Changer's Daughter (29 page)

Needing a four-footed partner as well, Shahrazad appeals to the dogs, but they are not as smart as she is, nor as interested in elaborate subterfuge. She finds an unlikely ally in the despondent clouded leopard. The Colorado November days are far colder than the cat likes, but it does join in the evening romps in the house—romps that leave furniture overturned and Frank resigned to putting anything breakable away in cabinets.

One sunny afternoon, after watching forlornly from the window, the clouded leopard moves outside to join them. After that, he disdains the cold, proving to Shahrazad that cats climb trees even better than coyotes.

Frank MacDonald, watching the games from where he is rebuilding (with the help of a couple of cautious werewolves) a fence line along where the ranchlands border public lands—a fence line he hadn’t worried much about as long as the lands were leased to him—smiles. He’ll need to call the Changer soon and let him know that his daughter is doing much better.

When hide-and-seek palls, Shahrazad finds other things to occupy her. There are still acres of ranchland to explore and new things to discover. More than once, she comes back to the ranch house whimpering for Frank to fix something—mostly stickers of one sort or another, for there are cactus and porcupine aplenty on the ranch and neither needs to be particularly clever to do her harm.

When the cattle are moved onto the lands adjoining the ranch, Shahrazad takes a great interest, although not because of the cattle. They are far too boring to be interesting playmates. However, their stolid travels stir up the little creatures in the grass.

Hip and Hop, who understand Frank’s warnings far better than Shahrazad does, do their best to warn her away, but she persists in slipping across the fence line. A fence meant to keep horses in and cows out is no challenge at all to a coyote. In any case, nothing here smells dangerous in the fashion the Eyes or the wolves had smelled dangerous. Here are only herbivores, bigger than the horses, true, but lacking the unicorns’ horns and the horses’ comparative intelligence.

Frank MacDonald observes her actions with some concern until he notes that the cattle’s owner has turned them out with minimal supervision.

This is typical cattle ranching, but something that Easterners, still seduced by the romantic vision of the cowboy as perpetuated by movies, never quite believe. How could anyone leave something as valuable as a cattle herd out without anyone to guard it from predators and rustlers?

Such is the common practice, though, with both cattle and their stupider ovine kin. Then the rancher is free to blame his losses on predators, rather than on poor management, and to lobby for higher bounties and stronger poisons.

For now, though, this lazy cattle management means that Shahrazad should be fairly safe. Frank concentrates his energy on repeatedly warning her that humans can be dangerous, and on teaching her to take cover whenever a vehicle comes up the road.

Somewhere in Shahrazad’s brain is the memory of when her littermates were gigged from their den and killed, so she is willing to believe that humans are dangerous. Hiding from a truck is rather like hide-and-seek, and so she takes to it with enthusiasm.

Frank hopes that this will be enough and worries that it will not. Still, like the Changer, he knows that a wild creature must learn caution or it will become less than it should be. He just prays that Shahrazad will learn the real value of caution before she learns the too-high price of carelessness.

11

True it is that politics makes strange bedfellows.

—Henry Timrod

R
egis doesn’t have Katsuhiro returned to his cell following their interview. Instead, the Japanese is taken to a small apartment, well appointed by Nigerian standards in that it has its own private bathroom complete with a shower. There is also a double bed, a low dresser with mirror, a desk, and a fairly comfortable chair. After the cell, it looks like paradise.

The guards escort him to the door but do not follow him in. Nor do they make a big point of locking his door. Katsuhiro understands that he is still imprisoned and does not press the point by checking the lock. If it is not locked, there will most certainly be guards. Regis is playing cat and mouse with him, teasing him with the illusion of freedom as he had with the ham and cheese sandwich.

Katsuhiro’s luggage—with the exception of his sword bag—has been set by the bed as if by a bellboy too polite to wait for a tip. Catching sight of his reflection in the mirror, Katsuhiro decides that another shower would be in order, followed by a change of clothes. Although his luggage has clearly been searched, his toiletries are still there. His razor is not.

After luxuriating with soap and fresh water, and scrubbing his teeth, Katsuhiro dresses in a clean pair of slacks and a light sports shirt, then awaits developments. With the exception of the delivery of a light lunch, followed by a late dinner, nothing happens.

Nothing happens the entire next day either. Katsuhiro watches out the window until he has memorized the patrol circuit of those guards he can see. He eats the meals that are delivered to him, even the cheese, aware that his athanor metabolism will have taken its toll for the days that he was forced to fast. And he waits.

Soon after he has finished showering on the morning of the second day in his apartment, Katsuhiro hears the door to his room being quietly unlocked. This is followed by a polite knocking.

“Come,” he says.

A guard, one he now recognizes as a senior fellow referred to as Balogun, which means “war leader.” This might be a title, but it could also be the man’s surname. Many Yorubans have fallen away from their tribal naming customs, customs that could involve as many as four separate names, none of which is the equivalent of a “family name.” Therefore, following the European fashion, many Yorubans have adopted a title once held by a family member in place of a surname.

Others, like his former cellmate, Adam, and his wife had taken Christian personal names or had been given them by Christian parents. Lately, Katsuhiro knew, the trend was reversing itself, at least to the extent of children being given a “Nigerian” name, but the reasons behind certain names are becoming lost just as irreversibly as many other old traditions.

When his guards escort him into Regis’s office, the Chief General Doctor is already in conference with a handsome young Yoruban man. Katsuhiro makes as if to withdraw, but Regis gestures for him to take a seat.

“Mr. Oba, please meet my associate Taiwo. Taiwo is in the employ of a very influential businessman in Lagos and has been sent here to represent his boss in our discussions.”

Katsuhiro shakes hands, not revealing that he has observed this Taiwo crossing the central courtyard several times over the day and a half he has spent in his new apartment. From the young man’s familiarity with the place, Katsuhiro had the impression that Taiwo had been there for several days even then. However, if Regis wants him to believe that Taiwo is newly arrived from Lagos, so be it.

“I am pleased to meet you, Mr. Tai Wo,” he says, deliberately making his accent a touch stronger to help the man feel superior to him.

“’Taiwo,’” the young man corrects politely. “It is my first name. My surname is Fadaka.”

“I most humbly apologize,” Katsuhiro says. “To my ear, it had the sound of two words.”

“No, just one,” Taiwo says. “It means something like ‘Test the World’—a traditional name for the firstborn of twins.”

“I see.” Katsuhiro bows again, grinning the nervous grin of a Japanese
sariman
. He knows he must not overdo it, but these Africans with their love for titles—look how quick this ‘Test the World’ had been to make certain he would not be called by his first name—are as susceptible as any people to a show of respect.

“I am sorry that I have not been free to tend to you, Mr. Oba,” Regis says. “There has been some pressing business that I alone could resolve.”

His stare is so pointed and so cold that Katsuhiro wonders if he suspects the Japanese’s role in Adam’s death. Then the cold stare vanishes, and Regis is again the affable but commanding businessman.

“In a few minutes, the rest of our group will be joining us,” Regis continues. “Then we can resolve our plans for this fine international trade.”

An image flits through Katsuhiro’s mind of an entire group of prisoners all permitted to wash and dress in nice suits to have their meeting, all in thrall to Regis’s threat of biological warfare. The image vanishes as soon as Regis’s associates troop into the office and take their seats.

The first is a fat, round, oily-skinned man dressed in a military uniform so covered with braid and decorations that he rattles when he moves. Regis introduces him as Supreme General Agutan.

The next man wears a hand-tailored suit, but the expensive cloth and fine sewing are wasted on his stooped figure. He peers about in a nearsighted fashion that reminds Katsuhiro of a slinking rat. Even his thick glasses, perched on the end of a long nose, remind one of a rat. He is called Mr. Ekute.

The final member of the group proves to be Taiwo Fadaka. Regis is certainly keeping matters close, but then each of these men represents more than just himself.

This is one way that Africans and Japanese are more like each other than they are like the Europeans and Americans. No one is an individual. Every person is bound by family ties, business obligations, and friendships. John Donne may have needed to declare “No man is an island,” but to a Japanese or an African, this is self-evident. Americans might have questioned the propriety of John Kennedy making his brother his attorney general; an African would be surprised if he didn’t.

Katsuhiro swallows a sigh. Those bonds of familial loyalty are what hold him here, though for him family is not restricted to those few he can trace to his loins. All Japan is his to guard and watch over, so he sits in the office and listens to the four Nigerians jockey for position, learning all he can, storing the information away as a weapon for their own destruction.

He must have played the role of cooperative toady well, for when he returns to his room, Katsuhiro finds that he has a guest. It is young Teresa, Adam’s wife—or rather Adam’s widow—and from the way she is dressed Katsuhiro guesses that she does not yet know of her change in status.

Even in her secretary’s costume, her figure had fired lust. Now, as she stands just inside his doorway, it is all he can do not to gape.

Teresa is clad in a filmy robe of snowy white lace that glows against her dark skin. Beneath this, the lines of her body are accented by a close-fitting pink-satin teddy cut low between her breasts and high on her thighs.

When Katsuhiro enters the room, Teresa rises, standing on light sandals with thin straps and high heels. They make her almost as tall as him, but the effect is enticing rather than intimidating. The elaborate curls of her hair are interwoven with pale pink ribbon and strands of faux pearls. She looks, Katsuhiro thinks, like a box of Valentine candy: vanilla cream over rich, sweet chocolate.

He bows to her, giving himself a moment to recover. When he straightens, the bland smile of a
sariman
is firmly in place.