by Chad Oliver
They ran toward the spot where the oryx had been, not worrying about the noise now. It was hard going and Royce tore his raincoat in three places. He pulled up, finally, his chest heaving.
Mutisya found the torn-up patch in the mud first, and then the bright red smear of blood; the blood was fairly thick. They found another spot a short distance away. The rain splashed into the blood and trickled off as though it had fallen into a puddle of oil.
This was where the hunting got tough.
Mutisya took the lead again. He went slowly at first, watching for the smears of blood, but then he broke into a jog. The wounded animal was running in a straight line, headed for the river. He couldn’t cross it, of course, but if he just didn’t turn aside until he became weak and confused …
Royce ran in a kind of trance, one hand clutching his rifle and the other holding his raincoat tightly against his body so that it would not catch in the bush. The rain-pounded world was dreamlike in its emptiness; nothing seemed to move, and the only sound Royce heard was the rising roar of the river.
He saw the Kikumbuliu: a swollen brown giant of a river, choked with mud and brush and uprooted trees, a river that hissed and boomed and ripped at its banks. They started down the slope. The footing was tricky; the grade that led to the river had only a dead grass cover and the ground had turned into a slippery swamp.
Mutisya stopped and threw up his hand.
Royce snapped back to alertness. The oryx was in plain sight and less than a hundred yards away. He just stood there in the pelting rain, his back to the torrent of the river, his front legs wide apart for balance. His head was up, nodding slightly, as though the weight of his horns had become a burden too heavy to bear. He was looking at Royce, waiting.
Royce steadied himself, lifted the rifle, and fired once. The oryx crumpled in a heap.
The two men picked their way across the muddy earth and looked down at the animal. He was dead, his soft brown eyes already glazing. Royce’s first shot had hit him in the belly. His last shot had gone home in the chest.
“Well,” Royce said. “Now the fun starts.”
Mutisya grinned. “He is a big one. Very heavy.”
Royce took off his hat and wiped the sweat from his eyes. The two of them could not possibly pack that animal back to the Baboonery. They would have to hack him up where he lay, and even then they would need more men. They were not far from the Baboonery—less than a mile, if one happened to be a bird.
He glanced up at the sky, letting the rain splash against his face. The clouds were black and heavy and it was beginning to get darker. There wasn’t much time.
“Mutisya, I’ll stay here and start cutting him up. Leave me that knife of yours and you get back to the Baboonery as fast as you can. If everything is okay there, come right back with four men and some pangas. Understand?”
“Okay, Mr. Royce.”
Mutisya turned without a world of complaint and moved with his effortless stride back up the slope. He had vanished in less than a minute.
Royce fished out his pipe and got it going. He stood quietly for a moment. The rain continued to fall, cloaking the earth in sheets of silver. He was awed at the primordial loneliness that surrounded him. He thought: I’ll remember this time and this place. One day, if I’m lucky, it will all come back to me, fresh and new with the smell of rain. One day, when I need it, I’ll take out this picture and see it again.
He stared at the surging power of the dirty water in the Kikumbuliu. The once tiny stream was a great wide river, and the yellow-brown current was deep and strong. It carried broken black trees along like matchsticks, and its voice was a swirling snarl of fury. Nothing was going to cross that river for a long time to come. He could imagine what the Tsavo must look like now, and the Athi that separated him from Nairobi. And there were other rivers, too many rivers, too many little creeks and formerly dry canyons that were bursting with water …
He picked up Mutisya’s knife and knelt by the oryx. This was a part of hunting that saddened him. There was death where there had been life, and the thrill was gone.
He went to work.
By the time that Mutisya returned with the men—who laughed and shouted when they saw the oryx—it was almost too dark to see. They hacked the animal crudely into sections with their pangas; they could carve it up properly when they got back to the Baboonery. Within twenty minutes, they had most of the edible meat piled into canvas carrying slings.
They started back through the darkness.
Royce could see the halo of the Baboonery lights ahead of him. He felt an icy chill that had nothing to do with the cooling of the night when he became aware of the presence of the other light as well. It was coming from the same place that he had first seen it, a seeming eternity ago. A soft, steady, pale glow, almost like moonlight.
They were still there.
Royce was very tired. He tried to concentrate on walking, on just putting one foot after the other in the mud. His brain was numbed. He was beyond mere worry.
He stared at those two lights shining through the darkness and the rain: two lights that were utterly different, separated by more than distance, and yet somehow linked.
We’re all in this together, he thought.
Wearily, he put his head down.
He was going home. He held that thought in his head. He was going home, a hunter carrying his meat. He was at the end of an inconceivably long procession of men, stretching back through the ages, men returning from hunts long forgotten …
It was, somehow, a comforting thought.
There was a tie with the past, a continuity, no matter what the future might hold.
8
The long days passed, and the longer nights. The rain kept coming. It did not rain continuously—the sun even broke through the clouds a few times—but it rained enough so that the earth had no chance to dry out. The rivers roared and water dripped in a steady stream from the roof thatch. Clothing mildewed in the dresser drawers. The moist planks of the walls were streaked with mold. Outside, the world was a dismal gray, as though the rain had absorbed all colors and all life. The skies were gray, the bush was gray, even the mud was gray. The mud had been red once, the color of rust, but the red was gone along with the clouds of dust that had once hung in the sun-baked air.
Royce waited. There was very little else that he could do. Supplies were running a little low, but they were in no danger from that quarter yet. The meat from the oryx had helped. He still had plenty of fuel for the generator. The children were both healthy now, although they were cross and bored. The novelty of the rain had worn off, and Kathy had her hands full trying to entertain them.
There were nights when the strange pale glow was plainly visible, and there were other nights when the bush surrounding the Baboonery was black and still and lifeless.
Royce toyed with the idea of tracking that light down. He knew he could find the source if he put enough effort into it. He would have tried it if he had been alone; he was desperately curious about what must be out there in the bush, and he knew that there was a chance he might find out something that would be useful to him. But he could not risk it. As long as they did not attack him he was prepared to leave them alone. To go out there after them was asking for trouble. He could probably do nothing even if he found them, and if he got himself killed Kathy and the children would be in a hopeless position. That game wasn’t worth the candle.
He waited, not knowing what to expect. Most of his fears were centered vaguely around the possibility of a direct attack under the cover of darkness. He was not quite ready for what actually happened.
It was daylight and a gentle rain was falling. Most of the men were in their quarters. Royce was standing at the kitchen window, looking out. A single baboon ran suddenly out of the bush and headed straight for the building that housed Royce’s office and the operating rooms. For a long moment, Royce did not react. He noticed that the animal was wet and bedraggled and thin almost to the point of emacia
tion. The baboon darted into the building. By the time Royce had snatched up his rifle and lunged out the door, the baboon was outside again. The animal clutched a couple of pineapples to his chest and scurried away in a queer three-legged run. Royce snapped off one shot, missed, and the baboon disappeared back into the bush.
On the surface, that was all there was to it.
Royce, however, learned some important things from the seemingly trivial pineapple raid. It was highly unlikely that a normal baboon would behave as that animal had done. Baboons often helped themselves to a farmer’s maize crop standing in the field, but they seldom ran through an occupied area and into a building after food. That was highly unusual, to say the least. If Royce had needed any additional evidence that some alien intelligence was controlling the baboons, he now had it.
More crucially, the incident taught him something that he should have realized before. If they had somehow taken over the baboons—not all of the baboons, of course, but some of them—the reason for the takeover was obvious. They could not function on this world without elaborate protective devices any more than a man could go for a stroll on Jupiter in his birthday suit. They had to work through a native animal, one that was already adapted to the environment of this planet. A baboon was a primate, like a man. A little simpler, a little easier …
They were practicing. The baboons were a means, not an end. A way station, a halfway house …
But if you take over a baboon and control him, that animal must still live as a baboon. He must eat, find shelter, ward off disease, protect himself from his enemies. Normally, he can do this readily enough. But if you short-circuit his brain, if you interpose an alien intelligence, what then? It is no help to a baboon to know philosophy or interstellar navigation. He has to know what insects to eat, which plants are nourishing, where the rock shelters are, how to avoid leopards.
The rains make things complicated, for baboons as well as men.
The baboon that had gone after the stored pineapples must have been desperate for food. He did not know even what to eat, much less where to find it. All he knew was that the captive baboons were fed maize and pineapple, and that traps were set with the same foods. The only certain source of those foods within miles was the Baboonery storeroom.
The next step was so glaringly obvious that Royce distrusted it on principle. Still, he could not afford to ignore it. He knew that a really hungry animal was a stupid animal. Even a deer will take long chances when his belly has been empty long enough.
Royce gave instructions that the outside door of the building that contained the storeroom was to be left slightly ajar. He locked the storeroom itself. He filled the syringe that was fastened to the pole with sernyl and put it in the lab, which was in the same building with the storeroom. From the inside, he unfastened the bottom of the lab window screen. The window was on the opposite side of the building from the bush where the baboons were.
He left the building by the door, went into the main building, and made himself a couple of sandwiches. Carrying the sandwiches and his rifle, he went outside again, this time using the front door. It was raining harder, and his boots squished into the mud. He walked a short distance through the muck that had once been the main road, left the road, and doubled back. He climbed through the window of the lab, refastened the screen, and sat down to wait. He kept his rifle ready on a lab table beside him, but he had the syringe pole in his hand. He didn’t want another dead baboon. He wanted one of those creatures alive.
He sat there for hours, listening to the rain drumming on the roof. Absolutely nothing happened. He waited until almost dark and gave up. He could not risk it alone in the lab at night unless he turned the lights on. He left the building, locked the outside door, and posted a guard. The next morning, he tried his trick again.
Royce crouched behind the lab door, annoyed with himself because his hands were trembling. He heard Mutisya’s shout and then a rapid scurrying sound in the hallway. He could not be certain, but from the amount of noise he judged that there was more than one animal in the corridor. He forced himself to wait, his heart thudding in his chest.
He heard a scratching sound as the animals tried the locked storeroom door. He knew that the creatures would have to move fast; if they could not open the storeroom door they would have to retreat quickly to have any hope of escaping. He waited until he heard them pass the lab door again.
Now.
He jerked open the door and sprinted into the hallway. There was a stench of baboons in the corridor. He saw them—two wet and skinny animals running for the open outside door. Royce did not hesitate. Just as the lead baboon ran through the door, Royce caught up with the other one. He jabbed the syringe into his rear end and jammed the plunger home. The baboon turned with a coughing snarl. Royce yanked out the bent needle and thrust the sturdy pole into the animal’s chest, hurling him back. The baboon snapped at the pole with his long white teeth.
Royce dropped the pole, turned, and ran back into the lab. He slammed the door and locked it and snatched up his rifle. There was a thud as the animal’s body struck the lab door. Royce did not fire. He stood there, rifle ready, catching his breath. He heard the baboon racing up and down the corridor. The animal was confused now, afraid to venture outside and trapped if he stayed in.
The sernyl began to take effect. Gradually, the baboon’s movements slowed, became erratic. There was a long pause. Royce heard a sodden thump as the animal fell to the floor.
Royce waited a long minute, then opened the lab door. There was a smell of excrement in the hallway. The baboon was out cold, a huddled gray heap on the mud-spattered floor. He was breathing rapidly, the fangs bared in his long snout.
Royce felt a moment of pity for the creature. Whatever it had become, it had reached the end of a long and strange journey. In its own mind, it must have believed itself cornered by alien beings in an alien land. It had been wet and hungry and afraid.
“Well, pal,” Royce said softly, “I didn’t ask you to come here. Remember that.”
He went outside into a driving rain. The other baboon had escaped back to the bush. Royce told Elijah to have the men carry a strong cage into the lab. When they got it into position, Royce and Mutisya lifted the unconscious animal into the cage. Royce put food and water in the cage, fastened the door, and put a padlock on it.
He instructed Mutisya to keep a sharp lookout and told Elijah that he would hold him responsible if anyone harmed the baboon. Then he locked the lab and locked the building and went inside to eat lunch.
There was nothing to do now except wait for the creature to recover.
As he ate his lunch, listening with half an ear to the chatter of his children, he was far from certain as to what his course of action should be.
He had his baboon, true enough. There remained the small problem of what the devil he was going to do with him.
Royce returned to the lab and hitched a chair up close to the cage—but not too close. He took out his pipe, filled it with Sweet Nut, and got it going. The rain pattered on the roof with a steady monotonous beat. A large black spider, like a burned pancake with legs, walked calmly across the floor and disappeared under a cabinet.
The baboon was awake. He sat in the far corner of the cage, as far as he could get from Royce, and stared at the man. The animal had eaten some of its food. He was an unlovely beast at best, and he smelled. Of all the primates, Royce thought, the baboon was the least attractive. A man felt an instant kinship with a chimpanzee, and gorillas could be charming despite their formidable size. Gibbons were endearing creatures, and orangs were fun in a lugubrious sort of way. Most of the monkeys were pleasant enough, if a trifle blunt in their manners. Lemurs looked like pets with their bushy tails, and tarsiers were clowns with their hopping legs and great saucer eyes. But it was hard to feel affection for a baboon. They were ugly and they could be dangerous, but it was more than that. The baboon lived on the ground, like man. The two animals had been competitors, perhaps for a mi
llion years and more …
The animal in the cage was not a baboon, not any longer. Royce knew that, and the cold intelligence that looked out through the creature’s eyes was all the proof that he needed. But he looked like a baboon. It took an effort of will to think of him as anything else.
Royce puffed on his pipe and felt singularly futile. He was almost close enough to reach out and touch the creature but there was no basis for contact. He did not even know whether or not they had a language, much less what it was. There was no convenient telepathy. He could not bring himself to utter, even in jest, the classic stock line: “Do you speak English?” Or Swahili, perhaps. Or Urdu. The idea was absurd.
He went to the storeroom, got a pineapple, and approached the cage. The animal snarled, watching him closely. Royce extended his hand, offering the pineapple. The creature defecated in fear. Royce put the pineapple in the cage and went back to his chair. The thing that looked like a baboon stared at him with something like horror and did not move.
Royce studied him as well as he could. The animal did not look healthy. His coat was dull, his eyes cloudy. He was too thin and there were vermin around his ears. Baboons were social animals; they lived in bands. A baboon alone, cut off from his society, would have a difficult time of it.
“You poor bastard,” Royce said. “I’m not enjoying this.”
He did not know whether or not he could keep the creature alive. Now that he had him, he was not sure that it was a good idea to keep him around at all. Would the others come after him? And how would they come—as baboons or as something else?
It seemed to Royce, as he sat there looking at the thing in the cage, that he had been wrong in thinking that they were simply controlling the baboons in some way. Surely, if that were the case, they could withdraw their control from an injured or captured animal. For that matter, they could release the baboons to forage naturally, then reimpose their control when it was needed.