Earth

Great. I had to open my mouth. If I ever make it home to Canada, you can bet I’ll tell them what kind of hospitality you can expect in South Africa, these days.

It was apparently no different here in ark four — a tapered wedge of steel and reinforced glass two miles from Kuwenezi’s main tower, sitting atop the canton’s long-abandoned gold mine. Ark four was the gene-crafters’ lab, where new types were sought that might endure the sleeting ultraviolet outside or adapt to the creeping deserts and shifting rains.

Nelson had nursed a fantasy that his reassignment here was a promotion. But then the director had handed him the familiar electroprod and sampler, and sent him to face more baboons.

I hate baboons! I can feel them lookin’ at me. It’s like I can tell what they’re thinking.

Nelson did not like what he imagined going on in the minds of baboons.

These monkeys were different at least. He could tell soon after pushing into sight of a copse of grey-green acacia trees, their leaves drooping in the dusty heat. Clustered beneath those gnarled limbs were about forty creatures, darker than the tawny beasts he had known in the main ark, and noticeably larger, too. They moved lazily, as sensible creatures would under the noon sun — even moderated by the expanse of reinforced glass overhead. Only idiotic humans like Dr. B’Keli insisted on work in conditions like these;

Procrastinating, Nelson looked the troop over. Perhaps they weren’t completely natural baboons at all. Nelson had heard rumors about some experiments…

His nostrils flared as fickle air currents wafted his way. They sure smelled like baboons. And when he shuffled through the sharp sava

Oh, they’re baboons, all right.

As soon as he came in sight, the troop rearranged itself, with strong young males taking posts at the periphery. Grizzled, powerful elders rose up on haunches to watch him nonchalantly.

Nelson knew these creatures lived mostly as vegetarians. He also knew they ate meat whenever they could. Until the collapse of the planetary ozone layer and the accompanying weather changes, baboons had been among the most formidable wild species in Africa. It had amazed Nelson when he first overheard, a month ago, one scientist commenting that mankind had evolved alongside such adversaries.

I’ll never call a caveman stupid again, he vowed as one of the creatures lazily bared impressive fangs at him. Paranoid, yes. Cavemen must’ve been real paranoid. But paranoia ain’t so dumb.

At least the troop appeared calm and well fed. But that was deceptive. Back in the main ark Nelson had come to compare life in a baboon troop with an ongoing — often violent — soap opera without words.

He saw one senior male rock on his haunches, watching a pregnant female seek tasty grubs under nearby rocks. Rhythmically smacking his lips, the patriarch pulled in his chin and flattened his ears, exposing white eyelid patches. The female responded by ambling over to sit by him, facing away. Methodically, he began picking through her fur, removing dirt, bits of dead skin, and the occasional parasite.

Another female approached and began nudging the expectant mother to move over and share the male’s attention. The screeching fit that ensued was brief and inconsequential as such things went. In a minute the two had been cuffed into silence and all three monkeys turned away, minding their own business again.

Nelson’s job was to sample monkey droppings for a routine microflora survey — whatever that was. As he approached, he recalled what Dr. B’Keli had told him after his first, unpleasant encounter with baboons.

“Don’t ever look them in the eye. That was exactly the wrong thing to do! The dominant males will take it as a direct challenge.”

“Fine,” Nelson had answered, wincing as the nurse sutured two narrow bites on his posterior. Wow you tell me!”

But of course, it really had all been in the introductory tapes he was supposed to have watched, back when his funds first ran out and he found himself willing to take a job, any job. Those painful bites reinforced the then startling revelation that tape learning might actually have practical value, after all.

Tutored by experience, he now kept the electroprod ready, but pointed away in a nonthreatening ma

I don’t like Dr. B’Keli. For one thing, despite his “authentic” sounding name, the biologist’s caramel features were suspiciously pale. He even had light-colored eyes.

Of course whites could legally work in all but two of the Federation’s cantons. And nobody else, from the director on down, seemed to care that a blanke held high position among the Ndebele. Still, Nelson nursed resentment over the subtle discrimination his settler parents used to suffer from whites, back in the Yukon new town of his birth, and had imagined the tables would be turned here, where blacks ruled and even U.N. rights inspectors were held at bay.

Now he knew how naive he’d been, expecting these people to welcome him like a long-lost brother. In fact, Kuwenezi was a lot like those boom town suburbs of White Horse. Both seethed with ambition and indolence, with rising and falling hopes… and with authority figures insisting on hard work if you wanted to eat.

Hard work had turned his parents’ filthy refugee camp into bustling, prosperous Little Nigeria — commercial center for the new farming districts scattered across the thawing tundra. Little Nigeria’s immigrant merchants and shopkeepers turned their backs on Africa. They sang “Oh, Canada” and cheered the Voyageurs on the teli. His folks worked dawn to dusk, sent money to his sister at that Vancouver college, and politely pretended not to hear when some drunkard patronizingly “welcomed” them to a frontier that belonged as much to them as to any beer-swilling Canuck land speculator.

Well, I didn’t forget. And I won’t.

The sampler finished digesting its bit of dung and signaled. Nelson shook loose the brown remnant. After the initial sensation of his arrival the baboons had settled down again. Calm prevailed. Momentarily, at least.

Strange, how over the last few weeks he had grown so much more confident in his ability to “read” the moods of his animal charges. Behaviors that had been opaque to him before were now clear, such as their never-ending struggle over hierarchy. The word was used repeatedly in those dreary indoctrination tapes, but it had taken personal contact to start seeing all the ladders of power ru

The males’ struggles for dominance were noisy, garish affairs. Their bushy manes inflated to make them seem twice their size. That, plus snarling displays of teeth, usually caused one or the other to back down. Still, over in the main ark Nelson had witnessed one male sava

It had taken a bit longer to realize that females, too, battled over hierarchy… seldom as extravagantly as the males, and involving not so much simple breeding rights as food and status. Still, their rancor could be longer lasting, more resolute.

The troop’s dominant male stared at him, a huge brute massing at least thirty-five kilos. Scars along the creature’s grizzled flanks sketched testimony of former battles. Wherever he moved, others quickly got out of his way. The patriarch’s expression was serene.