Congo Page 7

  Amy loved trips, and regarded them as special treats. After an especially good day, Elliot often took her for a ride to a nearby drive-in, where she would have an orange drink, sucking it through the straw and enjoying the commotion she caused among the other people there. Lipstick and an offer of a trip was almost too much pleasure for one morning. She signed, Car trip?

  “No, not in the car. A long trip. Many days.”

  Leave house?

  “Yes, leave house. Many days.”

  This made her suspicious. The only times she had left the house for many days had been during hospitalizations for pneumonia and urinary-tract infections; they had not been pleasant trips. She signed, Where go trip?

  “To the jungle, Amy.”

  There was a long pause. At first he thought she had not understood, but she knew the word for jungle, and she should be able to put it all together. Amy signed thoughtfully to herself, repetitively as she always did when she was mulling things over: Jungle trip trip jungle go trip jungle go. She set aside her lipstick. She stared at the bits of paper on the floor, and then she began to pick them up and put them in the wastebasket.

  “What does that mean?” Karen Ross asked.

  “That means Amy wants to take a trip,” Peter Elliot said.

  6. Departure

  THE HINGED NOSE OF THE BOEING 747 CARGO JET lay open like a jaw, exposing the cavernous, brightly lit interior. The plane had been flown up from Houston to San Francisco that afternoon; it was now nine o’clock at night, and puzzled workers were loading on the large aluminum travel cage, boxes of vitamin pills, a portable potty, and cartons of toys. One workman pulled out a Mickey Mouse drinking cup and stared at it, shaking his head.

  Outside on the concrete, Elliot stood with Amy, who covered her ears against the whine of the jet engines. She signed to Peter, Birds noisy.

  “We fly bird, Amy,” he said.

  Amy had never flown before, and had never seen an airplane at close hand. We go car, she decided, looking at the plane.

  “We can’t go by car. We fly.” Fly where fly? Amy signed.

  “Fly jungle.”

  This seemed to perplex her, but he did not want to explain further. Like all gorillas, Amy had an aversion to water, refusing to cross even small streams. He knew she would be distressed to hear that they would be flying over large bodies of water. Changing the subject, he suggested they board the plane and look around. As they climbed the sloping ramp up the nose, Amy signed, Where button woman?

  He had not seen Ross. for the last five hours, and was surprised to discover that she was already on board, talking on a telephone mounted on a wall of the cargo hold, one hand cupped over her free ear to block the noise. Elliot overheard her say, “Well, Irving seems to think it’s enough.

  Yes, we have four nine-oh-seven units and we are prepared to match and absorb. Two micro HUDs, that’s all. . . Yes, why not?” She finished the call, turned to Elliot and Amy.

  “Everything okay?” he asked.

  “Fine. I’ll show you around.” She led him deeper into the cargo hold, with Amy at his side. Elliot glanced back and saw the chauffeur coming up the ramp with a series of numbered metal boxes marked INTEC, INC. followed by serial numbers.

  “This,” Karen Ross said, “is the main cargo hold.” It was filled with four-wheel-drive trucks, Land Cruisers, amphibious vehicles, inflatable boats, and racks of clothing, equipment, food—all tagged with computer codes, all loaded in modules. Ross explained that ERTS could outfit expeditions to any geographical and climatic condition in a matter of hours. She kept emphasizing the speed possible with computer assembly.

  “Why the rush?” Elliot asked.

  “It’s business,” Karen Ross said. “Four years ago, there were no companies like ERTS. Now there are nine around the world, and what they all sell is competitive advantage, meaning speed. Back in the sixties, a company—say, an oil company—might spend months or years investigating a possible site. But that’s no longer competitive; business decisions are made in weeks or days. The pace of everything has speeded up. We’re already looking to the nineteen-eighties, where we’ll provide answers in hours. Right now the average ERTS contract runs a little under three weeks, or five hundred hours. But by 1990 there will be ‘close of business’ data—an executive can call us in the morning for information anywhere in the world, and have a complete report transmitted by computer to his desk before close of business that evening, say ten to twelve hours.”

  As they continued the tour, Elliot noticed that although the trucks and vehicles caught the eye first, much of the aircraft storage space was given over to aluminum modules marked “C3I.”

  “That’s right,” Ross said. “Command-Control Communications and Intelligence. They’re micronic components, the most expensive budget item we carry. When we started outfitting expeditions, twelve percent of the cost went to electronics. Now it’s up to thirty-one percent, and climbing every year. It’s field communications, remote sensing, defense, and soon.”

  She led them to the rear of the plane, where there was a modular living area, nicely furnished, with a large computer console, and bunks for sleeping.

  Amy signed, Nice house.

  ‘‘Yes, it is nice.’’

  They were introduced to Jensen, a young bearded geologist, and to Irving, who announced that he was the “triple B.” The two men were running some kind of probability study on the computer but they paused to shake hands with Amy, who regarded them gravely, and then turned her attention to the screen. Amy was captivated by the colorful screen images and bright LEDs, and kept trying to punch the keys herself. She signed, Amy play box.

  “Not now, Amy,” Elliot said, and swatted her hands away.

  Jensen asked, “Is she always this way?”

  “I’m afraid so,” Elliot- said. “She likes computers. She’s worked around them ever since she was very young, and she thinks of them as her private property.” And then he added, “What’s a triple E?”

  “Expedition electronic expert,” Irving said cheerfully. He was a short man with an impish quick smile. “Doing the best I can. We picked up some stuff from Intec, that’s about all. God knows what the Japanese and the Germans will throw at us.”

  “Oh, damn, there she goes,” Jensen said, laughing as Amy pushed the keyboard.

  Elliot said, “Amy, no!”

  “It’s just a game. Probably not interesting to apes,” Jensen said. And he added, “She can’t hurt anything.”

  Amy signed, Amy good gorilla, and pushed the keys on the computer again. She appeared relaxed, and Elliot was grateful for the distraction the computer provided. He was always amused by the sight of Amy’s heavy dark form before a computer console. She would touch her lower lip thoughtfully before pushing the keys, in what seemed a parody of human behavior.

  Ross, practical as always, brought them back to mundane matters. “Will Amy sleep on one of the bunks?”

  Elliot shook his head. “No. Gorillas expect to make a fresh bed each night. Give her some blankets, and she’ll twist them into a nest on the floor and sleep there.”

  Ross nodded. “What about her vitamins and medications? Will she swallow pills?”

  “Ordinarily you have to bribe her, or hide the pills in a piece of banana. She tends to gulp banana, without chewing it

  “Without chewing.” Ross nodded as if that were important. “We have a standard issue,” she said. “I’ll see that she gets them.”

  “She takes the same vitamins that people do, except that she’ll need lots of ascorbic acid.”

  “We issue three thousand units a day. That’s enough? Good. And she’ll tolerate anti-malarials? We have to start them right away.”

  “Generally speaking,” Elliot said, “she has the same reaction to medication as people.”

  Ross nodded. “Will the cabin pressurization bother her? It’s set at five thousand feet.”

  Elliot shook his head. “She’s a mountain gorilla, and they live at five thousa
nd to nine thousand feet, so she’s actually altitude-adapted. But she’s acclimated to a moist climate and she dehydrates quickly; we’ll have to keep forcing fluids on her.”

  “Can she use the head?”

  “The seat’s probably too high for her,” Elliot said, “but I brought her potty.”

  “She’ll use her potty?”

  “Sure.”

  “I have a new collar for her; will she wear it?”

  “If you give it to her as a gift.”

  As they reviewed other details of Amy’s requirements, Elliot realized that something had happened during the last few hours, almost without his knowing it: Amy’s unpredictable, dream-driven neurotic behavior had fallen away. It was as if the earlier behavior was irrelevant; now that she was going on a trip, she was no longer moody and introspective, her interests were outgoing; she was once again a youthful female gorilla. He found himself wondering whether her dreams, her depression—finger paintings, everything—were a result of her confined laboratory environment for so many years. At first the laboratory had been agreeable, like a crib for young children. But perhaps in later years it pinched. Perhaps, he thought, Amy just needed a little excitement.

  Excitement was in the air: as he talked with Ross, Elliot felt something remarkable was about to happen. This expedition with Amy was the first example of an event primate researchers had predicted for years—the Pearl thesis.

  Frederick Pearl was a theoretical animal behaviorist. At a meeting of the American Ethnological Society in New York in 1972, he had said, “Now that primates have learned sign language, it is only a matter of time until someone takes an animal into the field to assist the study of wild animals of the same species. We can imagine language-skilled primates acting as interpreters or perhaps even as ambassadors for mankind, in contact with wild creatures.”

  Pearl’s thesis attracted considerable attention, and funding from the U.S. Air Force, which had supported linguistic research since the l960s. According to one story, the Air Force had a secret project called CONTOUR, involving possible contact with alien life forms. The official military position was that UFOs were of natural origin—but the military was covering its bets. Should alien contact occur, linguistic fundamentals were obviously critically important. And taking primates into the field was seen as an example of contact with “alien intelligence”; hence the Air Force funding.

  Pearl predicted that fieldwork would be undertaken before 1976, but in fact no one had yet done it. The reason was that on closer examination, no one could figure out quite what the advantages were—most language-using primates were as baffled by wild primates as human beings were. Some, like the chimpanzee Arthur, denied any association with their own kind, referring to them as “black things.” (Amy, who had been taken to the zoo to view other gorillas, recognized them but was haughty, calling them “stupid gorillas” once she found that when she signed to them, they did not reply.)

  Such observations led another researcher, John Bates, to say in 1977 that “we are producing an educated animal elite which demonstrates the same snobbish aloofness that a Ph.D. shows toward a truck driver. . . . It is highly unlikely that the generation of language-using primates will be skillful ambassadors in the field. They are simply too disdainful.”

  But the truth was that no one really knew what would happen when a primate was taken into the field. Because no one had done it: Amy would be the first.

  At eleven o’clock, the ERTS cargo plane taxied down the runway at San Francisco International, lifted ponderously into the air, and headed east through the darkness toward

  Africa.

  DAY 3: TANGIER

  June 15,1979

  1. Ground Truth

  PETER ELLIOT HAD KNOWN AMY SINCE INFANCY. He prided himself on his ability to predict her responses, although he had only known her in a laboratory setting. Now, as she was faced with new situations, her behavior surprised him.

  Elliot had anticipated Amy would be terrified of the takeoff, and had prepared a syringe with Thoralen tranquilizer. But sedation proved unnecessary. Amy watched Jensen and Levine buckle their seat belts, and she immediately buckled herself in, too; she seemed to regard the procedure as an amusing, if simpleminded, game. And although her eyes widened when she heard the full mar of the engines, the human beings around her did not seem disturbed, and Amy imitated their bored indifference, raising her eyebrows and sighing at the tedium of it all.

  Once airborne, however, Amy looked out the window and immediately panicked. She released her seat belt and scurried back and forth across the passenger compartment, moving from window to window, knocking people aside in whimpering terror while she signed, Where ground ground where ground? Outside, the ground was black and indistinct. Where ground? Elliot shot her with Thoralen and then began grooming her, sitting her down and plucking at her hair.

  In the wild, primates devoted several hours each day to grooming one another, removing ticks and lice. Grooming behavior was important in ordering the group’s social dominance structure—there was a pattern by which animals groomed each other, and with what frequency. And, like back rubs for people, grooming seemed to have a soothing, calming effect. Within minutes, Amy had relaxed enough to notice that the others were drinking, and she promptly demanded a “green drop drink”—her term for a martini with an olive—and a cigarette. She was allowed this on special occasions such as departmental parties, and Elliot now gave her a drink and a cigarette.

  But the excitement proved too much for her: an hour later, she was quietly looking out the window and signing Nice picture to herself when she vomited. She apologized abjectly, Amy sorry Amy mess Amy Amy sorry.

  “It’s all right, Amy,” Elliot assured her, stroking the back of her head. Soon afterward, signing Amy sleep now, she twisted the blankets into a nest on the floor and went to sleep, snoring loudly through her broad nostrils. Lying next to her, Elliot thought, how do other gorillas get to sleep with this racket?

  Elliot had his own reaction to the journey. When he had first met Karen Ross, he assumed she was an academic like himself. But this enormous airplane filled with computerized equipment, the acronymic complexity of the entire operation suggested that Earth Resources Technology had powerful resources behind it, perhaps even a military association.

  Karen Ross laughed. “We’re much too organized to be military.” She then told him the background of the ERTS interest in Virunga. Like the Project Amy staff, Karen Ross had also stumbled upon the legend of the Lost City of Zinj. But she had drawn very different conclusions from the story.

  During the last three hundred years, there had been several attempts to reach the lost city. In 1692, John Marley, an English adventurer, led an expedition of two hundred into the Congo; it was never heard from again. In 1744, a Dutch expedition went in; in 1804, another British party led by a Scottish aristocrat, Sir James Taggert, approached Virunga from the north, getting as far as the Rawana bend of the Ubangi River. He sent an advance party farther south, but it never returned.

  In 1872, Stanley passed near the Virunga region but did not enter it; in 1899, a German expedition went in, losing more than half its party. A privately financed Italian expedition disappeared entirely in 1911. There had been no more recent searches for the Lost City of Zinj.

  “So no one has ever found it,” Elliot said.

  Ross shook her head. “I think several expeditions found the city,” she said. “But nobody ever got back out again.”

  Such an outcome was not necessarily mysterious. The early days of African exploration were incredibly hazardous. Even carefully managed expeditions lost half of their party or more. Those who did not succumb to malaria, sleeping sickness, and blackwater fever faced rivers teeming with crocodiles and hippos, jungles with leopards and suspicious, cannibalistic natives. And, for all its luxuriant growth, the rain forest provided little edible food; a number of expeditions had starved to death.

  “I began,” Ross said to Elliot, “with the idea that the ci
ty existed, after all. Assuming it existed, where would I find it?”

  The Lost City of Zinj was associated with diamond mines, and diamonds were found with volcanoes. This led Ross to look along the Great Rift Valley—an enormous geological fault thirty miles wide, which sliced vertically up the eastern third of the continent for a distance of fifteen hundred miles. The Rift Valley was so huge that its existence was not recognized until the 1890s, when a geologist named Gregory noticed that the cliff walls thirty miles apart were composed of the same rocks. In modern terms the Great Rift was actually an abortive attempt to form an ocean, for the eastern third of the continent had begun splitting off from the rest of the African land mass two hundred million years ago; for some reason, it had stopped before the break was complete.

  On a map the Great Rift depression was marked by two features: a series of thin vertical lakes—Malawi, Tanganyika, Kivu, Mobutu—and a series of volcanoes, including the only active volcanoes in Africa at Virunga. Three volcanoes in the Virunga chain were active: Mukenko, Mubuti, and Kanagarawi. They rose 11,000— 15,000 feet above the Rift Valley to the east, and the Congo Basin to the west. Thus Virunga seemed a good place to look for diamonds. Her next step was to investigate the ground truth.

  “What’s ground truth?” Peter asked.

  “At ERTS, we deal mostly in remote sensing,” she explained. “Satellite photographs, aerial run-bys, radar side scans. We carry millions of remote images, but there’s no substitute for ground truth, the experience of a team actually on the site, finding out what’s there. I started with the preliminary expedition we sent in looking for gold. They found diamonds as well.” She punched buttons on the console, and the screen images changed, glowing with dozens of flashing pinpoints of light.