The Ear, the Eye and the Arm (9 page)

She clamped a chain around Tendai's ankle and fastened it with a padlock. The chain was attached to a chunk of cement. Rita was fettered the same way. "I don't think you can find your way out, but this'll slow you down. Especially in the deep water."

"We're not going to do anything!" Rita said shrilly.

"Loaf if you like." The big woman shrugged. "The workers trap rats when they don't satisfy me enough to get fed. Some of the grass roots are said to be tasty. I wouldn't know." The She Elephant lumbered back to the round chamber.

Tendai tried to follow, but the cement block stopped him. He yanked on it. It moved forward a few inches. He sat down on the ground and tried to think.

"It's so dirty and horrible!" cried Rita. "How are we ever going to get away?"

"I want Mama," Kuda whimpered.

"It's okay. This is a game," Tendai told his little brother.

"We'll never see Mother or Father again. We'll die down here with the rats and mud."

Rita burst into tears. Kuda began to wail.

"Rita!" shouted Tendai, shaking her. "If they were going to hurt us, they would have done so already. This is a
game!
You're scaring Kuda."

She hugged herself and rocked back and forth. Presently, her sobs died down to sniffles. "You're right. I'm being stupid. It's a treasure hunt, Kuda. We're going to dig up toys from the ground."

"You can have a shovel all to yourself." Tendai folded the little boy's fingers around the handle.

Kuda's eyes grew round. "It's big!"

"It's the same size as mine. Look, we'll start on that patch over there."

Rita wiped her eyes. "Maybe we'll find something valuable. I've always admired the plastic dishes people had in their living rooms. I never knew where they came from."

"That's the spirit! We're Scouts, after all. We're prepared for everything."

"We could get badges for this," said Rita.

"Of course. For geology and nature study."

"For exploring," Rita said bitterly. "I'm sure even the Scoutmaster doesn't know about
this
place."

Tendai began working on a mass of ancient shopping bags. They disintegrated as he pulled them from the wall. He found pieces of old glass, mottled with rainbow swirls, and fragments of pottery. A strange feeling came over him. The ancestors had been here, might be here even now, watching him pull out the remnants of their lives. Did they mind?

"Here's an unbroken bottle," said Rita. It was a flask about three inches tall.

"The surface is lumpy," Tendai said, feeling the glass. He held it close to the lamp. "It's writing — English!" He searched his mind for the correct translation. His English was limited. "Pink Pills for Pale People."

Rita laughed. "It must be old. There aren't many pale people around now. This must be from colonial days, when — what was the name of that tribe?"

"The British."

"Yes, when the British ruled Zimbabwe. This is exciting! It must be worth a lot — and look! Here's a plastic duck." Rita gave the red plastic duck to Kuda, who ran it around the ground, quacking.

"Here's part of an old quilt." Tendai tried to work it loose, but dampness and rot made it crumble. He chipped out a clump of earth, with a bright square of cloth still attached, and took it to the light. It was beautifully done. Someone had spent hours fitting together jewel-like bits of material with tiny stitches. Any attempt to free it made the cloth disintegrate into mold no different from the earth.

Once again, Tendai felt uneasy. "I'm sorry," he apologized to the unknown ancestor who had patiently made the quilt. He dug a little hole in the side of the tunnel and buried the cloth there, to honor his or her memory.

"There are lots of valuable things down here. We could become millionaires," said Rita cheerfully. She seemed to have no qualms about disturbing the ancestors. Tendai didn't say that if they found anything valuable, the She Elephant would certainly take it from them.

When the cart was filled with refuse, Rita and Tendai pulled it down the tunnel to the main chamber. They had to drag their chunks of cement behind them. Kuda, who wasn't chained, helped them as best he could. They found a new, empty cart each time they visited the chamber and rolled it slowly back.

Once, Tendai looked behind to see one of the
vlei
people detach himself from the wall and shamble over to the cart. He did not tell the others.

It was impossible to say how long they had been working, but they were exhausted by the time the She Elephant fetched them. "Not bad for spoiled brats," she said, looking over the pile of treasures. Kuda cried when she took the red duck.

"It's a toy! He needs it!" cried Rita.

"He can make one out of mud." The She Elephant slapped Kuda's hands away and bent to unchain the others.

"Mean old hog," muttered Rita, and yelped when the She Elephant pinched her.

They followed the woman through a different tangle of tunnels, going down until they came to an underground pool that was fed by a spring. "Wash your hands here, princess," she told Rita.

All three children knelt to wash their faces and hands. The water was cold and almost black with vegetable material. It looked like tea. Tendai tasted it: the cold liquid seemed to sink into his tongue. "It's okay to drink," observed the She Elephant. "It's better where it comes out." So Tendai sat where the dark stream spilled from the rock, filled his hands and drank deeply.

"You'll get a disease," said Rita with a shudder. "All pond water should be boiled for five minutes to remove germs. It's in the Scout handbook."

But Tendai didn't care. The cold dark water put strength into him. It came from the same place as the whisper that had awakened him in Mazoe. It came from the ancestors.

"Don't fall asleep there!" The She Elephant yanked him to his feet. She led them to the surface. Tendai was amazed to find the sky black and spangled with stars. The cooking pots bubbled on crackling red fires. Lamps were lit on every table. They reflected on the ghostly faces of the
vlei
people.

The big woman ladled out dinner. When anyone asked for more, she gave it to him. She wasn't stingy. Knife sat beside the old woman's rocking chair. He rolled up balls of
sadza
and fed them into her toothless mouth. "You're all crooks," she muttered. "Jail rats."

"That's right, Granny," said the She Elephant. "We're lower than snakes' bellies. Want some tea?" Granny rattled her mug on the arm of her chair, and the She Elephant filled it.

Fist sat with a few of the more alert
vlei
people and applied himself to a mountain of food. Most of the others preferred to hide in the shadows on the ground. From the smacking noises, they appeared to be enjoying the meal as much as anyone else.

And the food was excellent. Even Rita gave in and asked for more. It might have been the hard work. It might have been the breeze making the fires dance or the bright stars frosting the sky, but Tendai thought he had never eaten a better meal.

Afterward, he staggered to the entrance of a mine and flopped down. The She Elephant took Rita and Kuda to an underground chamber, but she contented herself with chaining Tendai to another chunk of cement. He fell asleep at once. Later, he woke briefly to find himself covered with a rough blanket. He looked up at the sky. Never had he seen anything so awe-inspiring. At home, the big security lights washed out the stars, but here they stared down at him with an intensity that was almost frightening.

He listened to Knife and Fist kick dirt over the coals. "We're in it up to our necks," said Knife in a low voice.

"I don't like dealing with gangs, especially the Masks. I've heard stories . . .," Fist said.

"Who hasn't? Help me shift this pot." Tendai heard water slosh and scatter a few hissing drops over the coals. Then he began drifting off again.

He tried to remember Mazoe and couldn't. All his life seemed pale and distant compared to what he was experiencing now. Tendai was frightened by this sudden lack of memory, but his exhaustion would not let him dwell on it long. He fell into a deep dream that he would not remember when he awoke.

Nine

In the Cow's Guts, Eye fed General Matsika's credit card into the computer. He almost fainted when he saw how big their expense account was.

"Beautiful, beautiful money," sang Ear, looking over his shoulder.

"We'll have to work for it. I wouldn't like to have the General after me if I made him angry," Arm said, which sobered up the other detectives at once.

Eye withdrew a hundred dollars from the expense account. The computer hummed and clicked. A hundred dollars slowly creaked out the money slot at the side. It had been so long since it had been used, the slot was clogged with dust. "Let's think about this logically," said Eye, sniffing the green ink on the dollars. "The children went to Mbare Musika and were headed for Beatrice, in the south."

"Maybe they took a subway," Ear said.

"Surely they wouldn't be that foolish."

"They don't know that much about the outside world," said Arm. "However, the police have checked all the obvious possibilities. Our job is to think of something unusual. If you were a child and had just escaped from a boring, oppressive house —"

"It was a beautiful house," Eye objected.

"It
looked
beautiful. Excuse me, my friend. I know seeing is your specialty, but I could feel the unhappiness. It was a home full of machines rather than people, with parents who are always busy and a father who wants everything so perfect no one can relax."

"You could tell all that?" asked Eye.

"That's
my
specialty." Arm unfolded a map of Harare and studied it carefully. "If I were one of those children, I'd want some fun. I'd eat all the food I wasn't allowed at home — chili-bites, for example. I wouldn't go straight to Beatrice either. I'd take a side trip to the Bird Garden or the Lion Park or the Mile-High Macllwaine to ride the elevators."

The detectives spent the afternoon calling all the places that looked like fun, with no results. Finally, as night fell, it was clear to everyone the General's fears had been correct. He called to report that the children had not come home.

"They might have been kidnapped at Mbare Musika. It's an excellent place for it," said Arm, draping his long limbs over the threadbare sofa. He watched Ear feed synth-food into the microwave. A moment later, a sickly smell floated through the office. "I hate bacteria burgers."

"Be thankful your special abilities don't include taste," said Ear, fanning the hot plates with his ears. They sat around a rickety card table and ate, with many helpings of ketchup and mustard.

"We'll have to visit Mbare Musika," Arm said as he jammed the plates into the overloaded sink. "We don't know what we're looking for, but maybe something will come looking for us."

A few minutes later, the detectives were seated at the back of a bus. The other passengers had moved to the front, but Ear, Eye and Arm were so used to this reaction, they didn't notice. Eye sat between the other two with his eyes closed because he was afraid of heights.

The bus took the long way around, stopping at the Mile-High Macllwaine — once at the two hundredth floor and once two floors below the Starlight Room Restaurant. A pair of dishwashers got off. The bus had to veer sharply to avoid a collection of diplomatic limos. They flew the Gondwannan flag and blared noisy sirens. The windows were tinted so no one could look in.

It was ten o'clock at night. The vast city of Harare was spread out like a jeweled sea. Traffic lights blinked at the tops of buildings. Buses, taxis and limos swarmed through the skyways, patrolled by cops in night-black cars that reflected no light. They were like patches of moving darkness in the rowdy, noisy traffic.

The bus finally settled at Mbare Musika. Ear, Eye and Arm wandered around, waiting for something to happen. "Sometimes children are stolen by women who can't have babies," remarked Ear, overhearing a woman complain that she had too many.

"They don't take the ones old enough to remember their parents," said Eye.

"Maybe they're being trained as beggars or pickpockets." Arm looked down the street of the animal markets. It was mostly deserted, but a few persistent salesmen waited for customers. Something — he didn't know what — sent out a tremor of emotion unlike anything he had ever felt. It wasn't the animals. The goats dozed in their pens, dreaming dull, goatlike dreams. A pedigreed cat brooded with resentment. The salesmen emitted sleepy impressions of hunger. No, it was something else, painfully alert and malicious.