Elliot did think about it, and he discussed it at the Project Amy staff meeting at ten o’clock. They considered possible industrial applications for apes, and possible advantages to employers, such as the lack of unions and fringe benefits. In the late twentieth century, these were major considerations. (In 1978, for each new automobile that rolled off the Detroit assembly lines, the cost of worker health benefits exceeded the cost of all the steel used to build the car.)
But they concluded that a vision of “industrialized apes”
was wildly fanciful. An ape like Amy was not a cheap and stupid version of a human worker. Quite the opposite: Amy was a highly intelligent and complex creature out of her element in the modern industrial world. She demanded a great deal of supervision; she was whimsical and unreliable; and her health was always at risk. It simply didn’t make sense to use her in industry. If Morikawa had visions of apes wielding soldering irons on a microelectronic assembly line, building TVs and hi-fl sets, he was sorely misinformed.
The only note of caution came from Bergman, the child psychologist. “A quarter of a million is a lot of money,” he said, “and Mr. Morikawa is probably no fool. He must have learned about Amy through her drawings, which imply she is neurotic and difficult. If he’s interested in her, I’d bet it’s because of her drawings. But I can’t imagine why those drawings should be worth a quarter of a million dollars.”
Neither could anyone else, and the discussion turned to the drawings themselves, and the newly translated texts. Sarah Johnson, in charge of research, started out with the flat comment “I have bad news about the Congo.”*
For most of recorded history, she explained, nothing was
*Johnson’s principal reference was the definitive work by A. J. Parkinson. The Congo Delta in Myth and History (London; Peters. 1904).
known about the Congo. The ancient Egyptians on the upper Nile knew only that their river originated far to the south, in a region they called the Land of Trees. This was a mysterious place with forests so dense they were as dark as night in the middle of the day. Strange creatures inhabited this perpetual gloom, including little men with tails, and animals half black and half white.
For nearly four thousand years afterward, nothing more substantial was learned about the interior of Africa. The Arabs came to East Africa in the seventh century A.D., in search of gold, ivory, spices, and slaves. But the Arabs were merchant seamen and did not venture inland. They called the interior Zinj—the Land of the Blacks—a region of fable and fantasy. There were stories of vast forests and tiny men with tails; stories of mountains that spewed fire and turned the sky black; stories of native villages overwhelmed by monkeys, which would have congress with the women; stories of great giants with hairy bodies and flat noses; stories of creatures half leopard, half man; stories of native markets where the fattened carcasses of men were butchered and sold as a delicacy.
Such stories were sufficiently forbidding to keep the Arabs on the coast, despite other stories equally alluring: mountains of shimmering gold, riverbeds gleaming with diamonds, animals that spoke the language of men, great jungle civilizations of unimaginable splendor. In particular, one story was repeated again and again in early accounts: the story of the Lost City of Zinj.
According to legend, a city known to the Hebrews of Solomonic times had been a source of inconceivable wealth in diamonds. The caravan route to the city had been jealously guarded, passed from father to son, as a sacred trust for generation after generation. But the diamond mines were exhausted and the city itself now lay in crumbling ruins, somewhere in the dark heart of Africa. The arduous caravan routes were long since swallowed up by jungle, and the last trader who remembered the way had carried his secret with him to the grave many hundreds of years before.
This mysterious and alluring place the Arabs called the Lost City of Zinj. * Yet despite its enduring fame, Johnson could find few detailed descriptions of the city. In 1187 Ibn Baratu, an Arab in Mombasa, recorded that “the natives of the region tell. . . of a lost city far inland, called Zinj. There the inhabitants, who are black, once lived in wealth and luxury, and even the slaves decorated themselves with jewels and especially blue diamonds, for a great store of diamonds is there.”
In 1292, a Persian named Mohammed Zaid stated that “a large [the size] diamond of a man’s clenched fist . . was exhibited on the streets of Zanzibar, and all said it had come from the interior, where the ruins of a city called Zinj may be found, and it is here that such diamonds may be found in profusion, scattered upon the ground and also in rivers
In 1334, another Arab, Ibn Mohammed, stated that “our number made arrangements to seek out the city of Zinj, but quitted our quest upon learning that the city was long since abandoned, and much ruined. It is said that the aspect of the city is wondrous strange, for doors and windows are built in the curve of a half-moon, and the residences are now overtaken by a violent race of hairy men who speak in whispers no known language
Then the Portuguese, those indefatigable explorers, arrived. By 1544, they were venturing inland from the west coast up the mighty Congo River, but they soon encountered all the obstacles that would prevent exploration of central Africa for hundreds of years to come. The Congo was not navigable beyond the first set of rapids, two hundred miles inland (at what was once Léopoldville, and is now Kinshasa). The natives were hostile and cannibalistic. And the hot steaming jungle was the source of disease—malaria, sleeping sickness, bilharzia, blackwater fever—which decimated foreign intruders.
The Portuguese never managed to penetrate the central
*The fabled city of Zinj formed the basis for H. Rider Haggard’s popular novel King Solomon’s Mines, first published in 1885. Haggard, a gifted linguist, had served on the staff of the Governor of Natal in 1875. and he presumably heard of Zinj from the neighboring Zulus at that time.
Congo. Neither did the English, under Captain Brenner, in 1644; his entire party was lost. The Congo would remain for two hundred years as a blank spot on the civilized maps of the world.
But the early explorers repeated the legends of the interior, including the story of Zinj. A Portuguese artist, Juan Diego de Valdez, drew a widely acclaimed picture of the Lost City of Zinj in 1642. “But,” Sarah Johnson said, “he also drew pictures of men with tails, and monkeys having carnal knowledge of native women.”
Somebody groaned.
“Apparently Valdez was crippled,” she continued. “He lived all his life in the town of Settibal, drinking with sailors and drawing pictures based on his conversations.”
Africa was not thoroughly explored until the mid— nineteenth century, by Burton and Speke, Baker and Living-stone, and especially Stanley. No trace of the Lost City of Zinj was found by any of them. Nor had any trace of the apocryphal city been found in the hundred years since.
The gloom that descended over the Project Amy staff meeting was profound. “I told you it was bad news,” Sarah Johnson said.
“You mean,” Peter Elliot said, “that this picture is based on a description, and we don’t know whether the city actually exists or not.”
“I’m afraid so,” Sarah Johnson said. “There is no proof that the city in the picture exists at all. It’s just a story.”
4. Resolution
PETER ELLIOT’S UNQUESTIONED RELIANCE ON twentieth-century hard data—facts, figures, graphs—left him unprepared for the possibility that the 1642 engraving, in all its detail, was merely the fanciful speculation of an uninhibited artist. The news came as a shock.
Their plans to take Amy to the Congo suddenly appeared childishly naïve; the resemblance of her sketchy, schematic drawings to the 1642 Valdez engraving was obviously coincidental. How could they ever have imagined that a Lost City of Zinj was anything but the stuff of ancient fable? In the seventeenth-century world of widening horizons and new wonders, the idea of such a city would have seemed perfectly reasonable, even compelling. But in the computerized twentieth century, the Lost City of Zinj was as unlikely as Camelot or Xanadu. They had been fools ever to take it seriously. “The lost city doesn’t exist,” he said.
“Oh, it exists, all right,” she said. “There’s no doubt about that.”
Elliot glanced up quickly, and then he saw that Sarah Johnson had not answered him. A tall gangly girl in her early twenties stood at the back of the room. She might have been considered beautiful except for her cold, aloof demeanor. This girl was dressed in a severe, businesslike suit, and she carried a briefcase, which she now set on the table, popping the latches.
“I’m Dr. Ross,” she announced, “from the Wildlife Fund, and I’d like your opinion of these pictures.”
She passed around a series of photographs, which were viewed by the staff with an assortment of whistles and sighs. At the head of the table, Elliot waited impatiently until the photographs came down to him.
They were grainy black-and-white images with horizontal scanning line streaks, photographed off a video screen. But the image was unmistakable: a ruined city in the jungle, with curious inverted crescent-shaped doors and windows.
5. Amy
“BY SATELLITE?” ELLIOT REPEATED, HEARING THE tension in his voice.
“That’s right, the pictures were transmitted by satellite from Africa two days ago.”
“Then you know the location of this ruin?”
“Of course.”
“And your expedition leaves in a matter of hours?”
“Six hours and twenty-three minutes, to be exact,” Ross said, glancing at her digital watch,
Elliot adjourned the meeting, and talked privately with Ross for more than an hour. Elliot later claimed that Ross had “deceived” him about the purpose of the expedition and the hazards they would face. But Elliot was eager to go, and probably not inclined to be too fussy about the reasons behind Ross’s coming expedition, or the dangers involved. As a skilled grantsman, he had long ago grown comfortable with situations where other peoples’ money and his own motivations did not exactly coincide. This was the cynical side of academic life: how much pure research had been funded because it might cure cancer? A researcher promised anything to get his money.
Apparently it never occurred to Elliot that Ross might be using him as coldly as he was using her. From the start Ross was never entirely truthful; she had been instructed by Travis to explain the ERTS Congo mission “with a little data dropout.” Data dropout was second nature to her; everyone at ERTS had learned to say no more than was necessary. Elliot treated her as if she were an ordinary funding agency, and that was a serious mistake.
In the final analysis, Ross and Elliot misjudged each other, for each presented a deceptive appearance, and in the same way. Elliot appeared so shy and retiring that one Berkeley faculty member had commented, “It’s no wonder he’s devoted his life to apes; he can’t work up the nerve to talk to people.” But Elliot had been a tough middle linebacker in college, and his diffident academic demeanor concealed a head-crunching ambitious drive.
Similarly, Karen Ross, despite her youthful cheerleader beauty and soft, seductive Texas accent, possessed great intelligence and a deep inner toughness. (She had matured early, and a high-school teacher had once appraised her as “the very flower of virile Texas womanhood.”) Ross felt responsible for the previous ERTS expedition, and she was determined to rectify past errors. It was at least possible that Elliot and Amy could help her when she got onsite; that was reason enough to take them with her. Beyond that, Ross was concerned about the consortium, which was obviously seeking Elliot, since Morikawa was calling. If she took Elliot and Amy with her, she removed a possible advantage to the consortium—again, reason enough to take them with her. Finally, she needed a cover in case her expedition was stopped at one of the borders—and a primatologist and an ape provided a perfect cover.
But in the end Karen Ross wanted only the Congo diamonds—and she was prepared to say anything, do anything, sacrifice anything to get them.
In photographs taken at San Francisco airport, Elliot and Ross appeared as two smiling, youthful academics, embarking on a lark of an expedition to Africa. But in fact, their motivations were different, and grimly held. Elliot was reluctant to tell her how theoretical and academic his goals were—and Ross was reluctant to admit how pragmatic were hers.
In any case, by midday on June 14, Karen Ross found herself riding with Peter Elliot in his battered Fiat sedan along Hallowell Road, going past the University athletic field. She had some misgivings: they were going to meet Amy.
Elliot unlocked the door with its red sign DO NOT DISTURB ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION IN PROGRESS. Behind the door, Amy was grunting and scratching impatiently. Elliot paused.
“When you meet her,” he said, “remember that she is a gorilla and not a human being. Gorillas have their own etiquette. Don’t speak loudly or make any sudden movements until she gets used to you. If you smile, don’t show your teeth, because bared teeth are a threat. And keep your eyes downcast, because direct stares from strangers are considered hostile. Don’t stand too close to me or touch me, be-cause she’s very jealous. If you talk to her, don’t lie. Even though she uses sign language, she understands most human speech, and we usually just talk to her. She can tell when you’re lying and she doesn’t like it.”
“She doesn’t like it?”
“She dismisses you, won’t talk to you, and gets bitchy.”
“Anything else?”
“No, it should be okay.” He smiled reassuringly. “We have this traditional greeting, even though she’s getting a little big for it.” He opened the door, braced himself, and said, “Good morning, Amy.”
A huge black shape came leaping out through the open door into his arms. Elliot staggered back under the impact. Ross was astonished by the size of the animal. She had been imagining something smaller and cuter. Amy was as large as an adult human female.
Amy kissed Elliot on the cheek with her large lips, her black head seeming enormous alongside his. Her breath steamed his glasses. Ross smelled a sweetish odor, and watched as he gently unwrapped her long arms from around his shoulders. “Amy happy this morning?” he asked.
Amy’s fingers moved quickly near her cheek, as if she were brushing away flies.
“Yes, I was late today,” Elliot said.
She moved her fingers again, and Ross realized that Amy was signing. The speed was surprising; she had expected something much slower and more deliberate. She noticed that Amy’s eyes never left Elliot’s face. She was extraordinarily attentive, focusing on him with total animal watchfulness. She seethed to absorb everything, his posture, his expression, his tone of voice, as well as his words.
“I had to work,” Elliot said. She sighed again quickly, like human gestures of dismissal. “Yes, that’s right, people work.” He led Amy back into the trailer, and motioned for Karen Ross to follow. Inside the trailer, he said, “Amy, this is Dr. Ross. Say hello to Dr. Ross.”
Amy looked at Karen Ross suspiciously.
“Hello, Amy,” Karen Ross said, smiling at the floor. She felt a little foolish behaving this way, but Amy was large enough to frighten her.
Amy stared at Karen Ross for a moment, then walked away, across the trailer to her easel. She had been finger-painting, and now resumed this activity, ignoring them.
“What’s that mean?” Ross said. She distinctly felt she was being snubbed.
“We’ll see,” Elliot said.
After a few moments, Amy ambled back, walking on her knuckles. She went directly to Karen Ross, sniffed her crotch, and examined her minutely. She seemed particularly interested in Ross’s leather purse, which had a shiny brass clasp. Ross said later that “it was just like any cocktail party in Houston. I was being checked out by another woman. I had the feeling that any minute she was going to ask-me where I bought my clothes.”
That was not the outcome, however. Amy reached up and deliberately streaked globs of green finger paint on Ross’s skirt.
“I don’t think this is going too well,” Karen Ross said.
Elliot had watched the progress of this first meeting with more apprehension than he was willing to admit. Introducing new humans to Amy was often difficult, particularly if They were women.
Over the years, Elliot had come to recognize many distinctly “feminine” traits in Amy. She could be coy, she responded to flattery, she was preoccupied with her appearance, loved makeup, and was very fussy about the color of the sweaters she wore in the winter. She preferred men to women, and she was openly jealous of Elliot’s girl friends. He rarely brought them around to meet her, but sometimes in the morning she would sniff him for perfume, and she always commented if he had not changed his clothing overnight.
This situation might have been amusing if not for the fact that Amy made occasional unprovoked attacks on strange women. And an attack by Amy was never amusing.
Amy returned to the easel and signed, No like woman no like Amy no like go away away.
“Come on, Amy, be a good gorilla,” Peter said.
“What did she say?” Ross asked, going to the sink to wash the finger paint from her dress. Peter noticed that she did not squeal and shriek as many visitors did when they received an unfriendly greeting from Amy.
“She said she likes your dress,” he said.
Amy shot him a look, as she always did whenever Elliot mistranslated her. Amy not lie. Peter not lie.
“Be nice, Amy,” he said. “Karen is a nice human per-son.”
Amy grunted, and returned to her work, painting rapidly.
“What happens now?” Karen Ross said.
“Give her time.” He smiled reassuringly. “She needs time to adjust.”
He did not bother to explain that it was much worse with chimpanzees. Chimps threw feces at strangers, and even at workers they knew well; they sometimes attacked to establish dominance. Chimpanzees had a strong need to determine who was in charge. Fortunately, gorillas were much less formal in their dominance hierarchies, and less violent.
At that moment, Amy ripped the paper from the easel and shredded it noisily, flinging the pieces around the room.
“Is this part of the adjustment?” Karen Ross asked. She seemed more amused than frightened.
“Amy, cut it out,” Peter said, allowing his tone to convey irritation. “Amy. .
Amy sat in the middle of the floor, surrounded by the paper. She tore it angrily and signed, This woman. This woman. It was classic displacement behavior. Whenever gorillas did not feel comfortable with direct aggression, they did something symbolic. In symbolic terms, she was now tearing Karen Ross apart.
And she was getting worked up, beginning what the Project Amy staff called “sequencing.” Just as human beings first became red-faced, and then tensed their bodies, and then shouted and threw things before they finally resorted to direct physical aggression, so gorillas passed through a stereotyped behavioral sequence on the way to physical aggression. Tearing up paper, or grass, would be followed by lateral crablike movements and grunts. Then she would slap the ground, making as much noise as possible.