Three Weeks in December (9781609459024) (16 page)

T
he next morning, the humans approached the gorillas, slowly foraging and knucklewalking, eyes obediently down. When the family spotted Max, they stopped eating to cluster together on the far side of Titus, watching her with great attention. A few of them coughed at her, loud aggressive barks that echoed through the trees. Titus stood squared off on all fours, vast and impassive, considering.

Forty feet down the slope, Max waited, head down, her breath rasping in her throat, riffling her fingers through some grasses in front of her. Before getting dressed this morning, she'd ripped up a sheet and wrapped it tightly around her ribs. Climbing the mountain to the gorillas, she'd worked hard to move somewhat normally, to hide the pain of her fractured rib. She had to search for the vine. And she wanted to see the gorillas.

Somehow overnight she'd forgotten how big they looked, a sense of immense furry weight and those shiny eyes. And they weren't like a school of fish or a herd of deer, where she knew without doubt exactly what the reaction would be at her approach, all of them wheeling to flee as a single body. These primates instead examined her, evaluating their options. She plucked some of the grass and chewed on the ends, trying to make her movements appear slow and relaxed. Her heart thumped in her chest.

Rising on his hind legs, Titus beat his chest in a rapidly escalating tattoo. She could see a bit of his movement from the corner of her eyes. The sound wasn't the deadened
thud-thud
of knuckles pounding flesh as in King Kong movies. No, this was a much louder sound, a popping noise. Must come from him clapping his cupped palms hard against his bare skin.

He screamed down at her. Somehow her actions—keeping her head down and pawing half-heartedly through the grass—weren't reassuring enough. He was warming himself up toward real anger. He began to pace back and forth, agitated.

On impulse, considering how aspie-like they'd seemed yesterday, she experimented. Shot one flash-glance directly at them, then away.

She heard a fast inhale from Yoko.

From the gorillas, on the other hand, there was a silence. She could feel them considering her. Titus paused in mid-motion, head cocked to one side.

As a child, when she'd been introduced to a stranger, she'd tried to circle round to the person's back or sides, some place where it felt less likely the person's eyes might suddenly snap up and stare at her. Allowing her to slowly get used to the person, without worrying about that confrontational stare.

So now, she casually shouldered her way up onto her knuckles, shifting herself six inches to the left to face a wild ginger plant, settling back down with her side to the gorillas. She tugged at the plant, busily. Happy unto herself.

The gorillas were utterly still.

She dusted the plant's roots off, then sniffed them. The spicy ginger scent. She took an exploratory bite of the crisp root and chewed. The white flesh inside tinged green. She kept her hands out where the gorillas could see them.

Normals met each other face on, shaking hands in a vestigial gesture developed long ago to reassure the other they clasped no small weapons.

The aspie version of a handshake would be parallel play, shoulders turned.

After watching her for a long moment, Titus made his decision.

He yawned. Angling her head just a little, she could see the edge of him. His massive stagy gesture—head thrown back, wide gaping mouth, loud groan of an exhale—demonstrated his utter boredom with her, while also elaborately displaying the length of his yellow fangs.

Then he sat down and stared off in another direction, mirroring her own turned-away posture.

Given this all-clear signal, within a few minutes the family started eating again, tossing an occasional glance at her, but no longer acting as alarmed.

Yoko knuckled over. “I
told
you not to look at them.”

“I remember.”

“Then why'd you do that? Listen to me. If I believe you're acting unsafe with them at any time, that you're endangering yourself or them, I will kick you off this mountain.”

Max was still watching the gorillas from the edges of her eyes, listening to them. She stated, “Don't worry. I'll be fine.”

Yoko grunted, sounding like Titus. “You're lucky they calmed down so fast. That was weird.” Then she moved off, heading toward a steaming stool sample.

That whole morning, Max kept at least thirty feet from the apes, allowing them time and space to get used to her, and her to them. From the edges of her eyes, or with fast glances, she watched their posture, gestures, and what they were eating.

While the gorillas moved through the jungle, she followed leisurely behind them, picking up the half-eaten pieces of plants they'd dropped and examining each. Identifying the plant and the part eaten.
Galium
ruwenzoriense
—they pulled the whole vine down, eating the leaves, stem, berries and flowers. With their huge fingers, they neatly picked blackberries off the bushes and popped them into their mouths, smacking their lips with satisfaction. They plucked leaves off nettle bushes and balled them up so the spines wouldn't jab them in the mouths, rolling each leaf up as carefully as a spitball before swallowing it. Like horses, they ate continuously, but unlike horses, they didn't rip mouthfuls off the landscape indiscriminately. Instead they considered each possible bite: giant gastronomic vegetarians picking through the countryside.

Every piece of chewed-up foliage that she found discarded on the ground, she sniffed intently for what chemicals might be inside. She closed her eyes and sucked in the smell in short bursts, concentrating. She took no notes. She had no need. She remembered everything.

About halfway through the morning, she noticed when they moved toward a new plant or spot, they didn't walk directly, but more eased up on their goal, wandering in slightly roundabout, as though they didn't want to startle the plant. Yoko and Mutara didn't seem to have noticed this because each time they headed for something, they knucklewalked forward in a line as straight as an arrow. Their actions determined and fast. Like a tone-deaf person humming, they could purse their lips and make noise but not get the tune. Each time, the gorillas glanced at them, their eyes glittering.

The next time she moved to a new spot, Max tried easing up sideways on the locale. At her movement, the apes kept eating, not bothering to look.

She foraged like they did, her head down and focused on the plants.

On the other hand, Mutara just leaned against a tree, off to the side, his hands empty, directly facing the apes. Yoko also sat still, unoccupied, waiting on the outskirts of the group until one of them crouched for a moment and pooped. As soon as the gorilla had moved away, she knuckled forward in a straight line, bug-eyed in her safety goggles, to burrow through the soft glop, looking for parasites. The family watched her from the edges of their eyes.

As Max worked, she listened to the gorillas' sounds, not just the noises of them munching through the foliage, but their vocalizations: loud smacks of enjoyment, a few satisfied grunts and chuckles, some cavernous burps.

About halfway through the morning, the sun broke out from behind the clouds, changing the jungle light from a gloomy underwater feel, to the flickering light of a disco. One of the females (Max knew the gender from the lack of a silvered fur across the back as well as the lack of swaggering muscles) stopped in a shaft of light and tilted her leather face to the sun. Steam rose from her fur. She let out a grumbly purr of contentment. It came out in two syllables, “Ra-oohm, ra-oohm.” A meditative chant mixed with a rumbling sound suggestive of digestion. Her eyes were closed, a chunk of juicy
Galium
vine clutched in her hand. Her voice low in the gut.

The family considered her statement, then a gorilla to her left chipped in to agree. “Ra-oohm, ra-oohm,” the gorilla answered. And one by one, like a role call of happiness, all the other family members responded with a chant-purr, each voice so distinct and emotive it clearly offered the speaker's identity, location, and mood.

The last one to respond was the baby gorilla—Yoko had said her name was Asante. After she chant-purred, she stood up on her tiny bowed legs to beat her cupped hands against her chest for a muffled patter. Unlike a horse or dog, she didn't prick her ears forward or wag her tail. Instead she showed her emotion the way a human would. She smiled, lips closed, her chin tilted proudly.

At midday each family member wove a giant bird's nest on the ground for their nap, padding the inside with soft grass and ferns. They lay down with loud sighs, staring up at the jungle canopy and lazily making popping noises with their lips. Ready to fall asleep, they flash-glance repeatedly at the humans until Yoko signaled to the other two they should leave.

The humans retreated a few hundred feet down the mountain so the gorillas could nap in peace. There, they ate their lunch and Yoko began to write up her notes from the morning, yawning, clearly needing a nap herself. Mutara leaned against a giant
Hagenia
trunk and closed his eyes. Max flipped rapidly through her plant encyclopedia, double-checking each of the plants she'd seen today. The vine Panoply had sent her to find was rolled in the mouth and then spat out, its bioactive properties too strong to ingest. By finding out what the gorillas chewed and swallowed, she was creating a list of what could not be the vine. By the time she finished her task, the others were asleep.

Although only a minor percentage of humans were diagnosed with Asperger's, everyone was really “on the spectrum,” ranging from the most outgoing glad-handing salesperson to a hunched and rocking autistic. The lightest sprinkle and you got an unusual ability to focus and be introspective, to follow an idea to its logical conclusion. You got Picasso and Cassatt, Einstein and Curie.

A bit too much of a sprinkle and you got Max, unable to control her focus, to pull herself out of her work. Her condition might be the price paid so the species could have diversity in tasks and abilities.

Half an hour later, Yoko and Mutara woke up, and the three of them wandered slowly up the hill, listening for clues that the gorillas were done with their siesta. Hearing the snapping and crunching of foraging, they approached.

Titus rose onto all fours to look them over, then grunted and sat back down. This time, accepting Max's presence that easily.

The other gorillas cast a few shy glances, then turned back to the business of eating. Max wandered slightly sideways to within twenty feet of them, then sat down, searching through the plant bits they'd dropped. Near them again, she was at peace. Flash-glancing at them, she felt she was finally communicating in something close to her own language.

Overwhelmed with the moment, she rumbled at them, “Ra-oom ra-oom,” grumbling the noise up from her belly.

Yoko and Mutara turned to her, eyes wide.

From the gorillas, there came a pause. A little surprised perhaps that she'd addressed them.

Then, lipping in a long string of hanging moss like an errant spaghetti strand, the mother of the baby gorilla agreed. “Ra-oom ra-oom.”

And one by one they chipped in their response.

 

Crossing the meadow that night to Pip's cabin for dinner, belting out “Row, row, row your boat” and swinging the flashlight around—trying in every way she could think of to warn any nearby forest buff that she was walking by, don't be alarmed—she heard a sound directly ahead of her. Her feet swiveled to run even as she pointed the flashlight toward the sound.

Yoko stood on Pip's porch, laughing. “Hey Tombay, the buffs aren't hard of hearing. You don't have to be
that
loud.”

She waited while Max climbed the stairs. Through the door came the sound of voices arguing.

“What's going on in there?” asked Max.

Yoko didn't respond.

So Max walked in and Yoko unwillingly followed.

Pip was flipping through the Rwandan phonebook. “No, I tell you that's it. The last straw.”

“
Vous êtes trop émotionelle
,” said Dubois. “Go to sleep. Tomorrow, you wake up. You see it is not so bad.”

There was the bitter smell of fear in the room.

“Look, do what you want with your life,” Pip said as she dialed. “I'm getting out of here.”

Max asked, “What's bothering her?”

Yoko said, “The Kutu, what else?”

“Scientists. They're offing scientists now,” said Pip, and then added, “Oh hullo, I'd like to book a flight.”

Dubois snorted. “She speaks English to them.”

“What happened?” Max asked, flash-glancing at them. Mutara was standing by the window looking out into the dark, away from all of them, rubbing the scar on his palm.

Yoko said, “Some geologists were killed by the Kutu. You don't need to know the details.”

“I don't agree,” said Pip.

Yoko's torso turned toward Pip. “You talking on the phone or to us?”

“They put me on hold. Max has to hear the story.” Saying these words her voice was pitched lower than normal, serious.

“She doesn't have experience here. She can't judge how places like the Congo work, what's dangerous and what's not.”

“Doesn't matter. It's her life.” Max stood still, not fidgeting, her body squared off toward them. If Pip talked this way normally, stood calm and certain, perhaps the others would listen to her more.

“If she gets scared off because of this, her company will stop paying the park guards. Without guards, hunters will climb the mountains looking for bushmeat.” Yoko turned to Dubois and said, “Hellooo. We're talking about your beloved gorillas here.”

Dubois' hands were stuffed into her pockets, her fingers nervously fiddling with change or an old house key. “I know. I know. But I think I have agreement with Pip.”