As they approached the mob of spectators, a strange sound split the air. Two very loud tones, a high note sliding to low. Only Mildred made the connection to a foghorn; none of the others had ever heard one. To them it sounded like a baleful howl.
Beside Ryan, Jak cranked his head around and stiffened, as if ten thousand volts had just shot through him. The youth’s reaction surprised the one-eyed man. It was just an animal noise. A very large animal.
Before Ryan could raise a hand to stop him, the albino took off, running at full tilt for the cages. Some of the carny folk saw him coming and tried to block his way with widespread arms, but he feinted, swinging his white head one way, then squirted past them. Staring at his rapidly accelerating back, the empty-handed roustabouts yelled for someone to get him.
“Dark night,” J.B. muttered, “we were supposed to go in nice and quiet, and recce first.”
“Better back his play,” Ryan said, waving the companions after him.
J.B. pulled Doc along like a stubborn calf.
Suddenly the howling got a whole lot louder, and it changed in timbre. Instead of coming from deep in a huge set of lungs, it came from high in the throat.
It went from misery to absolute joy.
Then it stopped altogether.
There was no one left to try to turn back the companions. All the carny folk had rushed over to one of the trailered cages.
And with good reason.
It appeared that the agile intruder was getting eaten alive.
Jak had his head stuck between the bars of the cage, holding on to them with both hands. For a split second, Ryan’s heart dropped in his chest. He thought the young albino was a sure goner, his head half inside the great carnivore’s open maw. But then he saw Jak wasn’t getting chewed.
He was getting licked.
The mutie mountain lion’s tongue slathered his face so hard that even holding on to the bars with all his might, Jak couldn’t keep his boots on the ground.
The great cat made a loud purring sound, like a wag’s big diesel engine fast idling, as it scrubbed the albino’s face and neck with a wide pink tongue that had to be a foot and a half long.
“What the nuking hell?” J.B. exclaimed as he came to a stop beside his one-eyed friend.
“It’s the lion, J.B.,” Ryan said. “They’ve got the lion.”
The companions—except Doc, who was still wearing the thousand-yard stare—needed no further explanation. Some time ago, Jak had been made a prisoner in Baron Willie Elijah’s mutie zoo. He had been caged up with a mutie mountain lion. After an initial, violent and lengthy misunderstanding, the two had got on famously. They were both wild things, so well matched physically and spiritually that they could communicate without words, with their eyes and with touch. Brother beasts of the hellscape.
Once freed, the big lion hadn’t run off, but had followed Jak and the companions. Only when it refused to enter a mat-trans unit was it left behind.
This, it seemed certain, was that selfsame noble beast.
“A captive again,” Mildred said glumly.
“Unlucky,” Krysty said.
“Mebbe,” J.B. stated. “Mebbe not.”
“What do you mean?” Krysty asked.
“Found Jak again, didn’t he?”
“Step back from the cage, mutie,” one of the roustabouts shouted as he shouldered up to the bars. He was a big, thick-bodied man with a heavy blue-black shadow of beard stubble, and matted black hair on the tops of his shoulders and the backs of his arms. He outweighed Jak by more than a hundred pounds.
The albino paid him no mind. “I said, step back!”
With no one to stop them, the ville folk pressed forward for a good view of the action. The show was starting a day early.
Jak pulled his head out from between the bars but didn’t move away. His fine, shoulder-length white hair was plastered to the side of his head.
“Let cat out,” Jak said, his ruby-red eyes glittering.
“Yeah, right,” the roustabout replied sarcastically.
Then he turned to address the gathered carny people. “Turn loose a thousand pounds of man-eater on your say-so.”