Part 3
Zara did not come to the station that night, but her tracks reached the southern firebreak before turning east along a game path. Kabo found them at first light. The lioness had stopped twice beneath camera poles, circling the metal bases where Nathan’s scent and the vehicle’s dust were strongest. At the second pole, one front paw had dragged lightly through the sand. Her shoulder injury was affecting her, though not enough to prevent her from covering several miles.
“If she followed the truck, she followed the cub,” Nathan said.
“Or the vehicle’s scent. Or the easier track north.” Kabo stood and brushed sand from his hands. “Either way, she is still close.”
They shut down all nonessential traffic around Mowana. The research staff due to arrive for the handover stayed in Maun, and no location images left the station. Kabo notified the families at two cattle posts east of the channel that a displaced lioness was moving nearby. No one there needed a lecture about her grief. They needed time to bring calves into stronger night pens and to know where the patrol vehicle would be.
Naledi chose a reinforced capture boma south of the firebreak for the first controlled contact. By noon, the team had checked the roofed mesh pen and remote gate, padded the rear panel, screened two sides with reed mats, and mounted two infrared cameras. A finer contact panel kept an adult paw from reaching the cub, while release cords allowed either reed screen to be dropped from the hide. A covered service trench linked the hide to the rear airlock.
“This is an assessment, not a release,” Naledi told everyone. “We need to see what the adult does when the cub is protected and we are absent. No one opens the field gate tonight.”
Nathan understood the reason. Zara might show interest without accepting the cub, or she might be too injured to care for it. Another lion could arrive first.
The cub’s baseline blood work was acceptable, though full results would take longer. Less than forty-eight hours of strict isolation and no contact with other animals made the added reunion risk low, not nonexistent; Naledi retained samples for full testing. The cub kept down small feeds of milk formula and minced meat delivered through the chute. On the second afternoon, a brief dry-season shower struck the tin roof and ended almost as soon as it began. She rose at the sound, planted her feet wide, and growled at the water running beneath the door.
Kabo watched the camera feed over Nathan’s shoulder. “Pula,” he said.
Naledi entered the word beside F-3 on the treatment sheet. Nathan looked at her. “You said no names.”
“I said she wasn’t a pet. Wild lions have field names. It stops three people from calling the same animal ‘the cub’ in three different reports.”
Pula meant rain and, in Botswana, blessing. Nathan wrote the word at the top of a clean page, then added F-3 beside it.
His satellite phone rang while Naledi prepared the transport crate. Leah’s name appeared on the screen.
Nathan stepped into the empty dining room, where the packing boxes seemed to have multiplied. “Hi.”
“You heard Emma’s message?”
“Most of it. We had an incident.”
There was a small pause. “What kind?”
He told her only that lions had been killed and a surviving cub was under veterinary care. He did not mention the patrol photographs or the cracked call from the thorns. Leah had grown up with news delivered that way: the least frightening facts first, the rest after he had converted them into a report.
“Are you safe?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“And your flight?”
“The handover is eight days away.”
“It was nine days away yesterday.”
“That’s generally how days work.” He regretted it as soon as he heard himself.
Leah did not take the bait. “Emma put your arrival on the calendar. In marker this time. I changed the sheets in your room again, Dad. I need to know whether we’re waiting for you or only keeping the room ready.”
Behind the office wall, a metal latch closed. Nathan glanced toward the sound. “I have to go.”
“Then go. Just call me before everything is already decided.”
The line ended before he could promise.
They moved Pula to the boma after sunset, when the air had cooled and daytime traffic on the distant concession roads had stopped. Naledi’s technician drove. The covered crate was carried through the service airlock and secured inside the animal compartment. Pula paced twice, drank, then crouched behind a tuft of transplanted grass.
Nathan and Naledi watched from an enclosed hide seventy yards downwind, linked to the boma by the protected service trench. Kabo waited in a patrol vehicle farther north, positioned to warn off any approaching traffic. The camera feeds glowed faintly between them.
For almost three hours, nothing larger than a genet crossed the screens. Nathan’s left knee stiffened. Naledi drank cold coffee from a flask and made no complaint. Near midnight, the cub rose and gave a contact call.
The response came from beyond the eastern camera. Zara entered the clearing slowly. The graze on her shoulder looked broad but shallow in the infrared image. She circled the boma once, keeping her weight low and her head forward. Pula pressed against the mesh.
Zara stopped. The cub called again, louder now. The lioness crossed the last few yards and touched her nose to the contact panel. Pula pushed both front paws against the finer mesh, rubbing her face along the narrow openings. Zara inhaled, drew back, then licked the cub’s muzzle through the fence.
Naledi released a breath. “Affiliative.” Nathan nodded. It was more than they had been entitled to expect. In the green cast of the monitor, Zara settled beside the enclosure with one flank against the wire. Pula lay down on the other side.
A gust tore one tie loose from the reed screening and slapped it against the metal frame. Pula sprang up. The screen struck again, and the cub threw herself against the padded rear panel, scrabbling for purchase.
Naledi caught Nathan’s sleeve as he moved and reached for the release cord. “I can drop it.”
“She’ll hurt the shoulder.”
“The rear is padded. Give me two seconds.”
Pula hit the panel a third time. Nathan heard the sound through the night, not through the monitor—a hard, bodily thump. He pulled free, opened the rear door of the hide, and entered the protected service trench with a flashlight held low.
Zara was on her feet before he had taken ten steps. For an instant, the beam caught the pale underside of her eyes. Then she swung away and vanished east.
By the time Nathan secured the screen, Pula had stopped struggling. Naledi came no farther than the edge of the clearing. She did not raise her voice.
“She saw you.” Nathan looked toward the dark path Zara had taken. “I know…”
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