Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Leopard Spot

“Yeah, the humans hog the limelight. Did it not bother you to advertise a product based on your hide, so to speak?”

“No, we are all protected now, and a guy has to make a living somehow. I figure if the humans are happy with faux, we are all better off for it. Besides, Cindy Crawford gets asked that all the time too.”

“About making a living from selling her hide?”

“Right. Some of us are just too beautiful to hide our light under a barrel.”

“That’s basket.”

“Whatever.”

“So how did you get out to the Rancho Exotica?”

“The what?”

“That is where the head human was killed. You know, the guy you were found dancing the cha-cha with, only he was dead?”

“Oh, him. I thought he was a stuffed decorator item. The place was filled with the kind of props I was used to seeing on a film set. Also, inside the new boss’s house. He is a good guy. He lets me indoors, which is why I was not completely lost when I woke up inside that place, although all the shapes and scents were new, and I did stumble around for a while, which is when I accidently sharpened my nails on the…on the—”

“Corpus delicti is what we call it in my trade. If Burkleo was already dead. Was he?”

“Oh, yes. Had a nasty smell about him already. I was quite upset I had mistaken him for a scratching post at first. But I was not quite myself from the stinging fly.”

“Tranquilizer dart,” I explained.

“Tranquilizer?”

“It puts you to sleep so the humans can move you without damaging you…or them. Surely they used such a device on you before.”

“No. I am trained. It is not necessary.”

“So. You would have been pretty unhappy to be ripped untimely from your new position with the Cloaked Conjurer?”

“My new boss, you mean. He was not my trainer, but he would visit to play and pet and feed.”

“And you were happy with him?”

“Oh, yes. He is a strange human. He has a face like mine in some ways, and a deep, buzzing, purring voice. I have never had such an agreeable boss.”

“So you want to go back to him?”

“Of course. I have not finished my training.”

“And you do not think he had anything to do with your abduction?”

“Why should he?”

I say one word, that even a naive leopard like Osiris can understand. “Publicity.”

He rubs his big blunt nose on a forepaw. “My new boss has too much publicity. I figure he likes to avoid it. He seems a bit litter-lonely. He would come out after dark and talk to me, as if we were the same breed. Performers, he said, are prisoners of the public. I had not thought of it that way. He said I was a good listener.”

Well, yeah. Like who can talk back?

Still, I do not wish to get between a boy and his human, so I only grunt what can be taken for agreement, then I restate the case:

“You were darted, woke up in a cage at Rancho Exotica, were watered but not fed for several days. Then you were darted again and woke up in the ranch house, alone except for what turned out to be the corpse of Cyrus Van Burkleo. You bumbled around, sharpened your claws on some handy portions of Burkleo’s body, then panicked and ran through the house, overturning furniture. Who caught you?”

Osiris frowns, an expression that lends a leonine dignity to his already formidable presence.

“I am not sure. I remember rushing outside somehow. Butch was awake and pacing in his cage. Our eyes met. Then…I cannot remember.”

“Someone must have caged you again, so the animal control people could handle you.”

“I am not difficult to handle,” Osiris says a bit huffily. “I am trained.”

“Exactly my point. And perhaps you were being trained for the role of murderer.”

“What do you mean?”

The Big Cats may be bigger but they are not always brighter.

“I mean that you were not fed for a reason. And your claws were allowed to grow for the same reason. Had not one of my ilk illegally obtained a forbidden snack for you from one of the other cages, and you had been released in the house ravenous and reverted to your savage state, you might well have mauled Cyrus Van Burkleo beyond all recognition—and destroyed the evidence of human battering, instead of merely puncturing him a bit.”

“They were ‘training’ me to kill him?”

“They were training you to look like you had killed him, only it backfired.”

“This is terrible! My professional reputation would have been ruined. My reliability is all I have.”

“Your professional reliability would have been moot. If you had been found with bloody claws over a mutilated human body, you would be dead by now. As it is, you rest under a cloud.”

“You mean I am still suspected of being a rogue animal?”

“And the people who set this up might want you permanently off the planet.”

Osiris’s yellow eyes gleam with the light of recognizing danger. His claws flex. “Who must I watch out for?”

“It could be anyone, and the best service you can do yourself is forget that I told you someone might want to kill you. If you jump the gun and attack an innocent Oasis worker, your career and your life are down the drain.”

“So I must wait to be attacked?”

“I am afraid so. Frankly, my dear Osiris, it is nothing different from what would have happened to you at Rancho Exotica if they had sold your hide to one of their weekend hunters.”

Chapter 36

Synth You Went Away…

Temple tried to imagine Midnight Louie covered in spots, leopard spots.

Then she looked again at the real leopard.

No, a domestic cat was not just a big cat. The leopard’s head was smaller in proportion to its long, lithe body. (Long was a suitable adjective for Louie, but lithe was not.)

Its ears were smaller and rounder than a house cat’s.

And its face was heavier and blunter.

It so much reminded her of Leonora Van Burkleo’s surgically altered features that Temple would never be able to look at another big cat without thinking of that strange woman.

The leopard was contentedly gnawing a piece of raw meat, which Temple chose to regard as a vague blur of some unknown species.

“He was hungry,” Kirby Grange commented. “Those damn people didn’t feed him properly.”

Max nodded, staring at the leopard as he had stared at the panther.

It finally rose, stretched, and came toward the fencing to view its three visitors.

No cages at the Animal Oasis, but outdoor areas set up for each animal.

Max put his hand to the fence. The leopard came over. Max unfolded his fingers, as if producing an invisible illusion. The leopard nudged its huge blunt nose into his palm.

Temple winced.

“He’s been trained,” Max said.

Grange shrugged and folded hairy forearms over his formidable beer belly. “A lot of the big cats that damned ranch gets are ex-roadside attractions, ex—circus animals, ex-zoo exhibitions, ex-pets. I knew what they were up to, but I didn’t figure on ’em abusing the animals before they sent them out to be killed.”

“Would hungry animals show more spirit during the hunt?” Temple wondered.

Grange’s sharp look softened with pity for her amazing ignorance as he considered her question. “They don’t need the animals to show what you call ‘spirit.’ The poor-spirited trophy collectors who come out to shoot them don’t need any illusions. Just herd ’em out there where they can’t hurt the shooter, but close enough to take a few bullets or arrows in the body and die sooner or later. More often later. Then hand the proud hunters the head and hide in a salt-packed box and ship ’em to wherever for immortality on the home or office wall. If every person in America who saw a mounted animal head in someone’s place said, “Oh, are you one of those yellow-bellied canned hunters?” it might take the fun out of it and they wouldn’t come back for more and drop their ten or thirty grand for one less of an endangered species. ’Course, I don’t hold with shooting unendangered species like that either.”