Even 300 years ago in France or England, 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 man continued inexorably.
One hundred years ago, 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 imagination 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 animals in zoos and game parks: artificial settings created by man as a souvenir of the once-prevalent natural world. But an animal in a zoo or a game park does not live its natural life, any more than a man in a city lives a natural life.
Today we are surrounded by man and his creations. Man is inescapable, everywhere on the globe, and nature is a fantasy, a dream of the past, long gone.
Ross called Elliot away from his dinner. "It's for you," she said, pointing to the computer next to the antenna. "That friend of yours again."
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?
Elliot hesitated. FINE.
STAF SNOS LOV came the reply, and the transmission was momentarily interrupted.
HOLD TRSNMSN.
There was a long pause.
INCREDIBL NWZ, Seamans printed. HAV FOUND MRS SWENSN
2.Swensn NWZ
FOR A MOMENT ELLIOT DID NOT RECOGNIZE THE name. Swensn? Who was Swensn? A transmission error? And then he realized: Mrs. Swenson! Amy's discoverer, the woman who had brought her from Africa and had donated her to the Minneapolis zoo. The woman who had been in Borneo all these weeks. IF WE HAD ONLY KNON AMY MOTHR NOT KILD BY NATIVS.
Elliot waited impatiently for the next message from Seamans.
Elliot stared at the message. He had always been told that Amy's mother had been killed by natives in a village called Bagimindi. The mother had been killed for food, and Amy was orphaned. . .
WHT MEANS?
MOTHR ALREDY DED NOT EATN.
The natives hadn't killed Amy's moth& She was already dead?
XPLN.
SWENSN HAS PICTR CAN TRAMSMT?
Hastily, Elliot typed, his fingers fumbling at the keyboard.
TRANSMT.
There was a pause that seemed interminable, and then the video screen received the transmission, scanning it from top to bottom. Long before the picture filled the screen, Elliot realized what it showed.
A crude snapshot of a gorilla corpse with a crushed skull. The animal lay on its back in a packed-earth clearing, presumably in a native village.
In that moment Elliot felt as if the puzzle that preoccupied him, that had caused so much anguish for so many months, was explained. If only they had been able to reach her before...
The glowing electronic image faded to black.
Elliot was confronted by a rush of sudden questions. Crushed skulls occurred in the remote - and supposedly uninhabited - region of the Congo, kanyamagufa, the place of bones. But Bagimindi was a trading village on the Lubula River, more than a hundred miles away. How had Amy and her dead mother reached Bagimindi?
Ross said, "Got a problem?"
"I don't understand the sequence. I need to ask - "
"Before you do," she said, "review the transmission. It's all in memory." She pressed a button marked REPEAT.
The earlier transmitted conversation was repeated on the screen. As Elliot watched Seaman's answers, one line struck him: MOTHR ALREDY DED NOT EATN.
Why wasn't the mother eaten? Gorilla meat was an acceptable - indeed a prized - food in this part of the Congo basin. He typed in a question:
WHY MOTHR NOT EATN.
MOTHR / INFNT FWND BY NATIV ARMY PATRL DOWN FRM SUDAN CARRIED CRPSE / INFNT 5 DAYS TO BAG-MINDI VILLAG FOR SALE TOURISTS. SWENSN THERE.
Five days! Quickly, Elliot typed the important question:
WHER FWNO?
The answer came back: UNKNWN AREA CONGO.
SPECFY.
NO DETALS. A short pause, then: THERS MOR PICTRS.
SND, he typed back.
The screen went blank, and then filled once more, from top to bottom. Now he saw a closer view of the female gor?illa's crushed skull. And alongside the huge skull, a small black creature lying on the ground, hands and feet clenched, mouth open in a frozen scream.
Amy.
Ross repeated the transmission several times, finishing on the image of Amy as an infant - small, black, screaming.
"No wonder she's been having nightmares," Ross said. "She probably saw her mother killed."
Elliot said, "Well, at least we can be sure it wasn't gorillas. They don't kill each other."
"Right now," Ross said, "we can't be sure of anything at all.,,
The night of June 21 was so quiet that by ten o'clock they switched off the infrared night lights to save power. Almost at once they became aware of movement in the foliage outside the compound. Munro and Kahega swung their guns around. The rustling increased, and they heard an odd sighing sound, a sort of wheeze.
Elliot heard it too, and felt a chill: it was the same wheezing that had been recorded on the tapes from the first Congo expedition. He turned on the tape recorder, and swung the microphone around. They were all tense, alert, waiting.