said.
Shortly after that the young man dragged away his little boy, who was still insisting he wanted to hear the lions roar. Eventually, everyone who talked with Mr. Kemper went away rather suddenly. Mr. Kemper, unabashed, drank from his paper cup and thought about the ravages of time.
A woman and a man came around the corner of the building that faced the polar bears. The woman was red-faced, her voice a thin rasping. “All you want to do is watch those damn chips. You’d watch those chips all day if I didn’t drag you away from there. Chips, chips, I’m sick of chips.”
“Chimps,” said Mr. Kemper as they went by. “Chimps, not chips. Chimps, lady, with an’m’ in it.”
The counterman, moving toward him, wiped the counter with a soggy rag and said, “Listen, Mac, what’s all this with the lions?”
Mr. Kemper looked at him. “Oh, do you like lions?”
“Well, it’s like this,” the counterman said. But he had no chance to finish. There was an animal shriek of pain from the other side of the building. The polar bears lifted their heads. Putting his unfinished drink on the counter, Mr. Kemper went toward the sound.
In the high cage that housed the chimpanzees, at the corner of the wing, a chimp swung violently on a trapeze, scolding at another on the cage floor. Kemper saw that the one on the trapeze was a female, the other a bigger, older male. The male, his face grotesque with anger, climbed the bars and got as close as he could to the trapeze. He hung there, grabbing at the female as she swung past just out of reach. There were only a few people near the cage, but most of them were smiling. One of them, a gangling, tall man, ran about pointing a camera first at the female, then the male. A lean woman, possibly his wife, stood close to him. She put her hand on his arm. When Kemper saw her eyes he moved behind the others and went toward her and the man with the camera, taking a position a little to their right.
“Do it again, Al,” the lank woman said. “Make them mad again.” Al was sweating. He laughed, looked at the people around him, then pushed black hair from his forehead and handed her the camera. “Okay, okay,” he said. “You get the shots now and don’t goof it.” He moved disjointedly, like a puppet, as close to the cage as he could, directly beneath the periphery of the trapeze’s swinging arc.
He started to jiggle, then jumped up and down, making faces at the female. “Chee, chee!” he called. He danced, capering loosely, flapping long arms against his thighs. “Haaah, haaah, haaah,” he yelled. “Haaah! Aargh!”
Angered, the female chattered at him. When the trapeze swung to the top of its arc she leaped and caught the cage bars, then dropped down them until she was only a few feet above the capering man. She screeched at him, pounding one hand against a bar, and the spectators laughed. On the opposite side of the cage the male chimp dropped to the floor and scuttled toward her. Stopping beneath her, he lifted his arms and growled low in his throat. She turned, snarling, and began to climb bars. With a last wild screech at the shouting, dancing man outside the cage she jumped, just as the male’s fingers brushed her foot. Far over his head she went, then thumped to the floor. He dropped, and ran after her. She was climbing toward the trapeze again when he caught her. He sidled in, cuffing at her, then they grappled. A scream split the air as his teeth sank into her shoulder. Added now to the smells of popcorn, sweat and cotton candy was the smell of blood.