in this rich panorama, they noticed certain missing elements. The people of Zinj had dogs, used for hunting, and a variety of civet cat, kept as household pets - yet it had apparently never occurred to them to use animals as beasts of burden. All manual labor was done by human slaves. And they apparently never discovered the wheel for there were no carts or rolling vehicles. Everything was carried by hand in baskets.
Munro looked at the pictures for a long time and finally said, "Something else is missing."
They were looking at a scene from the diamond mines, the dark pits in the ground from which men emerged carrying baskets heaped with gems.
"Of course!" Munro said, snapping his fingers. "No police!''
Elliot suppressed a smile: he considered it only too predictable that a character like Munro would wonder about police in this long-dead society.
But Munro insisted his observation was significant. "Look here," he said. "This city existed because of its diamond mines. It had no other reason for being, out here in the jungle. Zinj was a mining civilization - its wealth, its trade, its daily life, everything depended upon mining. It was a classic one-crop economy - and yet they didn't guard it, didn't regulate it, didn't control it?"
Elliot said, "There are other things we haven't seen - pictures of people eating, for example. Perhaps it was taboo to show the guards."
"Perhaps," Munro said, unconvinced. "But in every other mining complex in the world guards are ostentatiously prominent, as proof of control. Go to the South African diamond mines or the Bolivian emerald mines and the first thing you are made aware of is the security. But here," he said, pointing to the reliefs, "there are no guards."
Karen Ross suggested that perhaps they didn't need guards, perhaps the Zinjian society was orderly and peaceful. "After all, it was a long time ago," she said.
"Human nature doesn't change," Munro insisted:
When they left the gallery, they came to an open courtyard, overgrown with tangled vines. The courtyard had a formal quality, heightened by the pillars of a temple-like building to one side. Their attention was immediately drawn to the courtyard floor. Strewn across the ground were dozens of stone paddles, of the kind Elliot had previously found.
"I'll be damned," Elliot said. They picked their way through this field of paddles, and entered the building they came to call "the temple."
It consisted of a single large square room. The ceiling had been broken in several places, and hazy shafts of sunlight filtered down. Directly ahead, they saw an enormous mound of vines perhaps ten feet high, a pyramid of vegetation. Then they recognized it was a statue.
Elliot climbed up on the statue and began stripping away the clinging foliage. It was hard work; the creepers had dug tenaciously into the stone. He glanced back at Munro. "Better?"
"Come and look," Munro said, with an odd expression on his face.
Elliot climbed down, stepped back to look. Although the statue was pitted and discolored, he could clearly see an enormous standing gorilla, the face fierce, the arms stretched wide. In each hand, the gorilla held stone paddles like cymbals, ready to swing them together.
"My God," Peter Elliot said.
"Gorilla," Munro said with satisfaction.
Ross said, "It's all clear now. These people worshiped gorillas. It was their religion."
"But why would Amy say they weren't gorillas?"
"Ask her," Munro said, glancing at his watch. "I have to get us ready for tonight."
3.Attack
THEY DUG A MOAT OUTSIDE THE PERIMETER FENCE with collapsible metalloid shovels. The work continued long after sundown; they were obliged to turn on the red night lights while they filled the moat with water diverted from the nearby stream. Ross considered the moat a trivial obstacle - it was only a few inches deep and a foot wide. A man could step easily across it. In reply, Munro stood outside the moat and said, "Amy, come here, I'll tickle you."
With a delighted grunt, Amy came bounding toward him, but stopped abruptly on the other side of the water. "Come on, I'll tickle you," Munro said again, holding out his arms. "Come on, girl."
Still she would not cross. She signed irritably; Munro stepped over and lifted her across. "Gorillas hate water," he told Ross. "I've seen them refuse to cross a stream smaller than this." Amy was reaching up and scratching under his arms, then pointing to herself. The meaning was perfectly clear. "Women," Munro sighed, and bent over and tickled her vigorously. Amy rolled on the ground, grunting and snuffling and smiling broadly. When he stopped, she lay expectantly on the ground, waiting for more.
"That's all," Munro said.
She signed to him.
"Sorry, I don't understand. No," he laughed, "signing slower doesn't help." And then he understood what she wanted, and he carried her back across the moat again, into the camp. She kissed him wetly on the cheek.
"Better watch your monkey," Munro said to Elliot as he sat down to dinner. He continued in this light bantering fashion, aware of the need to loosen everybody up; they were all nervous, crouching around the fire. But when the dinner was finished, and Kahega was off setting out the ammunition and checking the guns, Munro took Elliot aside and said, "Chain her in your tent. If we start shooting tonight, I'd hate to have her running around in the dark. Some of the lads may not be too particular about telling one gorilla from another. Explain to her that it may get very noisy from the guns but she should not be frightened."
"Is it going to get very noisy?" Elliot said.