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DAY 9: ZINJ

June 21, 1979

1Tiger Tail

THEIR ENTRANCE INTO THE LOST CITY OF ZINJ ON theof June 21 was accomplished with none of the mystery and romance of nineteenth-century accounts of similar journeys These twentieth-century explorers sweated and grunted under a burdensoe finders, data-lock compasses, RF directionals with attached transmitters, and h-speed evaluation of a ruined archaeological site

They were only interested in diaold when he excavated Troy, and he had devoted three years to it Ross expected to find her dia to the ERTS coround plan of the city With a plan in hand, it would be relatively siement of urban structures

They expected a usable plan of the city within six hours Using RF transponders, they had only to stand in each of the four corners of a building, pressing the radio beeper at each corner Back in canals so that their computer could plot the more than three square kilometers A radio survey would separate the what had happened to the previous expedition, this seemed unwise

Their alternative hat ERTS called the non-systeer-tail approach" (It was a joke at ERTS that one way to find a tiger was to keep walking until you stepped on its tail) Theysnakes and giant spiders that scurried into dark recesses The spiders were the size of a man&039;s hand, and to Ross&039;s astonish noise

They noticed that the stoneas of excellent quality, although the li And everywhere they saw the half-moon curve of doors and hich seen motif

But aside fro distinctive about the rooular and roughly the sa decoration After socenturies they found no artifacts at all - although Elliot finally came upon a pair of disc-shaped stone paddles, which they presurain

The bland, characterless quality of the city grewas they continued; it was also inconvenient, since they had no way to refer to one place or another; they began assigning arbitrary nas When Karen Ross found a series of cubby holes carved into the wall of one room, she announced that this must be a post office, and from then on it was referred to as "the post office"

They came upon a row of sht these were cells of a jail, but the cells were extremely small Ross said that perhaps the people were small, or perhaps the cells were intentionally ses for a zoo But in that case, ere all the cages of the same size? And Munro pointed out there was no provision for viewing the animals; he repeated his conviction that it was a jail, and the rooms became known as "the jail"

Near to the jail they found an open court they called "the gyround There were four tall stone stakes with a cru at the top; evidently these had been used for soame like tetherball In a corner of the court stood a horizontal overhead bar, like a jungle gyround The low bar led Elliot to conclude that this was a playground for children Ross repeated her belief that the people were s area for soldiers

As they continued their search, they were all aware that their reactions simply mirrored their preoccupations The city was so neutral, so uninformative, that it became a kind of Rorschach for them What they needed was objective information about the people who had built the city, and their life

It was there all along, although they were slow to realize it In reen row in relation to light from a , or air currents, or any other factor they could identify In sorew thickly halfway doall, only to stop in a sharp horizontal line, as if cut by a knife

"Daer against it His finger came aith traces of blue paint

That was how they discovered the elaborate bas-reliefs, once painted, that appeared throughout the city However, the overgrowth ofof the lies impossible

At lunch, Munroa group of art historians to recover the bas-relief ihts and machines, they could see what&039;s there in no time," he said

The most recent exausto and others, eo expedition had the necessary equipment to contrive such a method on the spot At least it orth a try After lunch they returned to the ruins, lugging in the video cahts, and the tiny co they had worked out a syste the ie via Satellite through the digitizing co it back to their portable display unit - they were able to reconstitute the pictures on the walls

Seeing the bas-reliefs in this way reles If you looked directly at the walls, you saw nothing but dark moss and lichen and pitted stone But if you looked at the little coinal painted scenes, vibrant and lifelike It was, he remembered, "very peculiar There ere in the le, but we could only exaoggles to see at night, arid video to see during the day We were using machines to see e could not see otherwise, and ere totally dependent on them"

He also found it odd that the information recorded by the video camera had to travelto the display screen, only a few feet away It was, he said later, the "world&039;s longest spinal cord," and it produced an odd effect Even at the speed of light, the transmission required a tenth of a second, and since there was a short processing ties did not appear on the screen instantaneously, but arrived about half a second late The delay was just barely noticeable The scenes they saw provided theht into the city and its inhabitants

The people of Zinj were relatively tall blacks, with round beads and muscular bodies; in appearance they reseo froo They were depicted here as lively and energetic: despite the cli robes; their attitudes and gestures were expansive; in all ways they contrasted sharply with the bland and cru structures, now all that remained of their civilization

The first decoded frescoes showed round beside beautiful woven baskets containing round objects, while buyers stood and bargained with theht the round objects were fruit, but Ross decided they were stones

"Those are uncut dia at the screen "They&039;re selling diamonds"

The frescoes led them to consider what had happened to the inhabitants of the city of Zinj, for the city was clearly abandoned, not destroyed - there was no sign of war or invaders, no evidence of any cataclys her deepest fears, suspected the diahost town like so ht that a plague or disease had overcoorillas were responsible

"Don&039;t laugh," he said "This is a volcanic area Eruptions, earthquakes, drought, fires on the savannah - the anio berserk, and don&039;t behave in the ordinary way at all"

"Nature on the ra his head "There are volcanic eruptions here every few years, and we know this city existed for centuries It can&039;t be that"

"Maybe there was a palace revolution, a coup"

"What would that hed

"It happens," Munro said "In Africa, the anie when there&039;s a war on, you know" He then told the farmhouses in South Africa and buses in Ethiopia

Elliot was uni the affairs of man were very old - at least as old as Aesop, and about as scientific "The natural world is indifferent to man," he said

"Oh, no question," Munro said, "but there isn&039;t ree with Munro, but in fact a well-known acadeist Maurice Cavalle published a controversial paper entitled "The Death of Nature" In it he said:

One o the earth was characterized by a pervasive wilderness which we may call "nature" In the midst of this wild nature stood small enclaves of human habitation Whether caves with artificial fire to keep s and artificial fields of cultivation, these enclaves were distinctly unnatural In the succeedingartificial huh for centuries the trend reland, the great cities of man were isolated by hectares of wilderness in which untamed beasts roamed, as they had for thousands of years before And yet the expansion of o, in the last days of the great European explorers, nature had so radically diminished that it was a novelty: it is for this reason that African explorations captured the iination of nineteenth-century man lb enter a truly natural world was exotic, beyond the experience of most mankind, who lived from birth to death in entirely man-made circumstances

In the twentieth century the balance has shifted so far that for all practical purposes one may say that nature has disappeared Wild plants are preserved in hothouses, wild anis created by man as a souvenir of the once-prevalent natural world But an aniame park does not live its natural life, any more than a man in a city lives a natural life

Today we are surrounded by lobe, and nature is a fantasy, a dreaone

Ross called Elliot away fro to the coain"

Munro grinned, "Even in the jungle, the phone never stops ringing"

Elliot went over to look at the screen: COMPUTR LNGWAGE ANALYSS NG REQUIR MOR INPUT KN PROVIDE?

WHT INPUT? Elliot typed back

NOR AURL INPUT-TRNSMIT RECORDNGS

Elliot typed back, Yes lf Occurs YES IF OCRS

RCORD FREQNCY 22 - 50,000 CYCLS - CRITICL

Elliot typed back, Understood UNDRSTOD

There was a pause, then the screen printed:HOWS AMY?