Knight lit into Lee, the raw emotions from his ordeal lending venom to his argument. “I’ve seen your operation in Laos. They’re electrocuting tigers!”

Lee was unmoved by Knight’s outburst, having grown accustomed to righteous Western indignation. “It’s either that or starving them,” he replied matter-of-factly. “We don’t want to damage the furs. I thought we were meeting to discuss business.”

“Business!” Knight nearly burst out laughing at the absurdity. “You want to talk business? Your product is never going to make it to market. Between disease, inbreeding, and malnutrition, your supply is beyond salvage. Christ, that virus at the farm in Thakhek could have wiped out half of Asia if the World Health Organization hadn’t come in and contained it.” That is, Knight thought to himself, assuming I’m not the lone human host who escaped and is now wandering about in one of the most densely populated cities in the world.

Lee was a portrait of equanimity. “I only need to secure two more votes to get the farming legislation passed through CITES, and I already have a hundred-million-dollar commitment from a pharmaceutical company to start production on day one.”

“Lee, you have no product!”

But in this moment, Lee seemed to know Knight better than Knight knew himself. “You wouldn’t be standing here if you didn’t have a solution to propose. That’s why you came here, isn’t it?”

Knight hesitated, torn between the money and his soul. Lee could sense his reluctance.

“Well, Randall Knight,” he said, “you are the man who knows how to keep animals alive. What do we do?”

Knight considered, unable to believe what he was about to suggest. There was only one honest answer to the question. “You’d have to wipe out your inventory and start over.” Wipe out your inventory. It sounded better than telling Lee he must slaughter hundreds of majestic endangered animals by electrocution, starvation, flaying alive, or whatever other ghastly method he might use.

“Done. Then what?”

Lee’s willingness to destroy several million dollars’ worth of cats caught Knight off guard. The man was ruthlessly forward-looking, and now he left Knight with no off-ramp from the conversation besides continuing with his proposal.

Knight felt the strange sensation of being outside his body, listening to someone else say the words. “I can connect you with breeders in the US with clean gene pools, and drug companies that can supply livestock antibiotics. You’d want to take the same approach as a zoo. Run each individual tiger’s DNA through software to determine the best genetic matches. Use computer models to calculate optimal couplings. That way you can avoid inbreeding and genetic degradation of your stock.” Knight paused, barely believing the words coming out of his own mouth.

“How soon could we be producing new tigers?”

“Four to six months. It would push you back, but you’d still be first to market.”

“Then we have an agreement?”