The Ear, the Eye and the Arm (15 page)

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'They are welcome," said Chipo, clapping her hands in greeting. She approached them, smiling, and then wrinkled her nose. "Do you suppose, Myanda, that our guests would enjoy a refreshing bath?"

Myanda laughed. "A bath is an excellent idea, younger sister, and they need fresh clothes, too. Those rags can be fed to the metal worker's furnace. I wouldn't dare use them in a cook fire."

"Are they going to
stay?"
Chipo asked, with a funny emphasis on
stay.
Myanda only raised her eyebrows and said nothing.

The
  
big
  
woman
  
led
  
Rita
  
off to
  
the women's bathing area, while Chipo took Tendai to a part of the stream sheltered by reeds. She handed him a strip of cloth and a loofah pod to scrape off the dirt.

It felt wonderful to throw off the evil-smelling rags and plunge into the stream. Tendai swam along the bottom, over water-weeds that bent in the current, and splashed to the surface beside a flat rock. Thousands of black tadpoles scattered before him as he clambered through the shallows. He scrubbed and scrubbed with the loofah pod until the top layer of skin seemed worn away. He was washing off the despair of Dead Man's Vlei. He was removing the feel of the chain around his ankle. He untied the
ndoro
and carefully rinsed it.

"These are your people," he told the unknown ancestor. "Thank you for bringing me here." He fastened it around his neck again and wrapped the cloth around his hips the best way he could figure. His old rags were already gone.

With a sigh of pure happiness, Tendai lay back on the flat rock and let the dappled sunlight play over his face.

So much of the Valley of Resthaven was familiar to him. He hadn't learned it from books, or even from Father and Mother. Tendai felt a pang of guilt when he thought about his parents. He should have asked Myanda for the holophone straightaway, but it was so tempting, after the exhausting escape from Dead Man's Vlei, to rest awhile.

Yes, thought Tendai. That's all we're doing: catching our breath. After all, we've been missing so long, a few more hours won't matter. I'll ask for the phone after dinner.

Meanwhile, it was extremely pleasant to lie on the warm stone and let the breeze dry his skin. Somewhere, not far away, he heard a drum beat. It had an earthy sound, not like the metal drum at home, of something burrowed out of a tree trunk with an animal skin stretched over the top.

Now how had he known what it looked like? The Mellower, of course.

Night after night, the Mellower had told them stories of faraway times. He had told them how the houses were made and the weapons were forged, how the pots were laid in hot coals for many days to season them. It was all part of the unending wandering story he wove about them. Sometimes it was Praise, sometimes history, and a lot of the time it was pure fantasy, but told with such authority that they all believed it. And the Mellower believed it, too. They could see it in his eyes. That was the best kind of story: when the teller was as much under its spell as the listener.

The incredible thing was that the Mellower was
white.
He belonged to the English tribe. His ancestors had lived in a completely different way, so how could he speak so convincingly of Tendai's ancestors?

The answer's simple, thought Tendai, feeling a pleasant ache in his legs as he rested from the long climb up the well and the flight across Dead Man's Vlei. The Mellower has a Shona
shave.
Aren't we lucky a spirit decided to possess him? I wish someone would take an interest in me. But he was too contented to worry long. With his hands folded on the
ndoro,
he drifted off into a dreamless sleep.

Fifteen

Ear, Eye and Arm had trouble finding a taxi that would take them to Dead Man's Vlei after dark. Finally, they located an old broken-down pirate taxi whose owner charged them four times the going rate.

"I'll give you eight if you wait for us," said Arm.

"Nuts to you. I can't spend it when I'm dead," the driver replied.

The detectives checked their Nirvana guns as they sailed over the city. "How much getaway time do these give us?" asked Ear.

"Fifteen minutes. Then whoever we shoot wakes up. And remember, we have a limited number of rounds." Arm sighted along his weapon and tried to remember the police drill.

Eye sat stiffly between the other men and refused to enjoy the view. "I'll get airsick, and then you'll be sorry," he said when Ear tried to interest him. They flew over apartment buildings fifty stories high and as long as city blocks. People were having parties on the roofs of some of them. Ear could hear the music. Arm wished he was down there rather than flying to Dead Man's Vlei.

The lights below grew sparser, and presently they came to a great dark gash in the city. "That's Vainona." Arm pointed at the edge of the wilderness. The taxi driver went down at once and opened the door.

"You said you were taking us
into
the
vlei,"
Eye cried. "We could have taken a bus!"

"Take it or leave it."

"At least wait," Arm said, counting out the money.

"Waste of time. You bozos aren't coming out." The driver ran a flashlight over the money to be sure it wasn't counterfeit. Then he took off, and they watched his tail-lights fade into the distance.

"Vainona's deserted at this time of night," said Eye.

Arm noted that the houses were shuttered and bolted, the lawns empty. Even the doghouses had locks on them.

"Maybe we should wait till morning," Ear said.

"Sooner or later, Matsika's going to find out what we know and come down here. Then I very much doubt the children will survive. The man's incapable of doing anything quietly. No, comrades," Arm sighed, "I'm afraid it's up to us."

The detectives walked carefully into the wasteland. The cement gave way to springy earth, stones, stunted bushes, gullies and hills. The comforting lights of Vainona retreated, and the watchful dark of Dead Man's Vlei surrounded them.

"I get the feeling — I don't know why — this place
is full"
remarked Arm.

"Don't. I'm nervous enough," said Eye.

"It's not like anything I've experienced before. It's not a thousand thoughts scurrying in all directions like the Cow's Guts, but one mind. The closest I can describe it is the feeling I get from an ant nest. The queen is at the center, and all the workers mirror and feed on her thoughts."

"You're giving me the heebie-jeebies," Ear said.

"I thought you'd be interested.
This
mind doesn't like us at all, by the way.
It
would like to see us buried under ten feet of sludge."

"Shut up, Arm," said Eye.

The detectives sat down on a hill and waited. Ear spread his ears until they fluttered in the breeze. Eye opened his lids wide and scanned the hills and hollows. Arm pressed his fingers to the earth and felt the vibrations. They sat like this for a long time.

"There
are
people here. I hear snoring," Ear said.

"I see a little camp fire. There's an old woman in a rocking chair," said Eye.

"Granny," murmured Arm. "Anyone else?"

"Too many bushes in the way." Eye moved his head from side to side, a motion that always reminded Arm of an alert cobra.

"I can feel several voices, but I can't make out the words," said Arm with his long fingers splayed out on the soil. "We'll have to go closer."

The detectives picked their way down the hill. First came Eye, moving his head from side to side; then Ear, whose ears bellied out like radar disks; then Arm. Owls hooted and left their perches, spreading pale wings over the black ground. Rats scurried into holes. Moths fluttered from under the men's feet, and a few ticks brushed off the bushes to quest for food.

The detectives felt as conspicuous as one of Matsika's police cars with its siren blaring, but to normal people they would have passed like shadows in the gloom. They stopped just outside the firelight and watched the four people sitting there.

"We'll get those brats and —
zit!"
The She Elephant made a cutting motion across her throat. "I'm going to kill Trashman when I catch him."

"It's not his fault. He probably thought he was playing soccer with Kuda," said Fist.

"You're soft in the head. You deserve to spend the rest of your life in prison."

"Prison, yesss," Granny hissed. "That's where you belong. Criminals! Sinners! You're all going straight to hell!"

"Oh, shut up," said the She Elephant wearily.

"When's the last bus to Vainona?" Knife asked.

"In about twenty minutes. That's when the afternoon driver passes through again. I'm going to squeeze him until his eyes pop out — hey! What was that?"

Arm, in shifting to a more comfortable position, had put his foot squarely on one of the
vlei
people. The person sank his teeth into the detective's ankle. Arm screamed. Eye fired his Nirvana gun at the creature.

"Intruders! Stop them!" roared the She Elephant. All around, piles of trash came alive. Ear and Eye fired in all directions as they pulled Arm with them.

It was a nightmare trip. Arm stumbled along, trying to keep his mind off the pain. They tripped over bushes and slid down hollows as they struggled to reach the lights of Vainona. Sometimes they came down on something soft that went "Oof!" and tried to bite them. Eye, remembering Mr. Thirsty's Beer Hall, shot Knife before he could throw anything. Ear knocked down Fist, but they fired again and again at the She Elephant.

"She's made of steel!" gasped Eye.

She came after them, snarling with rage, and her black dress and skin melted perfectly into the night. They could hear her heavy footsteps as she pursued them. Finally, after ten direct hits, she fell with a groan. "She'll recover fast," panted Ear. Meanwhile, the
vlei
people boiled out of their tunnels and tried to cling to the men. They couldn't move as rapidly as the detectives, but there were many more of them, and more still came up from the lower depths.

"Don't lose your heads, comrades!" shouted Arm. He was really telling himself not to panic. The malevolence he had felt when the
vlei
was asleep was nothing to what it was producing now. It burned his mind like fire. All the insults and humiliation the
vlei
people had endured from normal folk bubbled up like hot acid. It was hate, rather than the pain in his ankle, that threatened to overwhelm him.

Ear and Eye dragged him the last few feet across the cement strip that surrounded Vainona. Then they lifted him and ran toward the bus platform not far away. "Help! Help! Call the police!" shouted Eye, but the houses were as silent as craters on the moon.

"There's got to be a phone! Something!" Ear cried. Arm's leg was bleeding badly. They put him down on a lawn, and Ear wrapped an emergency bandage around his ankle. "My gun's gone flat," said Eye in a low voice.

"Mine, too. We'll use his." Ear unstrapped the Nirvana gun from Arm. Arm was too weak to speak. He watched helplessly as Ear and Eye dragged a bus-stop bench in front of him for protection. A trash can whistled past them and crashed into a wall with a shockingly loud sound. The
vlei
people gathered at the border of Vainona. Some of them, emboldened by the dark, actually spilled across the cement walk. They made smudgy shadows on the street. More piled up behind, pushing the ones in front across the boundary.

The detectives stood back-to-back over Arm, but only Ear had ammunition. A chunk of cement thudded on the street not far away.

"Mwari! They're tearing it up!"
cried Eye. The
vlei
people reached under the cement walk and lifted it right out of the ground. It crumbled under their hands. They tore chunks loose and hurled them at the detectives. A roar echoed out over the
vlei.

"The She Elephant," said Ear.

"Good-bye, comrade." Eye squeezed his friend's shoulder. "I'm saying it now because I might not have time later. I forgive you for not washing the dishes when it was your turn."