ZWANZIG

Gerechtigkeit

"Who is she? How did she get here?"

"What do you think happened to her side there?"

"Where's Hermann? He should have been here by now."

"He's got a bad leg, remember? He doesn't go any faster than a walk."

All the lionesses were conversing in whispers as they stood in a tight circle, staring intently on what lay, unconscious, in the middle. "All right, all right, I'm here," Hermann said as he pushed his way through, not expecting anything but a false alarm from his friend. "What's the big emergen—Jesus!"

"Who's Jesus?" three lionesses asked at the same time.

"Never mind, who is that, and who did all that to her?" He was looking at another lioness, visibly skinny and caked with dust and dirt. On one side, she was covered in what looked like deliberately-inflicted claw marks. Hermann couldn't help but think right back to his first night in Africa; whoever he was looking at now was not nearly as bad as Kopa had been, but there were too many similarities to ignore or dismiss as coincidence.

"We were thinking you might be able to help us answer that question," Nala said to Hermann. "Simba? Where are you?"

"Coming, right here," Simba replied as he joined Hermann in the middle of the circle. "One of them…" he said, slowly drawing out his words without ever taking his eyes off the new arrival.

"One of who?" Hermann asked, exasperated. "If someone doesn't tell me what's going on around here—

"Sorry...she's one of Zira's. Look at her; there's no way she could have come from anywhere else, plus, all the other prides live much further away." Simba bent down and sniffed at the unconscious lioness, who never so much as moved a whisker. "Definitely, one of the Outlanders. But there's something else here too I can't make out; I've only ever smelled it a few times down by that pond."

While Simba was busy trying to figure out exactly who he was looking at, Hermann was more concerned with the ground to one side of her: he saw something which told him that this lioness might not have arrived here under her own power. "Simba," he said, "if you don't mind, put your paw down in that little patch of sand there."

"OK," Simba replied as he stepped on the indicated spot. "What is it you're looking for?"

"I've already found it," Hermann answered. "Look, your print has four pad impressions, plus the center pad in the middle. And you can't see any claw marks in any of them. But whoever made these"—he gestured toward another set of tracks—"clearly wasn't a lion. This animal had elongated toes, not pads, and the claws weren't retractable either; you can easily see the marks at the end of each toe. And furthermore…"

"There are five toes, not four," Simba added before Hermann could finish. "Not a lion at all. So this begs two questions, not one: who is she, and how did she get here?"

"Half of the second question's already answered for us. See this set of tracks? They're going in the opposite direction as these ones, and neither set goes past the point of where she's lying. And the footprints in both sets are identical."

"So that means she was carried?"

"Exactly. Someone brought her here, turned around, and went back to wherever he came from."

"Anything else?"

"The ones leading up to here are quite a bit deeper than the ones going away. There's only one explanation for that: this…thing…was carrying quite a lot more weight on the way here than on the way back. I'd bet anything that she was the extra weight. But what other animals around here make a print with five toe impressions?"

"Nothing comes to mind," Simba said. "Most everything around here either has hooves or paws that look like ours. The only other thing I can think of is an elephant, and believe me, we all would have known if one of those showed up."

"So then it wasn't an elephant, not any species of cat, nothing with hooves…wait…no, that's crazy! It couldn't be him…"

"It couldn't be who?"

"You said you smelled something strange on her, yes? Something you've only ever smelled down by a certain pond near here?"

"Yes, I did."

And whatever lives in that pond would surely smell like the water in the pond itself, right?"

"But she doesn't live at the pond," Simba said, slightly confused. "None of us do."

"She doesn't, but the animal that brought her here does…an animal that lives in the very same pond you mentioned—the only one around here—and makes this exact footprint. And I should add, there's no way in hell I'm going to go chasing after him to figure out the details of what happened."

"Wait, how do you know it's a 'he'?"

"Let me put it this way…does the name 'Roberto' have any meaning to you?"

"Sure, we all know a Roberto, he lives…in that pond…"

"Bingo! These aren't lion prints, nor did they come from anything else that lives on land. They're crocodile tracks. But why he brought her all the way remains a mystery, and one I'm not too keen on solving right now."

"Why not? As long as you don't catch him on a bad day, he's perfectly fine. Every time I've seen him, he couldn't have been nicer, even if he's a bit difficult to understand. His English is…limited, let's say."

"And what happens on his bad days, if I might ask?"

"I'll say this much: whatever you heard about how Zira got that bit of her ear ripped off, it wasn't a battle wound or a freak accident. Roberto snagged her when she tried to run off with one of his kills; she didn't realize one of the logs floating on the pond nearby had eyes…and teeth. I can try and find him and ask what happened, but in the meantime, let's get this one inside and taken care of. Something tells me she isn't here to cause trouble, even if she did come from the Outlands."

A few hours later

"In your opinion, Herr Schreiber, who was the prettiest girl we had with us in medical school?" Hermann said as he knelt over the still-sleeping lioness, who had been laid out on the mattress normally occupied by Kopa. "More suture material please, if you don't mind."

"Right here," Markos replied, handing off a new needle and thread. "Had to be Andrea, the one who lived across the street."

"Andrea? Seriously? She couldn't compare to that exchange student we had from St. Petersburg…what was her name again?" Hermann tied off the last knot. "Syringe."

"Evgenia, I think. Here's your syringe. Just plain saline in it, right?"

"Yep, just saline…she looks pretty dehydrated. I know I've done one of these already, but she could probably use another. That's as much as we can do for now; we can try and get her cleaned off in the pond once she's awake, but in the meantime, get the cards out of my suitcase and pour a drink or two. We'll play gin until she comes around."

"I thought the last of that booze was drunk?"

"I did too…and then I remembered this little beauty in here." Hermann pulled out a small bottle hidden between a few pairs of pants. "Deal a hand."

"Where did you get that?" Markos asked in amazement as he shuffled the cards. "That's a twelve-year-old Scotch!"

"Remember that patient I had who was the co-owner of a distillery?" Hermann replied. "The one we brought out of a coma after that horrible car accident?"

"Sure I remember him…did he give you a bottle as a thank-you gift?"

"Not exactly; he bought five bottles for all of us when Doctor Bruch was retiring, and I lifted one from the going-away party when the security guy's back was turned. Obviously no-one was ever going to drink it all…"

"Please tell me you aren't being serious. You stole Scotch from a retirement party?"

"Don't use that word, I didn't steal it, I…borrowed it without permission, but with every intention of bringing it back."

"Get help. Soon. Here are your cards; is this going to be 'house rules', or the normal, more law-abiding version?"

"Of course it's house rules, what did you expect? The loser of each hand does a shot, and five losses in a row means you have to do whatever punishment the winner decides on."

"Very good…in that case, you'll be performing the hardest, most technical songs you can think of for thirty minutes in front of the whole pride." Hermann rolled his eyes, knowing Simba had already asked him to do exactly this, but he wasn't expecting to hear what came next: "And you'll be naked."

"Fine with me, I suppose, knowing what you'll be doing if I win. Hey, wait a minute," Hermann said as he looked over his shoulder, "I think she's coming to!"

"Having second thoughts about nude arias, are we?"

"No, seriously, look! She's moving a bit." He got up and knelt down next to the lioness, keeping one hand on Markos's revolver where it couldn't be seen. "Can you hear me?"

"…I'm freezing…" Hermann could see that her teeth were chattering as if it were wintertime. "What…what happened?" She moved her back legs underneath herself, hoping to get up.

"You passed out and someone brought you here," Hermann replied frankly, not wanting to go into the details of who the "someone" was. "Don't try to get up just yet; you're cold because you've been dehydrated all this time. Are you from Zira's pride? What's your name?"

"Adila," the lioness replied. "I'm not here to…cause any problems…where's Vitani?"

"You know her? Markos, get Vitani." Markos jogged outside, calling the cub's name. "Markos is getting her," Hermann said. "You need to lie here for awhile so the medicine has some time to work. I'll make sure you stay warm enough. As long as you don't mean us any harm, we'll extend that same courtesy to you, understood?" He pulled the blanket off of his own sleeping bag and draped it over Adila, who still hadn't stopped shivering. "How's that?"

"Better. The one who just went outside, is his name Markos?"

"Yes, he's Markos; I'm Hermann. As you might be able to tell, we're not from around here."

"I know…you're the ones I heard about, the two humans who saved Kopa that night. You're from that place they call Germany."

"That's us. If you don't mind me asking, how did you get all those scratches on your side? That couldn't have been an accident; we even had to stitch up a few of the bad ones."

"Zira…she got in a few lucky swipes, but nothing I can't handle. I'll tell you everything I know, I promise, but can I sleep here for a bit first? I finally feel like I'm not trapped in a blizzard."

"I guess downhill skiing is out of the picture for you…"

"Downhill what?"

"Downhill skiing; that's when you go up a mountain in winter, strap two thin pieces of fiberglass to your feet, and try to make it down without crashing into a tree or falling over a cliff…it's lots of fun, you should try it if you're ever in Innsbruck. As far as things go right now, we should go back to that pond and have you drink something later, but you can stay here for now and warm up."

"Sorry…'stay here for now and what up'?"

"Warm up...you know, stay under the blankets and such?" Adila kept looking at him confusedly, at which point Hermann realized she wasn't used to his speech, in particular, his Germanized pronunciation of the letter w. "My mistake, I meant warm," he said, making sure to not change the first letter into a v. "I'm so used to my own accent, it doesn't sound strange at all to me. Close your eyes and get some rest; I'll wake you up in a bit."

"What about Vitani? Where is she, I have to talk to her."

"She's around here somewhere. She and Kopa never go too far, nowhere Markos can't find them at least. You'll have plenty of time to see her, as much as you like; I'll make sure of it."

Hearing this promise from Hermann, Adila shut her eyes and quickly went to sleep. Must have been a hell of a trip getting all the way here in that state, Hermann thought as he walked outside to find everyone else. "Markos? Markos, wo bist?"

"He's gone off to find Vitani," a voice recognizable as Simba's responded from around a corner. "Yes, I could tell you're looking for him; Kopa's wasted no time in teaching me what he already knows of your language. So, who is this lioness…is she an Outlander like I thought?"

"Her name is Adila, Euer Majestät, and—

"What did I say about the "your majesty" thing?" Simba said with a smile. "Please, call me by my name, unless you want to be 'Herr Sterlitz' for the rest of the time you're here."

"Right…she's one of the Outlanders, but she's not here to do Zira's dirty work. The two of them must have had a rather heated falling-out; that's the most probable explanation for all the scratches she has. We'll know more tomorrow once she's rested up and gotten back to normal—she's promised to tell us everything, by the way—but I'm thinking she ran away just to stay alive."

"Excellent work. Once again, we owe you more than we can ever repay."

"Don't sweat it," Hermann said, glad to finally test out a new expression in English even though it came out sounding like 'don't svet it'.

"How's your concert preparation going?" Simba asked. "For someone such as yourself, I would imagine this is a walk in the park for you."

"I only wish that were true! It's coming along, but I'll need as much practice time as you can give me. Can you stay here until Markos gets back? I'm going to try and find him, but I don't want anybody waking Adila up in the meantime. The sooner she gets better, which shouldn't take more than a day, the sooner we find out what's really going on here. She doesn't worry me at all, but whatever she's running from…that's what's going to keep me awake at night."

"Take your time. Adila wants to see Vitani, doesn't she?"

"Yes, how did you know? I wouldn't be surprised if they know each other from when they both lived in the Outlands, assuming they were there at the same time. What does 'Adila' mean, by the way? I'm not very well versed in African languages."

"I know because Markos knows a bit more English than you think he does! And 'Adila' is Swahili for 'justice'. How do you say that in German, if I might ask?

"Gerechtigkeit."