Luana (3 page)

They searched for him all along the Rift Valley, through new mountains where Luana found a strange shiny thing, and among the tallest trees of the thickest jungle. Luana had begun to fear that he had, made indifferent by misery, fallen prey to some other unknown predator.

The three of them were dividing the first haunch of a fresh-killed buck antelope when Ohoh finally reappeared.

“Where have you been, big mouth?” Jukakhan rumbled. The big cat was unable to show emotion but his growl was far from threatening.

Ohoh didn’t reply immediately. Instead, he settled himself in the crotch of a tree, peeled a banana with careful deliberation, and threw the peel at Chaugh.

“Out killing elephants, oh slayers of sparrows!”

That was the time both Chaugh and Jukakhan were especially sad they could not laugh.

One day Luana and Ohoh were sitting on the broad low limb of an
mzizi
tree, dividing the morning’s gathering of nuts. Both big cats had been out prowling for small game and now Jukakhan returned. A single breathtaking leap and he was up in the branches with them.

Luana put her arms around the sinewy neck, squeezed hard, and licked the lion’s ear. He squirmed and snarled, “Not now, man-sister. This is important.” He looked around then.

“Where is Chaugh?”

“It had better be important, to bring brother from hunting.” She stood on the branch, cupped her hands, and let out a deep-throated roar.

Minutes later the panther appeared and joined them in the tree.

“What is it then, brother?” the panther asked irritably.

“I was over by the rocky place, at the nearer river,” he murmured. “River-rat spore is strong there and I’d hoped to catch one out of his hole . . .”

“I hope I did not break my own stalk to hear about the failures of your own,” Chaugh interrupted.

“Patience, brother,” admonished the lion. “I caught man-smell, then. It was deeper in the forest, so I went to look. And it was true. There were many men.”

“What of that?” replied Luana, cracking a thick nut with her rock. “We have seen men in the forest before, and they have seen us.”

“That is true enough,” agreed Jukakhan. “But this was different. These men carry many strange things with them I did not recognize. And there was one whose skin—whose skin was as yours once was, man-sister. As yours still hints at. I thought you would want to see. It is curious strange.”

Luana pondered. Thoughts twisted like thornbush through her mind. Long left-alone memories began to trickle back, mixing with remembered pictures in the books. These recollections rushed in on her mind like a rising tide, filling in crevices and canyons and wetting her interest.

“I would not do this, man-sister,” Ohoh put in. The chimp could be brave until confronted with the need to actually make decisions or commit himself to something.

Luana glanced down at him and cuffed him gently on the arm.

“What harm could it do? Come, let us have a look-see at this strange man.”

Chapter II

The machete described a silvery arc, and vines and creepers parted, making perhaps tiny cellulose screams. Barrett wiped his forearm across his forehead to sweep clean the beaded sweat and found time for a slight grin.

He’d once run safari for a number of inexperienced explorers from another jungle, New York. There was one good-looking young fellow who obviously saw himself as another Stanley, Sir Henry. Barrett only saw him as Stanley, Laurel.

Of course, this young trailblazer was not content to relax and let Barrett and his men do the dirty work. Oh, no. He had to participate. He had his own machete, too, clean and shiny new.

Actually, he’d done rather well with the big knife. Until in a tired, sweaty moment he’d gone to wipe the perspiration from his brow and instead made a neat five-centimeter-long gash just over his eyebrows. Moral: never wipe sweat, scratch yourself, or swat bugs with the hand holding a machete.

Barrett turned, shouted,
“Njoo, njoo!”
to his men. Moving through the gap he shifted his machete to the other hand. There was a faint trail present, but it was clogged with overgrowth and protruding limbs ready to take a man’s pack off his back—or an eye from his head. He moved steadily forward. It was slow, back-breaking work.

Barrett’s arms and back, however, were reinforced and strengthened by a powerful dream. No creeper, no tough liana, no stubborn green-brown vine can resist the cutting power of a knife pushed by the promise of great sums of money.

Any dream that would motivate a man like George Barrett to challenge jungle like this had to be prosaic. Because George Barrett was no saint. Certainly he didn’t have the face of a saint.

It was rather like East Africa itself, smooth except for occasional sharp peaks and one great rift—watershed here, a dark place on the map there. Oh, he wasn’t pretty, but he was neat. His height was slightly above normal, the body powerful but not bulky. There were men who looked stronger, yet few were. Barrett possessed an inner strength that was far more impressive than the size of one’s biceps. To survive the places he went, this strength was vital. Africa did not fight clean.

Part of this inner strength came from the dream. The dream had its origin and its history to the south.

For two hundred years the Empire of Monomotapa had traded gold, silver, ivory, and precious stones to the Arabs who came down the coast from Medina and Cairo and Aden and great Khartoum. Later, this lucrative trade was taken over by the Portuguese. They pleaded and demanded, begged and threatened—yet no white man ever saw the mines of the Monomotapa emperors. They did not make the mistake of other primitive peoples, but instead kept their sources of wealth well hidden.

Then, in 1834, the Rozwi Bantu, who had ruled the Empire since the end of the seventeenth century, were overthrown and destroyed by barbarian Zulu from the south. Yet when the great cities of the Empire, Zimbabwe and the others, were finally excavated and explored, no sign remained to indicate that the wealth of kings had once passed through their mysterious stone walls.

What then became of the great treasure of Zimboë, which was to the Portuguese what fabled Cibola was to the Spanish conquistadores?

The historic Bantu migrations out of the Congo had run southward, paralleling the Great Rift. The Rozwi themselves had come from the region of Lake Tanganyika. Here, and only recently, had evidence been unearthed that hinted at a small reverse migration. According to the theory, small groups of the ruling Bantu had retreated along historic routes, moving ever deeper into the jungle.

To what end? To escape the fierce Zulu, no doubt. But also, some hypothesized, to try and re-establish the Empire from a hidden jungle base. Zimboë then might better be compared to the Inca’s last fortress city of Machu Picchu, not imaginary Cibola.

Alas, the theory remained only that, and one not taken seriously by older, less romantic but more realistic anthropologists. Besides, what would a small, retreating band of one-time Empire-rulers re-establish such a city
with?

George Barrett thought he knew.

That was why, after running polite, civilized safaris for dilettante scientists and for fat, ego-crazed industrialists, he would pull his shillings out of the bank in Nairobi, form an embarrassingly small expedition, and vanish for a couple of months in the virgin jungles of the Rift Valley.

Even his best friend, Murin the Breeded, would have a laugh at Barrett’s expense. He was so called because he apparently had the blood of every race of man flowing through his body. And that of other species as well, said some—though never to his face, as where matters of blood were concerned, they preferred to retain their own.

But Murin was at least sympathetic, and his scoffing was more good-natured than the other’s.

“Look, George, old chap. You’re as fine a guide as there is in East Africa. Hell, you’re the only man I know who can get along with both the Portuguese and the Zambians! Now if you’d only put a few of your shillings in the bank and keep them there instead of blowing them twice a year on these crazy hunts of yours into the back of nowhere, why, you’d be able to retire in a few years. Buy yourself a big house in Nairobi . . .”

“I don’t want a big house in Nairobi.”

“Get a decent car instead of that filthy old land rover, something befitting your abilities . . .”

“I don’t want a ‘nice car,’ and that ‘filthy old land rover’ gets me where I want to go.”

“. . . settle down with a few live-in maids . . .”

“I don’t need any live-in . . .” and Barrett would smile and grin at his friend, and they would both laugh and order Zombies from the little bar in Sandy’s, the only bar in Africa where you could get a drink mixed by a bonafide, honest-to-rattle witch doctor.

Barrett hit a vine and stumbled, shattered the daydream with a curse. The curse must have been lucky as well as potent, or the poisoned dart would have hit him in the eye instead of digging into the tree behind. He crouched and whirled at the sound of bone digging into tree. There was no need to look. He ripped the rifle off his back. From the back of the troop a man screamed.

“Form a circle, damnit! Get behind your packs!”

A second man screamed and fell, clutching at the tiny prick in his neck. Barrett threw himself behind a food container, a wooden crate wrapped in tough leather. Frantic gunshots began to answer the small, deadly darts. But half his men were down already, and they couldn’t even see the enemy. A distant shape, there. A tree limb moved where there was no limb.

Barrett squeezed off a shot and was rewarded by a crackling of leaves and twigs where something heavy crashed through them.

A shrill ululation erupted around them, an alto screech that cut off hope as securely as their retreat had been. Muzak for the party of the Mad March Hare.

“Christ . . . oh, Christ!” Barrett searched every tree, every bush for the slightest hint of movement. But there was only the horrible, high-pitched screaming. And darts.

Someone howled behind him.
“Fasisi . .
. we die!” One of his men bolted from behind his pack, throwing away his revolver and dashing back down the trail they’d cleared in the forest. Barrett looked desperately over his shoulder, staying low. Something whicked into the leather near his hairline.

“Stop, you idiot!
Acha!
You can’t . . .!”

The man gurgled distantly, the sound coming reluctantly from his throat. He staggered another few steps and crumpled face down into the dark earth. His body was feathered with darts.

The Wanderi were a half-legendary forest folk. Little was known about them except that they were implacably hostile to outsiders. Nor did they seem to make racial distinctions. Trespassers were all of one color.

Contact with the Wanderi had been attempted only once. During the Mau-Mau rebellions following the Second World War, the ruling British discovered that there were several sections of jungle where the Mau-Mau themselves feared to go. Expeditions were sent out to attempt an alliance with what was obviously a powerful potential ally. The results were consistent. Either such expeditions found nothing . . . or else they never came back.

That was the first and last attempt anyone had made to contact the Wanderi.

Barrett fought with a holster seemingly intent on frustrating his every move. Eventually he wrestled the pistol out and gave it to an unarmed bearer. He also battled the bindings on another crate until he’d loosened the big gun. Sizing up their chances he decided he’d trade them and both rifles for a hundred-meter start in the forest.

Another man slumped. Barrett swerved and fired in one motion and was rewarded by the sight of a painted figure crashing through delicate ferns from behind a tree that was surprisingly close. His men continued to fire around him. He sure hoped they were hitting something. He fired again, and another, closer figure fell earthward, his blowgun snapping under him. The devils didn’t even scream when they died.

“Goddamnit!” he bellowed in Swahili. “We come in peace!”

Either that was the signal the watchers were waiting for, or else they particularly abhorred clichés, because a second terrible howling burst from the trees. The witch-men forsook their blowguns for knives and spears and war clubs and came charging out of the trees.

Everything that followed took place without thought. There was no time allowed for such civilized luxuries. Barrett fired as fast as he could pull the trigger. Witch-men fell silently all about him, while the living continued to yell like the dead.

His own men fought as best they could. One threw himself at the feet of a charging warrior, pleading for mercy. The gesture was born of despair and doomed to failure. The Wanderi split the man’s skull with a war club. Barrett was too busy to be sick.

He backed himself towards a big Kooba tree, forsaking the crates and the circle of death they’d become. The big gun he dragged with him.

Sheer numbers of fallen comrades seemed to have no effect on the witch-men. You’d have thought those he’d slain were merely resting comfortably, for all the fear it struck into the hearts of cousins and brothers.