Page 8 (1/2)
DAY 6: LIKO
June 18, 1979
1Rain Forest
THE NEXT MORNING THEY ENTERED THE HUMID perpetual glooo rain forest
Munro noted the return of old feelings of oppression and claustrophobia, tinged with a strange, overpowering lassitude As a Congo le wherever possible Most ian 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&039;s troops never pursued theain
Even in the 1960s the jungle renita, -an unknown land with the power to hold the technology of ood 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 -froined 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 Toin a very dark cathedral: the sun was co on his cale to be h 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 theh he saw every shade of green in the foliage and the clinging creeper vines, there were feers or blooms Even the occasional orchids see decay at every turn, but that was not true either The ground underfoot was often firm, and the air had a neutral sh everything et - 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&039;s description fro branches absolutely shut out the daylightWe htThe dew dropped and pattered on us incessantlyOur clothes were heavily saturated with it
Perspiration exuded froWhat a forbidding aspect had the Dark Unknohich 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 le was not one unifored vertically like a layer cake Eachprofusion of plant and animal life, but there were typically few le supported four times as many species of anih the forest, Elliot found hi of it as an enormous hot, dark wo conditions until they were ready to rate out to the harsher and more variable temperate zones That was the way it had been for ed as she entered the vast huinal home In retrospect, Elliot believed he could have predicted her reaction, had he Thought it through clearly
Aing along the trail, pausing to sit and chew tender shoots and grasses She could not be budged or hurried, and ignored Elliot&039;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 ain," Elliot said "Gorillas are vegetarians, and they spend nearly all day eating; they&039;re large animals, and they need a lot of food" Amy had immediately reverted to these traits
"Well, can&039;t youShe won&039;t pay attention to me" And he knehy - 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&039;s out," Munro said, su 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&039;t look back," he said "Just walk on Ignore her"
They continued for several minutes in silence Elliot said, "She may not follow us" "Coorillas"
"I do," Elliot said
"Then you know there are none in this part of the rain forest"
Elliot nodded; he had seen no nests or spoor "But she has everything she needs here"
"Not everything," Munro said "Not without other gorillas around"
Like all higher priroup, and they were not coists assuly perceived as hunger, thirst, or fatigue
"We&039;re her troop," Munro said "She won&039;t let us get far"
Several h the underbrush fifty yards ahead She watched the group, and glared at Peter
"Now come here, Amy," Munro said, "and I&039;ll tickle you" Amy bounded up and lay on her back in front of hi to it"
Aain
If Elliot had an uncomfortable sense of the rain forest as the natural domain of his own animal, Karen Ross viewed it in terms of earth resources - in which it was poor She was not fooled by the luxuriant, oversized vegetation, which she knew represented an extraordinarily efficient ecosyste nations of the world did not understand this fact; once cleared, the jungle soil yielded disappointing crops Yet the rain forests were being cleared at the incredible rate of fifty acres a ht The rain forests of the world had circled the equator in a green belt for at least sixty million years - but man would have cleared them within twenty years
This widespread destruction had caused some alarm Ross did not share She doubted that the world clien be reduced Ross was not an alarmist, and not impressed by the calculations of those ere The only reason she felt uneasy was that the forest was so little understood A clearing rate of fifty acres aextinct at the incredible rate of one species per hour Life for wiped out every few minutes, and no one could predict the consequences of this stupendous rate of destruction The extinction of species was proceeding nized, and the publicized lists of "endangered" species told only a fraction of the story; the disaster extended all the way down the animal phyla to insects, wory utilization coy conversion systey Resources and Ecosystelewood Cliffs, NJ Prentice Hall, 1977) pp 232 - 255
The reality was that entire ecosystelance And these ecosystems were for the most part ed into a world entirely different from the exploitable world of mineral resources; this was an environned supreyptians called this the Land of Trees The rain forest provided a hothouse environantic plants werethe insignificant huh its perpetual darkness
The Kikuyu porters had an ih and joke and a, "They certainly are jolly"
"Oh, no," Kahega said "They are warning"
"Warning?"
Kahega explained that the men made noise to warn off the buffalo and leopards And the te to the trail
"Is this a tea nodded
"The tea said "Teame trail Will we see elephants?"
"Maybe yes, , elephants"
There was no arguing with his logic Ross said, "They telldown the line of porters
"Yes, they are my brothers"
"Ah"
"But you mean that my brothers, we have the saa said
Ross was confused &039;You are not real brothers?"
"Yes, we are real brothers But we do not have the same mother"
"Then why are you brothers?"
"Because we live in the saa looked shocked "No," he said ee, then?"
"Yes, of course - we are Kikuyu"
Ross was perplexed Kahega laughed
Kahega offered to carry the electronic equip over her shoulder, but she declined Ross was obliged to try and link up with Houston at intervals throughout the day, and at noon she found a clear , probably because the consortiued to link through and register another Field Time - Position
The console read:
FILD TME - POSITN CHEK - 10:03 H
They had lost nearly an hour since the previous check the night before "We&039;ve got to go fester," she told Munro
"Perhaps you&039;d prefer to jog," Munro said "Very good exercise" And then, because he decided he was being too hard on her, he added, "A lot can happen between here and Virunga"
They heard the distant growl of thunder and minutes later were drenched in a torrential rain, the drops so dense and heavy that they actually hurt The rain fell solidly for the next hour, then stopped as abruptly as it had begun They were all soaked and miserable, and when Munro called a halt for food, Ross did not protest
Ae; the porters cooked curried ravy on rice; Munro, Ross, and
Elliot burned leeches off their legs with cigarettes The leeches were swollen with blood "I didn&039;t even notice them," Ross said
"Rain makes &039;e at the jungle
"So," Munro said, and he went into an explanation of why leeches had to be burned off; if they were pulled off, a part of the head rea brought theht?"
"Yes," Kahega said "The ht They will not be afraid"
"Afraid of what?" Elliot said
"Keep eating Just be natural," Munro said
Elliot looked nervously around the little clearing
"Eat!" Munro whispered "Don&039;t insult them You&039;re not supposed to know they&039;re here"
The group ate in silence for several my stepped out
2 The Dancers of God
HE WAS A LIGHT-SKINNED MAN ABOUT FOUR AND A half feet tall, barrel-chested, wearing only a loincloth, with a bow and arrow over his shoulder He looked around the expedition, apparently trying to deter quickly in a language that was not Swahili The pygarettes they had been using to burn off the leeches The pygmy did not want it lit; instead he dropped it into a small leather pouch attached to his quiver A brief conversation followed The pygle several tie," Munro said He picked up his pack, which contained the first-aid kit "I&039;ll have to hurry"
Ross said, "We can&039;t afford the time"
Munro frowned at her
"Well, the man&039;s dead anyway"
"He&039;s not completely dead," Munro said "He&039;s not dead-for-ever"
The pygraded illness in several stages First a person was hot, then he ith fever, then ill, then dead, then completely dead - and finally dead-for-ever
Fromies appeared Munro nodded "Kneasn&039;t alone," he said "These chaps never are alone Hate to travel alone The others atching us; if we&039;d et an arrow for our trouble See those brown tips? Poison"
Yet the pyg back through the underbrush Then there were shouts and swiftly dras; A up on hihlythe to decide what Amy&039;s arrival meant Several questions were asked of Munro Finally, Elliot set Around and said to Munro, "What did you tell theorilla was yours, and I said yes They wanted to know if the gorilla was female, and I said yes They wanted to know if you had relations with the gorilla; I said no They said that was good, that you should
not becoorilla, because that would cause you pain"
"Why pain?"
"They said when the gorilla grows up, she will either run away into the forest and break your heart or kill you"
Ross still opposed e, which was several miles away on the banks of the Liko River "We&039;re behind on our ti further behind everythe expedition, Munro lost his temper "Listen, Doctor," he said, "this isn&039;t don Houston, this is the o and it&039;s no place to be injured We have medicines That man may need it You don&039;t leave hie," Ross said, "we blow the rest of the day It puts us nine or ten hours further back Right noe can still make it With another delay, on&039;t have a chance"
One of the pyg several times at Ross Then he turned to the others
"He says that the sick whiteto draw the writing for us"
Ross glanced at her watch and sighed
The pyge characters in thein concentration as he reproduced the alien syh the forest: they ran at a brisk trot, slipping through the forest vines and branches, dodging rain puddles and gnarled tree roots with deceptive ease Occasionally they glanced over their shoulders and giggled at the difficulties of the three white people who followed
For Elliot, it was a difficult pace - a succession of roots to stumble over, tree limbs to strike his head on, thorny vines to tear at his flesh He was gasping for breath, trying to keep up with the littleno better than he, and even Munro, although surprisingly agile, showed signs of fatigue
Finally they ca their
faces up to the sun The white people collapsed, panting and gasping The pygood-natured
The pygo rain forest Their sility had made theo, an Egyptian coreat forest west of the Mountains of the Moon; there he found a race of tinyreport had the ring of fact, and Herodotus and later Aristotle insisted that these stories of the tiny men were true, and not fabulous The Dancers of God inevitably acquired s as the centuries passed