The Ear, the Eye and the Arm (7 page)

Tendai saw, through half-closed eyes, that Kuda was sitting up and holding his head. The little boy seemed too dazed to speak.

"Look what you did to him!" Rita yelled, hauling Kuda to his feet. "You're going to prison
forever!"

"Sounds like Granny," said Fist.

"Yes, she does," replied Knife with grudging admiration.

Tendai flopped over to bring himself near Rita and Kuda, but he pretended to be too weak to stand. "What did you do to
him?"
demanded Rita. "He'd better be okay. If you so much as chipped a
toenail,
Father'll chew you up like a lion's dinner!"

"Who is this Father you keep squeaking about?" said Knife in a bored voice.

"No, don't tell him," whispered Tendai, grasping Rita by the ankle.

But she stamped her foot angrily. "General Matsika, that's who. You don't think you're so clever now."

The two men did seem stunned by this news. "Oh, mother," said Fist.

"Oh, Granny," murmured Knife.

Tendai lunged at Fist and yanked his pant leg. The belt parted; the pants fell down. Fist struggled to grab them, and Tendai pulled his leg out from under him. "Run!" he shouted at Rita and Kuda. Rita reacted at once. She bounded over the
vlei
with a speed surprising for her plumpness. Knife started after her.

Kuda tried to run, but he couldn't keep up on his short legs. As Tendai went by, he scooped the little boy into his arms. The added weight slowed him terribly.

Fist tripped over his pants again and fell with a splat on the ground. He hit his head on a rock and lay still. Knife, a much smaller and more fit man, zigzagged after Rita as she darted around hillocks and bushes. He roared at her to stop, and she yelled insults back. Tendai thought, as he struggled with Kuda, that Rita never knew when to leave well enough alone. Every time she turned to scream, she lost some of the distance between herself and Knife.

Then Tendai lost sight of them behind a hill. He swung down a valley and up again. His side stabbed with pain. His lungs couldn't get enough air. His legs threatened to collapse. He rounded another hill and threw himself into a hollow in the ground. Kuda, bug-eyed with terror, seemed about to scream.

"Don't," gasped Tendai, covering his brother's mouth with his hand. "Hide."

Kuda seemed to understand. He clamped his mouth shut and stared solemnly at Tendai. They listened to the wind rustling the heaps of trash — because now that Tendai had time to rest, he saw that the hills, the ground and everything was a mass of packed garbage. The springiness of the earth was caused by thousands and thousands of plastic bags. Tendai was awed.

Plastic hadn't been used for a hundred years, not since the energy famine of the twenty-first century. He had seen plastic bowls and cups in museums, but the raw material lay all around them here. It was torn and greasy and caked with mud, but it was still
plastic.

After he had caught his breath, Tendai stood up and pulled Kuda to his feet. "Let's go," he whispered, but froze at once. Up from the lonely hills, drifting on the wind, came a woman's voice.

"Catch children," it boomed, deep down from the earth itself. "Catch children. Bring them to meeeee." The wind blew it away. Tendai hoisted Kuda to his back, and the little boy clasped his arms around his big brother's neck.

"Bring them to meeeee," called the far deep voice. Tendai stumbled on, trying to ignore the ache in his legs.

Kuda screamed. "The ground is moving!"

Tendai saw — and almost fell, so great was his terror — that chunks of the ground that he took for trash
stood up.
They moved toward him from all sides. Even down in the hollow where they had just hidden, a lump detached itself and crept up the side.

"Mama! Mama!" Kuda screamed. Tendai turned desperately, trying to find an opening, but the creatures were all around. They moved toward him with a shambling gait. They had eyes —

They were people. Tendai watched them slowly turn from nameless horrors to human beings like himself. "It's all right,

Kuda," he whispered. "They're like us."

"They're
tokoloshes!
Demons!" sobbed Kuda.

"No, it's all right," murmured Tendai, lowering his brother to the ground. "Look at them. They're just very muddy." Kuda clung to his brother, but he seemed less panic-stricken. Tendai took out his knife and pointed it toward the nearest person, an old man with a floppy hat the same color and texture as the ground. "Don't touch us," he said quietly. "We'll go back with you. Just don't touch us."

Six

When the holophone rang at the Ear, the Eye and the Arm Detective Agency, all three men sprang to answer it. Arm won, as he always did. His long black snaky arm far outreached anyone else's. Besides, the tips of his fingers were slightly sticky.

"Hello! Detective agency. You lose 'em, we find 'em. Sneaky husbands our specialty," he cried. Ear folded his sensitive ears, and a look of pain crossed his face.

"Sorry," said Arm, lowering his voice.

"I — I need your help," said Mother on the holoscreen.

"You came to the right place," Arm said. "Nobody else can do what we do. We can hear a bat burp in the basement. We can see a gnat's navel on a foggy night. Hunches stick to us like gum to your shoe. Got a sneaky husband?"

"Of course not," Mother said with surprise. "I'm married to General Amadeus Matsika."

"Ouch," murmured Ear with his ears folded in like morning glories. Eye blinked, a longer process with him than with most people.

"I can't explain on the phone," said Mother. "If you're not busy, could I send the stretch limo to pick you up? Please don't be busy," she added with a tremor Arm picked up at once.

"At your service. We'll rearrange our appointments," the detective said graciously.

"Oh, thank you," Mother cried. She hung up.

The men smiled at one another. The area in front of the holophone showed a desk neatly piled with papers, a swivel chair and what appeared to be a diploma on the wall. Close up, the diploma turned out to be a gift certificate from Mr. Thirsty's Beer Hall. Just out of holoscreen range were a sink full of dirty dishes, a muddle of food containers and a sagging couch. Hanging on the wall were the only things of value in the whole office: three Nirvana guns, obtained at great expense when the detectives opened their office. They had been fired only once at the police training range.

"Do you want me to rearrange the appointments?" said Eye. Arm nodded, so Eye took down the calendar and erased
Take clothes to laundry
and wrote in
Important case for General Matsika
instead.

"She didn't ask how much we charged. That's always a good sign," remarked Ear.

"But what can Matsika want that he can't get?" Arm said. "He can call in the police, the army and the secret service. If he says 'boo,' a mugger at the other end of the city drops a wallet."

Eye fitted on dark glasses in preparation for going outside. "Perhaps it's a question of being too powerful."

"What do you mean?" Ear settled muffs over his ears to protect them from the noisy streets.

"What happens if an ant bites a lion on the toe?" said Eye. "The lion roars, but the ant scurries into a hole. The lion can't find it. He's too big."

"So you're saying there's a whole world running around under General Matsika's feet that he can't reach," said Ear as he looked into the cracked mirror over the dirty dishes. His muffs were getting bald in spots.

"We know that's true," said Eye soberly. "You have only to look at the Cow's Guts."

"Come on. We don't want to miss the limo," Arm said.

The three men strapped on the Nirvana guns and triple-checked the locks on the office. Arm braced himself for the assault of sensations from the street. He was the only one who couldn't protect himself although the thick adobe walls of the office made life somewhat bearable. The others walked on either side as if to shelter him, but there was nothing they could really do. Arm almost cried out as the door opened and the tangle of emotions rushed in.

Ear, his ears safely nestled in the ragged muffs, could listen to the outside world without pain. Eye was able to look around confidently: ninety-five percent of his eyesight was blocked out. Arm had to suffer the hate, greed and anger boiling around the suburb known as the Cow's Guts. Only an occasional whiff of kindness, like a pale flower wilting in an alley, softened his pain. Ear and Eye half carried him. Gradually, Arm adjusted, as one adjusts to the sound of a jackhammer, but he was never really comfortable.

They stood on the limo landing pad and looked out at the Cow's Guts. The streets rioted in all directions, twisting around in a confusing way. Newcomers always got lost, to the delight of the muggers. Stolen goods were sold openly here. Drugs were bought as easily as bananas. Beer halls blasted music that made everyone's ribs rattle, but here and there, among the pickpockets and dealers, a family struggled to survive. These were people from the villages who couldn't afford anything better. Children sailed boats down the fetid gutters and flew kites between the beer hall signs.

Here, too, came the beggars after their day's work in the wealthy suburbs. Legless men pushed themselves on little carts. Women with milky eyes led children whose hands stuck out like wings from their shoulders. After dark, these people settled in alleys, where they built cook fires and where they sang and danced.

Ear, Eye and Arm often looked down on these fires and imagined they were back in the distant village of their childhood.

Suddenly, the streets of the Cow's Guts began to empty all around the pad. People disappeared into doorways with magical speed. Eye laughed as he pointed to General Matsika's limo settling down toward the antigrav units. The government symbol, a black Zimbabwe bird on a green-and-red background, was clearly marked on the side.

"They think it's a raid. What wonderful quiet," Ear said.

"Are you the detectives? Yes, you'd have to be," said the chauffeur after the door sprang open. "Do you have a permit for those guns?"

Arm produced the license, but he still had to hand the weapons to the chauffeur for safekeeping. "No weapons allowed at the Matsikas," the chauffeur explained. "Say, would you mind sitting in the back? No offense, but you guys give me the creeps."

Ear, Eye and Arm didn't take offense — or not much. They were used to startling people, except in the Cow's Guts. In the Cow's Guts a person could have green wings and purple horns: no one would be the least surprised.

Mother had seen the detectives on the holoscreen, but she couldn't help jumping when they appeared close up. "I — I'm sorry," she stammered. "I haven't seen anyone like you before."

"There isn't anyone like us," said Arm. He extended his hand, and Mother, with only a tiny pause, shook it. She felt the strangest sensation as she grasped the fingers — and not only because they were slightly sticky. It was like touching an electric dynamo. Somewhere inside, energy hummed and might leap out at her. She was relieved when Arm let go.

Eye removed his dark glasses, and Ear took off his muffs. The three men stood in front of Mother and let her take a long look. Ear, who was white, unfolded his ears. They opened out like huge flowers, pink and almost transparent. Eye, who was brown, blinked his huge eyes, which were all pupil inside and no white. Arm, who could just as well have been called Leg, stretched out his long black limbs. He reminded Mother of a wall spider.

"How — how did you happen?" she asked.

Arm replied, "We all come from the village of Hwange, near the nuclear power plant."

"Oh yes," said Mother. "That's where the plutonium got into the drinking water."

"Our mothers drank it."

Mother stared at them. She knew about the accident, of course, in a distant sort of way. A few people died. Others got sick, but it had happened long ago. What must it have been like to have such babies? Hers had been so beautiful.

"Our parents were delighted when they found out what we could do," said Eye, blinking in a slow, unnerving way. "I could see a flea clinging to a hawk's feathers. My mother never lost anything."