Orphan of Creation (23 page)

There was little for Livingston to do but wander the town and drink too much
cafe noir
at the two grotty little restaurants and this depressing little café. The only other amusement was to be astonished at how fast the plants grew, how heavy the rains were, how humid and muggy the nights were, how ferocious the mosquitoes were.

The jungle seemed closer here, more powerful and determined, as if it would conquer the town overnight if humankind turned its back for a moment. It was a point driven home on the ride here, when they reached the rear guard of the rail-building crew and then had slowly driven past the army of men who were cutting back the jungle to lay the steel road. They had passed the supply wagons, the camps, the mess tents, the supply dumps, driven past the track-laying machines—the whole elaborate army needed to fight through the jungle. M. Ovono had maneuvered his Land Rover past bulldozers and the earthmoving gear, huge machines grinding and hacking away at the sinews of the forest, a nightmare noise of diesel engines and trees falling and men shouting—and then they were past the head of earthmoving team, ahead of the lead work gang.

M. Ovono followed the old dirt path to Makokou, driving straight into the wall of trees. In the moment they entered the trees, the sound of men working on the railroads stopped, abruptly, sharply, like a switch being thrown, the world of men swallowed up by the jungle and its own sounds.

When they had started out on the trip, Liv had been shocked by the railroad’s violation of the forest, the cruel clear-cutting. He had given a silent cheer when he saw some evidence of the jungle’s fighting back—a stand of saplings popping up inside the clear-cut line, a wall of bamboo growing back where it had been cut down, new-growth vines and creepers swarming over the felled trees, reaching out tendrils toward the track.

Not anymore. Not after they arrived in Makokou and M. Ovono pointed out an abandoned house with trees growing
through
the porch, sprouting up out of holes the branches had punched in the roof. The foundation of the house had collapsed, churned up and thrown over by termites, so that the entire structure twisted and sagged drunkenly. The remains of the roof were barely visible under heavy mats of moss and tangles of vines. Birds and lizards lived in it—and M. Ovono told them the house had been occupied eighteen months before! Liv had always thought of Nature as the underdog, a subdued and fragile entity, and thought of humanity as having her on the ropes. But slogging through the virgin rain forest, wandering the overgrown streets of Makokou, living in a world where it seemed all light was filtered to dark green by the endless foliage—all of that had changed his mind. Nature was no delicate and fading thing of beauty here, but a tough, vigorous opponent who could defeat and destroy all humanity’s work in a moment if she so chose.

It was, Livingston decided as he finished his coffee and dug out a wad of CFA francs to pay for it, one hell of a depressing town.

<>

Barbara was concentrating hard on writing her paper, not really listening to the world around, not registering the banging noise behind her. Finally she came to herself enough to realize that someone was pounding on her door. She turned around. “Come in!” she said.

Rupert, Clark, and Ovono came bursting into her room. “Found ‘em!” Rupert announced triumphantly. He dropped gratefully into a chair and sighed. “At least we’ve got directions that should bring us to them. Mister Ovono found these guys who were hiking along about a month ago and stumbled into some slash-and-burn fields. They saw their camp and were able to find the spot on a map.”

“And you know how to get there?” Barbara asked.

“Piece of cake. Drive three blocks, come to the traffic light, and turn green. About three days from here.”

“Perhaps less, depending on how far M. Ovono can get his Land Rover,” Clark said. “But our informants were very sure it was the Utaani. They didn’t know until they asked the tribesmen, and they were plenty scared when they found out. These fellows we talked to wander around trading, selling pots and pans and so on. You can bet they got the devil out of there as soon as they could, didn’t even try to make a sale. One of them even claimed to have seen a
tranka
on the way out, though since he claimed the thing was hovering in mid-air I’m not sure I’ll believe that part. Probably just a lemur that they spooked. But I’m thoroughly convinced they saw the Utaani village. Too many details matched—the language the villagers spoke, the slash-and-burn farming. Besides, after all the research we’ve done around here, the Utaani were just about the one tribe we hadn’t accounted for. And the village site they pointed out is nowhere near any of the other tribal villages around here. We’ve found them. If we can get packed up and ready, we should be able to leave tomorrow at first light.”

Barbara shut off the computer and stood up. “Then let’s get moving. This place is driving me nuts.” She turned to Monsieur Ovono and smiled. “
Merci, M’sieu Ovono,”
she said carefully, using up a significant fraction of her store of French.

Ovono grinned delightedly. “You ess welcome much!” he replied, using up all of his English.

They both laughed and Barbara shook his hand. “You guys start packing up,” she said. “I’m going to go find Liv and give him the good news.” She took her leave of her friends and hurried out into the night.

<>

M. Ovono yanked the distributor cap off the engine and slammed the hood shut. There was a hasp set into the front of the hood. Ovono closed it, put a heavy lock through it, turned the key, and pocketed it. He wrapped the distributor cap up in a bit of clean rag, then put it in a drawstring bag with the sparkplugs.

“People in the jungle can be quite honest, but now we are certain no one will find my Rover and drive off with it, eh?” he asked Rupert in French as he handed him the bag. Ovono walked once more around the Rover, making sure all the doors were locked against thieves, all the windows were sealed against the weather. The exhaust pipe was plugged to prevent anything from making a nest there, the radio aerial was stowed away, the spare tire and other external gear were locked up inside the Rover. Ovono took the bag of parts back from Rupert, placed it carefully in his backpack, and put the backpack on.

They had gone a fair distance along the road, which had slowly dwindled to a trail, a game path, and now, finally, to a single-file track through the jungle. The rest of the party shouldered their packs and set off down the trail, following Ovono.

This was it, Barbara thought. The last leg of the journey, the end of the road she had started down when she had broken open Grandfather Zebulon’s trunk. She rearranged her pack straps more comfortably and kept on walking.

<>

This might be the last leg of the trip, Barbara thought, but it was certainly also the longest. So far it had been three days of slogging through the jungle, making barely perceptible progress down the overgrown path, swatting flies, pulling off leeches if they chanced to cross a stream, sweating endlessly, their backpacks growing heavier with every step, the virulent-green jungle reaching out with its endless leaves and thorns and vines and mud to stop them. The dim light would suddenly darken, a sign of thick clouds forming overhead, and the heavens would open almost without warning, drenching the miserable travelers. When the skies cleared, they could scarcely tell under the blanketing foliage, and when the rains were over, the water would drip and pour off the trees and leaves long after the downpour had ended, so they could scarcely tell sunshine from shower.

The nights were more miserable still. Ovono, knowing with how little warning the sunset came, would stop them in the day’s march when it was still full light, as soon as he found some sort of clearing. He would set them to work clearing the underbrush and setting the mosquito netting while he built a fire. No sooner was the blaze going when the dim, shadowless daylight, filtered and diffused through the interminable layers of green above, gave way to impenetrable darkness, and the night cries of the forest began. Each night passed with infinite slowness, one person on watch, the others curled up in their sleeping bags in exquisite discomfort, restless on the hard ground, caught in a murky half-sleep, half-wakefulness as exhaustion battled with the mosquitoes, the night cries, and bodies aching in every bone and joint. Finally, the night would depart as suddenly as it had come, the halfhearted light of morning would sift down through the trees and waken them, and another weary day would begin.

In the morning, at the midday rest break, in the evening, Ovono forced them to eat no matter how tired or unhungry they were. They needed food to battle the heat and the exertion of the journey. Barbara gave thanks more than once that Ovono had volunteered to come with them on the final leg of the journey. They never could have managed this trip on their own.

Now, on the afternoon of the third day, they were so tired they didn’t realize it at first when they came across the edge of an old slash-and-burn field, so overgrown that the furrows and rows were barely visible. It was Ovono who called out and pointed to the burn-over. “We are most close now,” Ovono announced in French. “All is just as our two informants said it was.” Instantly, Barbara felt the adrenaline pumping through her veins. They had to be close!

Ovono grinned mischievously for a moment. “So let us keep an eye out for the
tranka
they warned us of.” Then he turned and started walking again.

Rupert cleared his throat and glanced at Clark. They had never really managed to make it clear to Ovono that the
tranka
were presumably real, and were the animals they were after. He shrugged to Clark and followed Ovono down the path.

Half an hour later, Barbara held up a hand for silence. As soon as they stopped walking, they could all hear it—the unmistakable sound of wood being chopped, shouts carried by the wind, a fire crackling, and a dozen other tiny noises that only came from a human settlement. Barbara sniffed and realized she had been smelling cooking meat, and the slightest hint of wood smoke carried by the wind.

There was a tiny flicker of movement visible through the endless wall of trees, and the travelers instinctively crouched down and froze.

Another flicker of motion. Another. Now it was clear that something was moving down a path that ran parallel to their own. A man. No, several men, the leader clothed in a simple breechclout and carrying a walking stick, the others naked—

—No, not men. Just one man. Barbara gasped. The figures behind the leader weren’t human. On two legs, yes, but not human. Not human at all.

Chapter Fifteen

Jeffery Grossington opened the package marked
Strictly Personal
with no particular emotion or premonition. He noticed the Gowrie postmark and thought perhaps Barbara’s great-aunt was sending along some papers he had left behind. It was with a dull, leaden sense of shock that he pulled out the photographs and realized what they were, and it was with a feeling of something close to despair that he read the story this Peter Ardley person had written. Grossington had expected the story to leak some time, but not this soon, and not this completely. And with the telegram that had arrived from Barbara yesterday saying they were off to find the Utaani and might be out of touch for weeks—it was the worst possible time for this to happen.

But had it really happened? Had the news
really
gotten out far enough so the whole world would pay attention? This Ardley character just seemed to be a reporter for the local paper down there. Maybe the story would stay local. Perhaps it would be some time before the national press got hold of the story—if they believed it all it.

With a shock, Grossington realized
he
was treating the story as if it wasn’t true, as if it was a rumor he could and should deny, squelch before it reached widespread attention. The trouble was, Ardley’s story told nothing but the exact truth, though God only knew how he had arrived at that truth. So what to do now? He felt as if his brain were stuck, with no useful thought or idea able to find its way out. He stared long and hard at the exterior pictures of his examination of Tail-End Charlie, trying to think of a way to undo the damage that had been done. He found the only notion he could summon up, ridiculously enough, was that the photos really were very good likenesses of him.

He pulled himself together, picked up the phone and pressed the intercom key. If the story was out, his job was to get the facts out as accurately as he could. “Harriet, talk to the Public Affairs people and see about arranging a press conference in the next day or so. I’ll want to notify the long press list, not just the local science reporters, so we’ll need a large room. But first, see if you can’t get me through to the Secretary’s office. It seems the boss is going to hear about what we’ve been doing, so he might as well hear it from me.”

<>

Barbara’s heart was pounding in her chest as they entered the village. What, if anything, was there to prevent these people from killing them all? What would the natives and visitors
say
to each other?

That was not the only thing that frightened her. She had seen that line of figures walking a few minutes before, seen the way they were led, seen, in a few seconds’ glimpse, a hundred tiny details of action and behavior that told her what she was seeing. It had never really dawned on her that the Utaani kept the australopithecines, the
tranka
, as slaves. She had imagined the Utaani as simply
knowing
about the
tranka
, perhaps being able to find them, able to tell Barbara where they were, share some woodsy lore so she could find them to study. But
slaves
. It was so obvious, now that she considered it, that she wondered how she could ever have thought otherwise. But slaves did not exist anymore in her world. How could she have known? And in any event, could animals—even animals in human form—
be
slaves?

They reached the central clearing of the village and stopped. Barbara looked around nervously. The village was a miserable spot, a degraded, colorless, spiritless place of grey, cloying mists. The smells of rotting, spoiled food and decaying human waste were everywhere. No living thing grew in the grey, gullied mud of the village clearing. Most of the huts were ramshackle things that seemed to be threatening to collapse at any moment.

At first, as they entered the clearing, the village had seemed empty of life, silent in spite of all the sounds they had heard from the trail. But now, slowly, faces were appearing from around the doorways of huts, children were peeking out from behind their mothers’ legs, men were sidling in from the fields.

Barbara was glad she could see no weapons, but she took no real comfort from that. They could be hidden anywhere.

Monsieur Ovono was even more rattled than Barbara. He had never believed in the
tranka
, had never understood, or even cared, what the party was looking for. He had been far less prepared than the others for the sight of those inhuman apparitions on the path. But
he
was the one who would have to speak for the visitors. No one else knew the language—assuming he and the Utaani shared a mutually intelligible dialect.

A small knot of Utaani villagers was slowly forming in front of them. One, a tall, muscular man with greying hair, stepped forward. He was wearing an ornate necklace that looked like it had just been hurriedly put on for the ceremony of meeting a stranger, judging by the way the beads were tangled up.

Ovono recognized him as the chief and stepped forward himself, holding his hands out, palms up and pointing at the sky. He bowed and spoke a few works of Eshiri. The chief answered back, and Ovono smiled nervously at him. Ovono turned to Rupert and spoke in French. “I have said hello, we mean no harm, and the chief has said no harm will come to honest visitors, and that he has never seen skin and hair like yours, though he has heard there were such people. He asks why you come here. You are here to see those creatures, of course, but would that be the wisest thing to tell these people?”

Rupert turned to Barbara, Clark, and Livingston. The situation would have been absurd, if it had not been so frightening. They were surrounded by a whole tribe of edgy Africans, with a trusty guide translating for them, and the very clear sense that if they didn’t talk smoothly enough, they were dead. “Okay, gang, now what?” Rupert asked. “The natives are getting restless, if you’ll pardon the expression. What can we say that won’t freak them out? Should we ask if they’ll have us for dinner, or what?”

Clark stepped forward. “Let me,” he said, and went on in French. “Monsieur Ovono, ask if there are not tales that tell of people like us coming before?”

Ovono relayed the question. The chief consulted with some of the men standing with him before he answered. He spoke, and Ovono nodded. “Yes,” Ovono said, “but not in the lifetime of this chief or his father. But they came, and were peaceful traders who did no harm and did not come to pry.”

Clark thought quickly and said, “Tell him
our
legends tell of just such a meeting, and
we
have come in the footsteps of that trader.”

The idea seemed to appeal to Ovono, and he translated it hurriedly.

The chief smiled and gestured for them to step closer as he spoke. “In that case,” Ovono translated into French, “all is well.” As the Utaani pressed around them, Rupert hurried relayed what was going on to Livingston and Barbara. They moved toward the center of the clearing, and their hosts clustered in around them. Caught up in the middle of a crowd of tribesmen curious to get a look at these strange new people, Livingston found himself wondering just how well all was going to turn out to be.

<>

With a nice calculation of how fast the mails traveled, Pete picked up the phone to call Grossington a hour after the scientist had received the package. This was going to require delicate handling, but Pete had thought it all out beforehand. With all his notes carefully arranged in front of him, he dialed the call.

A secretary at the other end answered. “Dr. Grossington, please,” Pete said.

“May I tell him who’s calling?”

“Pete Ardley from the Gowrie
Gazette
.”

“One moment,” the secretary said, and there was the quiet
clunk
of a hold button. After the briefest of delays a gruff old man’s voice came on the line. “Hello?”

“Dr. Grossington?”

“Yes.”

“This is Pete Ardley of the Gowrie
Gazette
. Have you received my package?”

“Yes, I have,” Grossington replied, his voice betraying some degree of nervousness. “Might I ask why you are calling me?”

“In a way, to apologize, Doctor. I wanted to talk with you before we went to press on the story,” Pete lied, “but my editor said no. He felt the whole thing was a hoax and you shouldn’t be given any warning about it being blown. As it stands, the story I sent you will appear in tomorrow’s edition. Already at the printers.”

“I see. Well, it appears the damage is done,” Grossington said. “I really don’t see the point in discussing it further.”

“I’m afraid that the damage goes a bit further than that,” Pete said. “The story is also going out on the wire, along with several of the photographs I sent you. And copies of the package you’ve got have gone to the Washington
Post
and the New York
Times
. I apologize for that, as well,” Pete said, “but I’m afraid there was no real way around it.” That last statement, as far as it went, wasn’t a lie, but it was as close as the truth could get to being false. True, if the goal was to further Pete Ardley’s ambitions, there
was
no way around it.

Pete knew the first rule of effective lying—tell as much of the truth as you can. Right now the goal of his lying was to get Grossington to feel as if Pete was on his side, so he might be willing to talk. But even so, he felt a little bad about it. Grossington seemed a decent enough old guy, and Pete was giving him trouble. He reminded himself that this story was important, and that if it was true, it belonged to the world. No bunch of scientists had the right to parcel out the facts when they saw fit.

“Your apology doesn’t do much to make my position any easier,” Dr. Grossington said irritably.

“No, but
maybe
you can help me patch things up for you,” Pete said in his most earnest voice. He was betting that Grossington had little experience of reporters. If that were so, his trick might work. “Nothing has reached the public yet on all this, and you can bet the
Post
and the
Times
are going to do some fact-checking before they publish.
If
you can give me a credible denial, something that explains what really happened down here and accounts for the facts we’ve got, I should be able to get my editor to print a withdrawal and send word to the other news organizations that it was all a misunderstanding. The only published report in that case would be in one tiny little hometown paper.
Can
you give me a good denial to take to my editor?”

There was silence from the other end of the phone, and with each denial-free second it lasted, Pete felt more jubilant—and more guilty. He didn’t like playing these games on the old guy, but that silence made him even more certain that the whole improbable story was true. He had gone out on a limb, and it wasn’t going to be cut off. Finally, Pete heard a long, unhappy sigh.

“No, Mr. Ardley,” Grossington replied, “I’m afraid I can’t deny it. For the simple reason that it is true. We don’t know how, we don’t know why, but about a hundred and thirty-seven years ago, at least five members of a nonhuman hominid species, a species that was supposedly extinct these last million years, were buried in Mississippi. And we’ve just dug them up.”

“I see,” Pete said, trying for a sympathetic tone to his voice. “I’m afraid that changes the situation, doesn’t it?”

“Don’t try to play games with me, Ardley,” Grossington snapped backed irritably. “You’re a reporter, and a reporter wants a story, and my saying ‘no, it’s all a mistake’ is no damn story at all. You’ve got the biggest scoop of your life, and you’re trying to figure out how to run with it.”

“Of course it’s a hell of a story,” Pete said. “I ought to know. I wrote it. But that doesn’t make it impossible for me to sympathize with your predicament. The word is out now, and there’s nothing that can be done about that. Now the question is, how do you handle it now that it’s out there? I think I can help.”

“I’m all ears,” Grossington said. “I’m sure you’ve got nothing in mind but my well-being. You’re just chasing a story, Ardley, and you don’t care who gets hurt.”

“Sure, right. Look, think what you want,” Pete said, starting to feel annoyed. “But this is my
job
, Doctor. Getting the truth to the public quickly. Maybe I’m a little sneaky and dishonest in the way I go about things at times, but I have to be that way if I want to get the job done. And before you sneer at me, let me ask you a question. If we waited until you were ready, how long would it be until the world learned about those skulls?”

“I honestly don’t know. At least some months. Maybe longer. We need time to study the facts, follow the leads this has opened up—”

“Have you considered what that means? In the year or two or three until you’re good and ready to talk, what happens to the rest of us?” Pete demanded, surprised at himself. Even as he spoke, he knew he shouldn’t be handling a source this way. “This isn’t some dry little gentlemen’s scientific disagreement. It affects all of us. The people’s right to know is important here. There’s a big debate over creationism versus evolution in the world today. People are deciding whether schoolbooks should even be allowed to mention the
word
evolution.