The east and west sides of the building were lined with rank after rank of cages holding a staggering miscellany of predators: great-maned lions with their sleek green-eyed mistresses; restless tigers undulating their stripes back and forth and grinning in sly, tusky boredom; chattering monkeys and chimpanzees; leopards and cheetahs and a pair of surly black jaguars whose claw-scored hides indicated either a recent difference of opinion or a burst of conjugal affection.
The south end of the vast room had been recently partitioned off, with a single heavy door breaking the new wall at its center. On either side of this door the bears held sway: shaggy grizzlies, black bears, cinnamon and brown; spectacled Andeans and sleek white polars padding silently on tufted feet.
The sick bear sulked in a cage to himself, humped in an oddly doglike pose with his great head hanging disconsolately.
Oliver sized up the situation, casting back to past reading for the proper procedure.
"I'll need a squeeze-cage and a couple of cage boys to help immobilize the brute," he said. "Will you—"
He was startled, in turning, to find that Bivins had not accompanied him into the building. He was not alone, however. The door at the center of the partitioning wall had opened while he spoke, and a slender blonde girl in the briefest of white sunsuits was looking at him.
pparently she had not expected Oliver, for there was open interest in her clear green eyes. She said something in a clear and musical—but completely unintelligible—voice that ranged, with a remarkably operatic effect, through two full octaves.
Oliver stared. "I'm here to doctor the sick bear," he said.