by Chad Oliver
It took them a long time. They studied every inch of the ground. They came up with three kinds of fresh tracks. One set of prints probably came from a jackal. They ignored that sign.
There were other tracks that were unmistakable. Royce had seen them a thousand times; they were one of the few tracks he could recognize on sight. They had been made by baboons. He could tell by the different sizes that there had been at least two of them.
The remaining tracks—if tracks they were—sent a chill down his spine. He had seen them only once before. Sharp-edged depressions, deep prints. Made by something heavy. As though a flat-bottomed post of hard wood or metal had been slammed into the earth …
They found one other thing. A tuft of baboon hair caught in a thorny bush.
The evidence was clear. It was even possible to reconstruct what must have happened. Kilatya had been on guard at the Baboonery. Something had taken one of the baboons. Kilatya had followed that something into the bush. He had caught up with it here. And that had been the end of Kilatya.
It was clear, but it made no sense. Baboons did not kill human beings. They were capable of it, no doubt of that, but they just didn’t do it. Certainly, one or two baboons would never attack a man. A whole troop might do it, although Royce had never heard of such a thing, but not a couple of animals on their own.
That left the other thing, the thing that made the deep prints. An elephant? The idea was absurd.
The facts were simple enough. The baboons and whatever had made those sharp-edged prints had come together here, just as they had at the Baboonery. Two baboons were missing. A baboon was dead, the body still in the freezer. And now Kilatya was dead.
Facts were fine, but facts alone were never enough. What did they mean? What could they mean?
The two men got back into the Land Rover and Royce drove the rough trail to the Baboonery. He took it easy, concerned for Kilatya’s body. Whenever he hit a hole in the road the corpse thumped soddenly in the tarp.
It was afternoon when he reached the thatched buildings in the clearing. It was hot again despite the dark clouds blowing across the sky. The caged baboons coughed out a greeting. Royce stared at them, his hackles rising.
Welcome home, he thought.
The Baboonery seemed very small and very lonely and very isolated.
When the Land Rover stopped, there was a smell of fear and death in the air.
5
There was no telephone at the Baboonery. There was no radio transmitter.
Royce told Kathy what had happened. He instructed Mutisya to stay with her and to make certain that the children did not stray from the main building. He climbed back into the Land Rover and made the short run to Matt Donaldson’s safari camp—five neat green tents in a clearing located just before the trail crossed the Kikumbuliu. Matt’s American clients were asleep in their tent, which simplified matters somewhat. Royce quickly explained the situation and Matt glanced at Kilatya’s body.
“Get that bloke out of here, will you?” Donaldson said in a low voice. “You’ll frighten my clients right out of their new safari boots.”
“I’m taking him in to the police at Mitaboni.”
“Want a bit of advice?”
Royce shrugged, wiping the sweat out of his eyes.
“Take old Kilatya out in the bush and plant him. Save you all sorts of trouble. The local Sherlocks will swarm over this place like flies. They won’t find out anything, you can bank on that. They’ll muck up my safari and you’ll be filling out forms until your arm drops off.”
Royce shook his head. “Can’t do that. You know the law. Dammit, a man has been killed. I’ve got to find out what the hell is going on.”
“You won’t find out from the police. In the old days, maybe. Not now. Royce, these people are forever killing one another. Or maybe it was an accident; I don’t know. I say forget it. Get yourself another driver.”
Royce felt a flash of anger. “It’s not that simple. I’m taking him to Mitaboni. Will you look in on Kathy if I’m delayed?”
“Certainly. No offense, Royce. You do what you think best. It’s your shauri. Just remember, I warned you. Now please get that body out of here before our friends emerge to sample the wonders of the African afternoon.”
“Right. Thanks, Matt.”
Royce turned the vehicle around, went back past the Baboonery, and headed toward the main road to Mitaboni. It was slow going and he could hear the tarp-wrapped body thumping behind him. When he finally emerged on the paved road he gunned the Land Rover with a sense of relief.
He still had a couple of daylight hours left when he got to Mitaboni. He pulled up in front of the ramshackle post office and got out into the sultry air. The flies began to settle on the tarp in the back of the Land Rover. He stepped into the public telephone booth outside the post office and closed the door. It took him half an hour to get a call through to the district headquarters at Machakos, a distance of a little better than one hundred miles. It took him another fifteen minutes to talk his way past a battery of officious clerks and get the ear of a captain in the Kenya Police. The captain told him that this was a very serious matter, which he already knew. The captain said that he was sure the local police could handle the situation, which Royce doubted. The captain thanked him for calling.
Royce left the telephone booth in something less than high good spirits. He was drenched with sweat. He drove across to the Mitaboni police station, carried Kilatya’s body inside, and placed it on the long counter.
“I have a dead man here,” he said to the building’s only occupant.
The African policeman, dressed in a crisp blue shirt, shorts, and heavy shoes, thoughtfully unwrapped the tarp. “This man, he is dead.”
“I know that.”
“This matter is very serious.”
“I know that.”
“I will have to notify Machakos.”
“I’ve done that.”
The policeman eyed him suspiciously. “We will see.”
Royce sighed and sat down. He stared at the fly-covered body on the counter while the officer attempted to contact Machakos. Another forty minutes went by. The policeman returned from his labors and confronted Royce. “I am in charge. This is a very serious matter. There must be an investigation.”
“Good. That’s why I’m here.”
It took Royce two hours to relate what had happened while the policeman took laborious notes. The body remained on the counter the entire time. Nobody came into the station and nobody left it. The policeman informed Royce that he would be out the next day to search for “clues.” Royce thanked him and left.
Darkness had fallen and the air was cooler. Stars gleamed through the broken clouds. Royce was tired, hungry, and disgusted. He made a quick detour on the way home to tell Bob Russell what had happened. He refused Russell’s offer of food and pushed on to the Baboonery.
It was late when he got there. All the lights were on and Mutisya was sitting on the front steps.
“Everything okay, Mutisya?”
“Okay, Mr. Royce.”
“Thank you. Go and get some sleep, Mutisya. Tell Elijah to post a watch.”
Royce went on inside. He was too tired to think.
He knew one thing.
Everything was definitely not okay.
The police arrived the next morning—all three of them, comprising the entire Mitaboni police detachment. They proceeded to launch their investigation, and they soon had the place in a state of total confusion.
Royce held himself under control; there was nothing else he could do. The scene before him was something between a Marx Brothers’ movie and watching a man trying to empty the ocean with a bucket. The police checked everything they could think of, including driver’s licenses, passports, and trapping permits. They examined the dead baboon in the freezer. They grilled the African staff. They studied the baboons in the cages. They marched down to Donaldson’s camp and looked at the tents. After a two-hour break for lunch—co
oked by Wathome—they actually had Royce drive them out to where Kilatya’s body had been found. They studied the tracks and scribbled away in notebooks.
When they were all through they went into a huddle. The officer in charge called Royce to him.
“This matter is very serious,” he said.
Royce couldn’t think of anything to say to that.
“You will not be charged,” he said.
Royce couldn’t think of anything to say to that either.
“It is our decision,” the policeman said solemnly, “that this man was killed by baboons unknown.”
Royce bit down hard on his pipe. He had the distinct feeling that wild laughter would not be appreciated.
“Wild animals in cages are very dangerous. Be more careful in times to come. If there is more trouble we will have to think again about the matter of trapping permits.”
The policeman saluted and took his leave.
Royce watched the police Land Rover disappear in a cloud of dust. He put his hands on his hips. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said.
He went into the kitchen and got a bottle of beer. He needed it.
He sprawled on the uncomfortable leather-covered couch, waiting for dinner, staring at nothing. Kathy was busy with the kids back in the bedroom, which was just as well. He didn’t feel much like talking.
Somehow, he had to organize his thoughts.
The police had been a waste of time, but he couldn’t blame them. This thing was completely outside the range of their experience. They knew their business when it came to accidents on the Mombasa road or cattle rustling or witch killings, but this …
A sound in the sky. A baboon torn apart with superhuman strength. Mysterious tracks. A man killed trailing a baboon …
Was there a cop in the world who could have made any sense out of all that?
Royce himself did not know what to think. The comic-opera interlude had done nothing to ease his mind. He knew that he was in danger even if he did not know exactly what the danger was. He was isolated here, vulnerable. He had a wife and two children to consider.
He also had a shipment of baboons to get out. He had men to feed and pay, equipment for which he was responsible. He could not just lock the door and walk out.
He fired up his pipe. His mind kept wandering. It was all so strange, so strange that he was here at all …
Two years ago, Africa had been little more than a splotch on a map to Royce Crawford. It was halfway between Edgar Rice Burroughs and actors shooting lions on TV—lions that were invariably “man-eaters terrorizing the native villages.”
Royce had settled into a comfortable rut. It was a more interesting rut than most and he might have remained in it for the rest of his life if it had not been for Ben Wallace. After Royce had graduated from the University of Texas and served his time in the army, he was too restless to spend his years parked in an office by day and stuck in a tract house by night. There were two things that Royce liked. He enjoyed hunting and fishing, which kept him outdoors, and he liked to write straightforward prose that bore some relationship to the English language. In both of these activities, he was terribly old-fashioned. His country had become an urban land; most Texans lived in cities now, and their most violent form of exercise consisted of carrying beer from the refrigerator to the backyard barbecue pit. The writing that was currently much admired seemed to deal exclusively with sex hang-ups and the feeble joys of drug addiction.
Royce made the happy discovery that there was a market for more or less factual stories about hunting and fishing. He taught himself to take passable photographs, and he made an unspectacular living writing for magazines like Field and Stream and Outdoor Life. It was fun, but it got tougher as time went on. There were only so many basic variants on how to fish for bass in stock ponds and how to pot Texas deer in the wilds of Kerr County. He had to keep on the move, looking for unusual ideas, and living began to get complicated.
Then Ben Wallace had called.
Royce went to Houston to talk to him. He knew in a rough kind of way about the Foundation’s medical research work in Africa, and he figured that Wallace wanted him to do an article on baboons. Instead, Wallace offered him a job in Africa.
“Why me?” Royce asked. “I’m not a doctor. I don’t know anything about Africa.”
“We don’t want a doctor,” Ben Wallace said. “You are not going to experiment on the baboons. We fly doctors in sometimes for work on the spot, but mostly we are concerned with getting the baboons out to the doctors—it’s more economical that way. We want a man who knows something about animals. You do. We want a man who can hunt for meat. You can. We want a man who can get along in somewhat primitive circumstances. You do that all the time. We want a man who can get along with people. We think you can. We want a man with some education. Your college record was a good one. Don’t sell yourself short, Mr. Crawford.”
“Okay. I’m the answer to the Foundation’s prayer. Why is the Foundation the answer to mine?”
Ben Wallace smiled. “May I speak frankly?”
“This would seem to be the time for it, Dr. Wallace.”
“Very well. I’ve checked you out very carefully indeed. You’re making a living out of your writing and that’s about all. You don’t have any compelling ties to keep you here for the next few years. Your oldest daughter—Susan—will be starting to school, but your wife can teach her the first-grade stuff. Susan will get far more out of a year or two in Africa than she’s likely to get around here. You could go.”
“Maybe I could. Why should I?”
“Look at it this way. We’ll pay you ten thousand dollars a year to manage the Baboonery. That’s about what you make in a good year here. The thing is, almost all of that will be clear profit. You will have no living expenses. We’ll pay your passage over and back. Your quarters will be provided, and your food and a reasonable liquor allowance. We’ll supply the ammunition for your hunting. Your job won’t take more than five or six hours a day. You’ll be sitting right smack in the middle of some of the best game country left in the world. You can do plenty of hunting and take all the pictures you need. You should be able to sell as many stories from there as you could poking around shooting jack rabbits in Texas. You can even take some time off and go fishing—there are some fine trout streams on Mount Kenya, you know, and there is good Indian Ocean fishing at Malindi. You’ll have some interesting years at the Baboonery, and you’ll wind up with two or three times the money you could make if you stayed home. That’s why you should go. If you’ve got any arguments against that, I’d like to hear them.”
Royce hadn’t been able to think of any arguments.
That was how he had wound up at the Baboonery.
Of course, Ben Wallace had left a few things out of his description of paradise. Little things like fear and isolation and death …
Royce refilled his pipe. Houston seemed more than a world away.
Perhaps Kilatya had been killed by a baboon—or by baboons—unknown. Except that unknown was the wrong word. The right word was alien. Face it. Something had come down out of the sky. Something was walking through the bush that left an unearthly track. Something was changing the baboons …
How? Why?
Royce did not know and could not know. But even if his imagination was playing tricks on him, one thing was obvious: he ought to get Kathy and the kids away from the Baboonery. He could take them to Nairobi, put them up in a hotel whether they wanted to go or not. Then he could come back alone. Find out for sure what in the hell was going on. Then make a final decision …
Wathome stuck his head in from the kitchen and announced that dinner was ready. Kathy came in with Barbara.
“Where’s Susan?”
“She’s not feeling well. I don’t know what’s wrong with her. I put her to bed; she says she doesn’t want any dinner.” Kathy looked worried.
Royce joined them at the table. “Well, let’s eat our dinner anyway. Maybe we’ll all feel better
later.”
He hardly tasted his food. Kathy seemed so distracted that he did not try to talk to her. Perhaps it would be more sensible to wait until Susan was over her cold or whatever it was. He had a lot of work to do. As long as Matt Donaldson was camped down the road they were not alone.
Better to wait …
After the dinner dishes had been cleared away and Wathome had gone, the night seemed suddenly very large and very still. The moon, like a coin of old silver, was high in a cloud-shrouded sky. The air was chilly and a small breeze stirred through the leaves of the banana trees. The baboons were restless, coughing and grunting in their cages. Somewhere, far away in the depths of the night, a solitary leopard gave a harsh cry of anger at a missed kill.
Royce sat on the edge of the bed, puffing on his pipe. “Hear that chui? I know just how that old leopard feels. I thought we might get someplace with the police in here, but we’re right where we were before. I really think we ought to get you and the kids to Nairobi. A couple of weeks at the Norfolk would do you good.”
Kathy took off her dress and hung it in the closet. She went over to check on Susan and then sat down next to Royce, smoothing her slip over her knees. “Let’s wait until Susan is better. She feels hot to me. Then we’ll talk about it.”
Royce kissed her, gently at first.
“Sex fiend,” she whispered. “You might at least turn the light out.”
“I was just being friendly.”
“Be a little less friendly. But put that stinking pipe away. I have to draw the line somewhere.”
Royce got up, turned off the light, undressed, and went to his wife. Later, when he thought Kathy had gone to sleep, he got up again and pulled on his clothes.
“Where are you going?”
He bent over and kissed her lightly. “Just going to have a look around. I won’t be long. Go back to sleep.”
“Be careful,” she said drowsily. “I love you.”
“I love you,” he said quietly. Lord, he thought, I really do. I’m an anachronism. If anything ever happens to her or the kids …
