The Shores of Another Sea

by Chad Oliver

  The men were tired and they worked in a kind of stupor. Royce had to ride herd on all of them, directing each job in time-consuming detail. Only Mutisya and Mbali showed any initiative at all.

  Royce kept his temper under control. There were times when the Africans drew away from him, retreating into their own values and their own ways. It did no good to shout at them. Of course, their own jobs were at stake in keeping the Baboonery operational, but he refrained from pointing this out. They had their own problems; he could not expect them to view things through his eyes. He kept a smile on his face and did the major share of the work without complaint. They needed each other. He would be up the creek if the men turned surly. They would be in trouble if the power failed and they just sat in their rooms waiting for something to happen. Royce ducked in and told Wathome to fix an unusually hearty dinner, and he set aside a case of precious beer to give the men with their evening meal.

  Somehow, he got the job done.

  The baboons were moved into the shed. Baboons, like all large primates, were very susceptible to respiratory ailments. He couldn’t leave them out where the rain swept through their cages. It took four men on each cage to lift them. The wet, angry animals kept trying to grab the shoulders of the carriers, which didn’t help any. That was normal, though. Royce examined the baboons closely but saw nothing unusual about them. They were just baboons—unlovely, ill-tempered, nasty, but not alien in any way.

  They dug drainage ditches around the pumps and the generator and used empty shipping crates to shore up the weak points. It was hard, back-breaking work. They were all soaked to the skin before nightfall. It made little difference whether a man kept his raincoat on or took it off. If he kept it on, his sweat drenched him from inside. If he took it off, the rain pelted him unmercifully. Royce took his off by early afternoon. The rain at least was cool.

  All that day, he forced himself to keep alert. He did not know exactly what he was watching for, but he was confident that he could recognize anything unusual if he saw it. He spotted nothing suspicious.

  When it was too dark to work further, he stumbled into the main building. He was very tired; the last two days had taken their toll. He didn’t really want any dinner but he made himself change into dry clothes and eat something.

  “Daddy,” Susan said happily, “the roof is leaking.”

  “Daddy will fix it tomorrow,” he said.

  He fell into bed before the after-dinner coffee came.

  He knew that he was courting disaster by going to sleep before he had established any sort of a guard, but he had to take a chance. He could not stay awake himself. The men were as tired as he was. It was raining so hard that visibility was close to zero.

  He slept instantly.

  Once, deep in the night, a sudden stillness awakened him. For a moment, he couldn’t figure out what it was. Then he realized that the rain had stopped. Moonlight was streaming in through the curtains. He could hear a distant roaring over the light drip of the water from the sodden thatch on the roof. Sleep-fogged, his tired brain puzzled over the strange sound. It came to him that the roaring must be the Kikumbuliu River. Only a few hours ago, or so it seemed, the Kikumbuliu had been a narrow trickle of water that he could drive a Land Rover through. It must be a raging torrent now.

  He stared at the moonlight. Maybe the rain had stopped for good. Maybe, in the morning, the sun would shine.

  He knew that he should get up and take a look around. He started to sit up in the bed. Kathy pushed him down again. “I’m awake,” she said. “I’ll call you if there’s any need. Go back to sleep.”

  Exhausted, he slept again.

  He dreamed no dreams.

  Royce slept until nearly ten o’clock the next morning and when he woke up it took an effort for him to get out of bed. It was raining again; he could hear it thudding on the roof thatch. It didn’t seem to be coming down quite as hard as the day before, but it was raining steadily. The whole room had a damp smell to it.

  He listened for the thumping of the generator and was faintly reassured when he heard it. At least they still had power.

  He went in to eat his breakfast.

  “Welcome to Noah’s Ark,” Kathy said.

  “We’ve got the baboons,” he said. “That’s a start.”

  He ate his breakfast slowly. Each item of food had now become a thing to be appreciated and savored. Coffee, cream, eggs, bacon, bread—when they were gone, that was it. A man could hunt in that swamp out there for a long, long time without finding a chicken or a pig, to say nothing of coffee or wheat. He might find a cow if he were lucky, but it wasn’t likely. The Kamba would keep their herds close to home; there was no need to search for water now.

  It was curious, Royce thought. The Baboonery had always seemed a lonely kind of place to him, stuck out in the middle of the African bush. By most standards, it had been isolated from the first. But it was different now, very different. There was no lifeline to connect him with the outside world. He could not pile in the Land Rover and go to Mitaboni for tobacco or milk. He could not depend on the train to bring in needed supplies. He couldn’t even get a letter out.

  He was beginning to understand the meaning of true isolation. He didn’t like it, but it did not panic him. He told himself that a century ago things had not been so very different for some of his own ancestors in Texas. There had been small settlements and farms and ranches in his own state as remote as the Baboonery was now. There had been fires and floods and sickness and Comanches. Whatever it was that had come down out of the sky to threaten him, it was not more mysterious or more deadly than the Indians had seemed to his own people less than one hundred years ago. It was a strange thought, and an oddly comforting one.

  If his ancestors had endured, he could do the same. Surely, he had not become that much less of a man in a mere hundred years.

  “Did you catch the news?”

  “I caught it. You can see most of it outside. It’s raining all over Kenya. The roads are all knocked out and a lot of the bridges are already gone. It’s a real dilly.”

  “How’s the roof holding out?”

  “Not bad, considering. We’ve got about a dozen leaks.”

  “I’ll see what I can do. I have a sneaking sort of suspicion that we won’t be going anywhere for a spell.”

  “Just try to take it a little easy today. I’d feel a hell of a lot safer if I didn’t have a dead man in bed with me at night.”

  “There’s some life in the old boy yet.”

  “See that it stays there. You know how we modern women are. Restless, unsatisfied, pampered—I may take up with a baboon.”

  “You won’t find them very effective.”

  “Maybe not. But I can write my memoirs and make a fortune.”

  “Not a chance. Beauty and the Baboon—it’d be so tame these days that nobody would pay any attention to it.”

  “We could make it a female baboon, a crazy mixed-up baboon girl with a grudge against the world, a baboon raised from infancy by a Chinese spy …

  Royce grinned. “Knock it off. I’m going up on the roof and dig in the thatch.”

  “Very symbolic,” Kathy said.

  Royce went out into the rain, feeling better than he had any right to feel. Everything looked normal, aside from a certain bottom-of-the-sea impression. It was possible, he supposed, that they were hampered by the rain just as he was. It couldn’t be easy for them to maneuver in an alien environment. They had shown that they could operate under dry conditions, but perhaps the mud and the water would slow them down. Baboons, too, did not take well to heavy rains …

  He checked the generator and the pumps and got Elijah to do some more work on the drainage ditches. He found Mutisya and told him to keep an eye out for game. If they were going to be cut off for any length of time, they had to have meat.

  Then he went to work on the roof. He plugged the leaks as quickly as he could, not taking the time to do the job properly. There was other work to do before ni
ghtfall.

  He needed more lights. The hours of darkness were long and dangerous. The baboon cages had been tampered with at night, Kilatya had been killed at night, the bush had been fired at night. He had a light on a pole next to the generator, another one over the door to the building that housed the operating room, and a third light between the kitchen and the men’s barracks. The area in front of the Baboonery depended on the light that filtered through the windows of the main building, and that wasn’t good enough. There was a guest house out there, a square thatched structure that was little more than a bedroom and a bathroom. It was already wired for electricity. If he could rig up a light socket above the door, keep a bulb burning there at night … well, it might be useful.

  He had to do something.

  He collected the necessary gear from the supply room, which was next to his office, and walked through the pelting rain to the guest house. He hadn’t been in there for a long time. It was never used except by the visiting doctors, and there hadn’t been any doctors around for quite a spell. The little house was damp but oddly stuffy despite the open windows. It had a smell of loneliness and disuse about it. A great king-sized bed that stood several feet off the floor dominated the room. It was neatly made up, ready for a giant. Kathy always referred to it as the Orgy Bed, but Royce had never tried it out.

  He went to work, and the job proved to be easier than he had anticipated. He had plenty of time to think.

  The rain mocked him as he worked. There was nothing dramatic about it—just a steady rain drumming on the thatch over his head and splashing into the muddy earth outside. There was no thunder, no lightning, no high wind. There was just a constant reminder that he was trapped, trapped by a combination of the most ancient of the elements and something so new that his world lacked even the words to discuss it sensibly.

  Of course, his whole evaluation of the situation might be faulty. He recognized that. He could not prove that something had come down out of the sky and landed out there in the African bush. He could not prove that the strange events around the Baboonery had been connected with that landing, assuming that the landing had really happened. On the other hand, he could not prove that the sun—however obscured by clouds—would rise tomorrow either, or that the lights in the night sky were stars. The best that any man had to go on was a very high degree of probability. It was folly to act on any assumption except the one that seemed to fit the facts best. All explanations had once been fantastic guesses. There had been a time when it had been little short of lunacy to believe that fire could be produced from friction, that an arrow could be as deadly as a spear, that animals could be domesticated more easily than hunting them wild, that plants would grow from seeds, that the world was round. People and tribes and nations had perished from wishful thinking. The ones that survived had learned to look facts in the eye and draw the unpopular conclusions.

  If something had landed here, it had not been an accident. Surely, beings that could pilot a ship across the light-years of interstellar space could select a landing place with precision. Even in the unlikely event that only interplanetary distances had been involved, the same point would apply. Even man, with his primitive space technology, could land on a designated spot on the moon with some accuracy.

  Question: Why land here?

  Well, Royce thought, turn the thing around. Suppose that man had the capacity to explore an inhabited planet. Suppose that he was uncertain what kind of a reception he might receive. Would he plop himself down smack in the middle of a city? Or would he try to check things out first in a relatively empty area?

  Of course, the chosen area should not be completely deserted. If you want to find out something about the natives you have to have a few to watch.

  In a way, the Baboonery was ideal. It was particularly ideal if they were unsure of themselves, uncertain how well they could function on this alien world. There must be limits to what you can discover from a spaceship. Sooner or later, you must test your theories. You must open your door and check things out. You have to start somewhere.

  All well and good. Except that he could not know their motives, any more than Montezuma could understand what Cortes was after or a chimpanzee could understand why he had been rocketed into space. Except that it did not explain the odd incidents with the baboons or the death of Kilatya or the fire.

  When you don’t know what is coming, you have to be ready for anything.

  Royce screwed the bulb—only 100 watts, but it was the biggest he had—into the socket he had rigged and tried it out. Somewhat to his surprise, it worked perfectly.

  It wasn’t much—little more than a gesture, perhaps.

  But he would be able to see a little farther into the darkness, and that was something.

  Royce was finishing a late lunch when Mutisya called out to him.

  “Mr. Royce! Choroa!”

  “Oryx,” Royce said, getting to his feet. “Meat, if we’re lucky. Make sure Elijah switches on the lights if I’m not back by dark.”

  “You be back,” Kathy said.

  Royce grabbed his raincoat and the .375 and ran outside. The rain was still coming down but the visibility was good enough so that he could see to shoot if he could just get a target.

  “Wapi?” he asked. “Where?”

  Mutisya pointed down the road toward Matt Donaldson’s camp. “Just now I saw him. A good one. Alone.”

  Royce hesitated only a moment. There wasn’t anything much left of the road; the Land Rover could not make it through mud that thick. Too noisy anyhow, probably. He looked at Mutisya. The Kamba stood quietly, a dignified figure somehow despite the gnarled bare feet and baggy shorts and the battered olive-colored army-surplus overcoat he wore instead of a raincoat. “Can we get him, Mutisya?”

  Mutisya smiled, showing his filed pointed teeth. “I will find him. You will shoot him.”

  “Okay, let’s go.”

  Mutisya started off at an easy jog, his bare feet almost silent in the mud. Royce pulled his hat down more firmly on his head and followed him. The mud sucked at his boots and he sounded like an elephant. He veered off to the side of the road where the ground was higher and firmer and tried to pace himself. Mutisya was tireless, despite his age. The man’s legs were as thin as sticks, but the long muscles in them were as tough as ropes.

  It was eerie once they got into the bush—a dark, dripping world of long silences and glistening wet-black bark. The sky was close and gray, pressing down upon them. The rain-streaked air was heavy and still and Royce was sweating before he had covered one hundred yards. There was an expectant hush that hovered over the sodden earth like an electrical charge. Royce could almost see the vegetation coming to life—the bushes and the grass and the trees and the creepers, all of them drinking in the rain, waiting for the magic touch of the sun to explode into leaf and flower.

  Tracking was simple enough as long as the oryx stayed in the road. The marks of his hooves in the mud were so clear that a child could have followed him.

  Mutisya stopped suddenly and pointed to his left.

  Royce nodded, panting. The oryx had turned off here, veering into the dripping bush to avoid Donaldson’s camp. He could still make out the tracks but they were fainter now; the tangle of ground-hugging plants kept the animal’s feet out of the mud. The spacing of the tracks showed that the oryx had increased his speed a little, but he was not running yet.

  Mutisya left the road, moving fast, his body bent over almost double. He looked for all the world as though he were sniffing out the trail. Royce kept behind him, picking open spaces, keeping his head up. Mutisya could track better than he could; Royce’s job was to look ahead to see if he could spot the animal.

  Mutisya saw him first, though. Some sixth sense made him look up and he stopped at once, pointing.

  Royce followed the pointing finger, saying nothing. It took him a moment and then the oryx seemed to leap into view. The animal was standing quietly by a baobab tree, his head raised, looking back. It was
a long shot in the rain, better than two hundred yards.

  Royce lifted the heavy rifle to his shoulder and slipped off the safety. He glued his eye to the scope. It took him a long agonizing minute to find the animal again in the scope, but then he had him. The two long, almost straight horns gave the oryx the look of a unicorn unless he was looking straight at you. He was a big animal, four hundred pounds or so, and there was power in that stout brownish-gray body. There were black and white markings on his face, and his black tufted tail was twitching slightly.

  Royce took a bead just above the left shoulder and his finger tightened on the trigger.

  The oryx moved. His didn’t move fast or far, but he moved enough. He was screened by foliage. Royce knew about where he was, but he had no shot.

  “Damn,” he whispered. He lowered the rifle, wishing that he had a stand to steady his arm. The .375 was a heavy gun and a slight waver could make a big difference at that range. He had waited an instant too long. Next time …

  He started ahead and to his right, trying to get an angle from which he could catch a glimpse of the oryx. He moved quietly, with Mutisya behind him now, taking advantage of every bit of cover he could find. He kept holding his breath and had to remind himself to breathe. He wanted that oryx. There was a lot of meat on him, enough meat to make a difference.

  He thought he had lost him and then, quite suddenly, he spotted him again. The oryx was moving away and to his left. It wasn’t a clear shot, but the animal was picking up speed. It was as good a shot as he was going to get.

  Royce jerked the rifle up, peered through the scope, and squeezed the trigger. The loud crack of the big rifle seemed muffled in the rain but there was nothing subdued about the kick of the gun against his shoulder.

  He lowered the rifle; he could not tell what was happening through the scope. The oryx, he thought, had jerked a little with the impact of the slug—but he couldn’t be sure. In any event, the animal had not gone down. The oryx turned and broke into a run, headed straight for the Kikumbuliu. Royce snapped off another shot, hoping for a miracle. There was no miracle. The oryx kept going and was lost to sight in an instant.