The Man Who Liked Lions
By JOHN BERNARD DALEY
Illustrated by ORBAN
A zoo is a place where some people make
sport of lower animals. That included Kemper,
but for him people were the lower animals!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Infinity Science Fiction, October 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Mr. Kemper leaned on the rail, watching the caged lions asleep in theAugust sun. At his side a woman lifted a whimpering little girl to hershoulder and said, "Stop that! Look at the lions!" Then she jiggled thegirl up and down. The lion opened yellow eyes, lifted his head frombetween his paws and yawned. Immediately the girl put her fingers overher face and began to cry. "Shut up!" said the woman. "You shut upright now or I'll tell that big lion to eat you up!" Looking throughher fingers the girl said, "Lions don't eat little girls." The womanshook her. "Of course they do! I said they did, didn't I?"
"Lions seldom eat people," said Mr. Kemper. With all of her twohundred pounds the woman turned to face him. "Well!" she said. The wordhung like an icicle in the warm air, but Mr. Kemper waved it aside."Only old lions resort to human flesh. Except for the famous incidentof the Tsavo man-eaters, of course." The woman pulled her arm tighteraround the girl, elbow up, as if to ward him off. "Come on, Shirl,"she said. "Let's go look at the taggers." And with a warning look overher shoulder she lunged away from the rail. A big man with an unlitcigarette in his mouth took her place.
As her wide back swayed down the walk, Mr. Kemper wondered if she hada special intuition about him, like dogs, whose noses warned themthat he was not quite the kind of man they were accustomed to. Women,particularly those with children, seemed to feel that way. He watchedher leave, having decided that she was unsuited for what he had in mind.
Two things happened simultaneously, interrupting his thoughts. The bigman beside him tapped him on the shoulder and asked him for a match; atthe same time Kemper saw, just beyond the retreating woman, a man in atweed jacket and gray slacks, watching him. For a second they staredat each other and Kemper felt a mind-probe dart swiftly against hisshield. He tightened the shield and waited. The man was heavily tanned,like Kemper, with unusually wide eyes and a dolichocephalic head. Hehad remarkable cheek-bones; they appeared to slant forward toward themiddle of his face, which was very narrow and long in the jaw. Helooked a lot like Mr. Kemper, the way one Caucasian looks like anotherto an Eskimo. His glance swerved from Kemper to the lion cage; thenhe turned his back, a little too casually. Breath hissed softly frombetween Mr. Kemper's teeth.
The big man said, "Hey, buddy, I asked do you have a match?"
"What? No, I don't smoke." His thoughts racing, he faced the lion cage.The tanned man had turned away, obviously not wanting to contact him,but why? He knew who Kemper was; there was no doubt of that. Frowningslightly, Mr. Kemper looked at the chewed hunks of horsemeat and boneon the cage floor, and the vibrating flies. The only logical answer wasthat the man was waiting for reinforcements. Even now he was probablycontacting the Three Councils. Still, that gave Kemper a reasonablechance; it took a while for even the most powerful minds to move alongthe pathways of time. Beside him the big man was talking again. "Youfeel okay, pal? You looked kind of far away ther