Chimpanzees? There were no chimps in this part of the Congo. Perhaps they might be gorillas: he saw one fragment from a cranium with heavy frontal sinuses, and he saw the beginning of the characteristic sagittal crest.
"Elliot?" Munro said, his voice tense, insistent. "Nonhuman?"
"Definitely non-human," Elliot said, staring. What could shatter a gorilla skull? It must have happened after death, he decided. A gorilla had died and after many years the bleached skeleton had been crushed in some fashion. Certainly it could not have happened during life.
"Not human," Munro said, looking at the ground. "Hell of a lot of bones, but nothing human." As he walked past Elliot, he gave him a look. Keep your mouth shut. "Kahega and his men know that you are expert in these matters,"
Munro said, looking at him steadily.
What had Munro seen? Certainly he had been around enough death to know a human skeleton when he saw one. Elliot's glance fell on a curved bone. It looked a bit like a turkey wishbone, only much larger and broader, and white with age. He picked it up. It was a fragment of the zygomatic arch from a human skull. A cheekbone, from beneath the eye.
He turned the fragment in his hands. He looked back at the jungle floor, and the creepers that spread reaching tentacles over the white carpet of bones. He saw many very fragile bones,, some so thin they were translucent - bones that he assumed had come from small animals.
Now he was not sure.
A question from graduate school returned to him. What seven bones compose the orbit of the human eye? Elliot tried to remember. The zygoma, the nasal, the inferior orbital, the sphenoid - that was four - the ethmoid, five - something must come from beneath, from the mouth - the palatine, six - one more to go - he couldn't think of the last bone. Zygoma, nasal, inferior orbital, sphenoid, ethmoid, palatine. . . delicate bones, translucent bones, small bones.
Human bones.
"At least these aren't human bones," Ross said.
"No," Elliot agreed. He glanced at Amy.
Amy signed, People die here.
"What did she say?"
"She said people don't benefit from the air here."
"Let's push on," Munro said.
Munro led him a little distance ahead of the others. "Well done," he said. "Have to be careful about the Kikuyu. Don't want to panic them. What'd your monkey say?"
"She said people died there."
"That's more than the others know," Munro said, nodding grimly. "Although they suspect."
Behind them, the party walked single-file, nobody talking.
"What the hell happened back there?" Elliot said.
"Lots of bones," Munro said. "Leopard, colobus, forest rat, maybe a bush baby, human. .
"And gorilla," Elliot said.
"Yes," Munro said. "I saw that, too. Gorilla." He shook his head. "What can kill a gorilla, Professor?"
Elliot had no answer.
The consortium camp lay in ruins, the tents shredded and shattered, the dead bodies covered with dense black clouds of flies. In the humid air, the stench was overpowering, the buzzing of the flies an angry monotonous sound. Everybody except Munro hung back at the edge of the camp.
"No choice," he said. "We've got to know what happened to these - " He went inside the camp itself, stepping over the flattened fence.
As Munro moved inside, the perimeter defenses were set off, emitting a screaming high-frequency signal. Outside the fence, the others cupped their hands over their ears and Amy snorted her displeasure.
Bad noise.
Munro glanced back at them. "Doesn't bother me," he said. "That's what you get for staying outside." Munro went to one dead body, turning it over with his foot. Then he bent down, swatting away the cloud of buzzing flies, and carefully examined the head.
Ross glanced over at Elliot. He seemed to be in shock, the typical scientist, immobilized by disaster. At his side, Amy covered her ears and winced. But Ross was not immobilized; she took a deep breath and crossed the perimeter. "I have to know what defenses they installed."
"Pine," Elliot said. He felt detached, light-headed, as if he might faint; the sight and the smells made him dizzy. He saw Ross pick her way across the compound, then lift up a black box with an odd baffled cone. She traced a wire back toward the center of the camp. Soon afterward the high-frequency signal ceased; she had turned it off at the source.
Amy signed, Better now.
With one hand, Ross rummaged through the electronics equipment in the center of the units in the camp, while with the other she held her nose against the stench.
Kahega said, "I'll see if they have guns, Doctor," and he, too, moved into the camp. Hesitantly, the other porters followed him.
Alone, Elliot remained with Amy. She impassively surveyed the destruction, although she reached up and took his hand. He signed, Amy what happened this place?
Amy signed, Things come.
What things?
Bad things.
What things?
Bad things come things come bad.
What things?
Bad things.
Obviously he would get nowhere with this line of questioning. He told her to remain outside the camp, and went in himself, moving among the bodies and the buzzing flies.
Ross said, "Anybody find the leader?"
Across the camp, Munro said, "Menard."
"Out of Kinshasa?"
Munro nodded. "Yeah."
"Who's Menard?" Elliot asked.
"He's got a good reputation, knows the Congo." Ross picked her way through the debris. "But he wasn't good enough." A moment later she paused.
Elliot went over to her. She stared at a body lying face down on the ground.