Chapter 5. The Tiger Trainer.
The two castrated tigers were kept in small cages, with plenty of clean straw on the bottom, to recover from what was actually very minor surgery. There was no infection, or other complications, despite the fact that the operating room was actually far from sterile. No pre-war surgeon or hospital would have dared surgery on a human in such a place. But other than what might have existed in the Maestro's palace, it was actually the best Dystopia had to offer. Aster's father had told her several times that the rate of infection from surgery at the zoo among animals was lower than that which any doctors for humans (except maybe those in the Maestro's palace) could boast of. They were the best because he and the zookeepers who had come before him had damn well busted their asses, and bowed and scraped to the Maestro to keep it the best. They did it because they cared about the animals, not because they had any great love for the Maestro.
Aster's father took the opportunity to feed the tigers with the best cuts of meat in the zoo, as often as they would accept it. The protein would help them heal from the surgery, and as he told Aster: "Any tiger, no matter how tame you think it is, is only about three meals away from becoming a maneater. Make that only one meal, if it hasn't been tamed."If the tigers were full, and kept full, and furthermore regarded him as the source of good meals, rather than being a good meal himself, they'd be less likely to attack him when he trained them. Hopefully. Tigers, like all felines, had an instinct to attack things just for the fun of it. He talked to the tigers in a quiet voice as he fed them, taking care to keep far enough away from the cage that they couldn't reach a paw through the bars and snag any part of his body or clothing with their claws.
The second day after Aster had helped her father with the surgery on the tigers, he left the zoo late one morning after making sure the animals were fed and cleaned up after for the day. He returned to his house a few hours later, just as Aster was finishing eating the lunch she had made for herself and Thumb, carrying several thick books. He set them down the table and helped himself to the rabbit stew and boiled dried apples that Aster had cooked. Aster finished her meal quickly and looked at the books, knowing her father wouldn't mind. One had a lot of pictures, of two men, and some tigers. It seemed to be about two men called 'Siegfried and Roy' (Aster wasn't sure if that was their first or last names) who had trained white tigers. That was strange to her. All the tigers in the zoo were orange and black, not white. Well, probably white tigers had all died in the War like a lot of other animals. The other books were thicker, didn't have very many pictures, and reminded her of some of her father's books that she didn't quite understand yet. They were all written by someone called 'B.F' Skinner'. Aster thumbed through the books. There were a couple pictures of rats, but none of tigers. She didn't know what use the books were, but they must be useful, or her father wouldn't have gotten them. Her father was the smartest man she knew. Hell, a lot of other men in Dystopia couldn't even read.
The Maestro was true to his word, in supplying them with what they needed. The day after her father had gotten the books from the library, a wagon came, loaded with the things her father had asked for. Several large jars of opium. A large basket with several articles of the Maestro's old clothes (which Aster thought smelled very badly, like one of the Zoo's apes after several hot days). Not merely one, but two electrified whips.
The Maestro's stablemaster came with the wagon, as well. His name was Daniel Wolfkiller. He had skin the color of tan leather and greasy black hair that he kept in a long braid down his back. A long, curved scar marred one side of his face, going across one cheek and up into his hairline. Aster wondered where it had come from.
"How did you get that?" She asked him.
"Horse kicked me." His eyes were squinted and slightly slanted like the Chinese people who would probably pay a lot for the preserved tiger testicles.
"Were you trying to tame it?" Aster asked him.
"The proper term would be 'break it." The stablemaster said. "And no. I was trying to… milk it, actually."
One of the men on the wagon snorted back some laughter, and Wolfkiller glared furiously at him.
"What's so funny?" Aster wondered.
"He was trying to 'milk' a stallion." The snorts became full fledged laughter.
Aster understood the joke. "Oh, you were trying to collect from it for artificial insemination."
Wolfkiller seemed surprised. "You know about that?"
"We have to do it a lot at the Zoo. Sometimes I do it with the smaller animals." Said Aster. "To try to keep the bloodlines from becoming too inbred."
The stablemaster didn't seem to approve. He shot a series of sour looks at the man on the wagon, at Aster's father, and back at Aster. "A little girl like you shouldn't be knowing about such things."
"I'm twelve." Aster stretched herself up to the limits of her not very impressive height. "And I need to know all about the Zoo. I'm to be zookeeper someday."
"Twelve…well." He seemed to think about that. "You're short. You look younger."
"Everyone says that."
"Well, perhaps you'll grow taller." Wolfkiller said as if that somehow settled the matter. "Just make sure that you keep out of the way when your father and I are working with the Tigers. They are not 'small animals' for little girls to be around. They're dangerous. I wouldn't even be here, if I had a choice in it."
Obviously the Maestro was the reason for him not having a 'choice' in helping her father train the tigers."Father said the same thing, but he wants me to watch. And to read the books he got from the Library. He says I may need to train animals someday, so I should learn as much as I can."
"Watch all you want. But keep out of my way."
Wolfkiller went then, to help her father and the other men unload the wagon. They put away the supplies, some in Aster's house, some in a large empty cage. Her father pointed to the cage. "That's where Daniel and I will be training the tigers. I'll bring a stool outside for you to watch us, when the time comes. But you make sure not to make a peep, you hear. No matter what happens. Any distraction, any noise at the wrong time, could make a good situation bad, or a bad situation worse."
Aster frowned. "Are the tigers very dangerous? I thought the operation was supposed to make them safe."
Her father shook his head. "No tiger is ever 'safe'. Not unless it's drugged or dead, and I wouldn't even trust 'drugged' very far. Being castrated makes it slightly less dangerous. Not much less dangerous. But some. And I'll take what I can get."
He glanced over at Daniel Wolfkiller, who was pulling a large, battered wooden trunk off the wagon. "Mister Wolfkiller is going to be staying in the house with us, in one of the empty bedrooms. You'll need to make sure to knock on the bathroom door, in case he's in there. Cook extra food at mealtimes for him. Keep out of his bedroom, and out of his things. On laundry day, ask him if there's anything he needs washed. Answer any questions he has, politely. Otherwise, try not to talk to him too much. He's not the talkative sort."
Aster nodded. Wolfkiller was somewhat scary. Not like the men at the Zoo. She thought about why. She used to be a little scared of the men who worked at the Zoo, but not for the past few years. Lately she got on with them well. In fact, they usually did what she said, when her father wasn't around. It was strange, now that she thought about it. Big men doing what a short girl like her said. Maybe that was what her father meant by 'respect'. But he also said respect had to be earned. How had she earned it? By knowing about the zoo? But that was just her job, what she was supposed to do.
Well, whatever it was, she would just keep out of Wolfkiller's way. Maybe she would earn his 'respect' and maybe not. It didn't really matter, hopefully the tigers would be trained soon enough and he would be gone back to the Maestro's stables, or wherever it was he had come from.
For the next few days, Aster's father studied the books he had gotten from the Library. He gave some of them to Daniel Wolfkiller, but the scarred man was not as good a reader as her father was. In fact, he wasn't even as good a reader as Aster was. One afternoon Aster's father was out somewhere in the Zoo, and Wolfkiller was getting very angry about some words in the book by B.F. Skinner that he didn't understand.
"What the hell is 'positive reinforcement?" He slammed the book to the table.
"Let me look." Before the man could object, Aster looked at the paragraph he had been reading. She wasn't sure, so she read a few paragraphs before it, then after it. Within a minute, she understood.
"It's like a reward. For the animal doing what you want. It's 'positive' because it's good. I'm not sure if that means the reward is good, or the animal doing what you want is good. And it's reinforcement, because it 'reinforces' the behavior. It gets the animal to keep doing what you want it to do."
"Hmm." The older man picked up the book and re-read the part that had puzzled him. "I suppose that makes sense. This bloody book is way above my head, though. I don't know what your father expects of me, I break bloody horses, I'm not a damned college professor or librarian. I think he's going to have to read most of these and translate them for me."
He put the book down and regarded Aster. "But you didn't have any trouble with that. Did you? Or not much, at least. Smart little short thing, aren't you?"
"I don't know." For most of her life, Aster had thought that learning came as easily to most people as it did to her, and still had a hard time understanding why it didn't. The fact that it did not was actually quite bizaare to her at her age, as if she were to discover one day that everyone else had blue blood, and hers was the only blood that was red. "I guess I am. I have to be smart and know a lot of things if I'm to be Zookeeper someday."
"Take my advice." Wolfkiller told her. "Keep it under your hat."
"My hat?" Aster touched her head. She wasn't even wearing a hat. "I don't understand."
"I mean, don't show off how smart you are. Which you seem to like to do. Don't let most people know it."
"I don't understand." Aster frowned. "Father says being smart is good. Why shouldn't people know about it?"
"Two reasons." Wolfkiller leaned back slightly in a chair. "Firstly, they'll be jealous. They'll hate you for it. Secondly, being smart can be a weapon, just like being strong or fast. And it's a better weapon if people don't know you have it. If someone is your enemy, let them think they have tricked you. Until they find out you've tricked them. If you let them think they've tricked you, they won't go around trying to find new tricks, that actually might really trick you."
That made sense. Aster cleaned up the table and read through some of the books that the stablemaster wasn't using. The words were hard, and she often had to look them up in the book's glossary, or the big dictionary on her father's shelf, or simply re-read what was written several times until it made sense.
The next day, her father and Daniel Wolfkiller began training the tigers. They both wore oddly colored sleeveless ponchos, cut from the Maestro's old clothing and tied around their waists, so that the tigers would get used to the Maestro's scent. Several men stood just outside the large cage where they worked, ready to go in if something went drastically wrong. Like one or both of the tigers trying to kill either the zookeeper or the Maestro's stablemaster. Aster sat quietly on her stool, 6 feet outside the cage, making no sudden noises or movements as her father had told her. Among other items that Wolfkiller had brought with him from the stables were several bridles and harnesses, used for horses that pulled plows. But a tiger's head was proportioned differently than a horses, it was shorter and wider, and didn't have a space between the teeth for a bit. Her father and Wolfkiller argued over this for a short while. Wolfkiller wanted her father to sedate the tigers again, and pull their teeth. Preferably all of them, but at least a few of them, so they would take a bit in their mouths. And declaw them as well, while he was at it.
Her father refused all of the suggestions. The Maestro would not be pleased by a toothless or clawless tiger, he insisted. Nor was removing just a few teeth for a bit a good idea either It would eventually result in the other teeth shifting, causing pain for the tiger, and most likely eventually causing the loss of more teeth. Her father would distract the tigers with a chunk of meat and quickly take various measurements with a cloth strip marked with inches, and he and Wolfkiller would cut apart and rivet back together the bridles. Eventually, they came up with something that fit over the tiger's heads. It had a ring on either side where reins could be attached, but for now, the reins were left off.
It seemed like her father and the Wolfkiller argued about almost everything. Wolfkiller said he had been training animals for nearly 40 years, since he was a boy younger than the Zookeepers 'peculiar daughter'. Her father said that those animals were horses and asses, and that Wolfkiller knew nothing about tigers, because they were meat eaters. Wolfkiller said dogs were meat eaters, too, and he had no problem training them. Her father just shook his head and told Wolfkiller that he didn't have time to explain the 'genetics of domestication' to him, and to try going to sleep in the same room with a wolf if he was too dumb to tell the difference.
There was more argument about the electrified whips. After reading some of the books about the two men, Siegfried and Roy, her father told Wolfkiller that the two famous pre-War tiger trainers had actually used 'fire extinguishers' to control the tigers, which didn't really hurt them. Unfortunately, all the pre-War fire extinguishers had long since leaked out (or maybe it had dried out, Aster wasn't sure) whatever it was that had been inside them, and there was no way to refill them or to make new fire extinguishers. But as the two tiger trainers, as well as some other books that Aster's father had gotten from the Library on the subject warned about hurting the tigers, as doing so would make them angry, and likely to attack you for hurting them, he wanted the electrified whips put on the lowest setting. "So they'll just tingle." He told Wolfkiller.
Of course the horse trainer disagreed. He said he had managed to understand a little of the books by B.F. Skinner, and they talked about not only 'positive reinforcement' – or rewards, but 'negative reinforcement' – or punishments. He felt the tigers needed to be punished if they did something wrong. "You can't train an animal without whipping it."
"A tiger isn't a horse or a donkey." Her father insisted. "Nor is it one of Skinner's rats. You piss it off, and it'll have your head for breakfast and your kidneys for lunch."
"It'll take longer to train them, without punishing them." Wolfkiller warned.
"I don't care. It'll take real long if I'm dead. Which is what your suggestion will get me, and I've no intention of ending up that way, thank you very much." He sniffed in annoyance.
Eventually, they ended up doing things the way Aster's father wanted. The electrified whips were turned down to their lowest setting. Aster's father started getting the tigers used to wearing the harnesses by giving them food, and also started training them to follow directions, by using tongs to hold the food either in front of them, or to one side, and giving the commands: "Gee", "Haw", and "Mush". He did this many times, then started giving the commands before he held out the food in the tongs, and would let the tigers have the chunks of meat only if they turned in the proper direction when he said "Gee" or "Haw", or went forward when he said "Mush".
This went on for a few days, and after a while Aster's father would only give the tigers chunks of meat sometimes when they followed the commands correctly. This was according to the book by B.F. Skinner and was called intermittent reinforcement. Aster sounded out the long words and read about them. The books said that animals learned better to do what you wanted if you only sometimes gave them the reward. And they shouldn't know which times they were going to get it, and which they weren't. That way they would always do what you wanted and hope that this time they would get the reward. For a change, the Wolfkiller actually agreed with the intermittent reinforcement, although he said he didn't know what it was called, but it was much what he did with horses. At least when he wasn't whipping them.
Sometimes the tigers wouldn't do what Aster's father and the Wolfkiller wanted them to do, and would growl and raise their paws threateningly, despite being tingled with the whips, and more than once Aster had to warn the Wolfkiller not to turn up the setting on his whip. Most of the time, though, they seemed to cooperate. Aster thought at first it was maybe because her father was making sure they were fed all the time, but it seemed more than that. Even when the other tigers were fed, they didn't seem quite as lazy and cooperative, and paced and growled and lot more. Perhaps it was the castration operation she and her father had done. Her father had mentioned that it would make them less violent and more cooperative. Or at least slightly so. Watching them, it seemed to Aster that it did more than that. Or perhaps something else, parallel to that. It seemed to make them less tiger-like. A little bit.
It was almost sad in a way. Aster wondered about the eunuchs in the Maestro's palace. If castration made tigers less tiger-like, did it make people less people-like? People didn't bite and growl like the tigers. Or did they? She thought about her father when he had to bow before the Maestro. He seemed smaller, then, although it wasn't his fault. The Maestro was the strongest one there was. Stronger than everyone else in Dystopia put together. Everyone had to do what the Maestro said, or he'd kill them. Her father didn't act like that at any other time. He certainly wasn't afraid of Wolfkiller, even though Aster was. A little bit. And he got into the cage with the tigers. So maybe people did bite and growl, in their own ways. It would not be much of a person, especially a man, who cringed all the time, in front of every other person alive.
In the next few days, her father and Daniel Wolfkiller put together some oval shaped objects made of fitted wood padded with leather and cloth. It went over the tiger's heads and around their chests, and fastened tightly to them with several straps. One of the tigers tried to claw at her father the first time he tried to put it on them, so he had to get them used to it a little at a time. First he put on just the round oval part, giving them pieces of meat to reward them for wearing it. Then he put the straps on them, loosely at first, gradually tightening them over a period of a few days, until the tigers were wearing both bridle and harness the way her father wanted them to.
They had only just started, of course. Once the tigers were used to the bridle and harness, and would walk (or run) straight, right, or left, they had to get used to being strapped together, the way they would be when pulling the chariot. This meant that her father had to walk near one tiger, and Wolfkiller (complaining loudly about the matter to whoever would listen or just the air if no-one was around) would have to walk near the other, sometimes gently pushing it from in front or behind, or in one direction or the other. Wolfkiller got a nasty claw across the back of his arm one day from one of the tigers. Her father saw that happen.
"Don't scream." He said immediately in a low voice. "And don't run away. And don't you dare whip it. Walk out of the cage, slowly."
Wolfkiller looked furiously angry, but did what her father said. He sat the Maestro's stableman down, and got out a small wooden box with cloth bandages and a bottle of wood alcohol.
"Why'd you tell me not to scream. Or whip the bloody damned thing for clawing me." Wolfkiller said, as her father treated his cut.
"Prey screams, and runs away." Her father said. "Tigers play rough. I've told you that before, Wolfkiller. They're not horses or donkeys. Their play is practice for the hunt. And if you act like prey, they'll hunt you."
"I'm having a hard time understanding why the Maestro came up with this idea." Wolfkiller spat on the ground. "Those things are nearly impossible to control. He's not going to like it when they take a chunk out of him."
The Zookeeper shook his head. "They'll do about as much damage to him as a kitten could do to you or me. I doubt he'll care, and the tigers are smart enough to submit to someone as strong as him. It isn't him I'm worried about."
"Why Joshua." Wolfkiller used his first name sarcastically. He waved his bandaged arm in the air. "I didn't know you cared. Do you think it'll have to be amputated."
"That's nothing." Her father dismissed the injury, which seemed very bad to Aster's young eyes. There had been a lot of blood. At least it seemed so to her. In reality, there had been only a few ounces of it, but Aster's standard of measurement was based on her childhood splinters, scraped knees, and fingers caught in doorways.
Getting the tigers to stay and move together proved to be the hardest part of training them. Despite being bribed with chunks of meat, and tingled (only on rare occasions) with the whips when they misbehaved badly, they did not seem to grasp the idea of staying and moving together. They wanted to either move apart, or attack one another, or attack her father and Wolfkiller. Or some combination of all three misbehaviors. Her father and the horse trainer kept at it, trading ideas, such as only feeding the tigers when they were fastened together with the harness, so they learned to associate being together with Good Things. Eventually, the ferocious beasts learned to cooperate.
After that, it got simpler. Once the tigers learned to move together as a team, at least most of the time, Aster's father fastened the straps from their harness to a large board, and made them move together while pulling that. The weight confused them at first, and the tigers kept turning their heads to look at the board, but the two men training them kept making them go forward, then right, then left, and after a while the tigers seemed to forget about the weight they were dragging.
Eventually, the board got replaced by a larger board, then a board with wheels. Then a low box with wheels, then a higher box, and finally, after two months, both tigers would actually pull around the wooden chariot that the Maestro had given them for training purposes.
It was fall, now, and the leaves were turning colors. Aster was glad of the extra meat the Maestro was giving to the Zoo for the animals (though she still thought he was very mean for the way he treated her father and forced men to become eunuchs). They ate a lot of the meat themselves, of course (though they did not tell the Maestro that), and stew or thick soup with a lot of meat was just the thing for a cold fall night.
Aster was less afraid of Daniel Wolfkiller than she had been, though she still didn't like him very much. He got angry when he saw her reading thick books faster than he could, and would stiffly walk outside or into his room. Sometimes there were raisins or sugar missing, and Aster was sure that the Maestro's horse trainer had taken them. Which made no sense, as she would have given them to him if he had only asked. But maybe he didn't want to ask a girl like her for food. She also didn't like his braid. From what she could tell, he never took it out, even when he took a bath, and Aster once saw a bug crawling on it. She tried to sit farther away from Wolfkiller after that. She didn't want his bugs to get into her hair.
A few times, Wolfkiller would leave the Zoo, usually in the evening after he and her father were done training the tigers for the day. He would go to the market in town and usually bring back a couple bottles of liquor. Her father said nothing about this, since Wolfkiller only drank a little bit of it at a time, and only at night. Never during the day when he had to be alert to train the tigers. A few times, though, Wolfkiller came back with a woman, who from the way she was dressed, appeared to be one of the prostitutes from a nearby brothel. He would take her off into one of the empty rooms at the zoo, and they would both come back out a while later, Wolfkiller pressing money into the woman's hand, or down the front of her dress.
Thumb saw Wolfkiller bring the prostitutes to the zoo a few times. She asked their father about them at lunch one day. "Are those women Mr. Wolfkiller's friends? Do they help him train horses for the Maestro?"
Aster and her father both choked on their lunch. After lunch, Aster saw her father go out by the darker man, and talk to him in an angry tone. After that, Aster still saw Wolfkiller bringing prostitutes to the Zoo, but he always brought them to a certain empty shed that was far away from their house, so Thumb didn't see them. Aster went into the shed one day, when she knew that Wolfkiller was busy helping her father with the tigers, and looked around. There were several blankets and pillows on the floor, a few full bottles of liquor, and several empty bottles. Aster took away an empty bottle. Bottles were valuable, and it gave her a smug feeling to steal something from Wolfkiller, whom she still didn't like very much. She was careful not to touch the blankets. She thought she had seen another bug in the dark braid that hung down his back the other night during supper, and for all she knew, there were bugs in the blankets.
She put the bottle on the window in her room, and admired the way the sun shined through the blue glass. Blue bottles were very rare. Then she hid it in the back of one of her drawers. Let the Maestro's stupid stablemaster wonder what had happened to his stupid bottle. If he even cared about bottles, other than drinking what was in them, that was. She would wait until he was done helping her father train the tigers, and then she would have the bottle on the window every day, if she wanted.
About that time, her father came up with something he wanted her to do.
"Aster." He said one day. "You've watched me and Daniel Wolfkiller training the tigers for a few months, now. And read most of the books I got on the subject. How much do you think you've learned about training animals."
"I don't know." Aster felt nervous. "I don't think I want to go in by the tigers, like you and Wolfkiller, if that's what you mean."
"Oh, goodness, no." Joshua reassured his daughter. "You're too young and too small. It's dangerous enough for grown men, like me and Daniel. It may be that someday the Maestro might want you to train a tiger. Or some other animal. But I'm sure you'll be a grown woman by then. And you're smart enough to get help, when you need it."
"Like Wolfkiller helps you? And the men from the zoo are outside the cage ready to help?"
"Exactly. You have learned a lot from watching." Her father nodded approvingly. "I want to see how well you can use what you've learned. I'd like you to take Stubs, that lynx we had to bottlefeed a few years ago, and teach him a trick. Something simple, like jumping through a hoop. See how fast you can teach him. Then after you've taught him, you can show me. Stubs is fairly tame, still. And he's too small to kill you."
Aster was excited over the project. She re-read all the books about Seigfried and Roy, and the ones by B.F. Skinner, and thought that it would be fairly easy to teach Stubs such a trick. She forgot about the bottle she had stolen, and her dislike for Daniel Wolfkiller and his dirty hair and dirty prostitutes.
The next day, she brought Stubs into a small cage, along with a bucket full of meat chunks. She had a hoop that she had made in a few minutes by twisting some raspberry runners into a big circle, and tying the ends together. She let Stubs sniff the hoop, but he didn't seem interested in it. He kept sniffing at the bucket of meat and trying to stick his nose into it.
"No!" Aster scolded. "Bad Stubs!" Not thinking, she gave him a hard swat on the nose. Stubs jumped up, hissed, then came back down and bit her on the hand. Hard!"
"Owee!" Red blood oozed over the punctures where Stub's teeth were sunk in. Aster tried to pull her hand away, but Stubs held on tight with his sharp teeth. Pulling made it hurt worse, and Aster was afraid that if she pulled too hard, she would make Stubs's teeth rip right through her hand. "Damn it! Lemme go, Stubs!"
Stubs did not seem inclined to 'let go', and instead growled angrily over his teeth at Aster. She stood there, feeling more stupid, than hurt. After the initial bit, the teeth didn't hurt that bad, if she didn't pull on them. Well, they still hurt some, but not as badly as when she had first been bitten. She didn't like it, though. What was she going to do, stand here all day with a lynx biting her hand? She didn't want to call for help, that was a baby thing to do and her father would be disappointed in her. He had thought she was smart enough to train Stubs, and that meant smart enough to figure out her own way out of this fix she was in.
Well, it had been keeping Stubs away from the meat that had gotten her into this fix. Maybe the meat was the answer. Using her left hand, she reached into the bucket of meat, and took out a piece. She held it near Stubs's nose, just above where his teeth were sunk into her hand. Stubs sniffed at the meat, but wouldn't let go of her hand. Instead, he tried pulling her whole hand upwards, towards the meat. That made the bite hurt worse, again.
"No, no. Bad Stubs. Owee! Not my hand!" Despite the pain of forcing her hand against the way Stubs wanted to pull it, she kept her hand in one place, and moved the meat away slowly, making sure that the lynx was keeping his eye on it. She tossed the meat gently, only a foot or so away. Stubs seemed torn between keeping his teeth sunk into her flesh, or satisfying his appetite. But he was a tame lynx, and after a few seconds, his stomach won out over his annoyance at having had his nose swatted.
Stubs snatched up the meat, and Aster looked at her hand. Not as bad as Wolfkiller's clawing from the tiger had been, but the twin sets of puncture wounds, one on top of, and one on the bottom of her hand were deep. For all she knew, they met in the middle. Puncture wounds were bad. They could get infected. Blood oozed from all four wounds made by the lynx's sharp canine teeth.
"Got to disinfect it." She got up, taking the bucket of meat with her. "You stay here, Stubs. I'll be back."
She closed the door to the cage quickly, before Stubs could sneak through, and went off to the Zoo's hospital, the same place where she had assisted her father in castrating the tigers. Stubs wasn't castrated, but she thought he was tame. After all, she and her father had bottlefed him. But maybe no predator was ever really tame, especially if you were mean to it and swatted it on the nose. She shouldn't have done that.
She had to walk past the very large cage where her father and Daniel Wolfkiller were training the tigers. They had gotten to the point where her father actually rode in the wooden chariot, and was pulling on the reins leading to the tiger's bridles as he called out the commands 'Gee', 'Haw', and 'Mush'. Wolfkiller was standing to one side of the cage, looking pleased that he was not the one who had to ride in the chariot, although as she went past, she heard him heckling her father with some comment to the effect that the zookeeper was the one who got to have all the fun and ride around, while poor Wolfkiller got stuck using his own two feet.
Just then, her father saw Aster's bleeding hand. "Halt!" he commanded the tigers, letting go of the tension on the reins. The two tigers stopped, and her father looked over at Aster.
"What happened to your hand."
"Stubs bit me." Aster admitted.
"Stubs? Her father raised his eyebrows. "That's not like him. What happened?"
"He tried to steal meat from the bucket, so I swatted him on the nose."
"That was a stupid thing to do, wasn't it?" her father didn't sound very sympathetic.
"Yeah." Aster's hand was starting to throb again, in the unseasonably warm autumn sun. "I thought you said Stubs wouldn't hurt me."
"I never said he wouldn't hurt you." Now her father looked disappointed. "I said he was too small to kill you. Any animal will try to hurt you, if you hurt it, first. Either that or run away. Why do you think I'm using the very lowest setting on the electric whips here, with the tigers? If I hurt them, they'll hurt me back, and they ARE big enough to kill me."
He shook his head. "Go get that disinfected. I've got a lot of work yet to do, this afternoon. The Maestro's getting impatient. When you're done, go back and try again with Stubs. Do better this time. Don't do the same stupid thing you did before."
Obviously. If you did the same stupid thing over and over again, you would get the same stupid result, over and over again. Aster had no desire to be bitten by Stubs again. That would be dumb. And it hurt.
Aster went to the hospital, set her bucket of meat to one side, and brought over the wood alcohol, a pair of small metal bowlsome rolls of clean cloth bandages, and a wooden probe, strong and rough, but slender. She tore off a bit of the cloth bandage and wrapped it around the tip of the wooden probe. Then she poured about half an inch of the alcohol into the metal bowl and dipped the cloth wrapped tip into it. She bit her lip. The next part was going to hurt. Badly. Probably worse than the initial bite from Stubs had.
Biting her lip and the inside of her cheek against the pain, she pushed the soaked cloth into one of the punctures, as far as she could stand. She waited a moment, then forced it farther.
Damn bloody hell. She whimpered, her fingers clenching uncontrollably, and stomped one foot as hard as she could. But she had to do it. She pulled the cloth wrapped probe out again, re-soaked it in alcohol, and forced it back into the puncture. It didn't feel any better than it had the first time. In fact, it seemed like it felt worse. She kicked at the leg of the table. Then she did it a third time.
There were four punctures on her hand. Two on top, and two on the bottom. The combination of the probe, and the alcohol got them all to bleeding again. Which was good. The blood would help wash out any bacteria and dirt. She glared at her hand, as if that part of her body had somehow turned traitor, and gotten the bites and hurt so bad just to annoy her. But it was her own fault, not her hands. Her hand did whatever she told it to do.
After cleaning each puncture with the probe three times, she poured the alcohol from the bowl over it on each side, while she held her hand over the other bowl to collect the runoff. She did that a few times, then held up her hand to the sunlight. It seemed clean, and somehow felt cleaner despite the pain. Trickles of blood were still coming out of the punctures and she made a face at them.
"Looks like I was bitten by a giant bloody vampire bat." But vampire bats were tiny. There were no giant ones. Only stupid girls like her who made stupid mistakes with Stubs.
She wrapped a bandage around her hand, picked up the bucket of meat with her good hand, and went back out to continue her training with Stubs. As she went past her father, she saw that he and Wolfkiller were now putting some large iron weights in the chariot. What was that about she wondered for a moment, before recalling that the tigers were going to be for the Maestro. And he weighed what, about 1000 pounds? They obviously were trying to get the tigers gradually used to pulling that much weight.
On her way, she considered what to do when Stubs misbehaved. Swatting him hard on the nose and hurting him was a bad idea, but she couldn't let him get away with being naughty. She didn't have an electric whip like her father and Daniel Wolfkiller, and she suspected that what seemed like a 'tingle' to a big tiger might really hurt a little lynx like Stubs. Seigfried and Roy had used fire extinguishers, and she didn't have those, either, but their having sprayed something on their tigers gave her an idea. Maybe she could spray water on Stubs to punish him.
She turned back to the hospital and quickly got a big syringe, the sort her father used for inseminating some of the larger animals. Then she filled a small jar with water, screwed the lid on, and put the water and syringe on top of the meat in the bucket she carried. Pleased at her idea, she jogged quickly back to where Stubs was waiting for her. The lynx was sitting in one corner of the cage, his head down low, as if ashamed that he had bitten her.
"That's right. You SHOULD be ashamed." She scolded Stubs. "No more biting."
She went back into the cage, this time hanging the bucket of meat up on a hook welded to one bar, where Stubs couldn't reach it, picked her hoop back up from the ground, and let him sniff it. Then she took a piece of meat from the bucket, put the hoop about three feet high in the air, and held the meat in front of it with the tongs.
Which, of course, did not work at all. Stubs simply ran under the hoop and jumped up to snatch the meat from the tongs. No good. She thought about squirting Stubs with the water in the syringe, but he hadn't actually been bad and done something like bite her. He just didn't understand what she wanted him to do. It was too bad that animals couldn't talk, and you just couldn't tell them to do or not do what you wanted, the way you could people. But then again, you couldn't even tell all people that. The Maestro certainly didn't listen to what anyone else might want or not want him to do. He was like an animal that way. Except worse, since he could talk. He just didn't listen. Or maybe he did, and didn't care.
Aster tried again. This time she put the hoop right on the ground, in front of Stubs, and held the meat on the other side with the tongs. This time it worked. Stubs walked through the hoop, and took the meat. Pretty good. She did it a few more times, then moved the hoop up a few inches. Stubs hopped through the hoop, to get the meat, and she gradually moved the hoop higher. Now Stubs stopped doing it right, again, and crouched down low to go under the hoop.
"No, not that way, Stubs." She pushed his head back, and then he tried to go around the hoop. Aster gave up, and gave him the meat anyways. Even though that wasn't a good way of 'reinforcement' like in the books by B. F. Skinner. She tried again, the hoop lower down again, but Stubs didn't seem interested. His stomach bulged slightly. Obviously he was full, and wouldn't be very cooperative in learning to jump through the hoop until he was hungry again. Probably by tomorrow he would be.
Aster brought Stubs back to his cage. But the next day she tried again, and the day after that. She learned a lot of things in the process, such as putting some branches full of sharp thorns underneath and behind the hoop, so there was no way to get the meat except by going through the hoop, and if Stubs tried to cheat, he would get scratched by the thorns, which only hurt a little bit. Seeing how her father only let the tigers have meat sometimes and not all the time, she eventually started only letting Stubs have the meat about half the time when he went through the hoop, and the other half the time she would pet him instead. Which he liked (Stubs was a sweetie, at least when he wasn't mad from being swatted on the nose), and it was one way it was better and more fun to train Stubs than to train tigers, like her father had to. You couldn't pet a tiger. They were too dangerous. You couldn't even turn your back on them for a second, the way she did to get a drink of water when she got thirsty working in the hot sun.
In less than a week, Aster had trained Stubs to jump through a hoop held at shoulder height, when she said the word 'Jump' in a commanding tone. Her hand still hurt when she cleaned it off a few times a day with the wood alcohol, and used a hot compress on it, to make sure it didn't get abcessed, but she didn't really mind anymore. She was proud of herself and Stubs.
She told her father the next morning that she was ready to show him what Stubs could do. She brought him over to the cage, held out the hoop, and said loudly: "Jump". True to his training, the lynx ran over and leaped high through the hoop. At least it seemed high to Aster. The cat could have easily gone higher, and no doubt would have been trained to do so by an adult more experienced in such matters. But her father seemed pleased.
"You did good with him." He praised her. "Keep him up on that trick. It's something you can show the people who visit the Zoo. The children especially will like it. I'll even get you a fancier hoop. Something with bright paint and ribbons."
Most people thought of Aster as a child, of course. Certainly Daniel Wolfkiller did. Though she hadn't though of herself that way in a couple years. To her, a 'child' was someone Thumb's age or younger. Probably they would be amazed by Stubs jumping through the hoop, and have no idea how in the world Aster could get him to do such a thing.
In the meantime, her father had finally gotten the tigers to pull a chariot with himself in it, along with a huge pile of iron weights, and to accept directions both by verbal command, and from pulling on the reins. They also were not staying in the cage any longer, her father was now letting the tigers pull the chariot right out through the cage door, and around the roads in the zoo. Sometimes it set the other animals in the Zoo to howling and shrieking, but after some effort, her father taught the tigers to ignore that, and not look at the other animals, but only look in the direction her father wanted them to go. He would drive the chariot around the zoo three times, with Wolfkiller jogging a short distance behind him (or a longer distance when he made the tigers run), and the zoo workers looking on nervously and trying to stay near the door of whatever building was nearest to run into and hide if they had to. Aster was no longer allowed to sit and watch any more from her stool, but had to look out the window of a building with a locked door, if she wanted to see her father go by in the tiger-pulled chariot. She laughed when she saw it the first time. It was almost as good as a parade in downtown Dystopia.
Eventually, he said it was time to show the Maestro what he had done, and turn the tigers over to him. The Maestro came that very afternoon, walking behind what looked to Aster like the fanciest chariot in the world. It was painted bright green, and set all over with green gems of some kind, with gold on all the edges, and filigreed flowers of lacy gold metalwork and green gems covering the entire outer surface. The inside of the chariot was covered with padded green leather, set with gold rivets, and a dark green floor with deep grooves to stand on. Aster was impressed. It was the fanciest thing she had ever seen that obviously was not made before the War.
When the Maestro came into the zoo, the chariot was being pulled by two drab looking horses, but the Maestro's servants quickly unhitched them, leaving the chariot standing by itself.
"Alright, Joshua." said the Maestro in a deep voice. "Let me see what these tigers of yours can do."
The zookeeper nodded nervously. "Help me bring the chariot into cage, Daniel. They're used to starting out from there, most of the time."
Her father and the Maestro's stable master pulled the chariot into the cage, where the tigers sat lazily, their tongues lolled out. They already had their bridle and harnesses on. As usual, her father did most of the dangerous work of attaching the harness to the chariot, then got into it, and drove it out the open cage door.
"Get in behind me." He urged the Maestro. "They're used to the weight. I'll show you how to command them."
The Maestro stepped into the fancy chariot, his weight causing it to sink low down on some metal springs that supported it. Her father took the reins and drove the tigers in a slow circle, explaining the verbal commands and how to use the reins to the Maestro.
"Using both is best." said her father. "The verbal commands and the reins reinforce each other. But you can use just the reins in situations where they might not hear you. A crowd, for instance. I've made some ear protectors for the tigers, and it's actually best for them to wear it if you take them somewhere crowded. Otherwise the noise might confuse or upset them."
"Get out." It was not a request. "Let me try what you taught me."
The zookeeper hastened to squeeze past one of the Maestro's enormous legs, and stepped out of the carriage. The Maestro took the reins, recalled the instructions he had been given, and pulling on the reins, said loudly 'MUSH'.
For a moment the tigers seemed confused by his voice, so much deeper than her fathers. But the rein commands were familiar, and they began walking obediently forward. The Maestro made them run a bit, then go in circles. When he stopped again, he was smiling broadly, showing huge, yellow teeth.
"I LIKE it." He pronounced. "I have to congratulate you, Joshua, you've pulled off the impossible. Or at least the improbable."
"Thank you, my Lord. And thank you for your generosity in providing additional food for the Zoo animals. Do you mind if I instruct your stable master in the arrangements that will need to be taken for their care."
"Not at all. I'm interested myself." The Maestro looked at the reins. They seemed small in his huge hands. "I'll have to have grips of some kind put on these reins. But that's no great problem. Go on about what will be needed to care for them."
Aster's father talked about how one of the cages at the zoo would need to be disassembled and put back together. And how the tigers would need to have an area to roam with grass and trees, and a tall, inward slanting fence, and a moat dug as well.
"It sounds like a lot of work." The Maestro waved away most of what the zookeeper had had to say, with one hand. "I'll have the cage disassembled and brought to my palace, of course. The rest… I'll see if I have room for it all."
"That means no." Aster thought to herself. The Maestro didn't care if the tigers were happy, any more than he cared if people were happy. They were all nothing more to him than toys, and he was like a little three year old brat, who threw his toys around, and forgot about them in a corner when he wasn't playing with them, and broke them when he was in a bad mood. That animals weren't toys were one of the first things she learned at the zoo. You had to take care of them (or make sure someone else did) even if you were bored, or tired, or even sick. They had needs. People had needs, too, and probably more of them than animals did. But the Maestro didn't care about any people or animals or anything but himself. Aster exhaled angrily, only slightly audibly, through her nose.
Wrath.
It was a mistake. The Maestro heard. He turned his head towards Aster. He recognized her. "The ugly girl. Is there a problem?" His voice sounded like a tiger's growl.
No way was Aster going to tell the Maestro what the problem really was. Her mind raced for a plausible lie. One immediately came. She held up her bandaged hand. "My hand got bitten by a lynx last week. It really hurts."
"A lynx? How did that happen? When you were feeding it?"
Aster made her second mistake.
Pride.
She told the truth. She didn't see her father shaking his head ever so slightly. "I taught it to jump through a hoop. But I did it wrong at first, so it bit me."
"You taught it to jump through a hoop. In only a week." The Maestro mused. "How did you learn to do that?"
"Partly watching my father with the tigers. Partly reading the books he got about two men called Siegfried and Roy and some books written by someone called B.F. Skinner."
"You read the books over the summer?" asked the Maestro.
More pride.
And her third mistake. She told the truth again, and corrected the Maestro. "I read them over a weekend. But I had to go back and re-read them a few times, as well. Just to check on some stuff that was written."
"You read several college level psychology texts. 'Over the weekend'." The Maestro said nothing for a few moments, simply gazing at her unfathomably with oversized, squinting green eyes. "And you're how old?"
"Twelve." She remembered she was supposed to be polite. "My lord."
"Twelve." The Maestro tapped the edge of his carriage with his large fingers. Aster didn't know what to think or say. Finally the Maestro spoke again. "You're still ugly. And you still look like a boy."
"Yes, my Lord. I'm sorry if my appearance upsets you."
Aster's appearance was the least of the things the Maestro found upsetting about her, but he was hardly going to admit in public that he was upset by one small, ugly girl. He turned to his stable master. "You're work here is done, Wolfkiller. Gather up your belongings, and I'll expect you back at my palace by tonight. I'm putting you in charge of these beasts. You know more about them than anyone but the zookeeper, I expect."
With that, the Maestro took the reins of the chariot again, and urged the tigers on. It was evident he intended to drive them all the way to his palace. His stable master, Daniel Wolfkiller, waited until he was gone through the Zoo's main entrance, then jabbed a finger straight at Aster.
"I know you took the bottle from my shed, girl. Do you really think I cared about that?"
Aster looked baffled, and the stable master continued. "I know why you stole it. You think bottles are valuable. And you wanted to take something valuable from me. Because I offended you, Miss High and Mighty. God knows why. Well, let me tell you something. Bottles are not valuable. They're all over the place in the Maestro's palace. There's things that are far more valuable. But maybe now you'll get your chance to find both out for yourself. As well as what it really means to be offended."
He stalked away, towards the house to gather up his things.
"Stupid girl." He called over his shoulder. "I told you to keep it under your hat!"