Congo Page 23

  “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.

  DAY 11: ZINJ

  June 23, 1979

  1. Gorilla Elliotensis

  THE GORILLA CORPSES LAY STRETCHED ON THE ground, the bodies already stiffening in the morning warmth. Elliot spent two hours examining the animals, both adult males in the prime of life.

  The most striking feature was the uniform gray color. The two known races of gorilla, the mountain gorilla in Virunga, and the lowland gorilla near the coast, both had black hair. Infants were often brown with a white tuft of hair at the rump, but their hair darkened within the first five years. By the age of twelve, adult males had developed the silver patch along their back and rump; the sign of sexual maturity.

  With age, gorillas turned gray in much the same way as people. Male gorillas first developed a spot of gray above each ear, and as the years passed more body hair turned gray. Old animals in their late twenties and thirties sometimes turned entirely gray except for their arms, which remained black.

  But from their teeth Elliot estimated that these males were no more than ten years old. All their pigmentation seemed lighter, eye and skin color as well as hair. Gorilla skin was black, and eyes were dark brown. But here the pigmentation was distinctly gray, and the eyes were light yellow brown.

  As much as anything it was the eyes that set him thinking. Next Elliot measured the bodies. The crown-heel length was 139.2 and 141.7 centimeters. Male mountain gorillas had been recorded from 147 to 205 centimeters, with an average height of 175 centimeters—five feet eight inches. But these animals stood about four feet six inches tall. They were distinctly small for gorillas. He weighed them: 255 pounds and 347 pounds. Most mountain gorillas weighed between 280 and 450 pounds.

  Elliot recorded thirty additional skeletal measurements for later analysis by the computer back in San Francisco. Because now he was convinced that he was onto something. With a knife, he dissected the head of the first animal, cutting away the gray skin to reveal the underlying muscle and bone. His interest was the sagittal crest, the bony ridge running along the center of the skull from the forehead to the back of the neck. The sagittal crest was a distinctive feature of gorilla skull architecture not found in other apes or man; it was what gave gorillas a pointy-headed look.

  Elliot determined that the sagittal crest was poorly developed in these males. In general, the cranial musculature resembled a chimpanzee’s far more than a gorilla’s. Elliot made additional measurements of the molar cusps, the jaw, the simian shelf, and the brain case.

  By midday, his conclusion was clear: this was at least a new race of gorilla, equal to the mountain and lowland gorilla—and it was possibly a new species of animal entirely.

  “Something happens to the man who discovers a new species of animal,” wrote Lady Elizabeth Forstmann in 1879. “At once he forgets his family and friends, and all those who were near and dear to him; he forgets colleagues who s
upported his professional efforts; most cruelly he forgets parents and children; in short, he abandons all who knew him prior to his insensate lust for fame at the hands of the demon called Science.”

  Lady Forstmann understood, for her husband had just left her after discovering the Norwegian blue-crested grouse in 1878. “In vain,” she observed, “does one ask what it matters that another bird or animal is added to the rich panoply of God’s creations, which already number—by Linnaean reckoning—in the millions. There is no response to such a question, for the discoverer has joined the ranks of the immortals, at least as he imagines it, and he lies beyond the

  power of mere people to dissuade him from his course.”

  Certainly Peter Elliot would have denied that his own behavior resembled that of the dissolute Scottish nobleman. Nevertheless he found he was bored by the prospect of further exploration of Zinj; he had no interest in diamonds, or Amy’s dreams; he wished only to return home with a skeleton of the new ape, which would astonish colleagues around the world. He suddenly remembered he did not own a tuxedo, and he found himself preoccupied with matters of nomenclature; he imagined in the future three species of African apes:

  Pan troglodytes, the chimpanzee.

  Gorilla gorilla, the gorilla.

  Gorilla elliotensis, a new species of gray gorilla.

  Even if the species category and name were ultimately rejected, he would have accomplished far more than most scientists studying primates could ever hope to achieve.

  Elliot was dazzled by his own prospects.

  In retrospect, no one was thinking clearly that morning. When Elliot said he wanted to transmit the recorded breathing sounds to Houston, Ross replied it was a trivial detail that could wait. Elliot did not press her, they both later regretted their decision.

  And when they heard booming explosions like distant artillery fire that morning, they paid no attention. Ross assumed it was General Muguru’s men fighting the Kigani. Munro told her that the fighting was at least fifty miles away, too far for the sound to carry, but offered no alternative explanation for the noise.

  And because Ross skipped the morning transmission to Houston, she was not informed of new geological changes that might have given new significance to the explosive detonations.

  They were seduced by the technology employed the night before, secure in their sense of indomitable power. Only Munro remained immune. He had checked their ammunition supplies with discouraging results. “That laser system is splendid but it uses up bullets like there’s no tomorrow,” Munro said. “Last night consumed half of our total ammunition.’’

  “What can we do?” Elliot asked.

  “I was hoping you’d have an answer for that,” Munro said. “You examined the bodies.”

  Elliot stated his belief that they were confronted with a new species of primate. He summarized the anatomical findings, which supported his beliefs.

  “That’s all well and good,” Munro said. “But I’m interested in how they act, not how they look. You said it yourself—gorillas are usually diurnal animals, and these are nocturnal. Gorillas are usually shy and avoid men, while these are aggressive and attack men fearlessly. Why?”

  Elliot had to admit that he didn’t know.

  “Considering our ammunition supplies, I think we’d better find out,” Munro said.

  2. The Temple

  THE LOGICAL PLACE TO BEGIN WAS THE TEMPLE, with its enormous, menacing gorilla statue. They returned that afternoon, and found behind the statue a succession of small cubicle-like rooms. Ross thought that priests who worshiped the cult of the gorilla lived here.

  She had an elaborate explanation: “The gorillas in the surrounding jungle terrorized the people of Zinj, who offered sacrifices to appease the gorillas. The priests were a separate class, secluded from society. Look here, at the entrance to the line of cubicles, there is this little room. A guard stayed here to keep people away from the priests. It was a whole system of belief.”

  Elliot was not convinced, and neither was Munro. “Even religion is practical,” Munro said. “It’s supposed to benefit you.’,

  “People worship what they fear,” Ross said, “hoping to control it.’’

  “But how could they control the gorillas?” Munro asked. “What could they do?”

  When the answer finally came it was startling, for they had it all backward.

  They moved past the cubicles to a series of long corridors, decorated with bas-reliefs. Using their infrared computer system, they were able to see the reliefs, which were scenes arranged in a careful order like a picture textbook.

  The first scene showed a series of caged gorillas. A black man stood near the cages holding a stick in his hand.

  The second picture showed an African standing with two gorillas, holding ropes around their necks.

  A third showed an African instructing the gorillas in a courtyard. The gorillas were tethered to vertical poles, each with a ring at the top.

  The final picture showed the gorillas attacking a line of straw dummies, which hung from an overhead stone support. They now knew the meaning of what they had found in the courtyard of the gymnasium, and the jail.

  “My God,” Elliot said. “They trained them.”

  Munro nodded. “Trained them as guards to watch over the mines. An animal elite, ruthless and incorruptible. Not a bad idea when you think about it.”

  Ross looked at the building around her again, realizing it wasn’t a temple but a school. An objection occurred to her these pictures were hundreds of years old, the trainers long gone. Yet the gorillas were still here. “Who teaches them now?”

  “They do,” Elliot said. “They teach each other.”

  “Is that possible?”

  “Perfectly possible. Conspecific teaching occurs among Primates.”

  This had been a longstanding question among researchers. But Washoe, the first primate in history to learn sign language, taught ASL to her offspring. Language-skilled primates freely taught other animals in captivity; for that matter, they would teach people, signing slowly and repeatedly until the stupid uneducated human person got the point.

  So it was possible for a primate tradition of language and behavior to be carried on for generations. “You mean,” Ross said, “that the people in this city have been gone for centuries, but the gorillas they trained are still here?”

  “That’s the way it looks,” Elliot said.

  “And they use stone tools?” she asked. “Stone paddles.”

  “Yes,” Elliot said. The idea of tool use was not as farfetched as it first seemed. Chimpanzees were capable of elaborate tool use, of which the most striking example was “termite fishing.” Chimps would make a twig, carefully bending it to their specifications, and then spend hours over a termite mound, fishing with the stick to catch succulent grubs.

  Human observers labeled this activity “primitive tool use” until they tried it themselves. It turned out that making a satisfactory twig and catching termites was not primitive at all; at least it proved to be beyond the ability of people who tried to duplicate it. Human fishermen quit, with a new respect for the chimpanzees, and a new observation—they now noticed that younger chimps spent days watching their elders make sticks and twirl them in the mound. Young chimps literally learned how to do it, and the learning process extended over a period of years.

  This began to look suspiciously like culture; the apprenticeship of young Ben Franklin, printer, was not so different from the apprenticeship of young Chimpanzee, termite fisher. Both learned their skills over a period of years by observing their elders; both made mistakes on the way to ultimate success.

  Yet manufactured stone tools implied a quantum jump beyond twigs and termites. The privileged position of stone tools as the special province of mankind might have remained sacrosanct were it not for a single iconoclastic researcher. In 1971, the British scientist R. V. S. Wright decided to teach an ape to make stone tools. His pupil was a five-year-old orangutan named Abang
in the Bristol zoo. Wright presented Abang with a box containing food, bound with a rope; he showed Abang how to cut the rope with a flint chip to get the food. Abang got the point in an hour.

  Wright then showed Abang how to make a stone chip by striking a pebble against a flint core. This was a more difficult lesson; over a period of weeks, Abang required a total of three hours to learn to grasp the flint core between his toes, strike a sharp chip, cut the rope, and get the food.

  The point of the experiment was not that apes used stone tools, but that the ability to make stone tools was literally within their grasp. Wright’s experiment was one more reason to think that human beings were not as unique as they had previously imagined themselves to be.

  “But why would Amy say they weren’t gorillas?”

  “Because they’re not,” Elliot said. “These animals don’t look like gorillas and they don’t act like gorillas. They are physically and behaviorally different.” He went on to voice his suspicion that not only had these animals been trained, they had been bred—perhaps interbred with chimpanzees or, more strangely still, with men.

  They thought he was joking. But the facts were disturbing. In 1960, the first blood protein studies quantified the kinship between man and ape. Biochemically man’s nearest relative was the chimpanzee, much closer than the gorilla. In 1964, chimpanzee kidneys were successfully transplanted into men; blood transfusions were also possible.

  But the degree of similarity was not fully known until 1975, when biochemists compared the DNA of chimps and men. It was discovered that chimps differed from men by only 1 percent of their DNA strands. And almost no one wanted to acknowledge one consequence: with modern DNA hybridization techniques and embryonic implantation, ape-ape crosses were certain, and man-ape crosses were possible.

  Of course, the fourteenth-century inhabitants of Zinj had no way to mate DNA strands. But Elliot pointed out that they had consistently underestimated the skills of the Zinj people, who at the very least had managed, five hundred years ago, to carry out sophisticated animal-training procedures only duplicated by Western scientists within the last ten years.