Congo - Crichton Michael - Страница 47

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Today we are surrounded by man and his creations. Man is inescapable, everywhere on the globe, and nature is a fantasy, a dream of the past, long gone.

Ross called Elliot away from his dinner. “It’s for you,” she said, pointing to the computer next to the antenna. “That friend of yours again.”

Munro grinned, “Even in the jungle, the phone never stops ringing.”

Elliot went over to look at the screen: COMPUTR LNGWAGE ANALYSS NG REQUIR MOR INPUT KN PROVIDE?

WHT INPUT? Elliot typed back.

NOR AURL INPUT-TRNSMIT RECORDNGS.

Elliot typed back, Yes lf Occurs. YES IF OCRS.

RCORD FREQNCY 22-50,000 CYCLS-CRITICL

Elliot typed back, Understood. UNDRSTOD.

There was a pause, then the screen printed: HOWS AMY?

Elliot hesitated. FINE.

STAF SNOS LOV came the reply, and the transmission was momentarily interrupted.

HOLD TRSNMSN.

There was a long pause.

INCREDIBL NWZ, Seamans printed. HAV FOUND MRS SWENSN

FOR A MOMENT ELLIOT DID NOT RECOGNIZE THE name. Swensn? Who was Swensn? A transmission error? And then he realized: Mrs. Swenson! Amy’s discoverer, the woman who had brought her from Africa and had donated her to the Minneapolis zoo. The woman who had been in Borneo all these weeks. IF WE HAD ONLY KNON AMY MOTHR NOT KILD BY NATIVS.

Elliot waited impatiently for the next message from Seamans.

Elliot stared at the message. He had always been told that Amy’s mother had been killed by natives in a village called Bagimindi. The mother had been killed for food, and Amy was orphaned…

WHT MEANS?

MOTHR ALREDY DED NOT EATN.

The natives hadn’t killed Amy’s moth amp; She was already dead?

XPLN.

SWENSN HAS PICTR CAN TRAMSMT?

Hastily, Elliot typed, his fingers fumbling at the keyboard.

TRANSMT.

There was a pause that seemed interminable, and then the video screen received the transmission, scanning it from top to bottom. Long before the picture filled the screen, Elliot realized what it showed.

A crude snapshot of a gorilla corpse with a crushed skull. The animal lay on its back in a packed-earth clearing, presumably in a native village.

In that moment Elliot felt as if the puzzle that preoccupied him, that had caused so much anguish for so many months, was explained. If only they had been able to reach her before…

The glowing electronic image faded to black.

Elliot was confronted by a rush of sudden questions. Crushed skulls occurred in the remote-and supposedly uninhabited-region of the Congo, kanyamagufa, the place of bones. But Bagimindi was a trading village on the Lubula River, more than a hundred miles away. How had Amy and her dead mother reached Bagimindi?

Ross said, “Got a problem?”

“I don’t understand the sequence. I need to ask-”

“Before you do,” she said, “review the transmission. It’s all in memory.” She pressed a button marked REPEAT.

The earlier transmitted conversation was repeated on the screen. As Elliot watched Seaman’s answers, one line struck him: MOTHR ALREDY DED NOT EATN.

Why wasn’t the mother eaten? Gorilla meat was an acceptable-indeed a prized-food in this part of the Congo basin. He typed in a question:

WHY MOTHR NOT EATN.

MOTHR / INFNT FWND BY NATIV ARMY PATRL DOWN FRM SUDAN CARRIED CRPSE / INFNT 5 DAYS TO BAG-MINDI VILLAG FOR SALE TOURISTS. SWENSN THERE.

Five days! Quickly, Elliot typed the important question:

WHER FWNO?

The answer came back: UNKNWN AREA CONGO.

SPECFY.

NO DETALS. A short pause, then: THERS MOR PICTRS.

SND, he typed back.

The screen went blank, and then filled once more, from top to bottom. Now he saw a closer view of the female gorilla’s crushed skull. And alongside the huge skull, a small black creature lying on the ground, hands and feet clenched, mouth open in a frozen scream.

Amy.

Ross repeated the transmission several times, finishing on the image of Amy as an infant-small, black, screaming.

“No wonder she’s been having nightmares,” Ross said. “She probably saw her mother killed.”

Elliot said, “Well, at least we can be sure it wasn’t gorillas. They don’t kill each other.”

“Right now,” Ross said, “we can’t be sure of anything at all.,,

The night of June 21 was so quiet that by ten o’clock they switched off the infrared night lights to save power. Almost at once they became aware of movement in the foliage outside the compound. Munro and Kahega swung their guns around. The rustling increased, and they heard an odd sighing sound, a sort of wheeze.

Elliot heard it too, and felt a chill: it was the same wheezing that had been recorded on the tapes from the first Congo expedition. He turned on the tape recorder, and swung the microphone around. They were all tense, alert, waiting.

But for the next hour nothing further happened. The foliage moved all around them, but they saw nothing. Then shortly before midnight the electrified perimeter fence erupted in sparks. Munro swung his gun around and fired; Ross hit the switch for the night lights and the camp was bathed in deep red.

“Did you see it?” Munro said. “Did you see what it was?”

They shook their heads. Nobody had seen anything. Elliot checked his tapes; he had only the harsh rattle of gunfire, and the sounds of sparks. No breathing.

The rest of the night passed uneventfully.

THE MORNING OF JUNE 22 WAS FOGGY AND GRAY. Peter Elliot awoke at 6 A.M. to find the camp already up and active. Munro was stalking around the perimeter of the camp, his clothing soaked to the chest by the wet foliage. He greeted Elliot with a look of triumph, and pointed to the ground.

There, on the ground, were fresh footprints. They were deep and short, rather triangular-shaped, and there was a wide space between the big toe and the other four toes-as wide as the space between a human thumb and fingers.

“Definitely not human,” Elliot said, bending to look closely.

Munro said nothing.

“Some kind of primate.”

Munro said nothing.

“It can’t be a gorilla,” Elliot finished, straightening. His video communications from the night before had hardened his belief that gorillas were not involved. Gorillas did not kill other gorillas as Amy’s mother had been killed. “It can’t be a gorilla,” he repeated.

“It’s a gorilla, all right,” Munro said. “Have a look at this.” He pointed to another area of the soft earth. There were four indentations in a row. “Those are the knuckles, when they walk on their hands.”

“But gorillas,” Elliot said, “are shy animals that sleep at night and avoid contact with men.”

“Tell the one that made this print.”

“It’s small for a gorilla,” Elliot said. He examined the fence nearby, where the electrical short had occurred the night before. Bits of gray fur clung to the fence. “And gorillas don’t have gray fur.”

“Males do,” Munro said. “Silverbacks.”

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