The Last Panther

by Todd Mitchell

  “Like they did with the wolves?” Kiri asked.

  “Precisely,” said Sonia. “The trouble is, for most of the species we collect, there simply aren’t suitable wilderness areas left where we could reintroduce them.”

  “What about the panther cubs? Are you still keeping them here?”

  “For now. Would you like to see them?”

  Kiri’s heart skipped. She nodded, too excited to speak.

  Sonia held her hand before a sensor near a door at the far end of the room. There was a rush of air as the door slid open, then Sonia led Kiri and her da into a dimly lit corridor with a broad wall made of glass.

  Kiri ran to the glass wall. Below stretched an enclosure that resembled the ghost forest. Several clumps of saw palms dotted the sandy floor. A small pool occupied the center, and stands of cypress and pine trees grew in the distance. Unlike the underwater images in the hallways, the enclosure on the other side appeared to be real.

  Kiri spotted movement in front of a concrete den covered in palm fronds. One of the panther cubs was playing with a pink stuffed bunny, rolling on his back while clasping the stuffed animal between his forepaws, then throwing it off and pouncing on it with a curious, high hop.

  “That’s Cricket!” Kiri gasped. Relief at seeing the cub again took Kiri’s breath away.

  “Cricket?” repeated her da. “You named him that?”

  Kiri nodded. “Because he likes to hop.”

  “I see,” said her da, sounding amazed. “Kiribati, your mother used to call you Cricket.”

  “I know,” she said, not daring to take her eyes off the cub.

  Another small bundle of speckled fur emerged from the den to join the game, only this one was more hesitant. She stayed low and crawled toward the pink bunny as if trying to sneak up on it, before retreating with several quick, dainty steps.

  “There’s Skitter! Little Skitter!” exclaimed Kiri, pointing at the nervous cub.

  She glanced around for the third cub, suddenly worried that he might not have made it. Then Kiri spotted him on top of the concrete den. His dusky fur blended in perfectly with the shadows of the palm fronds. Only his yawn gave him away, and the characteristic dark line across his muzzle. “And Mustache! He’s the lazy one.”

  “Good names,” replied Sonia. “Much better than the ones we’ve been using for them. Right, Jackson?”

  A man taking notes on a vid screen at the far end of the observation room nodded. “PC-12 doesn’t have the same ring to it as Cricket,” he said.

  “All three of them were malnourished when we brought them in,” explained Sonia. “The mother must have run out of milk. That’s probably why she risked venturing so close to the refugee village. Normally, Puma concolor are far more wary and elusive.”

  Skitter finally got over her fear and pounced on the pink bunny, but as soon as it fell over, she jumped back and scampered into the den. Mustache stretched and turned his back on the commotion, annoyed.

  “For a while we didn’t know if PC-13—the one you named Skitter—would survive,” continued Sonia. “She seemed the weakest of the three. But now she’s gaining weight. With the genetic diversity these three provide, we might be able to breed them with samples from other subspecies someday. That’s why we’re grateful that you found them. These cubs could preserve the genetic line of one of the most magnificent apex predators we’ve ever known.” Sonia turned to regard Kiri. “Now do you see why they’re so important to us?”

  “I think so,” said Kiri.

  “Excellent. Because we have good news for you.” Sonia gave Martin a long look.

  Finally, her da spoke. “Sonia thinks we can use the value of the cubs to negotiate with the city officers for citizenship.”

  “Citizenship?”

  “For you,” said her da. “You’ll be able to stay in the city then. We both can. We’ll be assigned an apartment in the science complex.”

  “You’ll have to go to school, of course,” added Sonia, standing next to her da.

  “But I think you’ll like it,” said Martin. “You’ll get to learn about many wonderful things, and you’ll be able to play with other kids your age. We won’t have to worry about being hungry anymore, either. Or getting sick, or storms, snakes, mosquitoes…You might even get your own room. How’s that sound?”

  Kiri tried to picture the life her da had just described. He talked about it like it was a good thing, only she couldn’t imagine living in the city, away from the forest and the ocean. The devi mark on her shoulder began to tingle and itch in a way it hadn’t in days. “What about the cubs?” she asked, rubbing the mark on her shoulder. “Will I get to see them?”

  “You might be able to visit them,” said her da, glancing at Sonia.

  “I don’t see why not,” agreed Sonia. “I could talk with the head zoologist about making you an assistant caretaker. Then you could drop by after school and learn how to care for them.”

  “Here?” asked Kiri.

  “This is where they’ll be,” said Sonia. She brushed back the braids on the side of Kiri’s head. “We’ll all be together.”

  Kiri studied Sonia, struck by the familiarity of the gesture. “Are you the one who braided my hair?”

  Sonia nodded. “Many different people live in the city, Kiri, but we’re all citizens. We all call it home. It could be your home, too.”

  Kiri wondered if that was true. Could this place ever be her home?

  The thought of living in the endless claustrophobic halls terrified her. Maybe it wasn’t all like that, though. After all, the cubs seemed fine. They weren’t in danger like she’d feared. So maybe other things weren’t as bad as she thought. There had to be windows somewhere, and places where she could go outside. And there seemed to be good people here, too, like Ap and Sonia. People who might accept her. She could be friends with Ap, and work with her da, and look after the cubs like she’d promised the panther mother she’d do. And the cubs did seem safe here. At least they looked healthy and well fed. Staying might be good for them.

  “Hey,” said her da. “Once I save up enough credits, we can even get that scar removed.”

  Kiri realized she was touching the devi mark on her cheek. It had started to tingle and itch as well. She thought about the bone that had caused it, and how the magnificent sea turtle had gazed longingly toward the ocean waves as it was being pulled to shore. She felt a longing like that now, as if she were caught in a net and being dragged in.

  She peered down at the cubs in the enclosure. Cricket had moved to the edge of the forest beyond the den. He clawed at the base of a tree. But it wasn’t a tree. It was a vid screen wall. He frantically scraped his claws against it, as if trying to tear it down, only his claws kept sliding off the glass.

  The walls surrounding the enclosure may have looked like forests, but they weren’t forests. They were walls, and the cubs weren’t fooled by the pretty pictures of trees and grass that they showed. Even from up on the balcony overlooking the enclosure, Kiri could sense the cubs’ anxiety. She could feel it in the way her devi marks throbbed and itched, and in the way her chest ached. The cubs may have been healthy and well fed, yet something was missing. Something they desperately needed. They wanted out of here, just like she wanted out of here.

  No wall can stop the unraveling, she thought, recalling the warning that her mother had given her.

  Dragging the sea turtle to shore, trapping the panther, keeping the cubs here—it all led to the same thing. It cut them off from the life they’d been part of, and the life they’d been part of would be lost as well.

  “No,” she decided. “It won’t work. We can’t stay here.”

  “Of course we can,” said her da. “This is where we belong now.”

  “They don’t belong here.” Kiri nodded to the cubs. “It’s like the story of the wolves—if you take them away, everything unravels.”

  “Sweetie, I know what you’re thinking,” said Sonia. “You want them to be free. So do I. Believe me,
I wish there was a place where we could release them, but that’s simply not feasible right now. Even fully grown, these cubs can’t live in the wild. You saw what happened. The refugees were going to hunt them and sell them on the black market, and Gen Tech doesn’t have the resources to keep them safe outside the city walls.”

  “Besides, we need the cubs to get you citizenship,” explained her da. “It’s not safe on the coast anymore—not for you or them.”

  “But they need to go back. We need to go back,” said Kiri.

  “The cubs are staying here, Kiribati, and so are we,” replied her da.

  “So that’s it?” Kiri couldn’t believe her da wouldn’t listen to her. He wasn’t even trying to understand. “I’m just supposed to stay here and never see the fugee village again? Or the ocean? Or any of it?”

  “We have really good oceanscapes on file,” offered Sonia.

  “Vids!” said Kiri, furious that Sonia would even suggest such a thing. Vids weren’t real, and they made everything else seem less real too. “You better not turn my beach into a vid.”

  “Kiribati!” scolded her da.

  But Kiri was too upset to calm down. “What about Paulo? Will I ever get to see him again?”

  Her da clenched his jaw and fidgeted with his white jumpsuit.

  “Can I at least say goodbye to Paulo?”

  “We do have to return to collect supplies…,” hedged Sonia.

  “It’s too dangerous,” said Martin.

  “Please! I just want to see Paulo one last time.”

  Martin looked from Sonia to Kiri. At last he sighed, giving in. “Fine. You can come with us to say goodbye, but don’t expect too much. Your friend might not want to see you.”

  Kiri drew back, stung by her father’s words.

  “I wish the world were a different place, Kiribati,” he added in a softer voice. “A world more like the one you imagine, where we could release the cubs and all live peacefully together without walls. But that’s not the world we live in. It’s time you realize that. If people could change, they would have changed long ago when it first became clear how we were throwing things out of balance. Only people didn’t change then, and they won’t change now, no matter how much you might want them to.”

  Kiri looked away and shoved her hands into her pockets. She felt the soft shell of the stuffed turtle Ap had given her. Her da was wrong. He had to be. People could change. Things could be different.

  Childish as it might seem, she refused to let go of hope.

  Dozens of villagers poured onto the beach. It was midday, so most of the netters were in, waiting for the tide to turn and the heat to slacken. By the time the pilot set the tridrone down on a patch of sand near the sea-grape tunnels, about a hundred fugees had gathered. They peered at the huge black tridrone with their hands clasped over their faces to shelter their eyes from the blowing sand.

  Through a vid screen window inside the tridrone, Kiri saw Charro standing among the villagers, long gun clutched in his hands. He wasn’t pointing the black barrel at them, but he wasn’t lowering it either. That had the soldiers in the cargo bay anxious. As soon as the skids touched the ground, the soldiers rushed out the back ramp with their waller guns raised.

  “Put your weapons down!” shouted the soldiers as they took up positions around the tridrone.

  All four soldiers wore flex armor that covered everything, even their faces, and the waller guns they carried looked large and deadly.

  Charro glared at the soldiers, his expression full of contempt.

  Martin went out, despite Sonia’s protests, to try to calm the situation. Kiri listened to his muffled voice through the metal walls of the tridrone as he told the fugees they were only returning to pick up the equipment he’d left behind and to take down portions of the fence. “It’s a peaceful mission,” he said. “As long as we aren’t threatened, no harm will come to you.”

  Without a word, Charro turned and walked back to the village. Most of the netters went with him. A moment later, all the fugees turned their backs on Martin and shuffled to the village in silence, as if Martin and the waller soldiers weren’t even there.

  “We’re clear and secure!” shouted the lead soldier.

  Sonia helped Kiri unbuckle her safety harness. “I know it’s hard to say goodbye. Just remember, you have a wonderful new life ahead of you.”

  Kiri didn’t say anything in response. She didn’t want a new life—at least, not one in the walled-off city with its vid screen tunnels and kitten-cloud skies.

  She hurried out the back ramp and onto the beach. It wasn’t perfect, but it was real. The salty seaweed smell of the ocean and the slap of the too-bright sun made her heart soar.

  “See your friend?” asked Martin.

  Kiri stared at the village. She saw a few figures move between stilt houses, only she couldn’t recognize them. No one in the village even seemed willing to look her way. At the very least she’d thought Paulo might wave to her, yet no one did. She was dead to them.

  “Sorry, Kiribati,” said her da. “I feared it might be like this.”

  Her gaze fell. She was wearing shoes—the sort of thick-soled shoes that wallers wore—so the ground felt dull. “It’s nice to see the beach again.”

  Martin nodded. “Stay here with the pilot. We’re leaving two guards to keep watch over the tridrone. The other two are going with us to help carry back equipment. Is there anything from the house you’d like me to get?”

  The only thing Kiri had left from her life before that mattered to her was Snowflake, but she doubted he’d be at the stilt house in the swamp. And even if he was, she didn’t think her da would let her take a rat back to the city. That was assuming Snowflake would want to come with her, which he probably wouldn’t. This was his home.

  All her other possessions were things wallers would consider junk—old ripped clothes and a collection of sea glass, shells, and driftwood that she’d found over the years. Stuff that would look dirty and pointless in the city. The one possession she wanted to keep was her mother’s knife, and she already had that with her, strapped to her belt and hidden beneath her shirt. Her hand went to it now, touching the worn handle. Then her fingers drifted to the stuffed turtle in her pocket. She pressed the soft, round shell against her leg for reassurance. “No,” she told her da. “Leave it all.”

  Martin kissed her forehead and set off with Sonia and two of the soldiers. Kiri watched them go. Once they passed through the sea-grape tunnels, she pried off her shoes so she could feel the sand between her toes one last time.

  The soldiers paid her no mind. They both stood in the shade of the tridrone, scanning the dunes.

  A skinny figure paused beneath a stilt house at the back edge of the village. He blended in with the wooden stilts, but the funny way he held his shoulders and cocked his head were unmistakable.

  Paulo!

  Instinctively, Kiri jogged toward him.

  “Hey!” shouted a soldier. “Get back here!”

  “It’s okay,” she called back. “I’m going to talk with a friend.”

  She feared the soldiers might come after her, but they didn’t. They probably thought fugees were all crazy savages who’d net them and eat them if they went anywhere near the village. And they probably considered her a crazy savage, too. After a few sharp commands, they let her go.

  As Kiri neared the stilt house at the edge of the village, she saw that she’d been right. It was Paulo standing in the shade under the house. Only he wasn’t smiling. Instead, he looked scared.

  “Paulo!”

  He grimaced and turned his back to her.

  “Paulo! It’s me.”

  “You shouldn’t be here,” he said, still refusing to look at her. “You’re dead. I saw you get shot. Everyone says that you’re dead.”

  “If I was dead, could I do this?” Kiri picked up a clump of rotting seaweed and threw it at his back.

  The seaweed hit him with a wet thump and rolled off his hoodie. Only it was
n’t his hoodie. It was hers—one she’d left behind. The hood began to shift and change shape. A moment later a pink nose emerged, followed by a brown and white head.

  “Snowflake?”

  The little rat climbed onto Paulo’s shoulder and squeaked in response.

  Kiri hurried closer, but Paulo edged away. “I’m not supposed to talk with you,” he said, voice wavering. “How do I know you’re not a ghost?”

  “Snowflake knows.” Kiri reached her hand out to the little rat. Snowflake trembled and spun in fast little circles on Paulo’s shoulder, like he wanted to be mad at Kiri, but he was too happy to see her again to stay still. Suddenly, he leapt onto Kiri’s hand and scrambled up her arm to her shoulder, where he started to lick her cheek and nuzzle her ear while squeaking.

  “It’s good to see you, too, Snowflake,” said Kiri, giggling as the rat’s whiskers tickled her face.

  She lifted him off her shoulder and cradled him in her hands, rubbing her nose against his.

  Snowflake kept sniffing and squeaking softly.

  “Never seen him do that before,” admitted Paulo, finally cracking a smile. “I guess he does know.”

  “Where’d you find him?”

  “At your house. The day after they took you, I found him in the loft, curled up on your hoodie. He wouldn’t eat. I couldn’t get him to eat for days. He cried tears of blood.”

  “Rats do that when they’re sad,” said Kiri. She kissed the star on Snowflake’s head, breathing in his familiar pine-bark-and-coconut smell. He must have scampered back to the house after she’d left him in the ghost forest. It couldn’t have been an easy journey for him. “I missed you, too, Snowflake.”

  “Here.” Paulo took off the sleeveless hoodie and handed it to her. “I borrowed this.”

  Kiri let Snowflake climb into the hood, then she pulled the hoodie on over her waller clothes. Snowflake’s paws against her neck sent joyful shivers through her. “Thank you, Paulo. You’re a good friend. I was afraid he’d get eaten.”