Congo - Crichton Michael - Страница 35

Ross was gratified to see the little screen glow in a multicolored image-a map of their position in the Congo. She punched in the field position lock, and a light blinked on the screen. Words appeared in “shortline,” the compressed language devised for small-screen imagery. F I L D TME-POSITN CHEK; PLS CONFRM LOCL TME 18:04 H 6/17/79. She confirmed that it was indeed just after 6 P.M. at their location. Immediately, overlaid lines produced a scrambled pattern as their Field Time-Position was measured against the computer simulation run in Houston before their departure.

Ross was prepared for bad news. According to her mental calculations, they had fallen some seventy-odd hours behind their projected timeline, and some twenty-odd hours behind the consortium.

Their original plan had called for them to jump onto the slopes of Mukenko at 2 P.M. on June 17, arriving at Zinj approximately thirty-six hours later, around midday of June 19. This would have put them onsite nearly two days before the consortium.

However, the SAM attack forced them to jump eighty miles south of their intended drop zone. The jungle terrain before them was varied, and they could expect to pick up time rafting on rivers, but it would still take a minimum of three days to go eighty miles.

That meant that they could no longer expect to beat the consortium to the site. Instead of arriving forty-eight hours ahead, they would be lucky if they arrived only twenty-four hours too late.

To her surprise, the screen blinked: FILD TME-POSITN CHEK: -09: 04 H WEL DUN. They were only nine hours off their simulation timeline.

“What does that mean?” Munro asked, looking at the screen.

There was only one possible conclusion. “Something has slowed the consortium,” Ross said.

On the screen they read EURO/NIP0N C0NSRTIM LEGL TRUBL GOMA AIRPRT ZAIR THEIR AIRCRFT FOUND RADIOACTIVE TUF LUK FOR THEM.

“Travis has been working back in Houston,” Ross said. She could imagine what it must have cost ERTS to put in the fix at the rural airport in Goma. “But it means we can still do it, if we can make up the nine hours.”

“We can do it,” Munro said.

In the light of the setting equatorial sun, Moruti camp gleamed like a cluster of dazzling jewels-a silver dish antenna, and five silver-domed tents, all reflecting the fiery sun. Peter Elliot sat on the hilltop with Amy and stared at the rain forest spread out below them. As night fell, the first hazy strands of mist appeared; and as the darkness deepened and water vapor condensed in the cooling air, the forest became shrouded in dense, darkening fog.

DAY 6: LIKO

1. Rain Forest

THE NEXT MORNING THEY ENTERED THE HUMID perpetual gloom of the Congo rain forest.

Munro noted the return of old feelings of oppression and claustrophobia, tinged with a strange, overpowering lassitude. As a Congo mercenary in the 1960s, he had avoided the jungle wherever possible. Most military engagements had occurred in open spaces-in the Belgian colonial towns, along riverbanks, beside the red dirt roads. Nobody wanted to fight in the jungle; the mercenaries hated it, and the superstitious Sambas feared it. When the mercenaries advanced, the rebels often fled into the bush, but they never went very far, and Munro’s troops never pursued them. They just waited for them to come out again.

Even in. the 1960s the jungle remained terra incognita, -an unknown land with the power to hold the technology of mechanized warfare beyond its periphery. And with good reason, Munro thought. Men just did not belong there. He was not pleased to be back.

Elliot, never having been in a rain forest, was fascinated. The jungle was different -from the way he had imagined it to be. He was totally unprepared for the scale-the gigantic trees soaring over his head, the trunks as broad as a house, the thick snaking moss-covered roots. To move in the vast space beneath these trees was like being in a very dark cathedral: the sun was completely blocked, and he could not get an exposure reading on his camera.

He had also expected the jungle to be much denser than it was. Their party moved through it freely; in a surprising way it seemed barren and silent-there were occasional birdcalls and cries from monkeys, but otherwise a profound stillness settled over them. And it was oddly monotonous: although he saw every shade of green in the foliage and the clinging creeper vines, there were few flowers or blooms. Even the occasional orchids seemed pale and muted.

He had expected rotting decay at every turn, but that was not true either. The ground underfoot was often firm, and the air had a neutral smell. But it was incredibly hot, and it seemed as though everything was wet-the leaves, the ground, the trunks of the trees, the oppressively still air itself, trapped under the overhanging trees.

Elliot would have agreed with Stanley’s description from a century before: “Overhead the wide-spreading branches absolutely shut out the daylight.. We marched in a feeble twilight… The dew dropped and pattered on us incessantly… Our clothes were heavily saturated with it.

Perspiration exuded from every pore, for the atmosphere was stifling… What a forbidding aspect had the Dark Unknown which confronted us!”

Because Elliot had looked forward to his first experience of the equatorial African rain forest, he was surprised at how quickly he felt oppressed-and how soon he entertained thoughts of leaving again. Yet the tropical rain forests had spawned most new life forms, including man. The jungle was not one uniform environment but many different microenvironments, arranged vertically like a layer cake. Each microenvironment supported a bewildering profusion of plant and animal life, but there were typically few members of each species. The tropical jungle supported four times as many species of animal life as a comparable temperate forest. As he walked through the forest, Elliot found himself thinking of it as an enormous hot, dark womb, a place where new species were nourished in unchanging conditions until they were ready to migrate out to the harsher and more variable temperate zones. That was the way it had been for millions of years.

Amy’s behavior immediately changed as she entered the vast humid darkness of her original home. In retrospect, Elliot believed he could have predicted her reaction, had he Thought it through clearly.

Amy no longer kept up with the group.

She insisted on foraging along the trail, pausing to sit and chew tender shoots and grasses. She could not be budged or hurried, and ignored Elliot’s requests that she stay with them. She ate lazily, a pleasant, rather vacant expression on her face. In shafts of sunlight, she would lie on her back, and belch, and sigh contentedly.

“What the hell is this all about?” Ross asked, annoyed. They were not making good time.

“She’s become a gorilla again,” Elliot said. “Gorillas are vegetarians, and they spend nearly all day eating; they’re large animals, and they need a lot of food.” Amy had immediately reverted to these traits.

“Well, can’t you make her keep up with us?”

“I’m trying. She won’t pay attention to me.” And he knew why-Amy was finally back in a world where Peter Elliot was irrelevant, where she herself could find food and security and shelter, and everything else that she wanted.

“School’s out,” Munro said, summarizing the situation. But he had a solution. “Leave her,” he said crisply, and he led the party onward. He took Elliot firmly by the elbow. “Don’t look back,” he said. “Just walk on. Ignore her.”

They continued for several minutes in silence. Elliot said, “She may not follow us.” “Come, come, Professor,” Munro said. “I thought you knew about gorillas.”