Changer's Daughter (40 page)

Frank calls concise directions.

Peeking over her flank, Shahrazad watches. According to her unwritten rules for the game, she has just won a point. She’ll win another if she changes position and Wayne still doesn’t notice her.

The clouded leopard, asleep on a high shelf bordering the living room, winks a green eye, silent scorekeeper. When Wayne has gone into the bathroom, Shahrazad listens, marks the rise and fall of Jesus’s voice in the kitchen, Frank’s soft reply, the clatter of plates.

Having placed them and knowing by the continual stream of urine hitting water that Wayne is still occupied, she uncoils and comes out from under the table. A few feet away, there is an overstuffed chair—a very daring hiding place, since Wayne will pass within a few inches of it on his way back to the kitchen and dining room. Wanting the points this will win her in the clouded leopard’s estimation, Shahrazad ducks under the chair and resumes her sleeping-dog pose.

She settles just as the stream of urine stops. Wayne emerges, buckling his belt. Reaching behind him, he closes the bathroom door. Shahrazad is tensing for the moment he will pass her hiding place, when, to her surprise, the man glances around the living room then walks briskly down the hallway leading toward Frank’s bedroom, office, and several unused bedrooms.

He stays there only a moment, then emerges, glances again toward the kitchen. Listens to the rise and fall of conversation, and then heads down the other corridor. Here his snooping is baffled, for all the doors are kept closed. Most lead to storerooms or unused bedrooms, a thing Wayne learns with a quick opening of the door and peek inside. One door, however, is the locked one.

Wayne tests the knob, finds the door locked, tests it again, and then, with a curious expression on his face heads back up the corridor toward the living room. Pausing again to listen to the conversation in the kitchen, he is apparently satisfied that he has been unobserved.

Returning to the bathroom, he flushes the toilet, then makes a much less stealthy exit. He passes the hiding coyote without noticing her, even though in her puzzlement she has raised her head to watch him go by.

“Sorry to be so long,” Wayne says in his loud, aggressive, alpha-male voice. “Had to take a crap.”

Shahrazad doesn’t listen to Frank’s reply. Coming out of her hiding place, she glances up at the clouded leopard. The wild cat blinks at her.

“Humans!” the look says.

Shahrazad can only agree.

Once again the computerized voice of the international operator informs Chris that all lines into the city of Monamona are busy now.

He groans softly. The lines have been busy for the past twenty-four hours. Yesterday evening, before he left work, he told Arthur he had been unable to get through and had promised to continue trying from his home until he went to bed. Arthur had actually been pretty calm about it.

“I don’t need to reach Anson to inform him of any crisis,” he had said, “so don’t stay up late on my account. Phone service to these third world countries often goes out.”

Chris had taken the King at face value, making his last attempt at eleven before climbing into bed. He’d been certain that he’d get through this morning, and the recorded message is beginning to sound like a personal insult.

Bill wouldn’t be in for a while, having an early class or something. Chris debates whether or not to report his latest failure to the King, decides against it—the situation is unchanged since his last report—and tries to get ahead of some of his other duties.

After three more encounters with the recorded message, pushing the redial button on the phone begins to seem like a Sisyphean task. Arthur will be certain to ask questions when they have their usual informal lunch meeting. Chris realizes that he doesn’t want to admit that all the effort he has made in his assignment is to punch a single button on the phone.

He starts his new investigation by calling the number of the hotel in Lagos where Eddie and Anson had stayed. That call goes through. Heartened, he asks the clerk for the number of their branch hotel in Monamona, thinking that maybe there has been some change in the number or the area code. The number he is given, however, is the same as the one scrawled in his notebook.

“Can you transfer me somehow?” Chris asks, willing to grasp at straws.

“Sorry, sir,” the clerk says, his accent very strong but subtly different than that which Eddie had demonstrated when showing off his Nigerian persona. “All lines to dere is out.”

“Out?”

“Weatha conditions, sir.”

“Weather conditions?” Chris repeats the phrase distinctly, positive that he could not have heard correctly.

“That’s right. All phone is out.”

“Thank you for your help,” Chris says, and hangs up.

He tugs at his nose as if that will help him think.

“Weather conditions. Right.”

Turning away from his telephone, he logs on to the Internet. In a few moments, he has found a site dedicated to worldwide weather, complete with constantly updated satellite maps. Zeroing in first on Africa, then on Nigeria, then on the southern portion of the country, he finally locates Monamona. The city is completely occluded by a reddish brown mass that the web site’s key politely informs him indicates the presence of high winds.

Going for more detail, Chris learns that the wind resembles a cyclone or tornado, but is stationary.

“Curiouser and curiouser,” he mutters.

There is nothing more he can learn here, so he tries hot links to various sites, hoping for a more detailed discussion of the phenomenon. He learns little, but the little that he learns is quite interesting. He sums it up for Arthur when, about a half hour later, he goes to report.

“Monamona has, to all intents and purposes, become the roosting place for an anomalous windstorm. Most of the meteorologists who are studying it agree that it is not merely an intensification of the usual
harmattan
wind pattern.”

He pauses in case Arthur needs (as he himself had) a definition of this term. Arthur, however, has experienced the
harmattan
and simply nods for Chris to go on.

“The dominant theory is that the Monamona windstorm is caused by the
harmattan
encountering some other factor that has made the wind cycle back onto itself. The two most common guesses as to what this other factor might be are increased temperatures generated by the city itself or the height of the city’s buildings creating something like an artificial mountain range.”

“Bosh,” Arthur says, rather rudely.

“I agree, sir,” Chris says. “The meteorologists are somewhat hampered in their investigations since the Nigerian government is not permitting any travel at all into Monamona. In fact, they have cordoned off a five-mile-wide area surrounding the city.”

Arthur cocks a brow at this. “They’re worried about it, then. Note the advantages of a totalitarian government.”

Chris, who now knows something of Arthur’s frustration with his own inability to govern the fractious and strong-willed athanor, chooses not to take this last too seriously.

“The Nigerian government
is
worried, sir. I decided to find out—just for academic interest—how much trouble I would have getting a tourist visa. I was refused flat out.”

“Oh? Any evidence that they are deporting tourists?”

“The opposite, sir.” Chris frowns. Both Anson and Eddie have been among the humans’ strongest supporters. “I can’t swear to this, but, judging from various factors, the government is preventing people from departing.”

“What factors?” Arthur snaps, not in temper, but as a battlefield commander would request information.

“Nigeria has always had an active tradition of news reporting,” Chris says, “something I remembered from one of my journalism classes. I’ve hunted up on-line news from the area and learned that Lagos airport is temporarily closed to international flights. The official story is that something is out in one of the control towers. As of now, no one is reporting differently, but I thought it rather odd.

“I checked further and learned that hotels in Lagos are filling up. When I asked why, I was told that the borders with Benin, Niger, and Cameroon are closed. Again, the official word is that troops are being diverted from their usual posts in order to maintain the cordon around Monamona. Therefore, they aren’t available to provide routine customs on the border. However...”

Chris licks his lips and flips a page on his notes. “However, the news services in those border countries report an intensified Nigerian military presence on the borders.”

“Oh, my!” Arthur says. “And all because of a windstorm?”

Chris shrugs. “That’s all I could find out. I’ve sent a copy of all my notes directly to your computer.”

“Thank you.” Despite his evident worry, the King smiles graciously. “You have done a fine job. There are certainly advantages to having a reporter on staff. Keep trying to get through to Monamona. This storm may disperse, and it will all be a tempest in a teapot.”

“Right.”

As Chris leaves, he hears Arthur pick up the telephone.

“Lovern...”

He closes the door behind him. Arthur doesn’t think this a tempest in a teapot. Neither does he. The question is, what is it and, perhaps more importantly, what does this mean for their friends?

Aduke has overcome the feeling that she is going to slip into undignified hysteria, but she admits to herself that she is quite confused. That response seems safe, far safer than acting as if everything is normal.

Still, she wishes that she understood more of what Oya and her new associates intend to do. When she does learn, she realizes that there are times when ignorance
is
bliss.

They have gathered once more in Oya’s conference room, all three of the newcomers, herself, and Oya.

“I’ve spoken with Katsuhiro,” says Anson, the one Oya had first addressed as Eshu, “and he is comfortable for now. Regis has taken his sword, and he wishes to reclaim it before he leaves.”

“Not
Kusanagi
!” Oya says. “I am surprised that he permitted such an insult!”

Eddie, the only one of the three newcomers who had not been associated with the name of one of the
orisha
, and so the one with whom Aduke paradoxically feels both most and least at ease, shrugs, his expression wry.

“I suspect that Katsuhiro was not given an opportunity to protest the loss. That says our opponents did their homework.”

Dakar, who rather frightens Aduke with his mountainous size and tendency to bellow, thumps the tabletop with his fist.

“How much homework would it take?” he grumbles. “Katsuhiro teaches both
kendo
and
kenjitsu
—as well as other martial arts.”

Aduke has already noted that sometimes Dakar speaks of this Katsuhiro with a grudging respect and sometimes as if he hates him. She wonders at the relationship between these three men—and theirs with Oya. Certainly it is more complicated than mere tribal affiliation or nationality, yet she senses that it is something like that, too.

She wonders, too, why Oya has included her in these meetings. Certainly she has nothing to contribute, and she can tell that her presence makes all of them, but especially Eddie, guard what they say.

“Very well,” Oya says, “if your friend will not leave without his sword, his sword must be found. Did you have any luck in that direction, Eshu?”

“’Anson,’” the thin man corrects gently. “Here and now I am ‘Anson.’ Eshu does not have the most savory of reputations in these civilized days.”

Dakar chuckles. “Satan. That’s who the Christians and the Moslems think Eshu is. What stupidity! They would have been better to think of him as the angel Gabriel.”

Anson shakes his head. “Eshu’s skin is too black for them to see him as an angel, though he has been a messenger between gods and men. However, I am Anson A. Kridd, and that will be ample trouble for our enemies. Now, we have decided that Katsuhiro will seek his sword, and I will attempt to visit him again tonight. What can we do in the meantime?”

“Our problems,” Eddie says, “are like the Worm Ouroborus, biting on its own tail. The city faces famine and riot unless the wind wall is dropped. However, if the wall is dropped, the smallpox may spread.”