No Enemy but Time (42 page)
and mangy to boot. Joshua leaned his head against the side window and closed his eyes.
Blair said, “You're not having second thoughts, are you, Joshua?”
“Lately all my thoughts are second thoughts.”
“There's still time to go back, of course.”
Joshua opened his eyes. “All right. Let's go back.”
Blair shifted his pipe in his teeth, a meerschaum like the one Hugo had lost to the rhesus monkey at Ritki's Animal Ranch. Kaprow shot him a swift sidelong glance. Both scientists, their pet projects in the balance, were visibly alarmed.
“Joke,” Joshua comforted them, patting Blair on the knee. “Didn't mean to scare you shitless. I'm as obsessed as you two are. It's just that I didn't ask for my obsession.”
“Neither did I,” Kaprow countered.
“My saying we could take you back wasn't an insincere formality, Joshua. If you want us to, we can.”
“It's okay. Really. I've got a bad case of preflight jitters, that's all.” A model of innocence, he lifted his eyebrows. “Only human, you know.”
“I wouldn't blame you if you wanted to—”
“Renege, Dr. Blair?”
“Pull out, I was going to say.”
“Of course you wouldn't.” Joshua closed his eyes again, in spite of which he was hungry rather than sleepy. Mentally he superimposed a segment of Florida's Miracle Strip on the desolate African landscape sliding past him outside. “What Zarakal needs out here, I think, is a good International House of Pancakes.”
“Come now, Joshua. A moment ago you were applauding the absence of used-car lots.”
“Or a Burger King.”
Blair chuckled appreciatively. “In a place where many of the people, not omitting the local police, poach elephants for a living?”
“Burger King would fry ’em, Dr. Blair.”
“Jesus,” said Kaprow. “At a time like this.”
The Great Man mumbled something about the delicious banality of Joshua's wit, and their conversation concluded. The Machine hummed along the highway until the highway itself ran out, and the Land Rover ahead of them eased down into the thornveldt, its wheels negotiating the bumpy track to Lake Kiboko like four pallbearers on uneven ground. Then Kaprow committed The Machine to this same formidable course, and the truck with the generator came rattling and clanging after. The caravan was now deep
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within the two hundred square miles of eastern lakeshore territory that Blair had persuaded President Tharaka to designate a “paleontological protectorate.”
During his training at Russell-Tharaka Air Force Base, Joshua had heard conflicting stories about the prevailing Zarakali attitude toward the Lake Kiboko Protectorate. People in Marakoi and Bravanumbi regarded the area as a national treasure, the site of the discovery of
Homo zarakalensis
, and they supported Blair's work there as a means of thrusting their country into the world spotlight. These folks never set foot within the protectorate, however, and probably had no wish to. Let the interior minister dig to his heart's content, until the camels came home from Ethiopia and the sand flea went extinct.
The pastoralists and seminomadic tribespeople who had once driven their camels and cattle through the area had another view, but it did not appear to count for much because their lifestyles disfranchised them from the politics of a nation struggling desperately to modernize. Industrialization and agricultural recovery were far more pressing concerns than the doubtful proprietary rights of either the Moslem nomads or the Sambusai pastoralists who often used this land. Only those whose trespass Blair specifically approved were supposed to set foot within the protectorate, and the Great Man seldom made concessions to either group.
After all, fossils lay exposed on the arid surface here, and the danger was that the Sambusai warriors, or their stupid cattle, would kick the skullcap of one of Adam's ancestors to uninformative smithereens. The importance of paleoanthropological research was beyond their understanding. Because they wanted to use the land, rather than simply stalk and sift it, they actively resented the government's decision to set aside two hundred square miles for Blair's researches. That this decision was unenforceable did not appease the Great Man, however, when he saw several Sambusai herding their livestock through the protectorate in haughty disdain for the legislation prohibiting their access.
“Damn! Look there! Those beggars've blocked us!”
Three Sambusai drovers had prodded their herd across the unpaved track approaching the lake. The air policeman in the Land Rover got out and began waving his pistol around. Neither the cattle nor their masters found this performance a compelling reason to move.
“Let me out, Joshua. Your compatriot needs my help.”
Joshua unlatched his door and climbed down into the withering morning heat; Blair followed. Outside The Machine, Joshua felt as vulnerable as a turtle that has ill-advisedly wriggled out of its shell. Blair marched toward the confrontation.
One of the Sambusai warriors, contemptuous of the angry air policeman, suddenly leapt high into the air.
He did not move his iron spear from its steady vertical, and at the summit of his leap he trembled his shoulders rakishly and smiled a faraway smile. As soon as he had touched down, a second Sambusai performed the same sort of leap. The red ocher on his plaited hair dusted up visibly when he landed, a halo of crimson grit.
Seeing Blair and Joshua approach, the air policeman holstered his pistol and returned sheepishly to the Land Rover.
His withdrawal seemed to trigger the leap of the last Sambusai warrior on the path. Because this herdsman was naked under his scanty, ill-secured toga, his penis performed a tardy recapitulation of his leap. Joshua, intimidated by these prepossessing men, hung back several feet. In comparison to them, he was a pygmy or a child. He could see the first two warriors nodding at him, appraising him, consigning
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him to some unflattering category reserved for runts, outsiders, cowards, or crazy persons.
Blair barked a greeting at the Sambusai. Having ceased their gymnastics, they inclined their heads just perceptibly in response. They seemed surprised to hear their own language coming out of the mouth of a paunchy white man with drooping mustachios and a bald brown pate. Nevertheless, they palavered amiably with Blair, nodded more than once at Joshua and The Machine, and stalwartly held their ground.
Wiping his brow with a handkerchief and humorously pursing his lips, the Great Man returned to Joshua.
“They're a decent enough crew, I think. Ignorant about human prehistory, of course. We'd probably do well to indulge them in a couple of their whims.”
“What were they saying about me?”
“Why, nothing. Nothing more than what they were saying about the lot of us, that is.”
“And what was that?”
“Referred to us, jocularly, as
iloridaa enjekat
, I'm afraid. Sounds lovely if you don't know what it means.”
“
Iloridaa
what?”
“
Enjekat
, Joshua. Means ‘those who confine their farts.’ Has to do with the kinds of breeches we wear.”
“Jocularly?”
“Well, I would say so. On the whole, they were quite pleasant.”
“What do they want? Did you tell them to move?”
“I
asked
them to move, Joshua. However, they're not going to pack off without a concession or two from the man who had this traditional grazing area proclaimed a state protectorate.”
“They've got your number, then.”
“Well, they know who I am, of course. Figured that out readily enough. It tickles them to have run up against the High Mucky-Muck of the interior ministry, so to speak. I'm the chap who displaces living people to dig up the bones of dead ones.”
“They
look
tickled.”
Kaprow stepped down from The Machine. He stood with one hand on the door, waiting for Blair and Joshua to come abreast. “What's the matter?” he asked. “If Joshua's going to get off by tomorrow morning, we need to get set up.”
Blair said, “Dr. Kaprow, a great many things in Africa are on permanent hold. I'm afraid you're going to have to—”
“We have a schedule. If we don't—”
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“We will, Dr. Kaprow, we will. I should have had a police unit from one of the frontier outposts sweep the area. Unfortunately, the protectorate's a little too big to fence.”
“Unfortunately,” Joshua echoed the Great Man. He pulled the moist material of his shirt away from his rib cage and wiped his forehead with his wrist. Out here, stickiness was a chronic affliction.
“What do they want?”
“They each want an item in trade, Dr. Kaprow. In addition, two of them would like a special favor.”
“Trade? What do we get?”
“Their cattle out of the road, I would imagine.”
“And the special favor?”
“Let's meet their specific demands first, shall we? The special favor is going to require a little of our time.”
“That's exactly what I had hoped to save, sir.”
“Nevertheless,” said Alistair Patrick Blair.
The warriors’ specific requests were simple, either poignant or grasping depending on your relationship to the item forfeited. Joshua yielded a leather belt with a brass buckle on which the jaunty figure of Mickey Mouse had been embossed. Kaprow, bewildered, forked over several American coins, while Blair made a lavishly eloquent presentation of his meerschaum pipe. The air policeman in the Land Rover, despite protesting that its sacrifice would put him in violation of the Air Force dress code, gave up his silver helmet, along with its camouflage net.
Finding that the helmet fit perfectly, the Sambusai warrior who had acquired it began chanting softly and doing gentle leaps, a Mona Lisa beatitude veiling his features. His tribesmen staggered about laughing, unable to puncture his composure with their jibes and catcalls. Then, controlling their mirth, they approached Blair with another request.
“What now?” Kaprow asked warily.
“They're envious of the helmet, but don't see any others to choose from. They'll settle for cardboard sun visors.”
“Oh, good.”
Joshua saw that a group of technicians (Americans) and field workers (Zarakalis) had climbed out of the covered flatbed of the truck behind them. Several were wearing sun visors, which they readily doffed and handed over to Blair to give to the importunate herders. As soon as the Sambusai had put these on, they began leaping with their helmeted comrade. The support personnel from the truck came forward to watch. One or two of them joined the dance, pogo-sticking with good-natured incompetence. The activity reminded Joshua of fuzzy kinescopes of
American Bandstand
segments on which Philadelphia teenagers had surrendered to a form of rhythmic seizure called the Watusi. It had not looked
exactly
like this, but then the Sambusai were not the Watusi.
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Kaprow said, “All we need now is a punch bowl and some helium balloons.”
The sun visors, Joshua noted, were red and white. They were emblazoned with the trademark of an American soft drink.
“My goodness, Dr. Kaprow,” said Blair. “You're awfully young for a curmudgeon.”
“What's the special favor they want? We need to grant it, if possible, and get on into camp.”
“They want to look inside The Machine.”
“
Look inside The Machine!
”
“They've never seen so fat a motorcar before, and it arouses their curiosity.”
Kaprow turned the angry russet of a baked apple. “They can't. It's impossible. You know it's impossible.”
“How badly do you want their cattle out of the road?” Blair put his hand on the physicist's shoulder.
“You don't think they're going to steal your Nobel Prize poking around in there, do you? I've never been able to make brain or bunion of the whole untidy scramble.”
“It's not your specialty, Dr. Blair.”
“Oh, I see. You believe these Sambusai herders are secret graduates of MIT,
magna cum laude?
”
“No, of course I don't. It's just that White Sphinx—”
“I'll show them around inside,” Joshua interrupted. “A tour guide who doesn't speak their lingo isn't going to spill much, is he?”
Because he had to, Kaprow acquiesced. Blair politely intervened in the Sambusai's dancing, and a moment later Joshua was leading two of the warriors to The Machine, where he pulled himself into a control space behind the cab. In this cramped chamber the Sambusai towered over him like professional basketball players. Their bodies gave off a unique commingling of scents: dung and cowhide, ocher and tallow, dust and sweat. To Joshua's surprise they seemed even more nervous than he.
“This way, gentlemen.”
Joshua turned a key and a door panel slid back into the insulated six inches of interior bulkhead. The Sambusai were delighted. They grinned, exchanged unintelligible commentary, and sauntered into the bizarre cargo section of The Machine. A metal rail outlined a rectangular catwalk around the inside of the vehicle. Opposite the three men was a small bell-shaped booth of smoky glass, and beside the booth stood an air policeman with a submachine gun.
“It's all right, Rick. We've got Dr. Kaprow's permission.”
“They don't plan to use those spears, do they?”
“Not that I know of. We'll take a quick look around and get out of your hair.”
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“What's going on?”
“Intercultural collision. Fill you in later.”
The air policeman—Rick, a blond Iowa farm kid—lowered his weapon but maintained the alert feet-apart posture of a sentinel. He had, Joshua knew, only a distorted inkling of the purpose of the arcane machinery inside Dr. Kaprow's vehicle, believing it a variety of mobile intelligence-gathering equipment meant to bolster Zarakal's military position in the Horn. Why Dr. Kaprow had driven The Machine inland to Lake Kiboko he had no clear idea, however. He was a GI who kept his nose clean by obeying orders.
