Hidden Empire (Empire 2)

Chinma avoided the teeth and carried him down the tree. "He's a biter," said Chinma to Ire.

"So am I," said Ire, and laughed. Whereupon the papa monkey twisted around in Ire's hand and bit him savagely on the thumb. Ire shouted and dropped the monkey, but Chinma immediately caught it again—it was easy, because the monkey ran away so slowly.

"Are you all right?" Chinma asked Ire.

"Just put it in the cage," said Ire testily, and he resumed sucking on the wound. "Get the rest of the family."

As Chinma brought down each of the babies, it was one of the other brothers, not Ire, who put them in the cages. Ire sat in the cab of the truck sucking on his wound and keeping up a low murmur of cursing.

There were only two females—it was not a large troop, because it shared the stand of trees with an aggressive troop of red-bellied guenon monkeys. Chinma only recognized them because his family had brought him books about monkeys after he became valuable to them. These guenons were very rare, especially such a large group, and most people thought the only ones still alive were in the West Africa Biodiversity Hot Spot. It was very important that these monkeys were here.

Chinma decided not to tell the brothers about them. They would want to catch them and sell them, too, and Chinma knew it would take a lot more bribes because these monkeys were so endangered.

Instead, Chinma would tell a scientist about them, so they could get protected. Of course, that would mean going in to Ilorin, where they turned in th

e white-faces, which they had never let him do. But he had never asked, either. Maybe he was valuable enough now that they would let him.

Up a tree, he went for the largest female. Like the papa monkey, she didn't try to move away. As Chinma inched closer, she seemed to snarl and he expected her to try to bite. But she didn't. Instead, just as he got hold of her by the back and neck, she sneezed in his face.

Sneezed or gave him a raspberry—he wasn't sure which—but it amounted to the same thing. Monkey spit and snot all over his face. And he couldn't even wipe it off, because he needed one hand to hold her and the other hand to help him climb. And by the time he got down the tree, the stuff had dried on his face.

"This one spits," he said. "Or sneezes."

And this time he was listened to—they held the she-monkey away from them as they took her to the cages in the back of the truck.

When all the white-face monkeys were in the back of the truck, Ire slid over on the front seat. "I'm not driving," he said.

"I will!" said Ade, who was the firstborn son of Chinma's mother.

"I don't care," said Ire.

Ade was stunned. Ire never let a son of one of the other mothers drive the truck. But when Ade climbed into the cab and turned the key to start the truck, Ire just looked out the window.

"Don't go home," said Ire. "We're going straight to Ilorin."

"Why?" asked Ade.

"Shut up," said Ire. But then Ire looked at Chinma, who stood outside the window of the driver's side. "How do you like this? I need a doctor. Your stupid monkey poisoned me."

"I told you he bites," said Chinma.

"You didn't tell me it was poisoned!" said Ire fiercely. "You're not getting paid for any of these monkeys."

Ade shook his head at Chinma, as if to say, Don't argue with him.

And Chinma realized that if they were going straight to Ilorin, they couldn't drop him off at home and so he wouldn't even have to argue in order to get taken there. He swung himself up into the back of the truck with the monkeys, and cooed and talked to them all the way there.

They were the unhappiest, least excited, most tired monkeys Chinma had ever seen. Ire was right. There was something wrong with them.

In Ilorin, Ire insisted they go to the clinic first, even before taking the monkeys to the scientists. He got out of the truck and staggered toward the clinic and Ade drove the truck off, as Ire had ordered. But Chinma was worried. What if the clinic didn't have the right medicines? Most of the medicine that got into Nigeria was intercepted by high officials and sold on the black market, so clinics rarely had a good supply of anything.

They drove on down Highway A123 from the clinic and turned at a big traffic circle. They crossed the railroad tracks and then turned right again on a narrow paved road with warehouses and small factories. It was one of the warehouses where Ade brought them and stopped the truck.

To Chinma's disappointment, there were no scientists here, just a couple of Nigerian men without shirts. Scientists always wore shirts. Chinma's brothers off-loaded the cages—they were still too big and heavy for Chinma to carry them—and took them inside the warehouse. Chinma stopped and looked around. There were lots of animal cages here, though most of them were empty.

The brothers started to carry empty cages back out to the truck.

"What are you looking at?" one of the warehouse men asked Chinma inYoruba.