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

talked," said Arm, who had received a report from General Matsika. "Blue monkeys are genetically engineered creatures — someone's Ph.D. project. They have a basic monkey structure with genes spliced from pit bulls and humans. They were supposed to be the ideal guard dog, but you can see why they didn't work out."
    "Tell me, is there — is there permanent damage?"
    "You'll be good as new in a day or two."
    Ear sighed with relief.
    "They can't find anything specific on the She Elephant," said Eye, looking over the police records the General had sent. "Ten million people live in Harare, and 'She Elephant' is a more common nickname than you might think."
    "It was one of the titles of the ancient Swazi queens," Arm said. "She's probably a small-time crook, because there isn't a record on her."
    Arm looked out the window of the office. It was three in the morning, but that was the middle of the working day in the Cow's Guts. Behind the big front windows of the dance halls, people gyrated to pounding music as though they were struck with some serious disease. The double-glass windows of the office kept out most of the noise. At Mr. Thirsty's across the way, a bouncer dragged a patron to a Dumpster and fed him in. In the alleys, a few beggars sat around a fire and listened to a man without arms or legs tell a story.
    "What could the She Elephant want with General Matsika's children?" Arm wondered aloud.

 
    Ten
     
     
     
    Tendai wondered about the same thing, but he thought about it less as the weeks went by. Once, soon after arriving, he tried to escape. By that time, it seemed the She Elephant and her cronies did not intend to harm them. If I can make it to those lights, he thought at night as he watched the nearest suburb five miles away, I can call the police. They'll rescue Rita and Kuda.
    When he was unchained in the morning, he bolted past Fist. The man didn't even attempt to follow him. That's strange, Tendai thought, but he soon found out why. The She Elephant's deep voice boomed out from under the hills. The vlei people roused themselves and overwhelmed him before he got half a mile.
    Later, he was shown a large round chamber at the hub of a network of tunnels. Battery-operated cables ran from a loudspeaker at the center. "I call in here, see," said the She Elephant. "It goes all over the vlei, so you can forget about running away. Save your breath for digging."
    Tendai also saw, in the larger tunnels, a system of rails going off into the dark. An ancient handcar allowed Fist and Knife to move quickly through the system. Clearly, Dead Man's Vlei had been inhabited a long time. He considered using the car to escape but decided he knew too little about the system. There must be miles of tunnels down there, he thought with a thrill of fear.
    It occurred to him that if he did — by some miracle — manage to escape, the She Elephant could hide Rita and Kuda so deeply no one would ever find them.
    Slowly, insidiously, he fell into the routine of life on the vlei. He awoke before dawn with the cold dew soaking his blanket. He toiled in the mines, with occasional tea breaks in the fresh air. At night, he ate ravenously and slept as though drugged.
    Sometimes he woke at night with a longing so sharp, it felt like a knife. He missed Mother and Father, and the Mellower, too. But as time went on, his memories of Mazoe became less distinct, and this frightened him most of all. Kuda was worse.
    Rita conducted memory drills. "You have to remember home," she told the little boy. "Mother often wore a hand-dyed caftan — brown and blue — and her hair was braided with ribbons. Father had a uniform with medals and jingled when he walked."
    "I know," said Kuda. Tendai suspected he said this to shut Rita up. He himself was finding it difficult to put faces with the caftan and uniform. But Rita didn't give up on the drills, and she didn't give up needling the She Elephant.
    Her ability to shooper was great. Often the She Elephant picked