by Ken Altabef

Ken Altabef contributed “Pleased to Meetcha” to our Aug. 2006 issue. He says he’s working on a fantasy novel trilogy right now. His new story takes us to East Africa, where conservationists face hard choices.

* * * *

Merrian Aprilwood placed the photographs on the desk facing outward so Dr. Falconer could more easily see them. She wondered briefly how they might best be arranged for maximum impact, but it didn’t matter. Any way you looked at it, the destruction was impressive. A wealthy Tanzanian estate, half the buildings ravaged by a tornado’s fury, kraals shattered, thatch and beam scattered wide, farmland ripped up as if a berserk bulldozer crew had run amok.

“These were taken in Kenyisha,” she said, “a small Tanzanian province just south of the Park.”

Dr. Falconer regarded the photographs carefully. He passed a slender, sharply pointed index finger along the surface as if to divine some deep significance perhaps hidden from the casual or untrained eye. The motion struck Merrian the wrong way, giving too much the impression of a sideshow charlatan. Falconer lifted one of the photos and held it up closely before his face, his careworn brow rumpling just above the wire-frame glasses.

Merrian repressed a snicker. She had to admit, she thought rather poorly of this man so far. It might have been different had his first words in her office not been, “Good Lord, I’d forgotten how much I hate Africa.” His principal objection, it turned out, was to the number and variety of annoying insects, coupled with an overblown fear of contracting some ghastly but unnamed disease from them. How was she supposed to take that, she who had spent the better part of her life on the continent and knew it to be one of the most beautiful, graceful places on Earth?

A native Californian, she had come to Kenya as a curious biologist whose casual safari led to an attachment to the Kenya Wildlife Service to study lions, and then eventually, elephants. Twenty years later, she was director of the Amboseli Elephant Project. Her return ticket to L.A., now as withered and yellow as any ancient parchment, hung among the photos pinned to the wall behind her desk, right between the hippo and the lion cub.

“Elephants caused all this?” Falconer asked. His voice was surprisingly deep for such a tall, thin man. A substantial amount of gray peeked through his close-cropped hair, appearing in a random haphazard fashion instead of a determined march up toward his temples. His eyes were sharp, making the creases and wrinkles at their edges seem as if they didn’t quite belong, all of this giving the impression of a relatively young man aged prematurely rather than an old man with a twinkle still in his eye.

“The damage is consistent with a herd rampage, yes, but with no reliable witnesses—”

“You can’t be sure,” said Falconer, “and you consider it unlikely.”

“Merrian likes to think of the Park’s pachyderms as her friends; I guess she’s hard-pressed to admit any of her charges might be misbehaving.” This came from Ian Hartwick-Corning, a senior research associate at Amboseli National Park, a very handsome and congenial man, and a world authority on elephants. Up until now, Merrian had found his help indispensable. However, this whole ludicrous scene was entirely his fault. It had been Ian who suggested bringing in Dr. Falconer, an old acquaintance from his Oxford days. “I feel the same way, I suppose,” Ian continued. “After living with these elephants for so many years, studying them, interacting with them on a daily basis, you can’t help but form an emotional attachment. They’re very gentle beasts, actually.”

Falconer paused to scan the cramped interior of Merrian’s office. An overstuffed file cabinet and cluttered bookcase; the Save the Elephants calendar tacked on the back of the door; the photos, framed and unframed, forming a haphazard mosaic of wildlife on the wall behind her little desk; the pair of worn rattan chairs in which Falconer and Hartwick-Corning were seated.

Merrian watched his gray-green eyes run their gaze over all the things that encompassed her life, and wondered what he saw when they rested once again upon her. She knew what she looked like—a pudgy middle-aged woman, skin tanned by an outdoor lifestyle, her hair a rough-cut pageboy bleached blond by the African sun and streaked unabashedly with gray. Which Merrian Aprilwood did he see? Was it the strong, self-fulfilled woman she believed she had become, or a misplaced Californian who had sacrificed her entire life in an effort to preserve a dying species?

“Right. Let’s assume there is a herd of bull elephants ripping up the countryside south of the Park,” suggested Falconer. “Aside from the property damage, has anyone actually been hurt?”

“Luckily not,” answered Ian. “It seems the villa’s owners were on holiday and the house staff all put up in the servants’ lodge.” He gestured idly at one of the undamaged buildings in the photo.

“They didn’t hear anything suspicious?”

Ian grunted softly. “Oh, they heard it all right. Sounded like the Hand of God thundering down from On High. But that kind of racket doesn’t necessarily make you want to stroll outside for a look-see.”

“The damage to the estates and farmland is apparent,” Merrian explained, “but what you can’t see in the photos is the damage to the political situation here. Amboseli National Park borders on Tanzania to the south. For a long time, the hunting of elephants for sport was allowed in Tanzania. I’ve fought long and hard, backed by the Kenya Wildlife Service, to get the Tanzanian government to impose a moratorium on hunting, but now with these...incidents...the killing has begun again. Any bulls that stray outside the Park, as they often do—we’re only talking about a five-mile variance here—are in mortal danger.”

“And not just the bulls,” added Ian, his congenial features taking on a serious cast. “Cows too. Last week we lost two long-time friends—Big Ben and Feather Head.”

“These elephants were senselessly slaughtered, brought down by machine-gun fire in Longido,” fumed Merrian. “That’s more than fifty miles from the site of this supposed rampage. Feather Head was a lovely female, sixteen years old. I’d known Big Ben for twenty years. He was fifty, and in his breeding prime.” Her voice quavered embarrassingly at the last, betraying the depth of her sorrow at the recent loss of a friend. “We don’t have many breeding males left here. We can’t afford to lose them.”

“I see,” said Falconer. He brushed his hand dismissively over the photos on the desk without actually touching them. “Well, what steps have you taken to control the errant herd?”

Merrian practically jumped up from behind the desk. “None, because there is no errant herd! We keep strict tabs on all our major players. They’re tagged and tracked. We know their whereabouts within a mile or so at all times. That’s a big part of what we do here—we study their movements. There simply haven’t been any elephants in that area.”

“You think this kind of damage could have been faked? Perhaps the government—”

“We’re dealing with two different governments here,” said Merrian. “Kenya’s backing me all the way; they realize the scientific value of these elephants. But Tanzania is a different story. With this as evidence, they’ve lifted the ban.” The pain had crept back into her voice. Her research was in jeopardy, her animal friends in danger, the hard-fought political victories of the past few years fading quickly before her eyes. The situation was disastrous, and as much as she didn’t want to appear desperate to him, she was desperate. She must have been, to allow Ian to convince her that someone like Falconer could possibly help.

“The Tanzanians can be difficult at times,” explained Ian. “The ivory trade is still quite important to them. It’s far too easy for opportunists to use this ‘Mad Bulls on the Loose’ story as a convenient excuse to make more kills.”

“I sympathize,” said Falconer, rather unconvincingly, “but I feel constrained to point out that I’ve come quite a long way on your say-so, Ian. After a sixteen-hour flight, half a dozen vaccinations, not to mention a particularly grabby pair of immigration officials at Jomo Kenyatta, both of whom seemed eager to prove that courtesy is as near to the verge of extinction as your elephants, all capped off by a three-hour combination sauna and cab ride from Nairobi, this had better not be all you have. You said there was an eyewitness.”

Merrian felt competing pangs of pity and a guilty sort of glee as Falconer turned his annoyed, incising gaze toward Hartwick-Corning.

“Yes, of course. An eyewitness...of sorts. A man called Parsitau, a bushman, drives a minibus for us, doubles as tour guide. He knows this land as well as anyone, I guess. He was camped out nearby, and heard all the ruckus when the lodge got hit—”

“Sleeping it off in the bush, you mean,” added Merrian. “The man’s an inveterate drunk.”

“Not the most reliable of sources, I take it,” commented Falconer dryly. “Did he see any elephants?”

“No, he may have gotten there too late for that. The remarkable thing was what he didn’t find. He insists there were no elephant footfalls. He couldn’t possibly be mistaken—elephant tracks are large and quite distinctive, as you can imagine.”

“How about signs of heavy machinery?”

“None. He also says he could smell something ... well, elephants of course, but also something else. Vodun jusu bota. Angry spirits, to be more precise.”

Merrian snickered. “Are you sure that isn’t just the Tutai expression for hangover?”

“Is he a sensitive?” asked Falconer.

Ian nodded vigorously. “Quite possible. He claims to have come across more than a few strange happenings in the wild, including vengeful spirits. I know him well. He’s reliable, at least on this point.”

“They are a deeply superstitious people,” added Merrian. “Spirits and ghosts are in some ways more real to them than, say, California. While they will probably never see America, they personally know many people who claim to have had encounters with spirits.”

“You seem rather unconvinced, Ms. Aprilwood,” said Falconer.

Merrian appreciated the serious manner with which Falconer was treating the situation, but the expression of that same seriousness, etched into the already grim lines of his face, made her uneasy.

“Look,” she said, “I don’t know what pretense Ian used to draw you into this, Professor, but I assure you there are no ghosts in Kenyisha. There’s a certain sound in the jungle at night. An eerie high-pitched wail, very much like a tortured screaming. Locals say it’s the tormented soul of an old shaman, his bloody ghost paying penance for the tribesmen he’d cursed. But you know what? It’s just the mating call of a night bird, the Spotted Dikkop. Genus and species, Burhinus capensis. I don’t believe in ghosts, Dr. Falconer.”

“They probably don’t believe in you either.”

“That’s very amusing, I’m sure. But I am not amused. I’ve invested eighteen years in this project, trying to save these dear animals, to pull them back from extinction. And every single thing I’ve accomplished, through sweat and strain and tears, can all be whisked away in a heartbeat. It won’t take much, it won’t take much at all. Just when we’ve begun to see an increase in the herd, I can’t watch it all go down in flames. So I’m willing to suspend my disbelief for now. I’ll do anything to get this situation under control.”

“Do you really mean that?” challenged Falconer.

Merrian didn’t answer. No, of course she didn’t. Hers was a world of statistics and logic and natural law. The jungle was dangerous enough as it was; there was no place in it for ghosts and goblins. In Africa, there was no Halloween.

Merrian bit back her anger. It hadn’t taken long for Falconer’s abrasive personality to worm its way under her skin, but there was little reason, outside of her own frustration, for snapping at him like a hyena. Her current predicament was not his fault. Ian had said he was a man who knew about “this sort of thing,” although what credentials there could be in “this sort of thing” she had no idea. He said Nicholas Falconer held a Ph.D. from Oxford, a doctorate in Psychical Studies. Upon hearing that, Merrian had remarked that she wasn’t aware Oxford had a Department of Paranormal Studies. Ian chuckled softly, saying, “You’re not supposed to know.”

Was he kidding?

Falconer went on, “This fellow Parsitau, I’ll need to speak with him. But you haven’t convinced me there’s anything out of the ordinary at work here, Ian. I certainly hope this isn’t all just a waste of my time.”

* * * *

Just so it wasn’t all a waste of his precious time, Merrian suggested she take Dr. Falconer on an aerial tour of the Park and its inhabitants. Having spent the past three days in meetings with Tanzanian Wildlife officials in a futile attempt to stall the spate of renewed hunting, she couldn’t bear the thought of passing the afternoon cooped up in her office. Besides, she never missed an opportunity to show off her animals.

She took an exquisite relief in piloting her Cessna 185 up into the clear afternoon sky. The long rains of spring had infused the grasslands with much-needed moisture, sparking the scintillating splendor of renewal. The patchwork mosaic of open plains, woodlands, and swamp that is southern Kenya draped out below them as a giant crazy quilt. Merrian made for the southwest, where the rich swamp land was best for viewing wild game. They were soon rewarded with a splendid view of a zebra herd on the move, fifty strong, rippling gracefully across the plain as one against a verdant backdrop of long green grasses.

Not long after, they sighted a multitude of grouse and bushbucks, a few wayward giraffe, and a small family grouping of elephants. From the air, the elephants looked characteristically unimpressive—gray, slow-moving masses easily mistaken for lumps of lifeless rock. Merrian guided the small plane toward the west, buzzing low over a group of Maasai herders illegally grazing their cattle on the fertile Park savannah.

She set the Cessna down on a makeshift airstrip just outside Tortabolis Camp, a cluster of huts and a long house the Project used as a monitoring base. No one came out to meet the plane. Merrian guided Falconer into one of a pair of battered Land Rovers waiting on a small circular driveway. The drive connected with a long, long dirt road stretching out to the endless east, but Merrian took them off-road in pursuit of the elephants they had seen. It would be easy to find them.

Lapsing into a casual but well-practiced speech usually reserved for fundraisers, Merrian tried to impress upon her guest the highly intelligent nature of elephants. They were, after all, among the world’s most perceptive animals. The number of similarities between the giant pachyderms and humans was striking, including a similar life span, close-knit familial groupings, and complex social interactions. Her efforts to interest the professor in her most intriguing topic, the ceremonies and rituals she had discovered among the wild elephants, had little effect on Falconer. He nodded often but said little.

“I’ve found them to have very subtle, individual personalities,” she continued.

Falconer offered a probing stare. “Do they have souls?”

“What?”

“I am asking, in your expert opinion, do they have souls?”

Merrian was flustered by both the nature of the question and the unpleasant way the Professor was trying to push her buttons. Worse yet, she had no pat answer. She had never seriously considered the question before. Her mental flailing was paralleled by a sudden wild swerve of the Rover in order to avoid a ditch. She had forgotten she was still driving the vehicle. “If we do,” she finally said, “and I don’t necessarily grant you that point—but if we do, they do.”

They found the elephants, two adult females and four young, grazing lazily at the edge of the swamp. Merrian stopped the Rover at a hundred yards, safely downwind, and suggested Falconer get out. She watched him unfold his gangly legs from the car, his lightweight suit of charcoal gray a poor choice of color in the heat.

“Be careful and slow,” she insisted, “and stay near the truck. The cows protect their young as fiercely as any human mother. One of those calves is very young and we don’t want to risk an attack response.”

Merrian recognized a torn ear here, a particular slope of tusk there.

“Let me introduce Belle,” she said grandly, pointing to a ten-foot behemoth, “and we call this other female Miss Daisy. Isn’t she just beautiful?” Merrian couldn’t say whether it was her proportions, or the set of her magnificent ears, or perhaps the haughty carriage of her massive head, but Miss Daisy was a particular favorite. “All these calves were fathered by Big Ben, the bull who was killed last week in Longido.”

Silently, they watched as the elephants uprooted large clumps of dactylon grass with their trunks, knocking the dirt loose against their legs before stuffing the foliage into their mouths. Those long, writhing organs seemed so wonderfully alive, Merrian could readily believe the other ten thousand pounds completely inconsequential. The dull thuds of elephant footfalls were accompanied by soft rumbling noises of satisfaction as they shuffled off toward a small inland stream. The smallest calf, still as yet unable to maneuver the water into his mouth by way of his tiny trunk, knelt down at the water’s edge and drank with his lips. When he’d had his fill, he rubbed himself contentedly against his mother’s sturdy leg.

Merrian wondered how she could possibly convey to this stodgy Oxford professor all these magnificent creatures meant to her, their gentle power, the shows of genuine affection and sorrow she had witnessed, or what it felt like to watch a five-ton mother frolicking gaily with her young. As for the latter, fate provided them with a demonstration when the calves discovered a mud wallow in a small ravine adjoining the stream. Within moments, the calves were merrily rolling in the black mud, and the adults joined in, playfully flinging gouts of cool mud at each other with their trunks.

Sidestepping the formidable piles of elephant dung that marked their way back to the car, Merrian saw the impassive face of Dr. Falconer transformed with a sheepish grin. She thought perhaps there was hope for him after all.

“Let’s hope tomorrow brings something more productive,” he said. “A visit to the zoo is not what I came here for.”

* * * *

A few weeks earlier, she would have burst out laughing at the idea of such a scene, but the next day found Merrian Aprilwood winding her way through the bush south of Lake Amboseli in search of a phantom herd of elephants. This time of year the lake was dry except for its central depression, but the recent rains had left countless pools of muddy water in the shallow marshlands surrounding. The Land Rover crept along, its stuttering advance punctuated by frequent stops to check the bush. Their party consisted of Merrian, Parsitau, Ian Hartwick-Corning, and Dr. Falconer. Ian carried a Capchun rifle which fired gas-propelled tranquilizing syringes loaded with enough succinylcholine to take down a big cat if they ran into one. They might have been scientists, bushmen, and Rangers, but out of the car, on the long wilds of the savannah, they were potential prey.

Parsitau looked as though he’d just come off yet another rough night. His spindly legs were trembling merely from the exertion of getting in and out of the Rover, and every time he bent to inspect the bush he arose with a familiar weary groan. Merrian knew only a little about him. He was Tutai, acclimated to modern culture by the lure of a steady paycheck. He wore typical Kenya tour guide dress, knee-length khaki shorts, the green cotton shirt that was standard issue for Park employees, and a red bandanna sweat-catcher circling his neck. He spoke letter-perfect Queen’s English with the identical North Country accent as Hartwick-Corning, which was no coincidence. The two had long been friends.

Elephants never stray too far from water, and Parsitau was betting that his ghosts held to the same standard of behavior. Early on, he expressed some excitement at finding a pair of demolished termite mounds, but Merrian was not impressed. An hour later they ran into a pair of disgruntled buffalo whose culpability in the matter was confirmed by a sheen of fine white powder dusting their hides. The buffalo became greatly interested in the truck, and only with much honking of the horn and a few well-aimed stones were they ultimately convinced to pass on.

A small Piper Cruiser on loan from the Kenya Wildlife Federation circled periodically above, and each time it passed she was reminded what a waste of a day this was. The heat was building to an intolerable incalescence, and despite heavy-duty repellant the swarms of mosquitoes erupting from the folds of the swamp were an unbearable nuisance. Falconer, initially apoplectic at the sight of them, sat hunched down in his seat, determined to keep them off by virtue of his burning gaze alone. He was not enjoying much success. Merrian was just about to insist that they had done enough damage to their skin for one day when Parsitau cried out.

The tracker, who had been putting on quite a show of exaggerated attention to every broken twig or displaced branch as if elephants could possibly be so subtle, called the group over to a lightly wooded area. Merrian followed the others, looking closely for elephant footmarks but finding none. Yet here were definite signs of elephant activity—baobabs knocked over, acacia stripped to the naked white trunks with shreds of bark hanging like flags of passage. Scattered about the ground were the characteristic fibrous balls of pulp the elephants had chewed and spat out. As per routine, Merrian radioed the main relay station at Amboseli Center to verify if any radio-tag transmitters had indicated known elephant activity in the area.

Before she could get a reply, an eerie whining caught her ear.

“Somebody’s hungry,” she said.

The stomach rumblings of foraging elephants, audible as far as a mile away, filled the air. As searching eyes were denied, a more alarming set of sounds rattled through the bush—the loud snapping of wood as trees were tossed aside like fluff, the ponderous thundering of cyclopean feet, an occasional warning trumpet. It was certain. Elephants were coming this way and in quite a hurry.

“There isn’t much that makes a herd move like that,” said Merrian. She thought someone might be driving the animals, perhaps luring them over the border to make a kill. Infuriated by the thought Merrian plunged forward, ready to take some drastic, ill-conceived action and angry enough to challenge an armed party of poachers. Just as quickly Ian Hartwick-Corning was shouting at her, warning her back.

The uproar had now risen to a deafening torrent, making speech impossible. Nonetheless Merrian, suddenly reversing her course, shouted back that they had best make a run for it. Their vehicle was only twenty yards away. As one, the party raced for what little shelter the Land Rover could offer. Except for Falconer. He stood transfixed, gazing quizzically toward the source of the elephant sounds. Maybe he didn’t realize the danger of being squashed into pulp by enraged elephants, but Merrian certainly did. Even so, she ran back to him.

As she yanked his arm, she knew it was too late. Trees within their line of sight snapped and were tossed aside. A great cloud of gray dust rose up, but no elephants; a loud trumpeting not twenty feet ahead, but no bull. Foliage whipped about in a frenzy as the overbearing smell of elephant musk bore down on them. Though she still could see no elephants, Merrian didn’t dare run for the Rover. Falconer seemed content to stand his ground, remaining unruffled and quizzical.

Merrian closed her eyes and they were all around her, flapping ears and snorting trunks. The ground trembled. She felt the mammoth thud of pulverizing feet as they came on. Her hair blew wildly about her face. She staggered one step backward, driven by the sheer tonnage of animal momentum rocketing invisibly past. She could almost feel the rough elephant hide grating along her skin. Falconer’s hand closed tightly about her forearm to steady her, but she felt no reassurance.

Her heart thudding in her chest, she opened her eyes. Nothing. The two were standing alone in the clearing amid a multitude of tiny balls of yellow fluff drifting down from the acacia, still swirling with the commotion.

Around them the deluge of broken branches and bowled-over trees made it seem as if a tornado had whipped through the copse. Falconer was bending over, spitting profusely into the bush. Merrian had swallowed a pungent bit of Africa herself but saw no need to replicate Falconer’s comically undignified display.

When Falconer stood up, he was beaming.

“Glorious!” he exclaimed. “Absolutely glorious! I’ve never experienced anything remotely as powerful as that.”

“Neither have I. I feel like we should be squashed flat.”

“We’re in luck. Your skepticism is apparently reciprocated. Those ghosts don’t believe in you, either.”

Merrian laughed with him for a moment, but her hands were still trembling.

“Or perhaps,” added Falconer seriously, “the situation is quite the opposite. Perhaps they think rather highly of you.”

Merrian refused to answer, turning instead to inspect the forest dynamic. After taking a few minutes to settle her nerves, she said, “There aren’t any tracks. It’s possible some kind of funneling activity was forcibly propelling wind current through the area, carrying the scent of a nearby herd—”

Falconer inclined his head, casting a caustic look over the tops of his glasses. “Ms. Aprilwood, if you try hard enough I’m sure you can concoct some pseudoscientific explanation, no matter how wildly improbable it may be. And having done so, you will fixate on that theory rather than accept a truth that disrupts your organized little view of the universe. Please don’t do that. You stood here right next to me. Don’t rationalize this wonder away. Accept what you have just witnessed, or we’ll get nowhere with this.”

He was absolutely right, of course. All protective self-delusion and denial aside, she had stood there. She had stood there, and that was enough.

The radio, hanging clipped to her belt, crackled to life. It was the pilot of the Piper cruiser returning her call. He confirmed there were definitely no elephants in the area, then began grousing over his wasted time and could he please head back to base camp now?

* * * *

“I need a drink,” mumbled Parsitau, for what must have been the third time, as he propelled the Rover along the dirt track. Even at their moderate pace, the best the rough terrain would allow, they were treated to every jounce and bump as they raced nightfall back to the camp.

“And I’m buying,” said Ian. “I’ve got a fresh bottle of Glenlivet primed and waiting on my desk.” He sat beside Merrian in the back seat, the Capchun rifle trained lazily out the open rear of the Rover. Not many beasts would bother a moving vehicle, but an overly aggressive lioness had occasionally been known to attack from the rear. Ian leaned toward the front seat, placing a hand on Falconer’s shoulder. “Is it true they passed right through you?”

“Oh, yes,” he said. “Imagine a locomotive bearing down on you, and you stand helpless, certain to be killed, and then it hits. It hits, and you’re still left standing! Unbelievable.”

“Picture us running for our lives.” Ian chuckled. “Seemed a good idea. Now I’m sorry I missed out on all the fun.”

“It was anything but fun, Ian,” Merrian said flatly.

“I told you they were angry,” grumbled Parsitau.

Falconer grunted his dissent. “I wouldn’t say angry. More like truculent. There’s a difference. It’s important we define their emotional state as precisely as we can in order to get a handle on this. I’d appreciate as many impressions as possible. We each see ghosts differently, like individual facets in a prism. I’d especially like to know what our resident skeptic thinks?”

“I don’t know what to think,” said Merrian. “It’s like some bizarre kind of wrestling match going on in my mind. I keep trying to pretend it never happened, that I haven’t just witnessed proof of the definite existence of ghosts.” She pouted at her own silliness. “I’ve long been a confirmed atheist. Now it’s as if I’ve been tossed into a tankful of angry piranha, with theological conflicts and unreasonable implications nibbling at me from all sides. If ghosts exist, do they also necessitate belief in a heaven and hell and all that other religious window dressing I’ve already dismissed?”

“If it helps,” offered Falconer, “rest assured that nothing we’ve witnessed is metaphysical, nor even supernatural. These were passive ghosts, not active spirits. There’s a difference. As an expert in the so-called paranormal, the scientific basis for passive ghosts is well known. They are best described as persistent echoes in space-time, extensions of consciousness that linger beyond death. Not souls.”

Merrian found this to be a steadying concept, as Falconer had no doubt intended. Space-time echoes. This much she could accept. Heavens, hells, immortal souls, and avenging gods were on their own.

“All right, Dr. Falconer, I’ll grant you the ghosts are real,” said Merrian. “A real pain in my ass. Now how do we get rid of them? Can’t we send them trundling off to wherever it is that spirits go off to, and everybody’s happy?”

“Persistent space-time echoes generally represent an unfulfilled emotional need,” he explained. “Such a void is best canceled out by supplying the polar opposite.”

“You give them what they want,” suggested Ian. “Ah, but what if it’s revenge they’re after?”

Falconer shook his head. “I don’t think so. You said they haven’t hurt anyone, and they certainly could have. Anyway, it’s not very likely we’re going to be able to give them the poachers, is it?”

“No,” Merrian conceded, wishing it were otherwise. “Now that the ban on hunting has been lifted, we can’t even pursue them legally. So we’d better find another answer.”

And if I stand any chance of getting rid of them, thought Merrian, it would sure help to find out what they want. She felt put on the spot here. She was the expert on elephants and their behavior, yet she had no inkling as to what they might be after. Second-guessing ghosts was just not her business.

A thought came, completely unbidden, in the ensuing silence. A scene she had witnessed several years earlier, a poacher kill. A group of slain elephants lying about, their tusks and feet hacked off.

“The ivory,” she suggested, “if their ivory was taken from them, perhaps they want it back.”

“That’s a good thought,” said Falconer. “What happens to the ivory?”

“Smuggled out of the country. Cut up. Distributed to retailers and craftsmen across the globe.”

“Then it’s not likely we’re going to return their ivory to them, is it?”

Merrian let out a weary sigh. The situation felt hopeless. “What else can we do, Dr. Falconer?”

“I’m not sure. I’ve never dealt with anything quite so....” He paused, bringing a tightly knotted fist to his jaw. His eyes, sharp and bright within their time-worn sockets, roamed uncertainly across the dusty plain. “Well, so huge. I’m afraid you have me at something of a loss.”

They sat in silence for a moment. Merrian tried again to think of what an elephant’s ghost might desire, what unfulfilled need could keep a spirit angry even beyond death. She kept coming back to the image of a huge bull, defiled by a poacher’s chainsaw.

“And you haven’t answered my question yet,” said Falconer. “Can you describe their emotional state? It’s important.”

Merrian sighed. “Desperation.”

* * * *

The next day brought two dreadful bits of news. Another estate in Tanzania had been wrecked by a presumed elephant rampage, the chickens and cattle scattered with fright. The property damage was formidable.

Even worse, another young bull had been killed. That made two prime breeders lost in one week, out of only thirty males of reproductive age—a severe blow to the Amboseli herd. Worse yet, the bull had been brought down inside the Park itself. Merrian rushed to the scene to find Broken Tusk, a five-ton giant, lying crumpled over on his side among the leafy suaedas like some twisted version of a deflated Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon. The sight sickened her. Broken Tusk had been one of the friendliest bulls in the herd. He was well used to humans and their vehicles, and was even known to roll a beach ball playfully back and forth with Merrian and her staff on occasion. She could not help thinking that his timidity had ultimately caused his destruction.

The killers had tried to conceal their work by slicing open the elephant’s hide, which encouraged lions to feed and obscure the site. A killing within the boundaries of the Park was clearly illegal. Merrian would alert the National Park authorities as soon as she made it back to her office, but she knew damn well the perpetrators would never be caught.

She slowly circled the lifeless wreck, moving away from the shredded meat and thick tubes of exposed intestine. When she noted his tusks had been cut from him, the irony was not lost on her. She had dubbed him Broken Tusk because early in his rough and tumble, misspent youth, both his tusks had been snapped off fairly close to the jaw, leaving only two jagged stumps. This bull would certainly not have been a target of ivory poachers; he was infinitely more valuable to them as a breeder. This had been an act of retribution.

Damn the ivory trade, she thought, though she knew the ivory quotas were only part of the problem. In truth, the acacia and fertile grassland were being depleted by the animals themselves at an alarming rate. With the wholesale destruction of their habitats and the expansion of human settlements, there just wasn’t enough available land to support wild elephants anymore. Merrian felt the inevitable crush of hopelessness. She would never save them.

Merrian cried over the body of Broken Tusk, as she would for any old friend.

For the next few days, she found some measure of solace by drowning herself in a backlog of paperwork. Hartwick-Corning took his friend on a field trip to interview some of the local tribal elders, but when the two returned they had no new ideas. The situation seemed unsalvageable from any quarter, and Merrian could not conceal her frustration and bitter disappointment. Falconer’s gaunt figure haunted her office, riffling through her files at odd hours with particular interest to photo references of the elephants that had been slaughtered in Kenyisha. Merrian felt as if he was not only intruding upon her privacy but dredging through what amounted to old family wounds as well. Unmarried and childless, she had no one else. She wished he would just go away. Falconer, however, was not yet ready to quit. He needed more information, he said, and suggested another intimate contact with the spirits to try to find an answer. He was understandably reluctant to face the charging herd again, but asked Merrian about the possibility of an elephant graveyard.

She pointedly informed him that such a concept was the stuff of childish fantasy. Elephants were sometimes known to bury their dead with twigs and leaves, lingering at the makeshift grave site for hours, and she had personally witnessed behavior that could only be interpreted as grieving, but there were no such things as elephant graveyards. Then she remembered the next best thing.

* * * *

This was the absolute last place Merrian would ever want to be, given the desperate state of mind into which she’d recently fallen. The site was just as she remembered it from seven years earlier, a strip of dusty plain in Northern Tanzania, peppered with thorny balanites resting in the misty shadow of Kilimanjaro. The province of Kenyisha. To one side rose a steep escarpment of mountain lava, and perhaps a hundred yards across the plain there was a deadly near-vertical drop into Kraavara Ravine and its thick jumble of sage brush and tamarinds below. This grassy corridor was a perfect place to ambush bull elephants as they migrated through, and had been used for such purpose for hundreds of years. In the past, this approach had required a fair bit of courage on the part of the poachers. If an enraged elephant attacked their vehicle along this passage it could easily knock the car down into the gorge. But of course, with blazing automatic weapons, modern poachers bought themselves a firm measure of security.

They reached the site late in the afternoon of a cloud-haunted and drizzling day. Here between the lava boulders lay the skeletons of six adult elephants, sun-bleached a perfect white, tusks carved out of skulls, feet hacked off. The skeletons remained remarkably intact. Too heavy for lesser scavengers to scatter around, they lay just where they had fallen. The damp weather had left a thin gray mist threading itself along the bones, which had all been picked clean by the hungry plain long ago.

Falconer sat cross-legged beneath the stunted branches of a lone baobab in the center of the strip. Merrian thought she saw an expectant glimmer in his old man’s eyes. She watched him for a time, before settling herself beside Hartwick-Corning at the side of the ravine. This place of death fostered a dark, contemplative mood that brooked no conversation. The two of them sat in silence, legs dangling over the edge of the abyss.

When she looked again at where Falconer sat, she saw through her tears that he had arranged some of the loose bones into an intricate circle. He sat as still as some graven jungle totem, completely motionless and in deep concentration.

A distant rumble nearly startled Merrian off her perch. Ian shot her a worried glance, hefting the dart gun to his shoulder.

“Steady, Ian,” she said. It was merely thunder echoing down from the lofty crags of Kilimanjaro, bringing an unwelcome visitor of a different sort. The thin mist that wrapped the base of the mountain rose a little higher, and a light rain came quietly down. A chill clawed at the back of Merrian’s neck. Was it just a draft of cool air, she wondered, or something more?

She had noticed no break in the dead calm of the place, when Falconer suddenly leapt up and began hopping about, cursing and spitting profusely.

“That’s a nasty habit you’re picking up,” she said.

“It’s called an aura,” Falconer returned, “which I often experience as a taste in the mouth upon contact with a spirit.” Merrian thought again of Victorian-era charlatans she had read about and the way they preyed upon the grief of hapless believers. She was tempted to grab the dart gun and shoot him herself, except the analogy fell flat. She could not see herself in the role of helpless rube.

Falconer spat again into the tall grass. “Tastes like what you’d scrape off the bottom of your boot after a walk through a circus tent.”

“So, you made contact with the spirits, I take it?” asked Ian.

Falconer nodded, still a bit distracted.

“Do you know what it is they want?”

“Yes.” He sighed. “It’s not the ivory or the poachers, I’m afraid. It’s something even more impossible.”

“What do you mean?”

“It seems they don’t want to go silently into that great good night.”

“What?”

“They know what’s happening. They’ve figured it out. They know they’re being driven to extinction, and they don’t like it.”

“But they aren’t going to become extinct, Nick,” said Ian. “Not if we can help it.”

“Can you?” Falconer shot back. Merrian recognized the skepticism in his voice.

“I think so,” said Ian, with an indignant snap of his head. “We’ve come a long way toward an understanding of the problem. The endangered list, the moratorium on hunting, steps to preserve their habitat...the National Parks and game preserves...the African Wildlife Foundation....”

Merrian might have chimed in and touted her own research and efforts, but she had now come to a different realization. “It’s no use, Ian.”

“It’s a chance,” he returned sharply, annoyed at suddenly having to defend wildlife conservation to the head of the Amboseli Elephant Project. “The only one I can see. Say, there’s an idea—if only we could communicate that to them somehow, convince them we’re going to keep them from extinction—”

“But we aren’t,” she said softly. She gazed down along the narrow mountain corridor at the shattered bodies of elephants cut down in their prime, and saw it all. The destruction of their habitat, the encroachments of human agriculture on their already diminishing ranges, the poachers, the ivory trade, the steady downward trend. The doom of the elephants was a juggernaut that had been in motion for three hundred years. Her cause was hopeless, and the situation with the phantom herd even more so.

“Let’s get out of here,” she said to Falconer. “This place gives me the creeps.”

* * * *

Two days later, their Jeep’s diesel engine crunched and complained as it hauled them up the steep incline of the narrow road to Nyahururu. Lush, cool, green forest hung silently on either side of the road’s cratered surface, a coarse macadam so rutted and pocked with hidden sinkholes that it crumbled beneath the Jeep’s tires with a sickening slushy murmur. Merrian and Falconer had flown the Cessna a hundred and forty miles north to Kisumu, rented the Jeep, and begun the long, dusty drive to the province of Nyahururu above the Great Rift Valley. At two thousand feet above sea level Nyahururu was the highest town in Kenya, composed mostly of ramshackle marketplaces and small farming communities scratching out a living against the mountain.

They intended to see a man who lived in a town called Ursai, whom Falconer believed to be their only chance to lay the ghost elephants to rest.

Falconer supposed Hartwick-Corning’s idea was on the right track, though running in an opposite direction. For better or worse, they would have to show the spirits the future, not in the service of false promises but instead to reconcile them to their inevitable fate. In order to do that, he had contended, they would require the services of a powerful psychic.

“But no one can see into the future,” Merrian had said.

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve done it myself on any number of occasions. The future is accessible. It’s right there,” exclaimed Falconer, clutching with a clawed hand at the air just in front of his face, “if one only knows how to grasp it.” His grand gesture lost all dramatic tension as it transformed into a panicked swatting of a huge metallic-green beetle that was dive-bombing his face. “Bugger off! Good Lord, what an abomination.”

“Psammodes sulcicollis. You were saying?”

“As I was saying, it’s all a matter of the proper delta waves. Certain individuals generate a freak bioelectric wave that carries over into the temporal field.”

To Merrian Aprilwood, this statement had seemed utterly preposterous. At first. But as she had recently come to believe in ghosts, she ultimately felt constrained to allow for the possibility that someone with a special talent might be able to predict the future.

“Well, if you can do it, why do you need the psychic?” she had asked.

“I’ve only been able to do it on a limited scale—just small distances—the outcome of a coin toss or a horse race, if it’s a short one.”

“That sounds like a hunch.”

“Just so. We’ll be needing much more than that. Someone who can see a lot farther up the timestream. Our psychic must also be able to reveal his vision to the spirits. We need a channeler.”

“And where could we possibly find someone like that?”

“Kenya, of course. The Africans may lag in technology but their knowledge of the mystic arts predates any other culture on Earth. I know a fellow who could probably manage it. He lives near Nyahururu.”

And so to Ursai, a grubby little town centered around a cement factory and quarry, and composed of a crumbling jumble of mud and straw buildings in the tradition of the Maasai manyatta. The landscape was a dull brown and treeless plain, in sharp contrast to the lush conifer-laden hills of Nyahururu, but Merrian found the high mountain air delightfully crisp and clear.

With great difficulty they came to M’Bengai’s house, as it lay on an unmarked dirt road several miles removed from what passed for Ursai’s main street. There was a man on the veranda dressed in modern khaki shirt and trousers, dark green bush jacket, and knee-length jackboots, brandishing a traditional Maasai spear. Falconer asked Merrian to remain in the car and approached the veranda, patting away the thin layer of white volcanic dust that had settled on his clothes during the drive. By his threatening expression she could tell the sentry did not recognize Falconer, and when he began gesticulating that Falconer should leave, Merrian found herself hoping the spear was merely for effect.

For his part Falconer appeared relaxed, and kept talking cordially even at the point of the spear. He produced a sizeable roll of banknotes, but the guard did not seem willing to soften his posture even in the face of such a generous show of cash and swatted them away. Falconer kept talking, his hands making gentle circling motions in the air that suggested to Merrian she might have to add mesmerism to her mental list of his talents, especially when the guard eventually cracked a vacant smile and led them around to the back of the main house.

They found the man they had come to see on the rear porch, beneath a canopy of thick mosquito netting rigged up in the shade of a gardenia tree. There were at least three hundred pounds of him, stuffed into an enormous white chambray shirt and soiled linen trousers. He sat on a bench overlooking the plain behind the house, where a woman wearing only loose sandals and a flimsy khanga tended a good-sized garden. The huge man was idly watching a pet mongoose as it ferreted grasshoppers out of the long grass and bit off their heads. On a small table next to him rested a bottle of beer, in his massive hands a newspaper. Falconer approached him, grinning.

“Nice setup.”

M’Bengai lowered his paper, the broad lines of his dark face arranged into a distinct air of surprise as he saw Falconer, surprise which quickly melted into distaste. He said nothing.

“Good to see you, old friend. You’re looking well,” said Falconer.

M’Bengai’s massive head allowed a slight nod, but no smile crossed his thick, down-turned lips.

“Sorry to barge in on you like this, but we need your help.”

M’Bengai remained impassive. Merrian noticed a sizeable collection of desiccated hides and bones of small plains mammals under the gardenia tree, and she spotted at least one elephant skull among them.

“Oh, come on,” said Falconer caustically. “When was the last time I asked you for something...?”

M’Bengai rolled his eyes.

“Listen,” said Falconer, “You really ought to help me. No heavy hitters, or anything. I’m just talking about a couple of wayward ghosts. You owe me, Raymond.”

M’Bengai’s eyes widened more than a little. His gaze darted toward the woman in the garden.

“Yeah, that’s right,” said Falconer. “I know you don’t want to get involved. But this nice lady is involved. Lady in distress and all that. I know how you like that sort of thing. Besides, if you’d seen what I’ve seen—hell, you must have some inkling of the disturbances in Kenyisha.”

Falconer turned abruptly and began ushering Merrian back to the car. “Let’s make some room in the Jeep. He’ll do it.”

“He said that?” Merrian asked, thinking she must have missed something.

“Oh no, he never talks. He can’t chance it. He’s seen too much.”

* * * *

They returned to Kenyisha, and its mists and bones. M’Bengai’s technique appeared to be a more elaborate version of Falconer’s basic method, making use of a complex and carefully crafted octagonal pattern of the elephant bones. He lit a pair of small silver braziers he had brought along, adding streamers of foul-smelling incense to the arrangement. M’Bengai went shirtless, and Merrian marveled at the intricate patterns of scarification etched along his voluminous arms, shoulders, and the great expanse of his chest. His skin was literally crawling with keratinous snakes, his entire body a magnificent ouroboros.

At the center of his circle of bones, M’Bengai lit a thick, solitary candle of pink wax that had a disgustingly oily, almost fleshy appearance. It smelled even worse than the incense.

Merrian wrinkled her nose. “I can’t see what all that stink has to do with tapping into this so-called temporal field of yours.”

“It’s a state of mind sort of thing,” replied Falconer. “It’s all in the delta waves. Besides, you have to expect a certain amount of showboating with this guy. It’s just the way he is. Aside from that, I’m in favor of anything that stands a chance of keeping these wretched mosquitoes at bay.”

“I just hope he can do what you’ve promised,” she returned.

As the dusk settled about them, M’Bengai began to mutter rhythmically in a deep, sonorous voice. Merrian could not determine the language; the words were clipped and guttural. His skin covered with a pale sheen of sweat, M’Bengai took on a monumental appearance in the failing light, a bodhisattva of chiseled basalt. He motioned to Falconer and Merrian to sit in the dirt beside him.

Slowly, Merrian felt a tension building up. She was painfully aware of how vulnerable they were, sitting out in the open, so near to dark, when the real monsters of the serengeti came out to play. And then there was something else, the air around them crackling with static electricity. It was hard to see anything clearly in the gathering gloom, but she began to make out large hulking shapes moving toward them from between the acacias. The dark outlines drew closer, slowly and ponderously, bearing with them the reassuring musky scent of elephant. M’Bengai’s pitch rose higher, in a cadence grown unnaturally shrill and quick, his bulky arms raised up over his head, hands waving pointedly as they grabbed great handfuls of the dark African sky.

Merrian strained her eyes by the flickering light of the lone candle, trying to pick out detail among the looming forms now joining a huge circle around them. She felt very, very small. She was reminded how easy it would be for one of these giants to crush them in a heartbeat, even by mistake. And she was afraid.

The elephants made no sound. Merrian recognized the massive silhouette of Big Ben outlined against the indigo dusk. His head was swaying from side to side, a nervous habit he had displayed all his life.

“Space-time echoes, my ass,” she whispered. And then, “I’m sorry, Ben. I’m so sorry.”

She could hardly bear the sight of his majestic shadow, his head gently rolling between gigantic shoulders. She let out a long, weary breath and all the fight went out of her with it. She didn’t feel she had wasted her time here, she could not regret one moment of the last twenty years. But it was over. She would see these tortured souls laid to rest, and then she would leave Africa. It was time. There was a studio in San Francisco waiting on her to put together the documentaries she’d been filming over the years. And when the wild African elephants were finally gone it would be her research that stood to tell their tale.

As M’Bengai’s song reached its crescendo—for song it was, the song of the far future—the phantoms began to stir and rustle. And then, to disappear. The figures faded softly, with only a snort or a timid grumble as farewell. One shape in particular stamped its huge feet and let out a final truculent blast from a waving trunk before it dissolved into the mists. Merrian could have sworn she recognized that blast as the familiar jovial bellow of Broken Tusk.

The candle blew out.

They sat in silence, as the elephant smell was whisked away on a light mountain breeze. It’s over, she thought, they’re gone. She heard Falconer’s voice.

“Come on, Raymond. Just this once. I have to know. What did you show them?”

It was too dark to see anything. Merrian was groping for her flashlight when she first heard M’Bengai’s deep, sepulchral voice.

“The far future. No elephants.”

“Yes, but there had to be more to it than just that,” pressed Falconer. “What else?”

“No people.”

“How far?” asked Falconer. “Just how far are we talking about here?” His question went unanswered by the enigmatic M’Bengai who lowered his eyes and solemnly mimed turning a key across his locked lips.

Falconer huffed. “Oh, come on, Raymond!”

M’Bengai tossed the imaginary key away.

Merrian didn’t turn on the flashlight, staring instead into the darkness at the now empty ring where the spirits of the elephants had stood, moments before. They had been, briefly, and were gone. Forever.

She glanced over at Falconer. The ghosts had left their bad taste in his mouth again, and now there was a bad taste in hers as well. The elephants had accepted the inevitable. They had come to terms with their fate, leaving the woman who had devoted so much time and energy to their lost cause, to ponder the fate of an entirely different species.