"Be at the lion cage at three o'clock. You'll never have a chance like this again, believe me."

"Sure, sure, but shots of what, friend?"

So Mr. Kemper bent his head and whispered to him, and as he did he saw the gleam start deep in Al's eyes and swell to the pale surfaces. But Al's eyes didn't gleam the way his wife's did. And after a while Mr. Kemper left them, and the cage that was silent except for the slow creaking of the trapeze.

After looking at his watch Mr. Kemper walked faster. The sun dropped in the sticky sky and there was only a faint wind. And for the next hour or so Mr. Kemper was here, there and everywhere. If there was a bunch of little boys shouting at the rhinoceros, then Mr. Kemper was there, smiling and nodding. When a party of college students stood making dirty jokes about the baboons, there too was Mr. Kemper, eventually saying something that made everyone stare at him.

He was ubiquitous. He was with the people who craned their necks at the giraffes, and the ones who laughed at the sleek sea lions darting in their narrow troughs. He was with a family watching the anacondas drooping in green cubicles; he was at the bison corral; he saw the crocodile, the yak and the blesbok. And always, wherever he was, he had a few words to say about the lions. And time passed.

It was exactly three o'clock when he stood again at the top of the stairway above the lion court. A lot of people were milling and shoving in front of the cages, a noisy crowd that made the lions nervous. They were awake now, pacing their cells, and the leopards were awake, and the jaguars. In the center cage the streak-maned lion put his head to the floor and coughed. Behind him the lioness waited, tense. The lion curved a paw around one of the bars and some of the people clapped their hands. Others whistled; several looked at their watches. Kemper, who was starting to smile again, watched the crowd. There was Al, his camera, and his wife, close to the center cage. The two teen-aged boys were near them. The little boy and his father were there, and many others that Mr. Kemper was glad to see. Hands clasped behind him, he stood looking down on them. Suddenly he felt powerful bonds clamp onto his mind.

Turning slowly around he saw Ulbasar walking down the hill toward him, a tall man at his side. They stopped in front of him, their faces dark in the sun. "Here he is," said Ulbasar. The tall man at his left made the greeting sign of one Noble to another. "Lord Kjem," he said. Returning 

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