Hidden Empire (Empire 2)

When the people were gone, Chinma led the doctor out into the parking lot. Ade strode up to them. "Where were you?" he demanded in Ayere. "I went in but there was nobody at the table and a sick man told me to get out or he'd infect me."

The doctor gripped Ade by the upper arm. "I need you to take me and a couple of other doctors out to where your brother got bitten."

"Why?" asked Ade.

"If you want your brother to live, you'll do it," said the doctor.

"I'll do it," said Ade, "but it's stupid. What does the place have to do with it?"

"Because we have to find the monkey that bit him, that's why," said the doctor.

Ade looked at Chinma, and Chinma rolled his eyes. "I tried to tell him but he told me to shut up," said Chinma in Ayere.

"What is he saying?" demanded the doctor. "Speak a language somebody understands."

Ade answered him. "We take all the monkeys."

"All the putty-face monkeys," said Chinma, trying to be accurate.

"Took them? Where?"

"A warehouse, other side of the tracks," said Ade.

The doctor glared at Chinma. "Why didn't you make me—" But then he caught himself and grimaced. "Yes, I should have listened. I've turned into one of those adults."

Five minutes later they were at the warehouse. The men were already loading the monkey cages into a panel truck but they hadn't left yet.

The doctor told them to stop. "These monkeys cannot leave Ilorin," he said inYoruba.

The foreman laughed at him, hooking his fingers through the wires of the cage. "We have the permits and unless you have an order from a judge and a policeman to back it up—"

Then he screeched and snatched his hand back from the cage and brought one finger into his mouth to suck on it. "Damn monkey."

Chinma looked into the cage. It wasn't the papa monkey, it was one of the mamas. Not the one that sneezed on him.

The doctor leaned in close to the man. "You are now a dead man," he said, "unless those monkeys stay right here."

The warehouse man looked puzzled but he had stopped laughing. "What do you mean?"

"I have a man in my clinic with blood coming out of his eyes because that monkey bit him."

Chinma thought of telling him it wasn't really the same monkey, but he decided not to.

The warehouse man sat down on the ground and began to cry. "Ebola," he said. "Ebola."

"It's not ebola," said the doctor. "It's something else. That's why the scientists have to look at these monkeys. Do you understand me? Maybe they'll find out things that will let them save your life."

The warehouse man shouted at his coworker. "Get those cages out of the truck!"

Chinma's brothers helped the man take the cages back into the warehouse.

Now the doctor could squat down beside Chinma and talk to him. "In the cab of the truck your brother Ade told me that you do the monkey-catching. He said that you warned your brother that the monkey was a biter."

Chinma nodded.

"Did it bite you?"

"No," said Chinma. "I was quick."