Congo - Crichton Michael. Страница 43

He was a large male with silver hair down his back. His massive head stood mote than six feet above the ground, and his barrel chest indicated that he weighed more than four hundred pounds. Seeing him, Elliot understood why the first explorers to the Congo had believed gorillas to be “hairy men,” for this magnificent creature looked like, a gigantic man, both in size and shape.

At Elliot’s back Ross whispered, “What do we do?”

“Stay behind me,” Elliot said, “and don’t move.”

The silverback male dropped to all fours briefly, and began a soft ho-ho-ho sound, which grew more intense as he leapt to his feet again, grabbing handfuls of grass as he did so. He threw the grass in the air, and then beat his chest with flat palms, making a hollow thumping sound.

“Oh, no,” Ross said.

The chest-beating lasted five seconds, and then the male dropped to all fours again. He ran sideways across the grass, slapping the foliage and making as much noise as possible, to frighten the intruders off. Finally he began the ho-ho-ho sound once more.

The male stared at Elliot, expecting that this display would send him running. When it did not, the male leapt to his feet, Pounded his chest, and roared with even greater fury.

And then he charged.

With a howling scream he came crashing forward at frightening speed, directly toward Elliot. Elliot heard Ross gasp behind him. He wanted to turn and run, his every bodily instinct screamed that he should run, but he forced himself to stand absolutely still-and to look down at the ground.

Staring at his feet while he listened to the gorilla crashing through the tall grass toward him, he had the sudden sensation that all his abstract book knowledge was wrong, that everything that scientists around the world thought about gorillas was wrong. He had a mental image of the huge head and the deep chest and the long arms swinging wide as the powerful animal rushed toward an easy kill, a stationary target foolish enough to believe all the academic misinformation sanctified by print.

The gorilla (who must have been quite close) made a snorting noise, and Elliot could see his heavy shadow on. the grass near his feet. But he did not look up until the shadow moved away.

When Elliot raised his head, he saw the male gorilla retreating backward, toward the far edge of the clearing. There the male turned, and scratched his head in a puzzled way, as if wondering why his terrifying: display had not driven off the intruders. He slapped the ground a final time, and then he and the rest of the troop melted away into the tall grass. It was silent in the clearing until Ross collapsed into Elliot’s arms.

“Well,” Munro said as he came up, “it seems you know a thing or two about gorillas after all.” Munro patted Ross’s arm. “It’s all right. They don’t do anything unless you run away. Then they bite you on the ass. That’s the mark for cowardice in these regions-because it means you ran away.”

Ross was sobbing quietly, and Elliot discovered that his own knees were shaky; he went to sit down. It had all happened so fast that it was a few moments before he realized that these gorillas had behaved in exactly the textbook manner, which included not making any verbalizations even remotely like speech.

3. The Consortium

AN HOUR LATER THEY FOUND THE WRECKAGE OF the C-130 transport. The largest airplane in the world appeared in correct scale as it lay half buried in the jungle, the gigantic nose crushed against equally gigantic trees, the enormous tail section twisted toward the ground, the massive wings buckled casting shadows on the jungle floor.

Through the shattered cockpit windshield, they saw the body of the pilot, covered with black flies. The flies buzzed and thumped against the glass as they peered in. Moving aft, they tried to look into the fuselage windows, but even on crumpled landing gear the body of the plane stood too high above the jungle floor.

Kahega managed to climb an overturned tree, and from there moved onto one wing and looked into the interior. “No people,” he said.

“Supplies?”

“Yes, many supplies. Boxes and containers.” Munro left the others, walking beneath the crushed tail section to examine the far side of the plane. The port wing, concealed from their view, was blackened and shattered, the engines gone. That explained why the plane crashed-the last FZA missile had found its target, blowing away most of the port wing. Yet the wreck remained oddly mysterious to Munro; something about its appearance was wrong. He looked along the length of the fuselage, from the crushed nose, down the line of windows, past the stump of wing, past the rear exit doors…

“I’ll be damned,” Munro said softly.

He hurried back to the others, who were sitting on one of the tires, in the shadow of the starboard wing The tire was so enormous that Ross could sit on it and swing her feet in the air without touching the ground.

“Well,” Ross said, with barely concealed satisfaction.

“They didn’t get their damn supplies.”

“No,” Munro said. “And we saw this plane the night before last, which means it’s been down at least thirty-six hours.”

Munro waited for Ross to figure it out.

“Thirty-six hours?”

“That’s right. Thirty-six hours.”

“And they never came back to get their supplies

“They didn’t even try to get them,” Munro said. “Look at the main cargo doors, fore and aft-no one has tried to open them. I wonder why they never came back?”

In a section of dense jungle, the ground underfoot

crunched and crackled. Pushing aside the palm fronds, they saw a carpeting of shattered white bones.

“Kanyamagufa," Munro said. The place of bones. He glanced quickly at the porters to see what their reaction was, but they showed only puzzlement, no fear. They were East African Kikuyu and they had none of the superstitions of the tribes that bordered the rain forest.

Amy lifted her feet from the sharp bleached fragments. She signed, Ground hurt.

Elliot signed, What place this?

We come bad place.

What bad place?

Amy had no reply.

“These are bones!” Ross said, staring down at the ground.

“That’s right,” Munro said quickly, “but they’re not human bones. Are they, Elliot?”

Elliot was also looking at the ground. He saw bleached skeletal remains from several species, although he could not immediately identify any of them.

“Elliot? Not human?”

“They don’t look human,” Elliot agreed, staring at the ground. The first thing he noticed was that the majority of the bones came from distinctly small animals-birds, monkeys, and tiny forest rodents. Other small pieces were actually fragments from larger animals, but how large was hard to say. Perhaps large monkeys-but there weren’t any large monkeys in the rain forest.

Chimpanzees? There were no chimps in this part of the Congo. Perhaps they might be gorillas: he saw one fragment from a cranium with heavy frontal sinuses, and he saw the beginning of the characteristic sagittal crest.

“Elliot?” Munro said, his voice tense, insistent. “Nonhuman?”

“Definitely non-human,” Elliot said, staring. What could shatter a gorilla skull? It must have happened after death, he decided. A gorilla had died and after many years the bleached skeleton had been crushed in some fashion. Certainly it could not have happened during life.

“Not human,” Munro said, looking at the ground. “Hell of a lot of bones, but nothing human.” As he walked past Elliot, he gave him a look. Keep your mouth shut. “Kahega and his men know that you are expert in these matters,”

Munro said, looking at him steadily.

What had Munro seen? Certainly he had been around enough death to know a human skeleton when he saw one. Elliot’s glance fell on a curved bone. It looked a bit like a turkey wishbone, only much larger and broader, and white with age. He picked it up. It was a fragment of the zygomatic arch from a human skull. A cheekbone, from beneath the eye.