Elephant families and bond groups make a lot of dust; a low rusty cloud like a stain in a porcelain sink south of the Enkongo Naroke swamp provided their direction this morning. The elephants normally traveled during the day from the acacia groves and grasslands where they fed to the deep swamp interiors where they rested and bathed, undetectable and undisturbed.
Pegeen, the asthmatic, put on a surgical mask. She and Etan rode in the Land Rover with Pert Kincaid and Eden, who drove. Tom, Bertie, Lincoln Grayle, and a young Research Associate followed in the combi. Every day, even when there were guests, was a workday for the Research Center staff. Pert had recording equipment with her and extra headphones that would enable the others to listen for infrasound communication between the elephants in the windless early-morning air.
"Elephants are so big," Pegeen said, looking dubiously at the boxy headphones, "and you don't have any trouble hearing them at the zoo. What is infrasound?"
"Frequencies well below oor range o' hearin'!" Pert told her, voice raised to be heard over the racket the diesel engine and a defective muffler were making. The track they followed was rocky, with dried, sweetly decaying piles of elephant dung Eden took pains to avoid, wrestling with the stiff steering until her wrists ached. "Sound audible tae oor airs travels in short waves and dissipates as it encounters natural objects:
particles in the air, heat risin' fr' the groond. Infrasound is composed o' long waves tha' travel great distances through solid rock, or undersea. We ha' known fer many years tha' whales also communicate infrasonically. Audible elephant roomblings, trumpet calls, bellows, and the like are only part o' thir language patterns. Should one o' the elephants recognize oor vehicles and is feelin' chummy today, tha' one may coom close. Then ye will hear a purrin' will lift the hairs on the back o' yir necks. Aye, we'rrre in luke today!"
Still in the hazy distance, thirty or more elephants were visible.
"Fer animals tha' may stand twelve feet at the shoolder and weigh six ton, they oft are remarkably elusive," Pert said, putting a hand on Eden's shoulder. "We'll slow doon naow, hon."
"How close will they allow us to approach?" Etan asked Pert. He was whisking fine dust from a camera lens with a camel's-hair brush.
"They'll not be a bit shy. We ha' been hir many yirs, and I ha' known most o' the Amboseli elephants since they wir juveniles. Naow hir's a nice bit o' shade we will be grateful fer later. Joost pool off hir, hon. The
lugga
is dry, but thir are boreholes the elephants ha' made recently tae gie at water."
Once they were parked beneath a dust-dimmed canopy of umbrella acacia, with the combi twenty-five feet away, Pert passed water around, then fiddled with the dials of her Nagra recorder. The elephants seemed to be moving their way in leisurely fashion, following, as a casually organized group, a familiar trail. All of them were the reddish brown color of the dust they raised. Still a quarter of a mile off, but Eden anticipated the elephants' arrival in the quickening of her heart.
"Thir is protocol tae be obsairved," Pert cautioned, "which we ha' wirked oot wi' the elephants dunn' long pairiods o' habituation." She picked up her walkie-talkie and spoke to the others in the combi. "It's pee break rrright now, er hold it 'til ye float. On no account leave the vehicle once the animals are wi'in a hoondred meters o' oos." She put the walkie-talkie down and took a pair of binoculars from a battered metal case. "Thir are elephants both placid and patient, oothers one might describe as paranoid," Pert explained. "A few may simply be off thir feed any gi'en day, er tarmented by ants up the trunk. We avoid males in musth; in tha' unhoppy condition they may attack at the slightest pairceived offense."
"Good cinema," Etan murmured, looking through a telephoto lens at the movement of elephants in their direction, like a small brown range of hills, restless topography.
Pert glanced at him, a look of misgiving. "Any mature elephant kin stomp this vehicle flat as a tin o' kippers. Mind ye dinna ferget tha'."
"What's musth?" Eden asked Pert.
"Rrragin' hormones. The condition affects all mature males fer up tae four months o' the year. But few o' them ha' the opportunity to mate until they are a' least tharty years o' age. The estrous female wants only the best and strongest bulls tae father her calves. Dunn' musth the testosterone level makes a bull dangerous er offensive tae others. He lives as an ootcast er wi' other bulls competin' fer the same prize, all o' them stinkin' miserable, contentious, and losin' weight."
Pert raised her binoculars to study the group of elephants.
"Aye, this will be Czarina's clan. A matriarch, quite elderly naow, but fully as big and powerful as inny bull. No males along today except fer adolescents, but, let oos ha' a look—" She scanned a partly denuded acacia grove in which a few trees had been uprooted, focused on a lone independent male yanking up tufts of coarse grass, trailing the group by forty meters. "Karloff," she said softly. "Ha 'n't seen the auld boy o' late."
"Do you name all of the elephants at Amboseli?" Pegeen asked her.
"Most ha' noombers; others ha' been gi'en names, by whim er soomtimes by appearance."
"Why Karloff?" Etan wondered, putting his camera down to wipe sweat from his eyes.
"He is somethin' monstrous, and not merely in size. Years ago he was part o' a bond group o' elephants, eighty strong, a phalanx moving rrrather rapidly through a confined area by Lake Kioko. It happened tha' a male lion found h'self trapped by thir approach, wi' no room tae get oot o' thir way. The lead elephant, oor gentlemanly Boris K., was quite astonished when the frightened lion leapt tae his shoulder and clung thir by the claws of a forepaw whilst rakin' oot the elephant's right eye wi' his oother claws. Whereupon oor enraged patriarch reached across the lion's boody wi' his trunk, plooked him ri' off, then held him by the tail and beat him 'gainst the rrrocky ground 'til the lion was nae but pulp."
"'Masterful! Towering! Ineluctable!"' Etan said, raising his camera to eye level again.
"He goes off like that" Pegeen explained, "quoting reviewers' blurbs from adverts for the new Hollywood films in the
Times
that particularly annoyed him."
"'Colossally talented! Wildly ambitious! Courageously moving!'"
"Etan, darling?"
"'Wonderfully playful, with delectable acting!"'
Toward Kilimanjaro there were a couple of striped hot-air balloons, red, yellow, and orange, like fishermen's bobs dappling the surface of a mirage. A popular type of safari in the national parks, Pert said.
"I hope no one minds awfully" Pegeen said, "but I must take a shit."
"Ye ha' aboot thray minutes," Pert advised her. "Please not tae dally. And carry a stick tae stir up the booshes befair ye drop yer knickers; some o' oor local vipers ha' vile dispositions."
"Oh," Pegeen said. She clenched her teeth and stayed in the Rover. Pert grinned at Eden. She had a dead-white spot near one corner of her mouth, the rest of her face hard varnish, like the wood of a coffin in which a perennial handsomeness was interred. Pert indicated that they should put on their headphones.
Eden could hear the elephants already, raucous in their dealings with one another. Calves stumbled about or fed even as their mothers walked. Cattle egrets like white feathers from an exploded pillow floated in the nimbus of red dust raised by the elephants; much higher, there were eagles.
In the air now a power of movement, a gamey effluence, stench of urine. Elephants, obviously, peed a lot.
"The first time," Pert said, "I laid eyes on an elephant group o' this size, I was properly humbled. I knew wi'out a doobt tha' they belonged hir and we did not. Much o' Efrika simply is not suited tae human habitation, except at the tribal, nomadic level. Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, was an exception. And Sooth Efrika, o' course, until 'instant democracy' happened in 1991. Democracy in the hands o' those wi' no desire tae employ it has been an abomination, an invitation tae despots and thir tyranny, which arrived bang on schedule. Thir once were tens o' thoosands o' prosperous farmers in those two coontries alone, most o' them white. Sooth Efrika raised food enough tae feed an entire continent. Today tha' gooverment's treatment o' the white farmers is destroyin' the coontry's agricultural base. Sooth Efrika has been forced to import basic foodstuffs, unheard of a decade ago. Thir farmers are the highest-at-risk-o'-murder group in the world. Upward o' six thoosand incidents o' black-on-white violence has decimated the farming community. I'm speakin' a gangs o' young thugs armed wi' Russian Kalashnikovs and usin' military amboosh tactics, rrroamin' the coontryside. Sooth Efrikan gun laws limit its civilian farmers tae ownership o' small arms, which are no defense against automatic weapons. A yoong nephew o' mine, married tae a lass o' Boer-Voortrekker descent and managin' a big farm she inherited, was strangled recently wi' barbwire. His wife and twin ten-year-old datters wir gang-raped. The goovemment seldom prosecutes e'en the bluediest ootrage. A policy o' dnvin' off the white commercial farmers whilst the incidence o' HIV-positive cases in the population soars past fifty paircent is suicidal at best. 'Strange things are many in this world, and strangest o' all is man.' I often think whilst starin' at the embers o' my fire and listenin' tae the soft nocturnal calls o' the great beasts in the wood close by, how Sophocles would ha' enjoyed my elephants. I woonder did he e'er sae one."
The elephants—two families temporarily conjoined, Pert explained, because there were twenty-eight of them, not including Karloff, who belonged to no family—were now close enough to distinguish individual features and imperfections:
a ragged ear, broken or cracked tusks, Karloff's scars and wizened eye socket. Pert's attention sharpened to her task. Adolescents were bumptious and play-threatening; they flashed young clean tusks like foot-long baby teeth, broke into ambling runs with their tails straight up and ears flapping. Czarina, oldest of the females and the matriarch the others deferred to, had a remnant of one tusk, the other blunt at the tip. She led the others with eyes downcast, trunk swinging close to the ground, sampling odors on a familiar trail. She was a talker, mostly rumblings. Long aware of the two vehicles parked in the acacia grove, when she was within thirty meters of them Czarina stopped and raised her trunk in an S-shape, nostrils moving delicately.
"We will be verra quiet now" Pert advised everyone. "Tha' roomble ye hear is reassurance tae the group. They may tarry a while, er joost pass oos by."
The elephants stayed. There were calves to be fed. Water to be sucked from boreholes in the dry streambed.
To the south a herd of zebra appeared in parched short grass. Wildebeest accompanied the zebra, both favored prey of lion, Pert said. "Also high in desirability a' mealtimes is the two-legged species, tha' canna run verra fast nor protect thir tender arses. Which o' carse ye dinna hear aboot sae aften, as it is bad fer tourism."
The sun rose higher; they all were damp with sweat. Pert apparently had no use for deodorant. Etan filmed and Pegeen fidgeted. Her surgical mask had turned grimy. One of the male elephants, adolescent but still a good eight feet at the shoulder, came close to the Rover, flapping his ears, pissing noisily; he sucked up dust and blew it over them. A mature female called him off. She waved her trunk then, casting what might have been an apologetic eye in their direction.
That's when they heard, and felt, Karloff coming, with a roar that could fibrillate an artificial heart.
The Rover trembled on the hard ground. Pert's head jerked around. In spite of the dark glasses she wore, Eden saw her eyes widen in alarm. They all looked back at the monster elephant as he charged the two vehicles in the grove. His show of rage had instantly upset the other elephants, who responded with fright rumbles, bellowing, and screams.
"What's happening?" Pegeen cried.
Etan said, panning his camera, "We should get out of—"
All of the elephants, led by Czarina, began to run, ears flat against their necks, trumpeting madly, raising an immense cloud of dust. The Rover shook from the impact of the stampede around it; the sun went dark. But not a single elephant made contact with them in their headlong panic.
Moments after the last elephant had cleared out, Karloff arrived. He had gone from a charge to a trot. His ears flapped and cracked like sails in a spanking wind. He loomed behind the Rover, less than three feet away but only partly visible through the dust. And passed it, heading for the combi. Trunk curled high, bellowing his outrage.
Eden could only imagine the petrified faces inside the combi; there was too much dust to see anything from twenty feet away. Pegeen whimpered in terror. Pert's walkie-talkie was on, but they heard nothing but static.
The bull elephant lowered his domed juggernaut's head and placed it against the side of the combi, as if he intended to roll it over a few times. Until he'd dislodged all of the combi's passengers like a few seeds from a gourd.
"Uh-oh, what's got him in this state?" Pert said.
Eden heard Bertie, but not over the walkie-talkie.
Karloff had lifted the combi off its right-side tires, tilting it at an angle of twenty degrees. There he hesitated, as if his rage had subsided. Eden heard Bertie again, and now she was receiving mind-pictures, a great jumble, so rapid she couldn't focus on any of them.
Karloff stepped back, head still lowered. The combi fell to the ground, springy on its shocks. Karloff rumbled, lifted his head, shuffled back a few more steps, trunk swinging imperiously. He tapped a six-foot tusk a couple of times on the bonnet of the combi. The flood of images continued in Eden's mind, a life in no particular sequence. She closed her gritty reddened eyes, feeling an end to the elephant's anger, and sighed.