Their reverie was interrupted by the screaming whine of ground-to-air rockets, blossoming explosions in the sky overhead. With each explosion, the riverbank glowed bright red, casting long shadows, then fading black once more.
“Muguru’s men firing from the ground,” Munro said, reaching for his field glasses.
“What’re they shooting at?” Elliot said, staring up into the sky.
“Beats me,” Munro said.
Amy touched Munro’s arm, and signed, Bird come. But they heard no sound of an aircraft, only the bursting of rockets in the sky.
Munro said, “You think she hears something?”
“Her hearing is very acute.”
And then they heard the drone of a distant aircraft, approaching from the south. As it came into view, they saw it twist, maneuvering among the brilliant yellow-red explosions that burst in the moonlight and glinted off the metal body of the aircraft.
“Those poor bastards are trying to make time,” Munro said, scanning the plane through field glasses. “That’s a C-130 transport with Japanese markings on the tail. Supply plane for the consortium base camp—if it makes it through.”
As they watched, the transport twisted left and right, running a zigzag course through the bursting fireballs of exploding missiles.
“Breaking a snake’s back,” Munro said. “The crew must be terrified; they didn’t buy into this.”
Elliot felt a sudden sympathy for the crew; he imagined them staring out the windows as the fireballs exploded with brilliant light, illuminating the interior of the plane. Were they chattering in Japanese? Wishing they had never come?
A moment later, the aircraft droned onward to the north, out of sight, a final missile with a red-hot tail chasing after it, but it was gone over the jungle trees, and he listened to the distant explosion of the missile.
“Probably got through,” Munro said, standing. “We’d
better move on.” And he shouted in Swahili for Kahega to put the men on the river once more.
2. Mukenko
ELLIOT SHIVERED, ZIPPED HIS PARKA TIGHTER, AND waited for the hailstorm to stop. They were huddled beneath a stand of evergreen trees above 8,000 feet on the alpine slopes of Mount Mukenko. It was ten o’clock in the morning, and the air temperature was 38 degrees. Five hours before, they had left the river behind and begun their pre-dawn climb in 100-degree steaming jungle.
Alongside him, Amy watched the golf ball-sized white pellets bounce on the grass and slap the branches of the tree over their heads. She had never seen hail before.
She signed, What name?
“Hail,” he told her.
Peter make stop.
“I wish I could, Amy.”
She watched the hail for a moment, then signed, Amy want go home.
She had begun talking about going home the night before. Although the Thoralen had worn off, she remained depressed and withdrawn. Elliot had offered her some food to cheer her up. She signed that she wanted milk. When he told her they -had none (which she knew. perfectly well), she signed that she wanted a banana. Kahega had produced a bunch of small, slightly sour jungle bananas. Amy had eaten them without objection on previous days. but she now threw them into the water contemptuously, signing she wanted “real bananas.”
When Elliot told her that they had no real bananas, she signed, Amy want go home.
“We can’t go home now, Amy.”
Amy good gorilla Peter take Amy home.
She had only known him as the person in charge, the final arbiter of her daily life in the experimental setting of Project Amy. He could think of no way to make clear to her that he was no longer in charge, and ‘that he was not punishing her by keeping her here.
In fact, they were all discouraged. Each of the expedition members had looked forward to escaping the oppressive heat of the rain forest, but now that they were climbing Mukenko, their enthusiasm had quickly faded. “Christ,” Ross said. “From hippos to hail.”
As if on cue, the hail stopped. “All right,” Munro said, “let’s get moving.”
Mukenko had never been climbed until 1933. In 1908, a German party under von Ranke ran into storms and had to descend; a Belgian team in 1913 reached 10,000 feet but could not find a route to the summit; and another German team was forced to quit in 1919 when two team members fell and died, about 12,000 feet. Nevertheless Mukenko was classified as a fairly easy (non-technical) climb by most mountaineers, who generally devoted a day to the ascent; after 1943, a new route up the southeast was found which was frustratingly slow but not dangerous, and it was this mute that most climbers followed.
Above 9,000 feet, the pine forest disappeared and they crossed weak grassy fields cloaked in chilly mist; the air was thinner, and they called frequently for a rest. Munro had no patience with the complaints of his charges. “What did you expect?” he demanded. “It’s a mountain. Mountains are high.” He was especially merciless with Ross, who seemed the most easily fatigued. “What about your timetable?” he would ask her. “We’re not even to the difficult part. It’s not even interesting until eleven thousand feet. You quit now and we’ll never make it to the summit before nightfall, and that means we lose a full day.”
“I don’t care,” Ross said finally, dropping to the ground, gasping for breath.
“Just like a woman,” Munro said scornfully, and smiled when Ross glared at him. Munro humiliated them, chided them, encouraged them—and somehow kept them moving.
Above 10,000 feet, the grass disappeared and there was only mossy ground cover; they came upon the solitary peculiar fat-leafed lobelia trees, emerging suddenly from the cold gray mist. There was no real cover between 10,000 feet and the summit, which was why Munro pushed them; he did not want to get caught in a storm on the barren upper slopes.
The sun broke out at 11,000 feet, and they stopped to position the second of the directional lasers for the ERTS laser-fix system. Ross had already set the first laser several miles to the south that morning, and it had taken thirty minutes.
The second laser was more critical, since it had to be matched to the first. Despite the electronic jamming, the transmitting equipment had to be connected with Houston, in order that the little laser—it was the size of a pencil eraser, mounted on a tiny steel tripod—could be accurately aimed. The two lasers on the volcano were positioned so that their beams crossed many miles away, above the jungle. And if Ross’s calculations were correct, that intersection point was directly over the city of Zinj.
Elliot wondered if they were inadvertently assisting the consortium, but Ross said no. “Only at night,” she said, “when they aren’t moving. During the day, they won’t be able to lock on our beacons—that’s the beauty of the system.”
Soon they smelled sulfurous volcanic fumes drifting down from the summit, now 1,500 feet above them. Up here there was no. vegetation at all, only bare hard rock and scattered patches of snow tinged yellow from the sulfur. The sky was clear dark blue, and they had spectacular views of the south Virunga range—the great cone of Nyiragongo, rising steeply from the deep green of the Congo forests, and, beyond that, Mukenko, shrouded in fog.
The last thousand feet were the most difficult, particularly for Amy, who had to pick her way barefoot among the sharp lava rocks. Above 12,000 feet, the ground was loose volcanic scree. They reached the summit at five in the afternoon, and gazed over the eight-mile-wide lava lake and smoking crater of the volcano. Elliot was disappointed in the landscape of black rock and gray steam clouds. “Wait until night,” Munro said.
That night the lava glowed in a network of hot red through the broken dark crust; hissing red steam slowly lost its color as it rose into the sky. On the crater rim, their little tents reflected the red glow of the lava. lb the west scattered clouds were silver in the moonlight, and beneath them the Congo Jungle stretched away for miles. They could see the straight green laser beams, intersecting over the black forest. With any luck they would reach that intersection tomorrow.
Ross connected her transmitting equipment to make the nightly report to Houston. After the regular six-minute delay, the signal linked directly through to Houston, without interstitial encoding or other evasive techniques.
“Hell,” Munro said.
“But what does it mean?” Elliot asked.
“It means,” Munro said gloomily. “the consortium has stopped jamming us.”
“Isn’t that good?”
“No,” Ross said. “It’s bad. They must already be on the site, and they’ve found the diamonds.” She shook her head, and adjusted the video screen:
HUSTN CONFRMS CONSRTUM ONSITE ZINJ PROBABILITY 1.000. TAK NO FURTHR RSKS. SITUTN HOPELSS.
“I can’t believe it,” Ross said. “It’s all over.”
Elliot sighed. “My feet hurt,” he said.
“I’m tired,” Munro said.
“The hell with it,” Ross said.
Utterly exhausted, they all went to bed.
DAY 8: KANYAMAGUFA
June 20, 1979
1. Descent
EVERYONE SLEPT LATE ON THE MORNING OF JUNE 20. They had a leisurely breakfast, taking the time to cook a hot meal. They relaxed in the sun, and played with Amy, who was delighted by this unexpected attention. It was past ten o’clock before they started down Mukenko to the jungle.
Because the western slopes of Mukenko are sheer and impassible, they descended inside the smoking volcanic crater to a depth of half a mile. Munro led the way, carrying a porter’s load on his head; Asari, the strongest porter, had to carry Amy, because the rocks were much too hot for her bare feet.
Amy was terrified, and regarded the human persons trekking single-file down the steep inner cone to be mad. Elliot was not sure she was wrong: the heat was intense; as they approached the lava lake, the acrid fumes made eyes water and nostrils burn; they heard the lava pop and crackle beneath the heavy black crust.
Then they reached the formation called Naragema—the Devil’s Eye. It was a natural arch 150 feet high, and so smooth it appeared polished on the inside. Through this arch a fresh breeze blew, and they saw the green jungle below. They paused to rest in the arch, and Ross examined the smooth inner surface. It was part of a lava tube formed in some earlier eruption; the main body of the tube had been blown away, leaving just the slender arch.
“They call it the Devil’s Eye,” Munro said, “because from below, during an eruption, it glows like a red eye.”
From the Devil’s Eye they descended rapidly through an alpine zone, and from there across the unworldly jagged terrain of a recent lava flow. Here they encountered black craters of scorched earth, some as deep as five or six feet. Munro’s first thought was that the Zaire army had used this field for mortar practice. But on closer examination, they saw a scorched pattern etched into the rock, extending like tentacles outward from the craters. Munro had never seen anything like it; Ross immediately set up her antenna, hooked in the computer, and got in touch with Houston. She seemed very excited.
The party rested while she reviewed the data on the little screen; Munro said, “What are you asking them?”
“The date of the last Mukenko eruption, and the local weather. It was in March—Do you know somebody named Seamans?”
“Yes,” Elliot said. “Tom Seamans is the computer programmer for Project Amy. Why?”
“There’s a message for you,” she said, pointing to the screen.
Elliot came around to look: SEMNS MESG FOR ELYT STNDBY.
“What’s the message?” Elliot asked.
“Push the transmit button,” she said.
He pushed the button and the message flashed: REVUWD ORGNL TAPE HUSTNNUN
“I don’t understand,” Elliot said. Ross explained that the “M” meant that there was more message, and he had to press the transmit button again. He pushed the button several times before he got the message, which in its entirety read:
REVUWO ORGNL TAPE HUSTN NU FINDNG RE AURL SIGNL INFO—COMPUTR ANLYSS COMPLTE THNK ITS LNGWGE.
Elliot found he could read the compressed shortline language by speaking it aloud: “Reviewed original tape Houston, new finding regarding aural signal information, computer analysis complete think it’s language.” He frowned. “Language?”
Ross said, “Didn’t you ask him to review Houston’s original tape material from the Congo?”
“Yes, but that was for visual identification of the animal on the screen. I never said anything to him about aural information.” Elliot shook his head. “I wish I could talk to him.”
“You can,” Ross said. “If you don’t mind waking him up.” She pushed the interlock button, and fifteen minutes later Elliot typed, Hello Tom How Are You? The screen printed HLO TOM HOURU.
“We don’t usually waste satellite time with that kind of thing,” Ross said.
The screen printed SLEPY WHRERU.
He typed, Virunga. VIRNGA.
“Travis is going to scream when he sees this transcript,” Ross said. “Do you realize what the transmission costs are?”
But Ross needn’t have worried; the conversation soon became technical:
RECVD MESG AURL INFO PLS XPLN.
AXIDENTL DISKVRY VRY XCITNG-DISCRIMNT FUNXN COMPT ANLSS 99 CONFDNCE LIMTS TAPD AURL INFO {BRETHNG SOUNS} DEMNSTRTS CHRCTRISTX SPECH.
SPSFY CHRCTRISTX.
REPETNG ELMNTS-ARBTRARY PATRN-STRXRAL RLATNSHPS-PROBLY THRFOR SPOKN LNGWGE.
KN U TRNSLTE?
NOT SOFR.
WHT RESN?
COMPUTR HAS INSFSNT INFO IN AURL MESG-WNT NOR DATA-ST WORKNG-MAYB NOR TOMORO-FINGRS X.
RLY THNK GORILA LNGWGE?
YES IF GORILA.
“I’ll be damned,” Elliot said. He ended the satellite transmission, but the final message from Seamans remained on the screen, glowing bright green:
YES IF GORILA.
2. The Hairy Men
WITHIN TWO HOURS OF RECEIVING THIS unexpected news, the expedition had its first contact with gorillas.
They were by now back in the darkness of the equatorial rain forest. They proceeded directly toward the site, following the overhead laser beams. They could not see these beams directly, but Ross had brought a weird optical track guide, a cadmium photocell filtered to record the specific laser wavelength emission. Periodically during the day, she inflated a small helium balloon, attached the track guide with a wire, and released it. Lifted by the helium, the guide rose into the sky above the trees. There it rotated, sighted one of the laser lines, and transmitted coordinates down the wire to the computer. They followed the track of diminishing laser intensity from a single beam, and waited for the “blip reading,” the doubled intensity value that would signal the intersection of two beams above them.
This was a slow job and their patience was wearing thin when, toward midday, they came upon the characteristic three-lobed feces of gorilla, and they saw several nests made of eucalyptus leaves on the ground and in the trees.
Fifteen minutes later, the air was shattered by a deafening roar. “Gorilla,” Munro announced. “That was a male telling somebody off.”
Amy signed, Gorillas say go away.
“We have to continue, Amy,” he said.
Gorilla no want human people come.
“Human people won’t harm gorillas,” Elliot assured her. But Amy just looked blank at this, and shook her head, as if Elliot had missed the point.
Days later he realized that he had indeed missed the point.
Amy was not telling him that the gorillas were afraid of being harmed by people. She was saying that the gorillas were afraid that the people would be harmed, by gorillas.
They had progressed halfway across a small jungle clearing when the large silverback male reared above the foliage and bellowed at them.
Elliot was leading the group, because Munro had gone back to help one of the porters with his pack. He saw six animals at the edge of the clearing, dark black shapes against the green, watching the human intruders. Several of the females cocked their heads and compressed their lips in a kind of disapproval. The dominant male roared again.
He was a large male with silver hair down his back. His massive head stood mote than six feet above the ground, and his barrel chest indicated that he weighed more than four hundred pounds. Seeing him, Elliot understood why the first explorers to the Congo had believed gorillas to be “hairy men,” for this magnificent creature looked like, a gigantic man, both in size and shape.
At Elliot’s back Ross whispered, “What do we do?”
“Stay behind me,” Elliot said, “and don’t move.”
The silverback male dropped to all fours briefly, and began a soft ho-ho-ho sound, which grew more intense as he leapt to his feet again, grabbing handfuls of grass as he did so. He threw the grass in the air, and then beat his chest with flat palms, making a hollow thumping sound.
“Oh, no,” Ross said.
The chest-beating lasted five seconds, and then the male dropped to all fours again. He ran sideways across the grass, slapping the foliage and making as much noise as possible, to frighten the intruders off. Finally he began the ho-ho-ho sound once more.
The male stared at Elliot, expecting that this display would send him running. When it did not, the male leapt to his feet, Pounded his chest, and roared with even greater fury.
And then he charged.
With a howling scream he came crashing forward at frightening speed, directly toward Elliot. Elliot heard Ross gasp behind him. He wanted to turn and run, his every bodily instinct screamed that he should run, but he forced himself to stand absolutely still—and to look down at the ground.
Staring at his feet while he listened to the gorilla crashing through the tall grass toward him, he had the sudden sensation that all his abstract book knowledge was wrong, that everything that scientists around the world thought about gorillas was wrong. He had a mental image of the huge head and the deep chest and the long arms swinging wide as the powerful animal rushed toward an easy kill, a stationary target foolish enough to believe all the academic misinformation sanctified by print.
The gorilla (who must have been quite close) made a snorting noise, and Elliot could see his heavy shadow on. the grass near his feet. But he did not look up until the shadow moved away.
When Elliot raised his head, he saw the male gorilla retreating backward, toward the far edge of the clearing. There the male turned, and scratched his head in a puzzled way, as if wondering why his terrifying: display had not driven off the intruders. He slapped the ground a final time, and then he and the rest of the troop melted away into the tall grass. It was silent in the clearing until Ross collapsed into Elliot’s arms.
“Well,” Munro said as he came up, “it seems you know a thing or two about gorillas after all.” Munro patted Ross’s arm. “It’s all right. They don’t do anything unless you run away. Then they bite you on the ass. That’s the mark for cowardice in these regions—because it means you ran away.”
Ross was sobbing quietly, and Elliot discovered that his own knees were shaky; he went to sit down. It had all happened so fast that it was a few moments before he realized that these gorillas had behaved in exactly the textbook manner, which included not making any verbalizations even remotely like speech.
3. The Consortium
AN HOUR LATER THEY FOUND THE WRECKAGE OF the C-130 transport. The largest airplane in the world appeared in correct scale as it lay half buried in the jungle, the gigantic nose crushed against equally gigantic trees, the enormous tail section twisted toward the ground, the massive wings buckled casting shadows on the jungle floor.
Through the shattered cockpit windshield, they saw the body of the pilot, covered with black flies. The flies buzzed and thumped against the glass as they peered in. Moving aft, they tried to look into the fuselage windows, but even on crumpled landing gear the body of the plane stood too high above the jungle floor.
Kahega managed to climb an overturned tree, and from there moved onto one wing and looked into the interior. “No people,” he said.
“Supplies?”
“Yes, many supplies. Boxes and containers.” Munro left the others, walking beneath the crushed tail section to examine the far side of the plane. The port wing, concealed from their view, was blackened and shattered, the engines gone. That explained why the plane crashed—the last FZA missile had found its target, blowing away most of the port wing. Yet the wreck remained oddly mysterious to Munro; something about its appearance was wrong. He looked along the length of the fuselage, from the crushed nose, down the line of windows, past the stump of wing, past the rear exit doors….
“I’ll be damned,” Munro said softly.
He hurried back to the others, who were sitting on one of the tires, in the shadow of the starboard wing The tire was so enormous that Ross could sit on it and swing her feet in the air without touching the ground.
“Well,” Ross said, with barely concealed satisfaction.
“They didn’t get their damn supplies.”
“No,” Munro said. “And we saw this plane the night before last, which means it’s been down at least thirty-six hours.”
Munro waited for Ross to figure it out.
“Thirty-six hours?”
“That’s right. Thirty-six hours.”
“And they never came back to get their supplies
“They didn’t even try to get them,” Munro said. “Look at the main cargo doors, fore and aft—no one has tried to open them. I wonder why they never came back?”
In a section of dense jungle, the ground underfoot
crunched and crackled. Pushing aside the palm fronds, they saw a carpeting of shattered white bones.
“Kanyamagufa,” Munro said. The place of bones. He glanced quickly at the porters to see what their reaction was, but they showed only puzzlement, no fear. They were East African Kikuyu and they had none of the superstitions of the tribes that bordered the rain forest.
Amy lifted her feet from the sharp bleached fragments. She signed, Ground hurt.
Elliot signed, What place this?
We come bad place.
What bad place?
Amy had no reply.
“These are bones!” Ross said, staring down at the ground.
“That’s right,” Munro said quickly, “but they’re not human bones. Are they, Elliot?”
Elliot was also looking at the ground. He saw bleached skeletal remains from several species, although he could not immediately identify any of them.
“Elliot? Not human?”
“They don’t look human,” Elliot agreed, staring at the ground. The first thing he noticed was that the majority of the bones came from distinctly small animals—birds, monkeys, and tiny forest rodents. Other small pieces were actually fragments from larger animals, but how large was hard to say. Perhaps large monkeys—but there weren’t any large monkeys in the rain forest.
Chimpanzees? There were no chimps in this part of the Congo. Perhaps they might be gorillas: he saw one fragment from a cranium with heavy frontal sinuses, and he saw the beginning of the characteristic sagittal crest.
“Elliot?” Munro said, his voice tense, insistent. “Nonhuman?”
“Definitely non-human,” Elliot said, staring. What could shatter a gorilla skull? It must have happened after death, he decided. A gorilla had died and after many years the bleached skeleton had been crushed in some fashion. Certainly it could not have happened during life.
“Not human,” Munro said, looking at the ground. “Hell of a lot of bones, but nothing human.” As he walked past Elliot, he gave him a look. Keep your mouth shut. “Kahega and his men know that you are expert in these matters,”