After an hour one of the porters suddenly picked up his load and started along the path. The others, grinning sheepishly, followed his example and the safari went forward into the sacred heartland.
They heard the machines at dawn the next morning and as they went on the sound became louder. The rivers they crossed were waist-deep and thick as honey with the fearful red poisoned mud.
Apart from the distant growl and roar of the machines, the forest was silent. They saw no birds or monkeys or antelope, and the Bambuti were silent also. They kept close together and they were afraid, darting anxious glances into the forest around them as they scurried forward.
At noon Sepoo halted the column and conferred with Kelly in a whisper. He pointed towards the east and Kelly nodded and beckoned Daniel and Victor to her. Sepoo says we are very close now. Sounds in the forest are very deceptive. The machines are working not more than a few miles ahead. We dare not approach closer for there are company guards at the forest edge.
What are you going to do? Victor asked.
Sepoo says there's a line of hills to the east. From there we'll be able to overlook the mining and logging area. Pamba will stay here with the porters. just the four of us, Sepoo and i, you, Daniel, and Victor, will go up on to the hills.
Daniel unpacked the VTR and he and Victor checked it. Come on, Kelly ordered, before the light goes or it begins to rain again.
They climbed the hills in Indian file with Sepoo leading.
However, even when they came out on the top they were still hemmed in by the forest. The great trees soared high overhead and the undergrowth pressed in closely about them, limiting visibility to twenty or thirty feet. They could hear the bellow of diesels below them, closer and clearer than before. What now? Daniel wanted to know. Can't see a damned thing from here. Sepoo will give us a grandstand view, Kelly promised, and almost as she said it, they reached the base of a tree that was a giant amongst a forest of great trees. Twenty pygmies holding hands can't encircle this tree, Kelly murmured. We've tried it.
It's the sacred honey tree of the tribe.
She pointed at the primitive ladder that scaled the massive trunk.
The pygmies had driven wooden pegs into the smooth bark to reach the lowest branches and from there they had strung liana ropes and lashed wooden steps that ascended until they passed out of sight into the forest galleries a hundred feet above where they stood. This is a Bambuti temple, Kelly explained. Up there in the high branches they pray and leave offerings to the forest god. Sepoo went first for he was the lightest and some of the pegs and steps were rotten. He cut new ones and hammered them into place with the blade of his machete, and then signaled the others to follow him. Kelly went next and reached down to give Victor a hand when he faltered. Daniel came last, carrying the VTR slung over his shoulder and reaching up to place Victor's feet on the ladder rungs when he could not find them for himself.
It was slow progress, but they helped the old man up and reached the upper gallery of the forest safely.
This was like the land at the top of Jack's beanstalk, an aerial platform formed by interlinked branches and fallen debris. New plants had taken root in the suspended leaf mould and trash and formed a marvelous hanging garden where strange and beautiful flowers bloomed and a whole new spectrum of life flourished closer to the sun. Daniel saw butterflies with wings spread as wide as his hands, and flying insects that sparkled like emeralds and princely rubies. There were even lilies and wild gardenias growing in this fairyland. Daniel caught the flash of a bird so jewelled and splendid that he doubted his own eyes as it vanished like a puff of brilliant smoke amongst the foliage.
Sepoo barely allowed them to rest before he began to climb again.
The trunk of the tree was half as thick at this level, but still as huge as its neighbours had been at their bases. As they went higher so the light changed. It was like coming up from the depths of the ocean.
The green submarine glow brightened until abruptly they burst out into the sunlight and exclaimed with wonder.
They were on the top branches of the sacred honey tree.
They looked down upon the carpet of the forest roof. It spread away, undulating like the billows of the ocean, green and unbroken on every side, except in the north. All their eyes turned in that direction and their cries of wonder faded and they stared in horror and disbelief.
In the north the forest was gone. From the base of the green hill below them, as far as they could see to the north, to the very foothills of the nowclad mountains the forest had been erased. A red plain(of desolation lay where once the tall trees had stood.
None of them could speak or move. They clung to their lofty perch and stared speechlessly, turning their heads slowly from side to side to encompass the enormity of the bare devastated expanse.
The earth seemed to have been raked by the claws of some rapacious beast, for it had been scoured by the torrential rain waters. The topsoils had been torn away, leaving stark canyons of erosion; the fine red mud had been washed down to clog and choke the rivers through the forest. It was a desolate lunar landscape. Merciful God! Victor Omeru was the first to speak. It is an abomination. How much land has he defiled? What is the full extent of this destruction? It's impossible to calculate, Kelly whispered. Even though she had seen it before, she was still stunned by the horror of it.
Half a million, a million acres, I don't know. But remember, they've been at work here for less than a year. Think of the destruction in another year from now. If those monsters she pointed at the line of MOMU vehicles that were strung along the edge of the forest at the foot of the hill, if those monsters are allowed to continue. It was an effort for Daniel to drag his eyes from the wide vista of destruction and to concentrate on the line of yellow machines.
From their high vantage point they seemed as tiny and innocuous as a small boy's toys left in the sandbox. The MOMU were in a staggered formation, like a line of combine-harvesters reaping one of those endless wheat fields on the Canadian prairie. They were moving so slowly that they appeared to be standing still. How many? Daniel asked, and counted them aloud. Eight, nine, ten" he exclaimed.
Running side by side that gives them a cudine almost four hundred yards wide. It doesn't seem possible that just ten machines have been able to inflict such terrible damage. Victor's voice shook uncertainly.
They are like giant locusts, remorseless, insensate, terrible. The caterpillar tractors were working ahead of the line of MOMUs, scything the forest to make way for the monstrous earth-eating machines to follow.
Even as they watched, one of the tall trees quivered and swayed.
Then it began to move, swinging ponderously as the steel blades ate through the base of its trunk. Even at this distance they heard the scream of living timber rending. It sounded like the death throes of a wounded animal.
The falling tree gathered momentum, its death cry rose higher and shriller, until the trunk thudded into the red earth and the mass of foliage shivered, then lay still.
Daniel had to look away. Sepoo was perched beside him on a high branch, and he was weeping. The tears ran very slowly down his wrinkled old cheeks and dripped unheeded on to his naked chest. It was a terrible intimate grief, too painful for Daniel to watch.
He looked back just in time to see another tree fall and die, and then another. He unslung the VTR from his shoulder and lifted it to his eyes, focused the telephoto lens, and began to film.
He filmed the devastated bare red plain on which not a living thing remained, not an animal, or bird, or a green leaf.