Changer's Daughter (20 page)

Eddie and Anson spend the better part of Katsuhiro’s scheduled day of arrival and the morning of the day after searching for him. Before they depart for Monamona, Anson promises substantial rewards to some shifty men in a darkened room if they can locate the tall, bearded Asian.

“I am praying,” Anson says to Eddie, no trace of irony in his voice, “that Susano simply let his impulsiveness carry him into Monamona early.”

“The same way it carried him into Nigeria two days ahead of schedule.” Eddie nods, then frowns. “That would be nice, but I don’t think it’s likely. If that was the case, someone should remember him: a lorry driver, a hotel keeper, a car dealer, a porter.”

“Yeah.”

“And think of the trouble we had leaving Monamona. The quarantine for smallpox is getting tighter. If you hadn’t known how much dash to pay and we hadn’t been able to prove we’d been vaccinated, we would have never gotten out. I have trouble believing that Katsuhiro would have been as smooth.”

“Keep cheering me up, friend,” Anson says glumly, dipping his free hand into a bag of cookies. “My life can use brightness, eh?”

Eddie doesn’t laugh. “I’m being practical. In case you hadn’t noticed, things are getting out of control.”

“I had noticed.”

“Any thoughts about what we do next?”

Anson licks cookie crumbs off of his fingers. “One, we look for Katsuhiro or any rumor of him in Monamona. Two, we go ahead and have our first meeting with Shango. He and Dakar will argue anyhow. They don’t need Katsuhiro present to do that.”

“True.” Eddie manages a small chuckle. “You certainly have chosen a contentious group.”

“Are any of us not contentious?” Anson says. “I think not. Those of us who have survived a lifetime or two have a strong sense of our own worth and of our own territory. Humans go to war over countries established by people they never knew. Our people—we often established the country, eh?”

“And view those who come into it as interlopers,” Eddie agrees, “even if they have been there for centuries. I really think that’s why so many of us have emigrated to America—there aren’t so many old rivalries.”

“Not
so
many”—Anson shakes his head—“but some. Now, whether or not it is true, Dakar has come to identify with the tales that say he was the one who opened the way into Yorubaland for the gods and those who came after them. The first kings of the first city are supposed to be his descendants. Shango’s lineage is old, but not that old. Besides, there are stories that Ogun’s wife left him for Shango.”

“Really?”

“True as can be. Her name was Oya. She is called ‘The wife who is fiercer than her husband,’ so I don’t know why warlike Ogun still resents her moving on, but he does.”

“Was she a real person?”

Anson shakes his head. “I doubt it, but you know how we athanor can be. Look at good Arthur. He never did half of what legend has attributed to the noble King of England, but now he expects to be treated as if he did it all and more besides. Our once and current king.”

“He did a great deal,” Eddie says, automatically resenting a slight to his ruler and close friend. “Much of what he really did has been forgotten. No wonder he clings to the legends.”

“Maybe.” Anson shrugs.

Eddie suddenly feels guilty. “I haven’t checked in with him for too long. I should e-mail him at least. Do you want me to tell him about Katsuhiro?”

“Not yet. Let us look for him a while longer.”

When they are back in their hotel, Eddie finds that both electricity and phone service are working. Since it is late, he has no trouble getting an international connection and downloads his e-mail. He is astonished by the number of messages waiting for him. By the time they have all been transferred, that astonishment has turned to concern.

Many of the messages are repetitions of an urgent request that Eddie call or at least e-mail. Arthur has not gotten over a primitive belief that many and louder requests will get action faster than one.

At last Arthur’s messages begin to offer details, and Eddie quickly grasps the import of Lil and Tommy’s plan to use the fauns and satyrs in their stage show.

His first reaction is a mirror of Arthur’s. There is a good chance that such publicity will at least lead to the discovery that the fauns and satyrs are real. At the very worst, the athanor as a community may be exposed.

Much of Eddie’s attention and energy for the last fifteen hundred years—as human society became less tolerant of multiple gods and multiple ways of viewing strange happenings—has been spent misdirecting attention from the athanor. Especially during the last two hundred years, ever since science won out over magic as the means of explaining odd events, the athanor have taken care not to draw attention to themselves. Now a rock star and his less-than-scrupulous manager plan to risk all of this for a flamboyant stage show.

Eddie’s fingers are racing across his computer keyboard, drafting a reply to Arthur, suggesting strategies to counter, even hinting that he might be available for recall, when he suddenly recalls present events.

His fingers grow still and he stares at the wall of his hotel room. How much does any of this really matter?

During the last week and more he has been forced to face how much of the world still lives. He has seen people drinking water that in America wouldn’t be given to a pet, children gaunt from malnutrition, and smallpox (which he had believed forever banished) rearing its head once more. In the newspapers he has read the statistics on the spread of AIDS in Africa—a plague that has hit Nigeria very hard because of its lingering tradition of male privilege and polygamous marriages.

An undercurrent to his and Anson’s searches both for Anson’s friends and for Katsuhiro has been their acceptance that human rights are very delicate things indeed, that all it takes is a few unscrupulous people in power to undermine all the rhetoric and make it no more meaningful than a child’s nursery song.

Eddie’s hands slip from the keyboard and he rereads the words that he has written as if they had been typed by a stranger. After a moment, he erases that message and types another:

Arthur - Sorry that things are less than peaceful there. Don’t worry. Most Americans don’t believe anything the entertainment industry does, even if they experience it with their own five senses. Go see the show yourself if you want proof. Just try to keep them from touring internationally since Customs could be a problem. Busy here. Too much to tell now. I’ll try to be better about keeping in touch.

Eddie.

After reviewing the message, Eddie sends it. He doesn’t doubt that Arthur is going to be unhappy when he gets it. After a moment he types another message:

Chris and Bill - My apologies, but the King is going to be a bit pissy for the next couple of days. Or more than he has been. I append a message I just sent him by way of explanation. Weather the storm. I’m authorizing my banker to put a bonus directly in your accounts. Thanks.

Eddie.

Once that message is sent, Eddie links to his bank accounts, arranges for the promised bonus, then arranges for more money to be sent to him in Nigeria. He suspects he’s going to need it before this is over.

Gazing into his computer screen, he mulls over who else he might contact. Vera is probably getting a less intense version of Arthur’s barrage, so Eddie sends her a brief message encouraging her to stay at work on Atlantis, no matter how much Arthur whines:

If things do go south, (he continues) that refuge will be worth far more than any soothing you can give to Arthur’s fractured pride. Arthur envisioned that all athanor would want to follow his conservative path toward educating human culture about our existence. Now he knows he’s wrong. When he adjusts, he’ll be at his best again. He’ll adjust faster with a minimum of hand-holding. Trust me. I append a copy of the message I sent him, so you’ll understand why he’s in a foul mood.

Eddie.

This sent, he drafts a nearly identical message to Jonathan Wong, the athanor to whom Arthur is certain to turn for legal counsel. Feeling that he’s covered all the bases, Eddie logs off.

When he tucks the computer into its case, he has a feeling that he won’t be using it very often over the next few days. Problems here promise to need more immediate solutions—ones that will waste blood and sweat, not electrons.

Katsuhiro does not get his cellmate talking all at once, but sharing the drinking water that has been liberally supplied for him, treating his wounds, and sympathizing with his misery finally gets the other man to open up.

The man’s name is Adam. He is a Christian, a member of one of the ecstatic religious sects that blend African religious practices with Christian doctrine. It was after his return from a church service that he had been kidnapped.

“My wife and I,” Adam says, speaking carefully in his stilted schoolroom English, “come back to our hotel. We go into our rooms and there are men waiting for us. Men w’ guns. They tell us that they want to know about some guests who are coming.”

“Wait,” Katsuhiro says. “You said, ‘your hotel.’”

“Yes, yes,” Adam says. “My wife and I, we have a hotel. Not so big but very comfortable. Even some air-conditioning and a backup generator for electricity.”

“Ah.” Katsuhiro has a bad feeling he knows where this is going, but he needs all the information he can get. “Please, continue.”

“I tell them this is privileged information, but after they hit me a few times I show them the register.” Adam frowns. “They not find what they want der. I can tell this. So then I know what they want.”

Adam’s voice drops, becoming so soft that Katsuhiro must bend his head to hear him.

“There is a man. Strange one. African, very wealthy, but I have no idea where his money come from. When I was at school, he made friends with my father. Later, when I want to start the hotel, he give me a loan. This man have called me some weeks before and say he need to get some rooms at my hotel and that he will need me to do a favor for him, too.

“I say ‘Of course’ because this man is my benefactor. He tells me that he not want that he staying there told to anyone. I say ‘Of course’—he is a rich man. He not need beggars to follow him. He tell me that a foreign businessman will be coming, too. That he will need special food, special drink. My benefactor say ‘I give you money for this. You order it.’ I say ‘Of course.’”

Adam pauses for breath. Katsuhiro hands him a plastic cup partially filled with clean, though warm, water.

“Drink,” he orders. Then, “Your benefactor—what is his name?”

With the stiff motion of the totally blind, Adam holds out the empty cup so that Katsuhiro can take it.

“That is one thing they want to know,” he says sadly. “I try not to tell them, even when they beat me. But then they take me to their big boss.”

Adam shudders, his command of English slipping. “When I tink that the last ting I see is dat man’s ugly face, I am sick. Dat man beat me more. I say nothing. Maybe he know that I hurt too much, ‘cause den he say to me, ‘Adam, you got a pretty wife.’ I get real sick then, ‘cause I have been thinking dat dey leave her at the hotel.

“The boss man say, ‘Adam, you got a pretty wife. It be real bad if something happened to her.’ I say, ‘If you not hurt Teresa, I tell you everything.’ So he promises, and I tell him. I tell him that my benefactor is Anson A. Kridd. I tell him that he have a big-shot Japanese man coming.”

Adam falls silent for so long that Katsuhiro must prompt him.

“Anything else?”

“Then the boss man laugh at me. He pick up a gun and I tink he gonna shoot me dead, but he jus’ spit into my face and say ‘Good nigger boy.’ Then he say to two guards, ‘Tie him in a chair. I want him to watch me fuck his wife.’”

Adam is weeping now, tears trailing from his blind eyes. Katsuhiro reaches out, though normally he shies from physical contact with any but his most intimate associates, and puts an arm around him.

“He make me watch w’ a gun to my head. Den when he done, he kick Teresa to the floor and pick up a gun again. He come and lean into my face, ‘she’s not bad for a nigger bitch. I think I’ll keep her for a while.’”

Adam is talking fast now, forgetting to keep his voice low.