Free The Ear, the Eye and the Arm by Nancy Farmer Page A

the Gondwannan flag and blared noisy sirens. The windows were tinted so no one could look in.
    It was ten o'clock at night. The vast city of Harare was spread out like a jeweled sea. Traffic lights blinked at the tops of buildings. Buses, taxis and limos swarmed through the skyways, patrolled by cops in night-black cars that reflected no light. They were like patches of moving darkness in the rowdy, noisy traffic.
    The bus finally settled at Mbare Musika. Ear, Eye and Arm wandered around, waiting for something to happen. "Sometimes children are stolen by women who can't have babies," remarked Ear, overhearing a woman complain that she had too many.
    "They don't take the ones old enough to remember their parents," said Eye.
    "Maybe they're being trained as beggars or pickpockets." Arm looked down the street of the animal markets. It was mostly deserted, but a few persistent salesmen waited for customers. Something — he didn't know what — sent out a tremor of emotion unlike anything he had ever felt. It wasn't the animals. The goats dozed in their pens, dreaming dull, goatlike dreams. A pedigreed cat brooded with resentment. The salesmen emitted sleepy impressions of hunger. No, it was something else, painfully alert and malicious.
    Intrigued, Arm started down the street. At the end, a man slept on a chair with a leash looped around his wrist. On a table next to him squatted a blue monkey. It watched the detectives with bright, unkind eyes. Others might think it was cute. Arm knew differently.
    "Don't," he began, but it was too late. Ear tried to pat the monkey. It sprang and buried its teeth in the detective's ear.
    "Help!" Ear screamed. Eye tried to pry the animal's jaws open, but it was much stronger than it looked. Arm circled its neck with his long fingers and squeezed. The monkey opened its mouth and shrieked, causing both detectives to loosen their hold. It sprang to the other end of the table and danced back and forth with its fur erect. The owner hunched in his chair, pretending not to notice.
    "He ought to be in a cage!" shouted Arm, stanching the blood on Ear's ear with a handkerchief.
    "Yaa! Push off, rope arms!" screamed the monkey.
    "It talks!" the detective said in surprise.
    "Of course I talk, you booboo brain. Hey, elephant ears! What cesspool did you crawl out of? Can you beat time with those?"
    "Shut up! You hurt him badly!"
    "Ask me if I care," said the monkey, presenting its backside insultingly.
    "Shall I grab him?" Eye said.
    "He'll only bite you." Arm held up the now fainting Ear.
    "I've tasted better things," the Blue Monkey jeered. "I bit a kid this morning who tasted like strawberries compared to him!"
    "Kid? What kid?" Arm said.
    "Shut up," hissed the owner, pulling the animal's tail.
    "Do that again and I'll turn your mouth inside out," the monkey snarled. "There were three of them. Ugly, like all humans. The She Elephant got them. Ow!" The Blue Monkey and its owner fell to the ground in a furious fight.
    Arm was seriously worried by Ear, who had passed out cold. "Call a paramedic," he whispered to Eye. "Then contact General Matsika."
    He thought his voice was too low to be overheard, but the Blue Monkey raised its head in midsnap and shrieked, "Matsika! Cops! Run for it!" Instantly, the street emptied. The animal sellers disappeared into the shadows. The monkey and its owner made up their quarrel at once and streaked off into the night.
    "My big mouth," groaned Arm. He dragged Ear to a table and laid him out. The wound wasn't bad, but Ear was more sensitive than most people. He was falling into a state of shock. Eye returned with a paramedic and a squad of policemen. The latter fanned through the market, searching for the Blue Monkey. The paramedic disinfected Ear's wound and fed plasma into his arm to counteract the shock.
    "I ruined things," said Ear after Arm and Eye had settled him on the office sofa. "I should never have patted a wild animal. Was it my imagination, or did it talk?"
    "It