DAY 10: ZINJ
June 22, 1979
1.Return
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."
"Yes, but the silverback coloring is whiter than this. This fur is distinctly gray." He hesitated. "Maybe it's a kakun?dakari."
Munro looked disgusted.
The kakunidakari was a disputed primate in the Congo. Like the yeti of the Himalayas and bigfoot of North America, he had been sighted but never captured. There were endless native stories of a six-foot-tall hairy ape that walked on his hind legs and otherwise behaved in a manlike fashion.
Many respected scientists believed the kakundakari existed; perhaps they remembered the authorities who had once denied the existence of the gorilla.
In 1774, Lord Monboddo wrote of the gorilla that "this wonderful and frightful production of nature walks upright like man; is from 7 to 9 feet high. . . and amazingly strong; covered with longish hair, jet black over the body, but longer on the head; the face more like the human than the Chim?penza, but the complexion black; and has no tail."
Forty years later, Bowditch described an African ape "generally five feet high, and four across the shoulders; its paw was said to be even more disproportionate than its breadth, and one blow of it to be fetal." But it was not until 1847 that Thomas Savage, an African missionary, and Jeffries Wyman, a Boston anatomist, published a paper describing "a second species in Africa . . . not recognized by naturalists," which they proposed to call Troglodytes gorilla. Their announcement caused enormous excitement in the scientific world, and a rush in London, Paris, and Boston to procure skeletons; by 1855, there was no longer any doubt - a second, very large ape existed in Africa.
Even in the twentieth century, new animal species were discovered in the rain forest: the blue pig in 1944, and the red-breasted grouse in 1961. It was perfectly possible that a rare, reclusive primate might exist in the jungle depths. But there was still no hard evidence for the kakundakari.
"This print is from a gorilla," Munro insisted. "Or rather a group of gorillas. They're all around the perimeter fence. They've been scouting our camp."
"Scouting our camp," Elliot repeated, shaking his head.
"That's right," Munro said. "Just look at the bloody prints."
Elliot felt his patience growing short. He said something about white-hunter campfire tales, to which Munro said something unflattering about people who knew everything from books.
At that point, the colobus monkeys in the trees overhead began to shriek and shake the branches.
They found Malawi's body just outside the compound. The porter had been going to the stream to get water when he had been killed; the collapsible buckets lay on the ground nearby. The bones of his skull had been crushed; the purple, swelling face was distorted, the mouth open.
The group was repelled by the manner of death; Ross turned away, nauseated; the porters huddled with Kahega, who tried to reassure them; Munro bent to examine the injury. "You notice these flattened areas of compression, as if the head was squeezed between something
Munro then called for the stone paddles that Elliot had found in the city the day before. He glanced back at Kahega.
Kahega stood at his most erect and said, "We go home now, boss."
"That's not possible," Munro said.
"We go home. We must go home, one of our brothers is dead, we must make ceremony for his wife and his children, boss."
"Kahega. .
"Boss, we must go now."
"Kahega, we will talk." Munro straightened, put his arm over Kahega and led him some distance away, across the clearing. They talked in low voices for several minutes.
"It's awful," Ross said. She seemed genuinely affected with human feeling and instinctively Elliot turned to comfort her, but she continued, "The whole expedition is falling apart. Ifs awful. We have to hold it together somehow, or we'll never find the diamonds."
"Is that all you care about?"
"Well, they do have insurance. . .
"For Christ's sake," Elliot said.
"You're just upset because you've lost your damned monkey," Ross said. "Now get hold of yourself. They're watching us."
The Kikuyu were indeed watching Ross and Elliot, trying to sense the drift of sentiment. But they all knew that the real negotiations were between Munro and Kahega, standing off to one side. Several minutes later Kahega returned, wiping his eyes. He spoke quickly to his remaining brothers, and they nodded. He turned back to Munro.
"We stay, boss."
"Good," Munro said, immediately resuming his former imperious tone. "Bring the paddles."
When they were brought, Munro placed the paddles to either side of Malawi's head. They fitted the semicircular indentations on the head perfectly.
Munro then said something quickly to Kahega in Swahili, and Kahega said something to his brothers, and they nodded. Only then did Munro take the next horrible step. He raised his arms wide, and then swung the paddles back hard against the already crushed skull. The dull sound was sickening; droplets of blood spattered over his shirt, but he did not further damage the skull.
"A man hasn't the strength to do this," Munro said flatly. He looked up at Peter Elliot. "Care to try?"
Elliot shook his head.
Munro stood. "Judging by the way he fell, Malawi was standing when it happened." Munro faced Elliot, looking him in the eye. "Large animal, the size of a man. Large, strong animal. A gorilla."
Elliot had no reply.
There is no doubt that Peter Elliot felt a personal threat in these developments, although not a threat to his safety. "I simply couldn't accept it," he said later. "I knew my field, and I simply couldn't accept the idea of some unknown, radically violent behavior displayed by gorillas in the wild. And in any case, it didn't make sense. Gorillas making stone paddles that they used to crush human skulls? It was impossible."
After examining the body, Elliot went to the stream to wash the blood from his hands. Once alone, away from the others, he found himself staring into the clear running water and considering the possibility that he might be wrong. Certainly primate researchers had a long history of misjudging their subjects.
Elliot himself had helped eradicate one of the most famous misconceptions - the brutish stupidity of the gorilla. In their first descriptions, Savage and Wyman had written, "This animal exhibits a degree of intelligence inferior to that of the Chimpanzee; this might be expected from its wider departure from the organization of the human subject." Later observers saw the gorilla as "savage, morose, and brutal." But now there was abundant evidence from field and laboratory studies that the gorilla was in many ways brighter than the chimpanzee.
Then, too, there were the famous stories of chimpanzees kidnapping and eating human infants. For decades, primate researchers had dismissed such native tales as "wild and superstitious fantasy." But there was no longer any doubt that chimpanzees occasionally kidnapped - and ate - human infants; when Jane Goodall studied Gombe chimpanzees, she locked away her own infant to prevent his being taken and killed by the chimps.
Chimpanzees hunted a variety of animals, according to a complicated ritual. And field studies by Dian Fossey suggested that gorillas also hunted from time to time, killing small game and monkeys, whenever - He heard a rustling in the bushes across the stream, and an enormous silverback male gorilla reared up in chest-high foliage. Peter was startled, although as soon as he got over his fright he realized that he was safe. Gorillas never crossed open water, even a small stream. Or was that a misconception, too?
The male stared at him across the water. There seemed to be no threat in his gaze, just a kind of watchful curiosity. Elliot smelled the musty odor of the gorilla, and he heard the breath hiss through his flattened nostrils. He was wondering what he should do when suddenly the gorilla crashed noisily away through the underbrush, and was gone.
This encounter perplexed him, and he stood, wiping the sweat from his face. Then he realized that there was still movement in the foliage across the stream. After a moment, another gorilla rose up, this one smaller: a female, he thought, though he couldn't be sure. The new gorilla gazed at him as implacably as the first. Then the hand moved.
Peter come give tickle.
"Amy!" he shouted, and a moment later he had splashed across the stream, and she had leapt into his arms, hugging him and delivering sloppy wet kisses and grunting happily.
Amy's unexpected return to camp nearly got her shot by the jumpy Kikuyu porters. Only by blocking her body with his own did Elliot prevent gunfire. Twenty minutes later, however, everyone had adjusted to her presence - and Amy promptly began making demands.
She was unhappy to learn that they had not acquired milk or cookies in her absence, but when Munro produced the bottle of warm Dom Perignon, she agreed to accept champagne instead.
They all sat around her, drinking champagne from tin cups. Elliot was glad for the mitigating presence of the others, for now that Amy was sitting there, safely restored to him, calmly sipping her champagne and signing Tickle drink Amy like, he found himself overcome with anger toward her.
Munro grinned at Elliot as he gave him his champagne. "Calmly, Professor, calmly. She's just a child."
"The hell she is," Elliot said. He conducted the subsequent conversation entirely in sign language, not speaking.
Amy, he signed. Why Amy leave?
She buried her nose in her cup, singing Tickle drink good drink.
Amy, he signed. Amy tell Peter why leave.
Peter not like Amy.
Peter like Amy.
Peter hurt Amy Peter fly ouch pin Amy no like Peter no like Amy Amy sad sad.
In a detached corner of his mind, he thought he would have to remember that "ouch pin" had now been extended to the Thoralen dart. Her generalization pleased him, but he signed sternly, Peter like Amy. Amy know Peter like Amy. Amy tell Peter why - Peter no tickle Amy Peter not nice Amy Peter not nice human person Peter like woman no like Amy Peter not like Amy Amy sad Amy sad.
This increasingly rapid signing was itself an indication that she was upset. Where Amy go?
Amy go gorillas good gorillas. Amy like.
Curiosity overcame his anger. Had she joined a troop of wild gorillas for several days? If so, it was an event of major importance, a crucial moment in modern primate history - a language-skilled primate had joined a wild troop and had come back again. He wanted to know more.
Gorillas nice to Amy?
With a smug look: Yes.
Amy tell Peter.
She stared off into the distance, not answering.
To catch her attention Elliot snapped his fingers. She turned to him slowly, her expression bored.
Amy tell Peter, Amy stay gorillas?
Yes.
In her indifference was the clear recognition that Elliot was desperate to learn what she knew. Amy was always very astute at recognizing when she had the upper hand - and she had it now.
Amy tell Peter, he signed as calmly as he could.
Good gorillas like Amy Amy good gorilla.
That told him nothing at all. She was composing phrases by rote: another way of ignoring him.
Amy.
She glanced at him.
Amy tell Peter. Amy come see gorillas?
Yes.
Gorillas do what?
Gorillas sniff Amy.
All gorillas?
Big gorillas white back gorillas sniff Amy baby sniff Amy all gorillas sniff gorillas like Amy.
So silverback males had sniffed her, then infants, then all the members of the troop. That much was clear - remarkably clear, he thought, making a mental note of her extended syntax. Afterward had she been accepted in the troop? He signed, What happen Amy then?
Gorillas give food.
What food?
No name Amy food give food.
Apparently they had shown her food. Or had they actually fed her? Such a thing had never been reported in the wild, but then no one had ever witnessed the introduction of a new animal into a troop. She was a female, and nearly of productive age.
What gorillas give food?
All give food Amy take food Amy like.
Apparently it was not males, or males exclusively. But what had caused her acceptance? Granted that gorilla troops were not as closed to outsiders as monkey troops - what actually had happened?
Amy stay with gorillas?
Gorillas like Amy.
Yes. What Amy do?
Amy sleep Amy eat Amy live gorillas gorillas good gorillas Amy like.
So she had joined in the life of the troop, living the daily existence. Had she been totally accepted?
Amy like gorillas?
Gorillas dumb.
Why dumb?
Gorillas no talk.
No talk sign talk?
Gorillas no talk.
Evidently she had experienced frustration with the gorillas because they did not know her sign language. (Language using primates were commonly frustrated and annoyed when thrown among animals who did not understand the signs.)
Gorillas nice to Amy?
Gorillas like Amy Amy like gorillas like Amy like gorillas.
Why Amy come back?
Want milk cookies.
"Amy," he said, "you know we don't have any damn milk or cookies." His sudden verbalization startled the others. They looked questioningly at Amy.
For a long time she did not answer. Amy like Peter. Amy sad want Peter.
He felt like crying.
Peter good human person.
Blinking his eyes he signed, Peter tickle Amy. She jumped into his arms.
Later, he questioned her in more detail. But it was a painstakingly slow process, chiefly because of Amy's difficulty in handling concepts of time.
Amy distinguished past, present, and future - she remembered previous events, and anticipated future promises - but the Project Amy staff had never succeeded in teaching her exact differentiations. She did not, for example, distinguish yesterday from the day before. Whether this reflected a failing in teaching methods or an innate feature of Amy's conceptual world was an open question. (There was evidence for a conceptual difference. Amy was particularly perplexed by spatial metaphors for time, such as "that's behind us" or "that's coming up." Her trainers conceived of the past as behind them and the future ahead. But Amy's behavior seemed to indicate that she conceived of the past as in front of her - because she could see it - and the future behind her - because it was still invisible. Whenever she was impatient for the promised arrival of a friend, she repeatedly looked over her shoulder, even if she was facing the door.)
In any case, the time problem was a difficulty in talking to her now, and Elliot phrased his questions carefully. He asked, "Amy, what happened at night? With the gorillas?"
She gave him the look she always gave him when she thought a question was obvious. Amy sleep night.
"And the other gorillas?" Gorillas sleep night.
"All the gorillas?" She disdained to answer.
"Amy," he said, "gorillas come to our camp at night." Come this place?
"Yes, this place. Gorillas come at night."
She thought that over. No. Munro said, "What did she say?"
Elliot said, "She said 'No.' Yes, Amy, they come."
She was silent a moment, and then she signed, Things come.
Munro again asked what she had said.
"She said, 'Things come.' " Elliot translated the rest of her responses for them.
Ross asked, "What things, Amy?"
Bad things.
Munro said, "Were they gorillas, Amy?"
Not gorillas. Bad things. Many bad things come forest come. Breath talk. Come night come.
Munro said, "Where are they now, Amy?"
Amy looked around at the jungle. Here. This bad old place things come.
Ross said, "What things, Amy? Are they animals?" Elliot told them that Amy could not abstract the category "animals." "She thinks people are animals," he explained. "Are the bad things people, Amy? Are they human persons?"
No.
Munro said, "Monkeys?"
No. Bad things. not sleep night.
Munro said, "Is she reliable?"
What means?
"Yes," Elliot said. "Perfectly."
"She knows what gorillas are?"
Amy good gorilla, she signed.
"Yes, you are," Elliot said. "She's saying she's a good gorilla."
Munro frowned. "So she knows what gorillas are, but she says these things are not gorillas?"
"That's what she says."
2.Missing Elements
ELLIOT GOT ROSS TO SET UP THE VIDEO CAMERA AT the outskirts of the city, facing the campsite. With the videotape running he led Amy to the edge of the camp to look at the ruined buildings. Elliot wanted to confront Amy with the lost city, the reality behind her dreams - and he wanted a record of her responses to that moment. What happened was totally unexpected.
Amy had no reaction at all.
Her face remained impassive, her body relaxed. She did not sign. If anything she gave the impression of boredom, of suffering through another of Elliot's enthusiasms that she did not share. Elliot watched her carefully. She wasn't displacing; she wasn't repressing; she wasn't doing anything. She stared at the city with equanimity.
"Amy know this place?"
Yes.
"Amy tell Peter what place." Bad place old place.
"Sleep pictures?" This bad place.
"Why is it bad, Amy?"
Bad place old place.
"Yes, but why, Amy?" Amy fear.
She showed no somatic indication of fear. Squatting on the ground alongside him she gazed forward, perfectly calm.
"Why Amy fear?"
Amy want eat.
"Why Amy fear?"
She would not answer, in the way that she did not deign to answer him whenever she was completely bored; he could not provoke her to discuss her dreams further. She was as closed on the subject as she had been in San Francisco. When he asked her to accompany them into the ruins, she calmly refused to do so. On the other hand, she did not seem distressed that Elliot was going into the city, and she cheerfully waved goodbye before going to demand more food from Kahega.
Only after the expedition was concluded and Elliot had returned to Berkeley did he find the explanation to this perplexing event - in Freud's Interpretation of Dreams, first published in 1887.
It may happen on rare occasions that a patient may be confronted by the reality behind his dreams. Whether a physical edifice, a person, or a situation that has the tenor of deep familiarity, the subjective response of the dreamer is uniformly the same. The emotive content held in the dream - whether frightening, pleasurable, or mysterious - is drained away upon sight of the reality. . . . We may be certain that the apparent boredom of the subject does not prove the dream-content is false. Boredom may be most strongly felt when the dream-content is real. The subject recognizes on some deep level his inability to alter the conditions that he feels, and so finds himself overcome by fatigue, boredom, and indifference, to conceal from him his fundamental helplessness in the face of a genuine problem which must be rectified.
Months later, Elliot would conclude that Amy's bland reaction only indicated the depth of her feeling, and that Freud's analysis was correct; it protected her from a situation that had to be changed, but that Amy felt powerless to alter, especially considering whatever infantile memories remained from the traumatic death of her mother.
Yet at the time, Elliot felt disappointment with Amy's neutrality. Of all the possible reactions he had imagined when he first set out for the Congo, boredom was the least expected, and he utterly failed to grasp its significance - that the city of Zinj was so fraught with danger that Amy felt obliged in her own mind to push it aside, and to ignore it.
Elliot, Munro, and Ross spent a hot, difficult morning hacking their way through the dense bamboo and the clinging, tearing vines of secondary jungle growth to reach new buildings in the heart of the city. By midday, their efforts were rewarded as they entered structures unlike any they had seen before. These buildings were impressively engineered, enclosing vast cavernous spaces descending three and four stories beneath the ground.
Ross was delighted by the underground constructions, for it proved to her that the Zinj people had evolved the technology to dig into the earth, as was necessary fur diamond mines. Munro expressed a similar view: "These people," he said, "could do anything with earthworks."
Despite their enthusiasm, they found nothing of interest in the depths of the city. They ascended to higher levels later in the day, coming upon a building so filled with reliefs that they termed it "the gallery." With the video camera hooked to the satellite linkup, they examined the pictures in the gallery.
These showed aspects of ordinary city life. There were domestic scenes of women cooking around fires, children playing a ball game with sticks, scribes squatting on the ground as they kept records on clay tablets. A whole wall of hunting scenes, the men in brief loincloths, armed with spears. And finally scenes of mining, men carrying baskets of stones from tunnels in the earth.
in this rich panorama, they noticed certain missing elements. The people of Zinj had dogs, used for hunting, and a variety of civet cat, kept as household pets - yet it had apparently never occurred to them to use animals as beasts of burden. All manual labor was done by human slaves. And they apparently never discovered the wheel for there were no carts or rolling vehicles. Everything was carried by hand in baskets.
Munro looked at the pictures for a long time and finally said, "Something else is missing."
They were looking at a scene from the diamond mines, the dark pits in the ground from which men emerged carrying baskets heaped with gems.
"Of course!" Munro said, snapping his fingers. "No police!''
Elliot suppressed a smile: he considered it only too predictable that a character like Munro would wonder about police in this long-dead society.
But Munro insisted his observation was significant. "Look here," he said. "This city existed because of its diamond mines. It had no other reason for being, out here in the jungle. Zinj was a mining civilization - its wealth, its trade, its daily life, everything depended upon mining. It was a classic one-crop economy - and yet they didn't guard it, didn't regulate it, didn't control it?"
Elliot said, "There are other things we haven't seen - pictures of people eating, for example. Perhaps it was taboo to show the guards."
"Perhaps," Munro said, unconvinced. "But in every other mining complex in the world guards are ostentatiously prominent, as proof of control. Go to the South African diamond mines or the Bolivian emerald mines and the first thing you are made aware of is the security. But here," he said, pointing to the reliefs, "there are no guards."
Karen Ross suggested that perhaps they didn't need guards, perhaps the Zinjian society was orderly and peaceful. "After all, it was a long time ago," she said.
"Human nature doesn't change," Munro insisted:
When they left the gallery, they came to an open courtyard, overgrown with tangled vines. The courtyard had a formal quality, heightened by the pillars of a temple-like building to one side. Their attention was immediately drawn to the courtyard floor. Strewn across the ground were dozens of stone paddles, of the kind Elliot had previously found.
"I'll be damned," Elliot said. They picked their way through this field of paddles, and entered the building they came to call "the temple."
It consisted of a single large square room. The ceiling had been broken in several places, and hazy shafts of sunlight filtered down. Directly ahead, they saw an enormous mound of vines perhaps ten feet high, a pyramid of vegetation. Then they recognized it was a statue.
Elliot climbed up on the statue and began stripping away the clinging foliage. It was hard work; the creepers had dug tenaciously into the stone. He glanced back at Munro. "Better?"
"Come and look," Munro said, with an odd expression on his face.
Elliot climbed down, stepped back to look. Although the statue was pitted and discolored, he could clearly see an enormous standing gorilla, the face fierce, the arms stretched wide. In each hand, the gorilla held stone paddles like cymbals, ready to swing them together.
"My God," Peter Elliot said.
"Gorilla," Munro said with satisfaction.
Ross said, "It's all clear now. These people worshiped gorillas. It was their religion."
"But why would Amy say they weren't gorillas?"
"Ask her," Munro said, glancing at his watch. "I have to get us ready for tonight."
3.Attack
THEY DUG A MOAT OUTSIDE THE PERIMETER FENCE with collapsible metalloid shovels. The work continued long after sundown; they were obliged to turn on the red night lights while they filled the moat with water diverted from the nearby stream. Ross considered the moat a trivial obstacle - it was only a few inches deep and a foot wide. A man could step easily across it. In reply, Munro stood outside the moat and said, "Amy, come here, I'll tickle you."
With a delighted grunt, Amy came bounding toward him, but stopped abruptly on the other side of the water. "Come on, I'll tickle you," Munro said again, holding out his arms. "Come on, girl."
Still she would not cross. She signed irritably; Munro stepped over and lifted her across. "Gorillas hate water," he told Ross. "I've seen them refuse to cross a stream smaller than this." Amy was reaching up and scratching under his arms, then pointing to herself. The meaning was perfectly clear. "Women," Munro sighed, and bent over and tickled her vigorously. Amy rolled on the ground, grunting and snuffling and smiling broadly. When he stopped, she lay expectantly on the ground, waiting for more.
"That's all," Munro said.
She signed to him.
"Sorry, I don't understand. No," he laughed, "signing slower doesn't help." And then he understood what she wanted, and he carried her back across the moat again, into the camp. She kissed him wetly on the cheek.
"Better watch your monkey," Munro said to Elliot as he sat down to dinner. He continued in this light bantering fashion, aware of the need to loosen everybody up; they were all nervous, crouching around the fire. But when the dinner was finished, and Kahega was off setting out the ammunition and checking the guns, Munro took Elliot aside and said, "Chain her in your tent. If we start shooting tonight, I'd hate to have her running around in the dark. Some of the lads may not be too particular about telling one gorilla from another. Explain to her that it may get very noisy from the guns but she should not be frightened."
"Is it going to get very noisy?" Elliot said.
"I imagine," Munro said.
He took Amy into his tent and put on the sturdy chain leash she often wore in California. He tied one end to his cot, but it was a symbolic gesture; Amy could move it easily if she chose to. He made her promise to stay in the tent.
She promised. He stepped to the tent entrance, and she signed, Amy like Peter.
"Peter like Amy," he said, smiling. "Everything's going to be fine."
He emerged into another world.
The red night lights had been doused, but in the flickering glow of the campfire he saw the goggle-eyed sentries in position around the compound. With the low throbbing pulse of the electrified fence, this sight created an unearthly atmosphere. Peter Elliot suddenly sensed the precariousness of their position - a handful of frightened people deep in the Congo rain forest, more than two hundred miles from the nearest human habitation.
Waiting.
He tripped over a black cable on the ground. Then he saw a network of cables, snaking over the compound, running to the guns of each sentry. He noticed then that the guns had an unfamiliar shape - they were somehow too slender, too insubstantial and that the black cables ran from the guns to squat, snub-nosed mechanisms mounted on short tripods at Intervals around the camp.
He saw Ross near the fire, setting up the tape recorder.
"What the hell is all this?" he whispered, pointing to the cables.
"That's a LATRAP. For laser-tracking projectile," she whispered. "The LATRAP system consists of multiple LGSDs attached to sequential RFSDs."
She told him that the sentries held guns which were actually laser-guided sight devices, linked to rapid-firing sensor devices on tripods. "They lock onto the target," she said, "and do the actual shooting once the target is identified. It's a jungle warfare system. The RFSDs have maclan-baffle silencers so the enemy won't know where the firing is coming from. Just make sure you don't step in front of one, because they automatically lock onto body heat."
Ross gave him the tape recorder, and went off to check the fuel cells powering the perimeter fence. Elliot glanced at the sentries in the outer darkness; Munro waved cheerfully to him. Elliot realized that the sentries with their grasshopper goggles and their acronymic weapons could see him far better than he could see them. They looked like beings from another universe, dropped into the timeless jungle.
Waiting.
The hours passed. The jungle perimeter was silent except for the murmur of water in the moat. Occasionally the porters called to one another softly, making some joke in Swahili; but they never smoked because of the heat-sensing machinery. Eleven o'clock passed, and then midnight, and then one o'clock.
He heard Amy snoring in his tent, her noisy rasping audible above the throb of the electrified fence. He glanced over at Ross sleeping on the ground, her finger on the switch for the night lights. He looked at his watch and yawned; nothing was going to happen tonight; Munro was wrong.
Then he heard the breathing sound.
The sentries heard it too, swinging their guns in the darkness. Elliot pointed the recorder microphone toward the sound but it was hard to determine its exact location. The wheezing sighs seemed to come from all parts of the jungle at once, drifting with the night fog, soft and pervasive.
He watched the needles wiggle on the recording gauges.
And then the needles bounced into the red, as Elliot heard a dull thud, and the gurgle of water. Everyone heard it; the sentries clicked off their safeties.
Elliot crept with his tape recorder toward the perimeter fence and looked out at the moat. Foliage moved beyond the fence. The sighing grew louder. He heard the gurgle of water and saw a dead tree trunk lying across the moat.
That was what the slapping sound had been: abridge being placed across the moat. In that instant Elliot realized they had vastly underestimated whatever they were up against. He signaled to Munro to come and look, but Munro was waving him away from the fence and pointing emphatically to the squat tripod on the ground near his feet. Before Elliot could move, the colobus monkeys began to shriek in the trees overhead - and the first of the gorillas silently charged.
He had a glimpse of an enormous animal, distinctly gray in color, racing up to him as he ducked down; a moment later, the gorillas hit the electrified fence with a shower of spitting sparks and the odor of burning flesh.
It was the start of an eerie, silent battle.
Emerald laser beams flashed through the air; the tripod-mounted machine guns made a soft thew-thew-thew as the bullets spit outward, the aiming mechanisms whining as the barrels spun and fired, spun and fired again. Every tenth bullet was a white phosphorous tracer; the air was crisscrossed green and white over Elliot's head.
The gorillas attacked from all directions; six of them simultaneously hit the fence and were repelled in a crackling burst of sparks. Still more charged, throwing themselves on the flimsy perimeter mesh, yet the sizzle of sparks and the shriek of the colobus monkeys was the loudest sound they heard. And then he saw gorillas in the trees overhanging the campsite. Munro and Kahega began firing upward, silent laser beams streaking into the foliage. He heard the sighing sound again. Elliot turned and saw more gorillas tearing at the fence, which had gone dead - there were no more sparks.
And he realized that this swift, sophisticated equipment was not holding the gorillas back - they needed the noise. Munro had the same thought, because he shouted in Swahili for the men to hold their fire, and called to Elliot, "Pull the silencers! The silencers!"
Elliot grabbed the black barrel on the first tripod mechanism and plucked it away, swearing - it was very hot. Immediately as he stepped away from the tripod, a stuttering sound filled the air, and two gorillas fell heavily from the trees, one still alive. The gorilla charged him as he pulled away the silencer from the second tripod. The stubby barrel swung around and blasted the gorilla at very close range; warm liquid spattered Elliot's face. He pulled the silencer from the third tripod and threw himself to the ground.
Deafening machine-gun fire and clouds of acrid cordite had an immediate effect on the gorillas; they backed off in disorder. There was a period of silence, although the sentries fired laser shots that set the tripod machines scanning rapidly across the jungle landscape, whirring back and forth, searching for a target.
Then the machines stopped hunting, and paused. The jungle around them was still.
The gorillas were gone.