by Chad Oliver
He picked up his pipe and the long flashlight he kept on the dresser. Closing the door behind him, he took the rifle out of the gun safe and checked its load. He went into the sitting room, filled his pipe, and lit it. It was bitter with too much smoking.
He did not turn on any lights.
He stepped outside, closing the door softly behind him. He could see fairly well by the light of the moon and stars. It was a strange world, a world without colors, but it was not difficult to orient himself. Objects had sharp outlines in the night; everything was either a luminous gray or a jet black, with nothing in between. It was almost cold. He wished that he had worn a jacket.
He started walking, circling the buildings, not using his flashlight. He was challenged once by Nzioki, one of Elijah’s men. He was faintly surprised to find that the watch was actually being kept. He identified himself and kept walking. He was not looking for anything in particular. He was just looking.
At the very least, he could prowl around and satisfy himself that there was nothing lurking under the bedroom window. I’m like an old maid checking under the bed, he thought. What do I do if I find someone—or something?
He went all the way around the main building. He saw nothing unusual and heard nothing. He repeated his effort on the building that housed the operating rooms and his office. Nothing there.
He stood for a long time and watched the quarters of the African staff. There were no lights showing. Everything was quiet. He walked along the line of baboon cages, not getting too close. The animals stirred and grunted sleepily. That was all.
Royce knocked out his pipe against his shoe, refilled it from the tin he had put in his hip pocket, and lit it with a match. The flare of the light seemed very bright. It took his eyes a long moment to adjust again after the match went out.
Little man, what now?
He started off along the dirt road that eventually skirted the railroad track. This was the way that Kilatya had gone. He walked almost silently, flashlight in his left hand and rifle in his right. He did not intend to go far. Once he left the cleared area of the Baboonery and the smell of man, there was always the chance of running into animals. He did not fancy running into a big cat in the middle of the night, with or without a rifle. He smiled a little, remembering those ads that filled the magazines he wrote for. Attacked by a killer lion, I would have been lost without my Little Dandy Hotshot Flashlight Batteries! Blinding the beast with my flashlights titanic glare, I whipped out my pipe and blew smoke in his nose until he fell to the earth …
The whistle of an oncoming train startled him for a moment. The thing always took him by surprise, although it was a soft whistle, the sort of sound he always associated with a model railroad. A train just seemed so unlikely here.
It was even quieter once the train had gone by. There wasn’t a sound in the bush. It was a land of the dead.
He was ready to turn back when something caught his eye. Off there in the distance to his right. At first, he thought it was a light from the train. But the light did not move and the quality of it was wrong. It was a soft, pale glow, almost like moonlight. It was steady and utterly silent.
Royce took a deep breath. That glow was coming from the area where that thing from the sky had come down. It couldn’t be more than a couple of miles away.
He did not pause to consider a plan of action. He wanted to get a look at whatever was producing that eerie light. He headed toward it.
There was no trail. He walked directly into the bush, moving as quietly as possible, using his flashlight sparingly. The glow ahead of him seemed to intensify that darkness. Thorns ripped at his clothing. Twice he had to backtrack to get around thick clumps of brush. He was worried about snakes. Nesting birds fluttered up before him. His hands were wet with sweat in the cool night air.
The glow was a little closer. He figured he had covered half a mile, maybe more.
Then, quite suddenly, the glow … stopped.
It wasn’t there.
There was only the moonlight and the stars and the hush of the night.
Royce stood stock still and waited. Long minutes crept by. The glow did not return.
He finally turned and began to retrace his steps. There was nothing else to do. Without the light to guide him it was madness to search the bush in the middle of the night. He made his way back to the trail and almost ran toward the dark Baboonery.
He was very tired but his mind was churning. He went into the cold kitchen and drank a bottle of beer, standing at the window and looking out at the cloud-shadowed stars. The beer helped a little.
He walked silently into the bedroom and checked his sleeping family. He put the rifle under the bed. He undressed in the dark and slipped into bed next to Kathy. She stirred but did not awaken.
Royce lay in the silence staring at nothing. His mind was filled with questions that had no answers.
6
The days drifted by, one by one. Royce was not lulled by the routine of running the Baboonery, but he was preoccupied. He had a lot to do, and he made the mistake of postponing the decisions he had to make.
Each day the dark clouds rolled through the great sky, throwing racing shadows across the parched land. It was hot again, hotter than ever with a dry wind that picked at the naked trees and piled the red dust in gritty drifts that rippled like sand dunes. The animals were pink-eyed and irritable, sticking close to the lowering streams. The white termite hills, taller than a man, stood out like sentinels in the barren plains. The promise of rain was worse than the blue skies and blazing sun had been; day after day the arid earth stared up at the tantalizing swollen clouds, waiting, waiting, forever waiting …
Susan seemed to be getting better, but she had a lingering fever. Her temperature shot up briefly to 102, then dropped down to around 99 and stayed there. She rested comfortably; she slept a lot and was very quiet. At least she was not getting worse. Royce was afraid to take her to Nairobi until she recovered some of her strength.
Kathy doctored Susan from the suitcase full of medical supplies she had insisted on bringing with her. She stayed with her day and night, and Susan was pleased with all the attention. Barbara was left to young Mbali, the shamba boy, which suited her fine. Royce was amazed at the patience shown by Mbali, who was little more than a child himself. Barbara adored him. Every night she would tell Royce with shining eyes of some wonderful new thing that “Bally” had done with her. Royce was deeply grateful to Mbali, and told him so. Mbali just smiled, looking down at his bare feet, and shyly said that he liked the girls. He said that he prayed for Susan at night, and Royce believed him.
Royce made no further attempt to search the bush. It was too much like asking for trouble. He did not see the strange glow in the night again.
They built strong wooden shipping crates for the baboons. The generator broke down and Royce spent a day repairing it. Royce and Mutisya found a good new area for the traps and salted it with maize and pineapple to bring in the baboons. They went out with a crew of men and finished the dirty job of moving the heavy traps.
The trapping went slowly, and Royce needed some big males for his shipment. It seemed to him that the ratio of trapped males to females was unusually low. There were a lot of empty traps. He examined them carefully. Sometimes, the bait was gone but nothing was caught in the trap. Baboons did escape from the traps occasionally, but he could find no sign that the traps had been forced from within. If something were releasing baboons from the traps, then that something had learned to open the traps properly. There were no damaged traps. At the Baboonery, the cages were undisturbed.
Royce saw baboons lurking at the edge of the clearing around the Baboonery several times. It had happened before; even elephants had been known to parade along the trail right by the front door. The baboons bothered him now, though. They seemed to be watching him. He knew that he was jittery but he saw no point in taking chances. Whenever he spotted baboons near the clearing he took his light rifle and drilled them neatly thr
ough the head. The buzzards did the rest.
The day finally came when Matt Donaldson loaded his clients into his Land Rover and carted them back to Nairobi to catch a plane for home. Matt left his camp intact, explaining that he intended to return shortly with some new hunters he was expecting.
Royce’s sense of uneasiness increased sharply when Matt had gone. He was afraid to make his trapping run and leave Kathy and the kids alone. Susan was definitely getting better. She was stronger now, almost her old self again. Surely, the trip to Nairobi would not harm her in a day or two …
He decided to tell Kathy to pack her gear.
He stood on the steps of the Baboonery, staring up at the cloud-darkened sky. He felt as though he were trapped in a dream, marking time. The hot, dry wind plucked at his shirt.
If only it would rain, he thought crazily.
If only it would rain.
Royce woke up early in the morning on the first day of November. He was fully awake but he did not move for a moment. Kathy had been up during the night with Susan and she was still sound asleep. He looked at the white curtains on the windows. They were hardly moving at all; the air was still. He could see the light of the sun behind the curtains.
The cloud cover was breaking, then. The rains were already late. Some years, he knew, the rains never came …
There was a curious heavy smell in the air. Royce couldn’t quite place it. He got up quietly, pulled on his clothes, and went into the empty kitchen. He took out the electric coffeepot that Wathome never used and plugged it in.
He stepped outside to have a look around.
He saw him at once, sitting under his bedroom window. A big male baboon. The animal just sat there, staring at him. Its red-rimmed eyes were challenging and unafraid. There was white saliva on his snout.
Royce felt a stab of fear. For a moment, he could not move. He had seen plenty of baboons in his time, but this one was … different. There was a cold intelligence looking out through those animal eyes. The beast was studying him.
“Okay, Big Daddy,” Royce whispered. “You just sit there for ten more seconds.”
Royce whirled and started back inside to get his rifle. He stopped before he got through the door. That smell. It was much stronger now. The baboon, yes, but there was something else.
The baboon still made no move.
Royce looked down the trail that led to the main road. The fear came again, a fear that was close to horror.
He ran into the house, trying to think, trying not to panic.
It would take more than a rifle to help him now.
Royce hesitated for a long minute in the kitchen. It would not help matters any to go flying off in all directions at once. He had to get things organized, and he had to do it fast. His senses were suddenly sharp: he was aware of the coffeepot bubbling on the table, the hum of the refrigerator, the nervous stirring of the baboons outside in their cages …
He strode quickly into the breezeway between the kitchen and the bedroom and opened the gun safe. He took out the .375 and a box of cartridges.
He went into the bedroom and bent over his sleeping wife. He touched her shoulder, gently.
“Kathy. Kathy, wake up.”
She stirred and opened sleep-fogged eyes.
“Kathy honey. Come on, wake up. We’ve got trouble. I need your help.”
She sat up, coming back to consciousness with a visible effort. “What is it? Is Susan …?”
“Susan’s okay. She’s still asleep. Are you awake enough to remember what I tell you? I haven’t got much time.”
Kathy rubbed her eyes. “I guess so. What’s going on?”
“Come over here to the window.” Royce kept his voice steady.
She climbed out of bed and followed him to the window. He pulled back the curtains. The baboon was gone, but that was a minor problem now. He pointed. “Look at that.”
Already, it was worse. Away across the red-brown earth, not over four hundred yards from the Baboonery buildings, a wall of dirty smoke boiled up into the morning sky. A jagged line of orange flame blazed under the smoke. It was a big fire, a very big fire, and even as they watched it seemed to move closer. A kudu bolted out of the bush, ran across the clearing, and vanished behind the main building. The sky was full of birds.
“Jesus H. Christ,” Kathy said.
“Get the picture? Just another humdrum episode of Breakfast with the Crawfords.”
Kathy managed a smile and Royce found himself smiling in return. Kathy had a strength in her that always surprised him. Whatever his problems, she wasn’t one of them. “Okay,” he said. “You get the kids up, take them into the kitchen, and give them something to eat. There’s time for that. Make sure Susan gets her medicine. There’s coffee ready in the pot. Take the .38 with you and keep it with you—it’s in the dresser. When you finish in the kitchen, you and the kids go and sit in the Land Rover. I want to know exactly where you are. If we can’t lick this fire—and our chances are not too bright—we’ll take off down that back road to Mitaboni. How was Susan last night?”
“About the same. When you called me I was afraid …”
“I’m scared right now, I’ll tell you that. Dammit, Kathy, something is trying to burn me out of here.”
“Maybe you ought to take the hint.”
Royce realized with a kind of wonder that he hadn’t really considered quitting, not yet. Getting Kathy and the children out was one thing, running him off was something else again. “If I’m licked, that’ll be the time to run away. I’m not licked yet.”
She didn’t argue. “We’re wasting time. Do what you have to do. But for God’s sake be careful. I’m not ready to be a widow yet.”
Royce grabbed the .375 and ran out the back door of the breezeway. The sharp smell of the fire was stronger now. The baboons in the cages were pacing and grunting. Behind him, the great cloud of smoke rose like a seething brown mountain into the still air.
He had time for some fleeting thoughts even as he ran; all of his senses had speeded up to the point that he could look back on his usual self as though he had been a slow-motion zombie. A man never realized how much he took for granted until it was all taken away. In the world Royce had known, when someone in your family got sick, you called the doctor. If someone threatened your life, you called the police. If fire broke out, you picked up the phone and hollered for the fire department.
It was different here, worlds and centuries different. He began to appreciate what a people like the Kamba were up against. Plagues, famines, fires—what could a man do? A fire in a dry land was not just an annoyance, not just an insurance-covered curiosity staged as a passing entertainment—it was a blazing monster, an all-devouring horror, an implacable wall of destruction.
It was a killer, and his weapons against it were a joke.
And if the baboons turned on them …
“Elijah!” he hollered, beating on the door of his headman’s quarters. “Mutisya! Wathome! Come out quick, hurry! Mota! Fire!”
He waited impatiently as the men tumbled out. He did have water; that was something. But the pressure was nothing much, and he had only the one hose that Mbali used for watering the garden and keeping the dust down. He couldn’t stop that fire with a garden hose, that was for sure. He had shovels and axes and rakes, but he didn’t have enough manpower …
And he didn’t know enough, either. He had never fought a big fire in his life.
Well, this was a good time to start learning.
The Africans stared at the smoke and sniffed the air. They did not panic. They simply waited for instructions. Their confidence in him was touching but not very helpful.
“Elijah. What should we do?”
Elijah examined the smoke solemnly through his tinted glasses. “It is a very large fire, Mr. Royce.”
Royce waited. Elijah said nothing else.
“In the place where the doctors cut on the baboons,” Mutisya volunteered, “there is a machine for putting out fires.”
>
Royce had forgotten about the fire extinguisher—not that it made any difference. One fire extinguisher for a forest fire—it might have been funny under other circumstances. It wasn’t particularly hilarious now.
“Okay,” he said. “This is what we’ll do. Mbali, you take the hose and put the water on everything you can reach. Try to get the thatch on top of the buildings as wet as you can. Do you understand?”
“Ndio.” The boy, pleased to be trusted with important work, ran off to get the hose.
“Elijah, take all of the men and supply them with tools—shovels, rakes, axes, pangas if you’ve got some. Get between the fire and the buildings and clear that area of anything that will burn. Then we’ll try to dig some kind of a trench—at least get the grass turned under. I’ll go down to Donaldson’s camp and round up the men there. I’ll join you as soon as I can. Any questions?”
Elijah shook his head. He looked dubious. “It is a very large fire, Mr. Royce,” he said again.
“Do your best. That’s all I ask. I’ll be back in a minute.”
Royce didn’t wait to check up on them. There was no time. He piled into the Land Rover—Kathy and the kids were still inside the building—and jolted down to Donaldson’s camp. He found four men there and some good tools. He drove them back to the Baboonery, parked the Land Rover in a reasonably shady spot for Kathy, and ran for the fire.
As soon as he got close to it his heart sank. The fire was an inferno—a solid wall of blistering heat and choking smoke. It was moving, not fast but inexorably, toward the Baboonery. It was a noisy fire: it hissed and crackled and roared at him, telling him things he did not want to know.
He had a couple of things in his favor, he figured. He tried to concentrate on them. There was no wind at all. That was a real break. Once that fire got a wind behind it they were through. And they had kept the land around the buildings fairly clear of brush; there wasn’t much to burn in this area. If they could keep the flames from jumping to the buildings …