African Dawn

by Tony Park

  ‘Shit,’ Tate said.

  The rhino lowered its head again at the new sound and sniffed.

  Tate heard the scream of the helicopter's jet engine and the chop of its rotors in the hot air. He looked up and saw that Victoria was banking around, heading towards them. The animal held its ground, but as Victoria flared the chopper again she sent a tornado of dust their way. Grit and sand shrouded everyone's view, including the rhino's. Blinded and frightened, the animal trotted around the tree. Tate heard a scream and thud as Zoe, her arms nearly pulled from their sockets, let slip her grip and fell.

  Tate stumbled forward blindly until he found a part of Zoe, grabbed at it and dragged her away. ‘Run!’ She needed no urging this time and was able to find her feet. She sprinted away.

  Tate looked over his shoulder and saw the rhino. It had heard them, and its ears guided it. It turned, seemingly spinning inside its own body length. It was homing in on the sound of Zoe's footsteps and the snapping of twigs in her path.

  ‘Hah!’ Tate yelled, waving his arms over his head. ‘Hah! Over here!’

  The rhino paused and registered Tate as its new target, then charged again. Tate ran for his life, hoping Victoria, who had climbed and begun circling again, could see what he was doing.

  Thankfully, it looked as though she had, as Tate turned and saw out of the corner of his eye the helicopter wheel around and set down in front of Zoe. Victoria beckoned to her and pointed to the rear hatch. Zoe jumped onto the skid and dragged herself inside as Victoria started to lift off again.

  Tate's arms and legs were pumping, but the rhinoceros quickly gained on him and lowered its head for the kill. Tate saw the shadow of the helicopter sweep over him and suddenly it was in front of him, filling his eyes and ears and mouth with choking grit and dust.

  Guessing where the aircraft was and praying he was nowhere near the tail rotor, Tate held his arms out in front of him until his chest slammed into the hovering helicopter's skid. He blinked and yelled ‘UP!’ to Victoria, and as soon as she knew he was hanging on she lifted into the air.

  Tate registered the rhino passing below him, and if he hadn't bent his knees his feet would have been hooked on its horn. It had been a gutsy move by Victoria to land in the path of a charging rhino, but if she hadn't Tate would have been dead. Victoria flew slowly sideways and then sat the chopper down. Tate scrambled into the back of the helicopter and loaded another dart faster than he'd ever done in his life.

  ‘Let's go get it,’ he yelled.

  *

  By the time the road party had arrived, Tate was kneeling beside the male rhino, bare-chested and covered in sweat-streaked dirt and dust. He'd used his bush shirt as a makeshift blindfold. Tate issued his orders rapidly, splitting the ground crew into two teams, one for each rhino.

  Teacher arrived on the scene, looking shamefaced. Zoe, meanwhile, had stayed in the helicopter after Victoria landed, sitting in the back with her head in her hands. Eventually, she summoned the courage to climb down from her seat and walk tentatively to Tate's side. Tate looked up when he realised she was there.

  ‘Oh my God, Tate …’

  He saw Zoe's faced was smeared with dirt and streaked with tears. Her chest was rising and falling as she sobbed. ‘Oh my God, Tate, you saved my life.’ She wiped the back of her hand across her eyes. ‘I thought I was going to die and –’

  ‘Get some water.’

  ‘I can clean up when we get back to camp.’

  ‘Not for you.’ He glared at her. ‘Get some water and wet the rhino's back. We have to keep it cool. These animals are in danger until the drug is reversed and they're back on their feet. Come on, get to work. You're wasting time.’

  Zoe started to cry.

  *

  That evening, on his way back to his tent from the bush shower enclosure, Tate paused in the shadows cast by the flames of the campfire and hissing gas lantern. ‘He's probably gay,’ Tate heard Zoe whisper from the fireside. A male laughed. Nigel, the British graduate student.

  Tate walked into the ring of light and the laughter and conversation stopped.

  ‘Tate, hi,’ Nigel said. Zoe raised an enamel mug to her lips and took a deep drink. Tate saw the red in her cheeks and knew it was more than sunburn or the firelight. She had a nasty scratch down one cheek. Perhaps he should have shown her more sympathy.

  She coughed as her drink went down the wrong way. ‘We were just talking about a professor I knew back at Stanford,’ she said.

  Perhaps not, he thought. He didn't care what the girl thought of him. It had been clear, since she'd arrived a week earlier, that Nigel had the hots for her. Nigel had been taciturn all week, which was annoying because, unlike Zoe, Nigel was actually a good worker and took the time to learn how to act in the bush. Unlike the girl, he listened.

  There were two other people around the fire, Angela, a volunteer from Australia who had paid a substantial amount of money to a rhino charity to come along on the capture operation, and François, a French vet. François and Angela stood and excused themselves, saying it was past their bedtime. Tate didn't know if they were sleeping together, but it wouldn't have surprised him. François had a habit of doing that sort of thing with the volunteers.

  Zoe stood. ‘Yep, me too. I want to be bright eyed and bushy tailed for tomorrow. I'm sorry about today, Tate, if I was a little slow climbing the tree. Thank you, again, for saving me.’

  A little slow? Tate would have laughed if it hadn't been so serious. He could take care of himself in the bush, although he'd used another of his lives today, but if one of the graduate students or ecotourism volunteers had been seriously injured or killed, the project would have been suspended indefinitely.

  ‘We won't be needing you tomorrow, Zoe,’ Tate said.

  She set down her mug, next to the near-empty bottle of Captain Morgan Spiced Gold rum, and squared up to him, hands on hips. ‘I don't need a rest, Tate. I'm good to go.’

  ‘No, you're not, and I'm not talking about a rest, either. You're off the project, effective immediately.’

  ‘Tate …’ Nigel said.

  Tate held up a hand to the boy. ‘I think you should go to bed, Nigel, and give us a moment.’

  Nigel shook his head.

  ‘Very well – Nigel, you can be a witness. Zoe, you endangered yourself and other people today by not following the instructions you were given in the briefing. If it was your first day in the bush I could understand it, but the other day you were more interested in getting pictures of the rhino than monitoring its vital signs. On Monday you started giggling while we were stalking the black rhino on foot. You've had your week's probation, but now I'm afraid you're going to have to pack tomorrow.’

  ‘No fucking way!’

  Tate was taken aback by her language.

  ‘My father is a major, and I mean major, donor to the charity that sponsored this operation, and I have a thesis to research, so you cannot simply dismiss me out of hand, Tate. I'm not going.’

  ‘Yes, you are, Zoe.’ Tate wondered if he was the first person in Zoe's life who had ever said no to her. ‘I'll arrange for Teacher to take you to Arusha in the afternoon.’

  ‘You can't do this.’

  ‘I can, and I am.’

  ‘Dr Quilter-Phipps …’ Nigel began, but the look from Tate silenced him.

  ‘Goodnight to you both,’ Tate said.

  Zoe started sobbing, as if that might make him reconsider. Tate looked back and saw that Nigel already had his arm wrapped around the girl's shoulders.

  Tate left them and walked back to his safari tent. The semi-permanent research camp on the banks of the Mbalangeti River was luxurious compared to some of the places he'd lived and worked at in the past thirty years. Too much of the money raised or donated by people such as Zoe's father went on creature comforts as far as Tate was concerned.

  He unzipped the mosquito-mesh door and kicked off his rafter sandals. He winced as he unbuttoned and took off his dirt- and sweat-stained bush shirt. T
hey'd been lucky to escape with their lives today, and while he felt for Zoe, he knew there was no way she could stay on the rhino capture team. She was a spoilt child, which was not her fault, but she also refused to follow the rules.

  Tate lay down on his camping stretcher with one arm under his head. A lion started its low, asthmatic calling nearby. He knew there would be repercussions – Zoe had probably already emailed her father – but he didn't care. He closed his eyes and nodded off.

  The noise of the zip woke him and he sat bolt upright. ‘Who's there?’ His rifle was out of reach.

  He caught her scent. Shampoo, soap, woman. She zipped the mesh door closed, but there was enough moonlight coming in through the weave for him to recognise her slender silhouette. Tate turned his head slowly to one side. ‘Zoe, I –’

  ‘Shush, Dr Quilter-Phipps. I understand why you said what you said before and I, like, totally understand,’ she said softly.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yes. I do, and I'm grateful to you for saving me today, and for teaching me so much, and I want to apologise for being such a brat. I want to make it up to you.’ She lifted her green tank top over her head and stepped out of her flipflops. She had no bra on and her young breasts stood firm and high.

  Tate swung his legs over the side of the stretcher and ran a hand through his unruly mane of greying hair. ‘Go back to your tent, Zoe,’ he sighed.

  She started unbuttoning her khaki shorts. ‘It's all right. I want this.’

  ‘Yes, well I don't. Red light, or whatever you Americans say, OK?’

  ‘Uh-uh. Not OK.’

  She let her shorts drop and pulled down her g-string and kicked the flimsy piece of lace across the tent floor. Despite himself he couldn't help but stare for a moment at her smooth bare skin. ‘Put your pants on.’

  She stood there, naked, with her hands on her slender hips. ‘I'll do whatever you want, you know. Just, like, tell me.’

  ‘All right. Get dressed and get out of here.’

  ‘You're serious?’ The surprise was clear in her tone.

  ‘Yes.’

  She scoffed. ‘Oh my God, you are gay, aren't you?’

  ‘No, just discerning.’ He regretted the words even as he said them.

  Zoe stared at him for a few long, silent seconds, then opened her mouth wide and screamed.

  *

  By the time Nigel and Teacher arrived, Zoe had put her shorts and sandals back on, and half-replaced her tank top. She'd pulled one shoulder strap until it stretched, but she couldn't tear it; however, when the young men arrived they found her under a tree outside Tate's tent with one breast all but exposed.

  ‘He tried to … he tried to attack me,’ she sobbed, her hands covering her eyes.

  Nigel squared up to Tate in the dark. ‘What do you want?’ Tate said to Nigel.

  ‘An explanation would be a good start, Doctor.’

  ‘Go back to bed, all of you.’

  ‘I don't think so,’ Nigel persisted.

  A jackal mocked them from the darkness beyond the camp, its high-pitched keening adding to Tate's growing irritation. He ignored the English boy and turned to the girl instead. ‘Blackmail's a dangerous game, Zoe, and it won't work with me.’

  Zoe looked at Nigel and her breast rose and fell with a sob. ‘He … tried to have sex with me.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Tate said.

  ‘I think Zoe deserves to be heard, Dr Quilter–’

  Tate rounded on Nigel. ‘This is ridiculous. She came into my tent and offered to have sex with me if I'd let her stay on the project. Isn't that right, Zoe?’

  She sobbed again. ‘How could you say such a thing?’

  ‘Pack your bags, Zoe, you're leaving first thing tomorrow. I'm going to bed.’

  *

  Victoria had taken the helicopter back to Arusha to refuel, and when she returned she brought with her Farina Khan, the Tanzanian country manager for the World Nature Fund, which was sponsoring the rhino-monitoring project and paying Tate's consultancy fees.

  Tate was in his tent, typing a detailed account of the previous day and night's shenanigans, as it appeared an unrepentant Zoe was still sticking to her lies this morning. Nigel and the other students and volunteers were huddled around her at breakfast, and Tate gave them a wide berth. He knew Farina was coming, and looked forward to a speedy resolution of this nonsense.

  He heard the helicopter landing and hit print. The portable printer whined and scratched away, and Tate pulled the three sheets free and quickly scanned them. He had rhinos to dart – the helicopter's time was precious. When Victoria returned to Arusha in the evening she could take Zoe with her. Tate walked out into the morning glare. It was hot already and the dust that stirred up the rotor blades was hanging in the now dead still air.

  ‘Tate, we need to talk,’ Farina said loudly as she strode towards him. Khan was all business, as always. Tate had lived and worked with Africans all his life – he'd been one of the last white game wardens in the Zimbabwean Parks and Wildlife Service – and he'd long ago embraced the African custom of preceding any conversation with a short but polite greeting. Khan was good at her job, but her directness still rankled him. Behind Farina was a white woman Tate was sure he didn't know, but who somehow still looked very familiar.

  ‘Hello,’ Tate said, extending a hand to the woman striding to keep up with Farina, and momentarily ignoring the woman who paid his wage. ‘I'm Tate Quilter-Phipps.’

  She smiled at him and took his hand, but said nothing for a few seconds. Even before she spoke, though, the wheels of his mind were spinning fast and he began to feel an odd constriction in his chest, almost as though someone had turned the valve on an adrenaline drip plugged straight into his heart.

  ‘You don't recognise me, but I'm not surprised. It's been thirty years,’ the woman said.

  Farina said something, but Tate didn't hear it. He looked into the woman's blue eyes and saw the light dusting of freckles on the tanned face. When she smiled, awkwardly under his gaze, he knew who she was, and it brought back all the pain that had never really gone away, just lain like a cancer somewhere deep inside his body, slowly eating him away.

  ‘You used to go out with my aunt, Hope,’ the woman said, but he was beyond the need to be reminded. Now he just wanted to forget all over again. Her smile fell away, but she tried to resurrect it.

  ‘You're little Natalie,’ he said, finally letting go of her hand.

  ‘Not so little any more,’ she said. ‘I'm dangerously close to forty.’

  ‘Natalie is a journalist,’ Farina interrupted, ‘from Outdoor Adventure magazine's Australian edition. She's come to do a story on the rhino-monitoring program and the success of the translocations from Kruger to Serengeti. You remember I mentioned someone from the magazine would be visiting in my email last week?’

  Not really, he thought, but he nodded dumbly. If Farina had mentioned Natalie Bryant's name in an email he certainly would have remembered. He would have told Farina to offer the story to someone else, or to find another project for Natalie to cover. God, he thought to himself, she was just as beautiful as Hope.

  ‘Natalie, Tate will find someone to show you to your tent where you'll be sleeping the next two nights. In the meantime he and I have some business to discuss.’

  Tate stood there a moment, uncomprehending, then said, ‘Right. Right. Nigel?’ He called the young researcher over, introduced him to Natalie and told him to take her to the accommodation they kept for the seemingly never-ending stream of visitors, donors and hangers-on who dropped in and out of the project camp on a regular basis.

  ‘What do you think you're playing at, Tate?’ Farina hissed once Natalie was out of earshot.

  ‘Did her daddy email you already?’ Tate asked.

  Farina shook her head. ‘Zoe contacted her father last night and I had him on the phone from America this morning threatening to call the Tanzanian police to open a rape docket on you.’

  ‘I didn't touch the girl, Farina
. She came on to me.’

  Farina waved her hand, as though swatting away a fly. ‘I'm sure you didn't, Tate. We all know you're not … well, we know you wouldn't take advantage of a young girl like that. And if you did, I'd personally cut your balls off with a panga since you rejected me that night in New York. What I can't understand, however, is why you would be so stupid as to send the daughter of one of our biggest donors home!’

  ‘She's a disaster waiting to happen. She nearly got herself – and me – killed yesterday.’ Tate quickly outlined his version of events while Farina stood there, hands on hips in the heat, impatiently waiting for him to end.

  ‘You took her in the helicopter and then on foot with you while you approached an animal without the ground crew in place.’

  He bridled at her tone. The truth of the matter was that he thought that if he kept Zoe under his wing for a day or two she might finally start paying attention to all she'd been told in her briefings, and wouldn't get in anyone else's way. Reluctantly, though, he now conceded Farina had a point. It could look as though he'd been giving her favourable attention as a prelude to making a move on her.

  ‘What does it matter?’ he asked Farina. ‘Even if I let her stay on here – against my better judgement – her father wants me tried for attempted rape.’

  Farina led him into his own tent and took a seat in a canvas director's chair at Tate's fold-out aluminium camping table. Tate sat on his stretcher. ‘I don't think he's serious,’ she said.

  ‘How can he not be serious – it's his daughter and he's swallowed her lies.’

  Farina shook her head. ‘He actually said to me that he thought his daughter was infatuated with you and that she … what did he say? Could come on a little strong around men sometimes.’

  ‘She's a spoiled brat who'll do anything to get her way.’

  Farina agreed. ‘And I think her father knows that, too. He intimated that if you let her stay on he would let this matter pass and would ensure she maintained a strictly professional relationship between the two of you.’