by Bill Schutt
Villagers, Wang told himself again, though he was inwardly certain that this was not the case. As if to confirm his suspicion, he noticed something else—a musky smell that had not been there earlier. And though he would never come to understand how, it was a scent that chemically circumvented any inclination he might have had to head off into the forest in search of his visitors.
Ten minutes later the biologist was back in his tent, and despite the musky night visitor, and the discomfort that a sheathed bayonet made for a bedmate, physical and emotional exhaustion had done their work. He was soon fast asleep, and at peace.
It did not last—could not last, in a time and place such as this.
Before the moon had moved halfway across the sky, he was awakened by a single gunshot. The blast echoed up the canyon like a reverse thunderclap. It was followed several seconds later by the distant baying of dogs—incessant and aggressive. They smell blood, Wang thought, a moment before another sound pierced the night. It was an almost human cry—high-pitched and conveying fear. Simultaneously muffled and echoed, magnified and distorted by the combination of fog and valley walls, the shriek passed through his campsite like a ghost. The reaction from below to this sound was completely different from the response to gunfire. It was as if someone had flicked a switch—the forest and indeed what seemed to be the entire canyon went completely silent: no dogs, no bats, and no insects. Even the windblown clacking of the dead bamboo seemed to have stopped.
At dawn, Wang quickly broke down his campsite and began a descent toward the nearest village, in the direction of the previous night’s gunshot. As usual, the hike was treacherous. The Silurian karstic limestone that made up the Daba Mountains was riddled with cavities ranging from finger length to cavernous—nearly all of them hidden by dense scrub and a thick layer of humus. One false step could easily lead to a broken leg—which in these regions was often indistinguishable from a sentence of slow death. An even faster route to the afterlife might be found in a crash through the thin ceiling of an uncharted cavern system—a spectacular but final discovery for an unlucky explorer.
Even before he reached the village, Wang Tse-lin could see the smoke from its morning cook fires. Though the settlement, a half-dozen bamboo huts with thatched roofs, defined remote, there was no fear of being treated as an intruder. Having visited before, he entered the clearing and found slightly more than a dozen people standing together.
Nearly the whole village.
They were gathered around something on the ground. The men crowded in close—the women and children on the periphery. As Wang approached, heads turned in his direction. Recognizing their strangely dressed visitor, the tight cluster of men parted, allowing him a first look at what appeared to be a body lying prone and wearing an elaborate ceremonial costume. Raising a hand in greeting, Wang nodded and advanced.
His first revelation was that the figure lying before him wasn’t wearing a costume at all. It was in fact covered from head to foot in dense, grayish-red hair. And, although the body was clearly bipedal, it was definitely not human.
“Yeren!” the leader of the village cried. He was a wiry-looking man, with a bowl haircut. Immediately the others followed with their consensus opinion: “Yeren! Yeren!”
Wang dropped his backpack and knelt to examine the creature, lying facedown on a patch of wet earth. A fist-size hole in the lower back showed how it had died—its spine severed by a single gunshot and most of the abdominal organs blown through.
He estimated it to have stood around six feet tall, perhaps a shade taller. Extending a hand, he touched one of the elongated arms—which had been thrown forward, completely obscuring the face.
The body is still supple, Wang realized, before being startled by what he thought was the heavily muscled limb beginning to move. His momentary alarm gave the assembled crowd a good laugh, and he quickly realized that two of the men were turning the corpse over to get a better look.
Later, Wang Tse-lin wrote in his field notebook:
The creature turned out to be a mother with a large pair of breasts, the nipples being very red as if it had recently given birth. The hair on the face was shorter and the face itself was narrow with deep-set eyes, while the cheekbones and lips jutted out. The scalp hair was roughly one foot long and untidy. The appearance was very similar to the plaster model of a female Peking Man.
After examining the body, Wang questioned the villagers, who told him that the Yeren had always lived in the forest and that two of them, a male and a female, had been in the area for over a month. The creatures were reported to have great strength and “were very brisk in walking,” with the ability to move as rapidly uphill as on a plain.
“This,” the chief explained, “makes it difficult for normal people to catch up with them.”
The biologist nodded and forced a smile. Unless those normal people have rifles, he thought, but left unsaid.
“They do not have a language,” the head local assured the biologist, with his “expertise” regarding the Yeren beginning to wear a bit thin. “They can only howl.”
Wang requested and was granted a meeting with all three of the village leaders. He presented his university ID card again, reminding the men that he was on a government-sponsored mission and that his superiors would certainly express their gratitude for the sale of the Yeren’s body, though the payment could be no more than he had previously offered for a specimen of white bear.
“These are hard times,” Wang added in a grave tone. “And there is little funding for this sort of work, especially since we have several similar specimens donated by villages in the western portion of the district.” This last part was, of course, not true but it quickly produced the desired effect.
“Of course you may have the wild woman,” the chief said, with the wave of a hand and a gap-toothed grin. “The forest has plenty of game and there are plenty of Yeren.”
Though Wang was puzzled at the mention of game, the thought was soon forgotten in the excitement of having so easily procured a specimen of such monumental scientific importance. The chief even volunteered to provide him with the salt necessary to dry the “Yeren’s” pelt and the services of a pair of stout villagers who were said to be “the finest skinners in the region.” Wang expressed his gratitude, then insisted on paying extra for an oversize clay jar half-full of the potent local home brew, into which he intended to preserve as many samples of the organs and other soft tissue as he could.
The day proved to be very long and very bloody and by the end of it Wang was not only exhausted but also covered in gore. The amiable chief, noting the weight of the now specimen-filled jar, assigned two porters to transport it—first to the river, then by canoe to the town of Yi Chang.
“When you arrive, you can tell your bosses about us!” the chief suggested enthusiastically. “How generous we were.”
“Your people are indeed generous,” Wang said, “but telling my supervisors might send the wrong message.” He paused, thinking about the coworker who disappeared after having uttered a single, harmless joke. Wang could see that the chief was confused, so he continued. “What if . . . more and more guests arrived . . . trapping your forest animals, killing the Yeren?”
The local nodded, solemnly. “That would be bad.”
By nightfall, the specimen had been completely packed, as had an array of sharp, newly washed instruments used to skin and prepare the creature. Wang bowed deeply, thanking the chief for his generosity before presenting him with a brass pocket compass that he’d owned since childhood.
Shortly before dawn, the biologist and his two porters began their descent out of the Shennongjia Forest. Although there would be no specimens of white bear to study and describe, Wang Tse-lin knew he would be returning to civilization with something of far greater value—the salt-packed skin, alcohol-preserved entrails, and partially disarticulated skeleton of an unknown primate—a creature that by all appearances had evolved along a branch somewhere between humans and apes. In all li
kelihood it would become one of the greatest scientific discoveries of the twentieth century. But while this was certainly a cause for celebration, another emotion was creeping into his consciousness. These days, even in the presence of a discovery that put his greatest childhood dreams to shame, darkness lurked beneath the excitement—a sense of fear and dread that would not go away.
The inland port city of Yi Chang
Western Hubei Province, China
June 20, 1946
A trip from the Shennongjia Forest to Yi Chang required four full days. During the second day, Wang and his escorts arrived at a larger village where he was able to hire a motor launch. He also contacted his supervisor at the Irrigation Committee as well as his university department chairman. The former instructed him to check into a hotel in Yi Chang and wait for further word. The latter, after determining that Wang had not lost his mind, urged him to “safeguard the specimen at all costs.”
“Someone will meet you,” he was assured, “when you disembark at the Yi Chang’s central harbor.”
Two days later, as his boat approached the crowded dock, he saw a line of ten or twelve soldiers, standing at attention behind an impatient-looking army officer.
“Are you Dr. Wang Tse-lin?” the man called.
“I am,” the biologist replied.
The officer gestured to one of his men and immediately the soldier stepped forward to receive the bowline from the frightened-looking boat pilot, who immediately retreated and checked the fuel level of a gas tank he had planned to refill after getting paid.
“You and your specimen must come with me,” the officer snapped at Wang.
“Yes, but—”
The military man held up a hand. “Enough talk!” With that, he signaled for his men to remove the scientist, his bags, and the containers containing the Yeren from the vessel. “Take them to the trucks.”
Within minutes, Wang was sitting in the back of a seven-passenger, armored scout car. He knew that the Americans had been supplying Chiang Kai-shek’s National Revolutionary Army with outdated and sometimes barely functional vehicles and equipment since 1942. The scientist noted that the interior of this particular model was so poorly ventilated that the engine fumes became almost immediately nauseating. Of more concern to Wang was his precious Yeren specimen—which had been loaded into a second vehicle. Now, as both truck drivers gunned their engines, Wang glanced back to see the motor launch pilot doing exactly the same thing—rapid departure. Their vehicles were now speeding in opposite directions, throttles open. What disturbed him most was that the boatman had never even bothered to collect his fee.
Less than a half hour later, the two trucks slowed down at a checkpoint outside the Yi Chang airport. The guards there quickly ushered them through and the vehicles made their way toward the runway. Wang could see that the few planes present had been shifted to one side, and the reason for this was immediately and perplexingly apparent. Three of the strangest-looking helicopters he had ever seen—or imagined he would ever see—were arrayed along the blacktopped runway.
They look like enormous bananas, Wang thought.
Chapter 7
A Hitch in the Plan
Civilization is like a thin layer of ice upon a deep ocean of chaos and darkness.
—Werner Herzog
I see technology as a Trojan Horse.
—Daniel Greenberg
Trojan is a horrible name for a brand of condoms. Why name it after something that, after penetrating the wall, broke open to let [an army] of little guys pour out and [mess] things up for everyone?
—Anon.
Metropolitan Museum of Natural History
Theodore Roosevelt Auditorium
July 12, 1946
“Did you know that Selznick cut ten minutes out of that Dalí dream sequence?” The film director had used a slight pause in the musical program to inform Charles Knight of this seemingly important fact about his most recent motion picture.
“Really,” Knight whispered back, hoping his guest would keep his lugubrious, and soon-to-be-world-famous, voice down.
Onstage, composer Bernard Herrmann had just finished conducting a full symphony orchestra in the Prologo to what would become his only solo opera, Wuthering Heights.
“Now this is what I’ve really come to hear,” said Alfred Hitchcock.
With the aid of an assistant, a young musician carried something that more resembled an odd piece of cabinetry than a musical instrument, to a spot adjacent to where the conductor stood.
Herrmann, already famous for scoring Citizen Kane, and Jane Eyre, basked in the applause of a sold-out audience before introducing the newly arrived musician with a wave of his hand.
“It’s a theremin, my dear man.” Hitchcock continued his monologue, every syllable given its own moment, even as the rest of the auditorium went silent.
Knight flashed a tight smile, then turned quickly toward the stage.
“Miklós Róza used one in Spellbound.”
Someone in the row behind them shushed the director, who immediately pivoted in his seat. Appraising the considerable size of the “shusher,” whose biceps seemed a serious threat to burst his tuxedo jacket, Hitchcock chose survival, turning back again toward the stage himself. “Riffraff,” he mumbled.
From her seat on the other side of Charles Knight, Patricia Wynters quietly let out a breath she felt like she’d been holding for several minutes. As she breathed in again, sounds that might have come from a ghost orchestra filled the auditorium, although oddly, the musician producing the notes was not even touching the instrument—instead passing his hands in the proximity of a pair of metal antennae.
How chillingly wonderful, she thought, watching as the “thereminist” (as he would later be introduced to her) seemed to wring eerie swoops and flutters from the very air.
“His majesty awaits,” Knight warned Patricia, in a whisper.
Patricia had grown accustomed to giving tours of the museum’s Vertebrate Zoology Department. What she found most amusing was the fact that dignitaries of every ilk, in addition to all manner of the rich and famous, reacted in precisely the same way—leaving their titles and self-importance in the elevators as they stepped onto the museum’s legendary fifth floor. Once there, each of them was a child again—from kings to stuffy British directors—and each was thrilled by the opportunity to visit a part of the museum they knew few people would ever see.
And tonight is no different, Patricia thought, unable to suppress a smile. For while Alfred Hitchcock was being given a personal tour of the paintings and dinosaur statuary in Charles Knight’s office (by the artist himself), “Call Me Benny” Herrmann was demonstrating a theremin (which had recently been gifted to Knight) for an uncharacteristically bemused Major Patrick Hendry. Choosing to avoid the aural torture that soon followed—as the major initiated a series of rude-looking contortions in a vain attempt to play theremin “Chopsticks”—Wynters and the composer wandered over to where Hitchcock was admiring Knight’s Tyrannosaurus rex model.
“There’s something terribly familiar about this creature,” the director said, stretching the sentence out so that it seemed like a paragraph.
Knight laughed. “I agree. My colleague Edwin Colbert thinks they’re birds, or rather that birds are dinosaurs. A fascinating concept, no?”
Bernard Herrmann nudged his corpulent new acquaintance. “Alfred, can you imagine these horrors running wild across the earth today?”
The director said nothing, apparently lost in thought, so Knight responded, “I guess we should be thankful the modern versions have lost both their size and their teeth.”
“I’m not sure that would matter, my dear Charles,” Hitchcock replied. “They do have numbers on their side.”
Patricia was just about to chime in when the sound of a crash from across the room caused them all to jump.
Four pairs of eyes turned toward the commotion, which found the redheaded Army officer holding his hands up as if in surrender. T
he theremin lay tipped over and splintered on the floor, emitting a thin trail of smoke and a brief sizzle before it died.
“I barely touched it,” the major exclaimed, defensively.
At that very moment, in a small dark room less than a block away on Central Park West, a man screamed and fell backward off his chair, tearing at the headphones he had been wearing and kicking over a monitoring device—which flew in the opposite direction.
“Are you out of your mind, Julius?” came the loud whisper of a second man, spoken in Russian.
The man on the floor moaned and rubbed his ears.
“I assume you’ve lost contact,” the other man said.
“What?” the man on the floor said, in a voice that was far too loud considering where they were and what they were doing.
Suddenly, a bang on the wall, followed by an only slightly muffled voice, “Hey! How ’bout shuttin’ up in there?”
“Yes . . . sorry,” the man who was standing called back in unaccented English.
“My kids are tryin’ ta listen to Fibber fucking McGee and Molly!” the plasterboard explained.
“Okay then. We are just fine in here,” the man reassured the wall. “Thank you.” Then, when there was no further response, he turned to the man on the floor. “You see what you have done?” he hissed in Russian. “Wait until Comrade Theremin hears how you’ve destroyed his prized bug.”
The man on the floor nodded but then quickly shook his head. “What?”
Chapter 8
Foreign Parts
Time destroys the speculation of men, but it confirms nature.
—Marcus Tullius Cicero
In waking a tiger, use a long stick.
—Mao Zedong
South Tibet
