Amy now came alongside Peter’s head and began to groom him, plucking at his beard and scalp. The gray gorillas signed rapidly. Then the male began his rhythmic ho-ho-ho once more. When she saw this Amy turned to Peter and signed, Amy hug Peter. He was surprised: Amy never volunteered
to hug Peter. Ordinarily she only wanted Peter to hug and tickle Amy.
Elliot sat up and she immediately pulled him to her chest, pressing his face into her hair. At once the male gorilla ceased grunting. The gray gorillas began to backpedal, as if they
had committed some error. In that moment, Elliot under-
stood: she was treating him like her infant.
This was classic primate behavior in aggressive situations. Primates carried strong inhibitions against harming infants, and this inhibition was invoked by adult animals
in many contexts. Male baboons often ended their fight when one male grabbed an infant and clutched it to his chest; the sight of the small animal inhibited further attack. Chimpanzees showed wore subtle variations of the same thing. If juvenile chimp play turned too brutal, a male would grab one juvenile and clutch it maternally, even though in this case both parent and child were symbolic. Yet the posture was sufficient to evoke the inhibition against further violence. In this case Amy was not only halting the male’s attack but protecting Elliot as well, by treating him as an infant—if the gorillas would accept a bearded six-foot-tall infant.
They did.
They disappeared hack into the foliage. Amy released Elliot from her fierce grip. She looked at him and signed, Dumb things.
“Thank you, Amy,” he said and kissed her.
Peter tickle Amy Amy good gorilla.
“You bet,” he said, and he tickled her for the next several minutes, while she rolled on the ground, grunting happily.
It was two o’clock in the afternoon when they returned to camp. Ross said, “Did you get a gorilla?”
“No,” Elliot said.
“Well, it doesn’t matter,” Ross, said, “because I can’t raise Houston.”
Elliot was stunned: “More electronic jamming?”
“Worse than that,” Ross said. She had spent an hour trying to establish a satellite link with Houston, and had failed. Each time the link was broken within seconds. Finally, after confirming that there was no fault with her equipment, she had checked the date. “It’s June 24,” she said. “And we had communications trouble with the last Congo expedition on May 28. That’s twenty-seven days ago.”
When Elliot still didn’t get it, Munro said, “She’s telling you it’s solar.”
“That’s right,” Ross said. “This is an ionospheric disturbance of solar origin.” Most disruptions of the earth’s ionosphere—the thin layer of ionized molecules 50-250 miles up—were caused by phenomena such as sunspots on the surface of the sun. Since the sun rotated every twenty-seven days, these disturbances often recurred a month later.
‘‘Okay,” Elliot said, “it’s solar. How long will it last?”
Ross shook her head. “Ordinarily, I would say a few hours, a day at most. But this seems to be a severe disturbance and it’s come up very suddenly. Five hours ago we had perfect communications—and now we have none at all. Something unusual is going on. It could last a week.”
“No communications for a week? No computer tie-ins, no nothing?”
“That’s right,” Ross said evenly. “From this moment on, we are entirely cut off from the outside world.”
5. Isolation
THE LARGEST SOLAR FLARE OF 1979 WAS RECORDED on June 24, by the Kitt Peak Observatory near Tucson, Arizona, and duly passed on to the Space Environment Services Center in Boulder, Colorado. At first the SESC did not believe the incoming data: even by the gigantic standards of solar astronomy, this flare, designated 78/06/4l4aa, was a monster.
The cause of solar flares is unknown, but they are generally associated with sunspots. In this case the flare appeared as an extremely bright spot ten thousand miles in diameter, affecting not only alpha hydrogen and ionized calcium spectral lines but also the white light spectrum from the sun. Such a “continuous spectrum” flare was extremely rare.
Nor could the SESC believe the computed consequences. Solar flares release an enormous amount of energy; even a modest flare can double the amount of ultraviolet radiation emitted by the entire solar surface. But flare 78/06/4l4aa was almost tripling ultraviolet emissions. Within 8.3 minutes of its first appearances along the rotating rim—the time it takes light to reach the earth from the sun—this surge of ultraviolet radiation began to disrupt the ionosphere of the earth.
The consequence of the flare was that radio communications on a planet ninety-three million miles away were seriously disrupted. This was especially true for radio transmissions which utilized low signal strengths. Commercial radio stations generating kilowatts of power were hardly
inconvenienced, but the Congo Field Survey, transmitting signals on the order of twenty thousand watts, was unable to establish satellite links. And since the solar flare also ejected X-rays and atomic particles which would not reach the earth for a full day, the radio disruption would last at least one day, and perhaps longer. At ERTS in Houston, technicians reported to Travis that the SESC predicted a time course of ionic disruption of four to eight days.
“That’s how it looks. Ross’ll probably figure it out,” the technician said, “when she can’t re-establish today.”
“They need that computer hookup,” Travis said. The ERTS staff had run five computer simulations and the outcome was always the same—short of airlifting in a small army, Ross’s expedition was in serious trouble. Survival projections were running “point two four four and change”— only one chance in four that the Congo expedition would get out alive, assuming the help of the computer link which was now broken.
Travis wondered if Ross and the others realized how grave their situation was. “Any new Band Five on Mukenko?” Travis asked.
Band 5 on Landsat satellites recorded infrared data. On its last pass over the Congo, Landsat had acquired significant new information on Mukenko. The volcano had become much hotter in the nine days since the previous Landsat pass; the temperature increase was on the order of 8 degrees.
“Nothing new,” the technician said. “And the computers don’t project an eruption. Four degrees of orbital change are Within sensor error on that system, and the additional four degrees have no predictive value.”
“Well, that’s something,” Travis said. “But what are they going to do about the apes now that they’re cut off from the computer?”
That was the question the Congo Field Survey had been asking themselves for the better part of an hour. With communications disrupted the only computers available were the computers in their own heads. And those computers were not powerful enough.
Elliot found it strange to think that his own brain was inadequate. “We had all become accustomed to the availability of computing power,” he said later. “In any decent laboratory you can get all the memory and all the computation speed you could want, day or night. We were so used to it we had come to take it for granted.
Of course they could have eventually worked out the ape language, but they were up against a time factor: they didn’t have months to puzzle it out; they had hours. Cut off from the APE program their situation was ominous. Munro said that they could not survive another night of frontal attack, and they had every reason to expect an attack that night.
Amy’s rescue of Elliot suggested their plan. Amy had shown some ability to communicate with the gorillas; perhaps she could translate for them as well. “It’s worth a try,” Elliot insisted.
Unfortunately, Amy herself denied that this was possible. In response to the question “Amy talk thing talk?” She
signed, No talk.
“Not at all?” Elliot said, remembering the way she had signed. “Peter see Amy talk thing talk.”
No talk. Make noise.
He concluded from this that she was able to mimic the gorilla verbalizations but had no knowledge of their meaning. It was now past two; they had only four or five hours until nightfall.
Munro said, “Give it up. She obviously can’t help us.” Munro preferred to break camp and fight their way out in daylight. He was convinced that they could not survive another night among the gorillas.
But something nagged at Elliot’s mind.
After years of working with Amy, he knew she had the maddening literal-mindedness of a child. With Amy, especially when she was feeling uncooperative, it was necessary to be exact to elicit the appropriate response. Now he looked at Amy and said, “Amy talk thing talk?”
No talk.
“Amy understand thing talk?”
Amy did not answer. She was chewing on vines, preoccupied.
“Amy, listen to Peter.” She stared at him. “Amy understand thing talk?”
Amy understand thing talk, she signed back. She did it so matter-of-factly that at first he wondered if she realized what he was asking her.
“Amy watch thing talk, Amy understand talk?”
Amy understand.
“Amy sure?”
Amy sure.
“I’ll be goddamned,” Elliot said.
Munro was shaking his head. “We’ve only got a few hours
of daylight left,” he said. “And even if you do learn their language, how are you going to talk to them?”
6. Amy Talk Thing Talk
AT 3 P.M., ELLIOT AND AMY WERE COMPLETELY concealed in the foliage along the hillside. The only sign of their presence was the slender cone of the microphone that protruded through the foliage. The microphone was connected to the videotape recorder at Elliot’s feet, which he used to record the sounds of the gorillas on the hills beyond.
The only difficulty was trying to determine which gorilla the directional microphone had focused on—and which gorilla Amy had focused on, and whether they were the same gorilla. He could never be quite sure that Amy was translating the verbal utterances of the same animal that he was recording. There were eight gorillas in the nearest group and Amy kept getting distracted. One female had a six-month-old infant, and at one point, when the baby was bitten by a bee, Amy signed, Baby mad. But Elliot was recording a male.
Amy, he signed. Pay attention.
Amy pay attention. Amy good gorilla.
Yes, he signed. Amy good gorilla. Amy pay attention man thing.
Amy not like.
He swore silently, and erased half an hour of translations from Amy. She had obviously been paying attention to the wrong gorilla. When he started the tape again, he decided that this time he would record whatever Amy was watching. He signed, What thing Amy watch?
Amy watch baby.
That wouldn’t work, because the baby didn’t speak. He signed, Amy watch woman thing.
Amy like watch baby.
This dependency on Amy was like a bad dream. He was in the hands of an animal whose thinking and behavior he barely understood; he was cut off from the wider society of human beings and human machinery, thus increasing his dependency on the animal; and yet he had to trust her.
After another hour, with the sunlight fading, he took Amy back down the hillside to the camp.
Munro had planned as best he could.
First he dug a series of holes like elephant traps outside the camp; they were deep pits lined with sharp stakes, covered with leaves and branches.
He widened the moat in several places, and cleared away dead trees and underbrush that might be used as bridges.
He cut down the low tree branches overhanging the camp, so that if gorillas went into the trees, they would be kept at least thirty feet above the ground—too high to jump down.
He gave three of the remaining porters, Muzezi, Amburi, and Harawi, shotguns along with a supply of tear-gas canisters.
With Ross, he boosted power on the perimeter fence to almost 200 amps. This was the maximum the thin mesh could handle without melting; they had been obliged to reduce the pulses from four to two per second. But the additional current changed the fence from a deterrent to a lethal barrier. The first animals to hit that fence would be immediately killed, although the likelihood of shorts and a dead fence was considerably increased.
At sunset, Munro made his most difficult decision. He loaded the stubby tripod-mounted RFSDs with half their remaining ammunition. When that was gone, the machines would simply stop firing. From that point on, Munro was counting on Elliot and Amy and their translation.
And Elliot did not look very happy when he came back down the hill.
7. Final Defense
“How LONG UNTIL YOU’RE READY?” MUNRO asked him.
“Couple of hours, maybe more.” Elliot asked Ross to help him, and Amy went to get food from Kahega. She seemed very proud of herself, and behaved like an important person in the group.
Ross said, “Did it work?”
“We’ll know in a minute,” Elliot said. His first plan was to run the only kind of internal check on Amy that he could, by verifying repetitions of sounds. If she had consistently translated sounds in the same way, they would have a reason for confidence.
But it was painstaking work. They had only the half-inch VTR and the small pocket tape recorder; there were no connecting cables. They called for silence from the others in the camp and proceeded to run the checks, taping, retaping, listening to the whispering sounds.
At once they found that their ears simply weren’t capable of discriminating the sounds—everything sounded the same. Then Ross had an idea.
“These sounds taped,” she said, “as electrical signals.”
“Yes . .
“Well, the linkup transmitter has a 256K memory.”
“But we can’t link up to the Houston computer.”
“I don’t mean that,” Ross said. She explained that the satellite linkup was made by having the 256K computer on-site match an internally generated signal—like a video test pattern—to a transmitted signal from Houston. That was how they locked on. The machine was built that way, but they could use the matching program for other purposes.
“You mean we can use it to compare these sounds?” Elliot said.
They could, but it was incredibly slow. They had to transfer the taped sounds to the computer memory, and rerecord it in the VTR, on another portion of the tape bandwidth. Then they had to input that signal into the computer memory, and run a second comparison tape on the VTR. Elliot found that he was standing by, watching Ross shuffle tape cartridges and mini floppy discs. Every half hour, Munro would wander over to ask how it was coming; Ross became increasingly snappish and irritable. “We’re going as fast as we can,” she said.
It was now eight o’clock.
But the first results were encouraging: Amy was indeed consistent in her translations. By nine o’clock they had quantified matching on almost a dozen words: