The Ear, the Eye and the Arm (31 page)

"At last!" Eye cried.

"The police can double-check it, but I'm convinced. It proves the children were here."

"Let's get to a computer terminal and go over the Matsika list of acquaintances again," said Ear.

Arm looked up at the darkening sky at the top of the subway stairs. "I just don't like the idea of the She Elephant out there hunting." And in his mind, Arm saw her tramping along the quiet tree-lined streets of Borrowdale. She was dressed in black, and when night fell, she would blend very well into the shadows. She reached into a pocket for a flask of
kachasu.
Arm felt her teeth grip the cork and pull it from the mouth of the flask. His eyes filled with tears as the fiery drink sloshed down her throat —

"Watch your step," said Ear, leading him onto a train.

Now where did that come from? thought Arm.

"I phoned the General to tell him to keep an eye on Borrowdale," Eye told him.

Where did the time go? thought Arm. I don't remember Eye making a call. I really was with the She Elephant! I could find her! But the train started off toward the Cow's Guts, and Arm remembered that Sekai would be coming home soon.

At the thought of the baby, Arm forgot about his search for the other children. All he could think of was how wonderful it would be to get home again. "I'll bet the Mellower forgot to warm her bottle," he said aloud. "She told me he gave it to her ice-cold yesterday."

Eye shook his head. Ear pretended to be interested in the dark tunnel flying past outside.

The Mellower had not forgotten to warm the formula. Sekai radiated contentment when the Praise Singer brought her in, nestled in a baby pouch strapped to his chest. She was singing a song inside her head:

Milk, milk, beautiful milk.

Warm, warm, wonderful warm.

Happy, happy, happy, happy.

Arm was enchanted. He lifted her from the pouch. She gasped and stiffened. The song changed:

Big booming things.

Big awful things!

No, no, no,
no!

She screamed and clenched her little fists. It was like a physical blow. Sekai was pushing him away! The Mellower immediately scooped her back into his arms. "There, there. Did the awful man scare you? Oh, foo! We can't have that. Princess is safe now, yes, she is." He tucked her back inside the baby pouch.

"You — stole — her — love. You
thief!"
Arm was so outraged he could hardly speak.

"Can I help it if Princess prefers me? Don't hurt me!" The Praise Singer backed away from Arm's long reach.

Eye stepped between them. "You can't hit a man with a baby."

"Bully!" said the Mellower from behind Eye's back.

Arm collapsed on the sofa. He began to cry, not like an adult but with the all-out, stormy, the-world-is-coming-to-an-end sobs of a baby. Sekai answered him with equally desperate howls. Eye quickly lifted her from the carrier and presented her to Arm.

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" said Ear.

"Trust me."

Arm held the infant, and both of them, at exactly the same time, stopped howling. He felt the baby song again:

Mine! Mine! Mine ! Mine!

They fell into a kind of bliss together. "It's okay," Arm whispered.

"No, it is not," said Eye. "Don't you see what's happening? You're projecting your thoughts into her, just as you did with Mr. Thirsty. What were you thinking about when you came into the room?"

"Trains," said Arm. Sekai's mind immediately filled with alarm. He changed the image of the rattling subway car into that of a rocking horse. She stopped being frightened and became curious. He rocked it back and forth. Sekai cooed with appreciation.

"We have a problem," Eye said.

Then Arm understood. How long could he keep his mind on childlike images? How long before an intrusion from the adult world terrified Sekai? She was too young for such things.

Swallowing hard, he handed her back to the Mellower. The baby settled into the familiar pouch with a nagging sensation that something was missing.

"I'll take good care of her," promised the Mellower. For the first time, Arm noticed that the man's face was drawn with worry. He had lost weight. Deep lines were etched beside his mouth.

Later, the three detectives silently drank papaya juice as they sat in Mr. Thirsty's. Arm shredded the little umbrella the bartender had perched on his glass and let the savage emotions of the Cow's Guts wash through him. I'm glad the Mellower is suffering, he thought bitterly. I hope whatever's eating him has a good, hearty appetite.

Thirty

"Eeee!" shrieked Mrs. Horsepool-Worthingham early one morning. "You parasite! You vandal! All my strawberries gone! You greedy guts!" Trashman hooted as he galloped past the window.

"He's done it this time." Rita yawned.

"She was saving them for cream tarts this afternoon."

Then Tendai remembered that the entire Borrowdale Animal Fanciers' Society was meeting that afternoon. He and Rita were supposed to bake the cakes. "We'll have to use guavas."

"There aren't many of those left either." Rita smiled wickedly. Trashman not only liked guavas, he seemed to enjoy the nutty taste of the grubs.

While Rita visited Kuda, Tendai distracted Mrs. Horsepool-Worthingham in the kitchen. "He has to go," she said, blowing on the hot coffee Tendai brought her. "I shouldn't have put up with him so long. It's my kind heart, you see. People have always told me, 'Beryl, you're too good for this world. So trusting and generous to a
fault.' No! No! Put
two
tablespoons of oats in the water, not three!"

Tendai stirred the thin porridge and tried to keep dismay from showing on his face. Trashman might be annoying but somehow, through the weeks, he had become part of the family.

When Rita returned, the Mellower's mother sent her out to collect fruit. "I shall find it difficult to hold up my head at the meeting," she mourned. " 'Poor Beryl,' they'll say. 'Can't afford anything but guavas.' That horrible tramp!" Tendai hoped, as sometimes happened, that Mrs. Horsepool-Worthingham would use up all her anger in talking and not really do anything.

He offered her oatmeal, but she waved it away. "I'm too upset! Put it on the back burner for later." She strode off in the direction of the unexplored wing of the house.

Tendai waited a moment and followed. She went along a sunlit veranda and through a series of storage rooms. Evidence of the house's once-grand days was stacked everywhere: magnificent rugs, original paintings, statues, busts of gloomy Horsepools and Worthinghams, antique furniture and a real horse dipped in bronze that Tendai avoided touching. It was easy to hide. Mrs. Horsepool-Worthingham went into a den and closed the door. At the top of the door was a stained-glass fanlight with a panel broken out. Tendai climbed on top of a grand piano — he shared the space with a stuffed pheasant and a hippopotamus foot hollowed out for umbrellas. He settled himself next to the broken glass.

The woman was sitting in front of a holophone. At last, thought Tendai. She asked for a number he recognized as his own. In a few moments, the harassed face of the Mellower appeared. "Oh! Hello, Mummy. How nice of you to call. How thoughtful."

"Don't give me that Mellowing nonsense. Listen, is anyone near?"

The Praise Singer didn't look well. His skin hung loosely, and deep lines had appeared beside his mouth. Tendai was shocked. "Mrs. Matsika is lying down. She had a bad night. The General is meeting with the President over a national emergency. I think the Gondwannans shot down a Zimbabwean airplane."

"I don't care about airplanes! Have you planted the idea about offering a reward?"

Tendai turned cold. So his parents weren't in Beijing at all! He leaned against
the fanlight. Mrs. Horsepool-Worthingham was yellow behind the stained glass, and the Mellower was blue. He certainly looked blue. His mouth turned down, and he dabbed at his eyes with a large cloth that looked suspiciously like a diaper.

"I — I did try. During Mrs. Matsika's therapy session."

"Therapy, hah! Unvarnished flattery is what you hand out — and they eat it up with a trowel. Disgusting! Why couldn't you have gone into law like your father?"

"Please, Mummy. Don't start. I haven't got the nerves for a law court." The Mellower ran his fingers through his lank blond hair. It was a lot thinner than Tendai remembered. "Anyhow, it
is
therapy. It makes people feel good."

"So does heroin," sneered Mrs. Horsepool-Worthingham. "I'm glad your father isn't alive to see you cringing and bowing like a whipped dog."

"Mummy, I have to work."

"You listen!"
Mrs. Horsepool-Worthingham had several ways of talking, but she saved one tone of voice for special occasions. She used it when the dogs made a mess on the carpet. She used it when Rita broke a prized bone-china teacup. She used it now. Tendai winced.

"Yes, Mummy," said the Mellower.

"I want you to hypnotize the Matsikas into offering a large sum of money for the return of their brats."

"That's cruel!" said the Praise Singer with more spirit than Tendai had given him credit for. The man's face had gone white as chalk.

"Nonsense! I'm only redistributing the wealth. I need to repair the roof and fix the robot, have the tennis court put to rights and replace the pipe in the fountain. The stables are collapsing, too."

"It's cruel and it's a crime!"

"Be quiet, you lily-livered Mellower!" said Mrs. Horsepool-Worthingham, using her special voice. "I intend to keep the children until the General offers a reward. If you inform on me, I'll go to prison. How would you like that? Your poor old mother shivering in Waa Waa Prison because you were too selfish to keep your mouth shut.
That's
cruel for you, you ungrateful serpent's tooth!"

The Mellower clasped his hands until the joints cracked. Tendai saw that his fingernails were chewed down to the quick. "Why don't
you
call the General, Mummy? I'm sure he'll be grateful."

The woman laughed harshly.
 
"What a
ninny you are! Gratitude doesn't fill your pockets. The General doesn't pay you what
you're
worth, and that's not much. Mark my words, the only way you get by in this world is to grab the opportunity when it presents itself."

A baby cried in the background. The Mellower looked quickly toward the sound. "I have to go."

"Put a word in his ear, in that smarmy way of yours. Suggest delicately that a reward might do wonders."

"I have my professional ethics," said the Mellower, trying to outstare his mother with his watery blue eyes.

"Ethics, rubbish!" said Mrs. Horsepool-Worthingham, glaring back with her steel gray ones. "You wouldn't want anything to happen to your poor old mother, all alone in a hovel that is falling down around her ears. You wouldn't want her to end her days sewing mailbags in a cold gray cell."

"Don't talk like that! Of course not!" The baby's cries became more insistent. "Oh, I don't know what to do!" The Mellower snapped off the holoscreen without even saying good-bye.

Tendai stayed perfectly still as the woman locked the door of the den and went back to the main part of the house. He might have been another stuffed animal. He hugged himself to get control of his rage. His first impulse was to denounce Mrs. Horsepool-Worthingham as a traitor. That is what Rita would have done. But first impulses weren't always wise.

I wish the Mellower weren't involved, he thought. It isn't really his fault. If my mother asked me to do something criminal, I'd probably agree, too. But Mother wouldn't do that.

Tendai's mind was whirling. What would Father do to Mrs. Horsepool-Worthingham? In spite of her dishonesty, she had taken them in and fed them. She was cruel to Kuda. But did she really know that? "I'm building character," she always said when they complained. Father made them do things they hated, too, in order to build character. And what would he do to the Mellower?