The floor curved up into the walls, one of which was nearly hidden behind a wide fan of bamboo stalks. The floor was painted bright white. All in all, the whole space wasn’t any larger than a two-car garage. It smelled the way a garage would smell if you left a bear inside it too long.

Doug breathed through his mouth and tiptoed over to the panda, its body slowly inflating and deflating like a fur balloon.

He realized, suddenly, that there was a significant difference between this panda and the cows back home. With the cows, it was easy to sniff out a vein, break the skin, take care of business. Here, he could imagine biting down and getting only a mouthful of hair.

He leaned over the animal, fangs bared, his hesitant hands hovering clawlike in the air, lacking only a black cape and high collar to finish the picture. Then a faint whirr from above caught his attention. Light glinted off a single lens, a glassy eye in the corner that motored slowly upward to look from panda to Doug.

Is that a camera? thought Doug.

The camera angled down again, past the panda, square on the rubber pig toy, and Doug wondered, Is that really a rubber pig toy?

He stepped around the panda and crouched on his hands and knees in front of the thing. It wasn’t a toy. It was some kind of animal. It looked like a naked rat.

What the hell IS that?

3

The magic kingdom

"OW. OW. OW," said Doug from under his white plastic poncho.