Different Dreams (2 page)

In that same instant, Malou realized something else: She was coming to him. Just like the female monkeys
who came to Sumo to offer their services, she had put herself in a subordinate position by being the one to come to Landell. She was certain the same pattern held in human society. Landell probably would have made her come to his office in San Antonio if he hadn't wanted to inspect the property himself. No, Landell was the sort that somehow always turned others into subordinates, always made them come to him.

And that, Malou realized, anger sparking within her, was precisely what he had succeeded in doing to her. He'd managed to make that damned gate he was leaning on into his office for the moment, and to turn her into a humble supplicant coming to him. Well, she hadn't studied the behavior of lower primates for this long without picking up a few tricks of her own. Such as overfamiliarity. She'd observed the way low-status troop members always deferred to Sumo, cringing and cowering and fleeing any contact with the head honcho. Malou was determined to win back the ground she'd inadvertently lost—there would be no cringing or cowering.

“Cam,” she called out casually, “I'd forgotten when your office said you were coming.” She could see by the slight flutter of those thickly fringed, espresso brown eyes that she'd momentarily nonplussed him with her nonchalant greeting. She followed up her advantage by coming to the side of the gate where he waited and thrusting her hand out boldly. “I assume you are Cameron Landell,
proud new proprietor of El Rancho de los Monos. As you've no doubt guessed, I'm Malou Sanders, resident manager.”

“You're right on the first count.” His voice was as clipped and staccato as his walk had been. Betraying origins Eastern and urban, it was a far cry from the good-old-boy Texas drawl she'd anticipated. “As far as being proud goes, that remains to be seen.” He took her hand in his. An ironic smile flirted around his lips.

Remembering Sumo's model, Malou brought her free hand over to rest on top of Landell's clasped hand. She patted it lightly in a condescending way, touching him with the easy familiarity that Sumo would use with an underling. “Hope you didn't have
too
much trouble finding the way out,” she said, implying that he had experienced difficulties.

“Not really,” he answered, still holding her hand, his words edged with mocking irony. “Once you leave San Antonio, it's pretty easy. You just head south. If you end up in Mexico, you know you've gone too far.” The edge softened and he smiled. Still holding her hand, he now held her eyes as well.

“And you're clearly not a man who ever goes too far,” Malou shot back, freeing her hand and her gaze. She'd wanted Landell to be the one to withdraw first, but the feel of his hand, strong and warm against her own, was far too disconcerting; if there was one thing she
absolutely could not afford to be at this moment, it was disconcerted.

“Oh, clearly. Never,” Landell agreed. But the quirk of his eyebrows told Malou that just the opposite was true. Dangerously true. “And now, Mylou? Milieu? What in the devil is your name?”

“Muh-lou,” she sounded out the name that no one ever got right the first time. “It's short for Mary Louise.” Malou reflexively bit her lip. She shouldn't have told him that. Shouldn't tell the enemy anything more than what was absolutely necessary—name, rank, and serial number.

“Well, Mary Louise . . .”

She knew she shouldn't have told him. She hated her real name. So prissy, so refined, so everything she never wanted to be.

“Malou,” he corrected himself, catching her look of distaste. “If you're through trying to one-up me, why don't you tell me the history of this, this
monkey
ranch.”

Malou winced. Landell had seen through her power play so easily. Even more unsettling, though, was his condescending tone when he'd said the word “monkey.” It told Malou all she had to know about the contempt in which he held the animals she'd chosen to devote her life to studying.

In any other situation, facing a man as commanding and as attractive as Cameron Landell, Malou would have withdrawn. She would have retreated, forsaking the human
apes she found so bewildering for the company of the lower primates she was more comfortable with. But she couldn't run away now. For once she stayed. She had to.

“ ‘One-up'? What could you be talking about, Cam?” she asked, dragging out her words with the barest hint of the Southern accent she'd never actually acquired. She would
not
be disconcerted.

Landell smiled, a pirate's grin that said he would be willing to play along—up to a point.

“Step inside your ‘monkey' ranch,” Malou said, holding open the gate so that he could pass inside. “I'll give you the deluxe tour complete with a history of the troop, and I'll try not to get too esoteric.”

“Oh, spare me no detail,” Landell teased.

Malou smiled tightly at his mockery and launched into the history she'd recited dozens of times for visitors from around the world. This performance, she knew, was the most crucial she would ever give.

“The troop's ancestral home is high atop Mount Arashiyama, Storm Mountain, outside of Kyoto, Japan. For centuries the monkeys lived wild there, feeding on persimmons, chestnuts, and berries, enduring the snow and rain from the indigo clouds that gave the mountain its name. Their breed is often called ‘snow monkeys' because they are the only primate other than man able to live in such a cold climate.”

Malou glanced over at Landell, attempting to gauge
his reaction. It was impossible. He wasn't reacting, he was absorbing—both her words and the animals they described. He watched as a monkey with an infant clinging to her belly bent a mesquite branch down to her mouth and stripped off the tiny leaves.

Malou kept on. “These macaques are the ‘see no evil, hear no evil, do no evil' monkeys. The Japanese call them ‘little old men of the forest.' They are beloved in their native land and appear in many Japanese fairy tales, where they have a reputation for wiliness.”

“I'll bear that in mind,” Landell commented, “and not be taken in by any wily macaques.”

That was far from the moral Malou had intended to be drawn.

“Now, much as I'm enjoying all this, I have a closing I need to get back for, and if I miss it I'll be out a healthy chunk in earnest money. That would make for a fairly pricey natural history lesson. So, if you have no objection, could we move on to the part of this story that concerns me?”

Malou was so irritated that she had to look away to hide the fumes she felt were pouring off of her. Her glance fell on old Kojiwa and his adopted daughter, Jezebel, lounging in the shade of a leafy mesquite.
This is for you,
she thought, bringing herself under control. She was a model of composure when she turned back to face Cameron Landell.

“Of course,” she demurred sweetly, picking up the thread of her narrative again. “In 1947, the Japanese institutionalized their affectionate regard for the snow monkeys by declaring them national treasures.”

“Sort of like sacred cows in India, eh?”

The analogy was completely off base, but Malou bit her tongue and continued. “Well, they
were
protected, and the entire mountain was turned into a monkey sanctuary. Primatologists laid out rations of wheat and apples to coax the animals down out of hiding so they could study them.”

“Hmmphf.”

Malou ignored Landell's derisive snort and went on. Whether Cameron Landell realized it or not, what she had to say was important; and whether he was interested or not, he would hear it.

“Anyway, the monkeys were close enough that researchers could study them, but their social patterns, which caging would have destroyed, were intact. That was so important.”

Unconsciously, the urgency that Malou felt leaked into her words. “That's how scientists learned how vital kinship is in the macaque world and how it's the basis for each member's status in the troop.” Malou's excitement about the area that was the subject of her life's work came through, enlivening what she said.

She stopped short when she glanced over and found
Cameron Landell staring, no longer at the monkeys capering past, but at her. Staring very hard and very long. She stared straight back. Landell was the first to break off the gaze. “It all sounds like monkey heaven back there in the Land of the Rising Sun. So why did the beasts end up here where there is not only no snow, but damned precious little water in
any
form?”

“You're right,” she began again. “It was heaven until a bit over ten years ago. Then, with all the provisioning and protection, the population of the Storm Mountain troop exploded and split into two groups. The alpha male stayed with the old troop and they drove the new group off, keeping it away from the rations at the food station. The hungry monkeys of the new troop were led by that old fellow over there.”

Malou pointed to Kojiwa. Abruptly, as if he didn't like being talked about by the meddling humans, Kojiwa turned his pink rump to them and took off, bounding stiffly on all fours across the field.

“With old Kojiwa in the lead, the new troop left Storm Mountain and started raiding gardens in Kyoto. Worse than that, though, the raiding band took to sleeping in the rafters of the Buddhist temples.”

“Ho-ho,” Landell signaled his comprehension, “and the national treasures became a public nuisance. I can imagine that monkey manure in the temples was not a popular decorating idea with the Japanese people.”

His conclusion was annoyingly accurate.

“Not popular at all. There were a lot of suggestions about how to deal with the renegades.” Malou tried to keep her voice light, but inwardly she shuddered as she said, “One small faction of primatologists felt that the offending monkeys would make ideal candidates for the . . .” She stumbled over the words. “The dissection table. Primatologists around the world rose up to protest such an immoral waste.” Her voice rose with the ongoing urgency of her story. It was a tale whose end had still not been told.

“Not too hard to guess which faction you agreed with, is it?”

“These monkeys, with all that's known about them and their family histories, are invaluable for behavioral research.”

The quirk of Landell's eyebrow made Malou aware that she'd turned her last few sentences into an impassioned plea. Her voice was neutrally calm when she began again. “A worldwide search was conducted to find a new home for the displaced monkeys of Storm Mountain. When the Japanese primatologists called Professor Everitt of the anthro department at the university, he called Mr. Stallings. In addition to being a rancher and a big landowner, Stallings was known to be an animal lover.

“Professor Everitt made Stallings the oddest proposition
of the old man's life: If he would fence in a couple hundred acres of his land, he would become the owner of a monkey troop. In return for provisioning the monkeys, once the troop was established, Mr. Stallings could sell any surplus animals he wanted to for lab studies.”

“But there never were any ‘surplus' animals, were there?” Landell asked with his usual irritating accuracy. He pointed toward the troop poking around for breakfast. “I mean, every one of those stumpy creatures out there is some vital link in the great monkey society you've got going here. Stallings never made a dime on the deal, did he?”

“He stopped caring about that,” Malou blurted out, aware too late that she'd tipped her hand. But it
was
too late. Besides, it was the truth and she was tired of tap-dancing around it. “He found out that there are more important things to care about than making money. That the monkeys, keeping them alive and together, was the most crucial thing.”

“Most crucial to you,” Landell amended.

“Mr. Stallings believed in what we're doing,” Malou protested. “Besides, keeping the monkeys wasn't that expensive. My salary is paid by a grant from the National Science Foundation, and Mr. Stallings had money anyway.”

“ ‘Had' is right,” Landell shot back. “I didn't know it, but by the time I met him, his money was either all gone or going fast. There had been a couple of oil wells that
ended up spouting dust and a few other bad business investments. When he came to me for a loan on a wildcat well up north, he used his south Texas holdings, including Los Monos, as collateral. That well was a duster too. Mr. Stallings died broke and I ended up with a monkey ranch on my hands.”

Landell stopped and stared down at Malou. “There's one other thing you should probably know. Stallings went bust trying to protect these monkeys you esteem so highly. Maybe the day-to-day costs of maintaining them don't seem high to you, but there are a few hidden expenses you've no doubt overlooked. Like keeping a couple hundred acres of land fallow. Not using them to raise beef or citrus or anything else that's going to pay you back for the use of that land while taxes are eating you alive. Now
that,
I guarantee you, is not cheap.”

Landell pivoted around, sighting along the fence lines winging out in either direction. “All this fence. Not cheap. And that pond.” He pointed to the pond that had been dug into the brown earth for the monkeys to use as their swimming pool, cooling off during the scorching days. Even now, two youngsters were splashing happily. “Not cheap to keep water pumping through that.”

He continued his survey, looking now at the research station. “Having those buildings and that road put in. Stringing power lines all the way out here. Putting in a septic tank, a well. Phones. None of it was cheap.”

Malou was caught off guard. Like a four-year-old child, she'd entered this world and accepted it without question. The range cubes she fed the monkeys once a day during the driest part of the summer were the only expenses she'd seriously considered.