had been unwilling to do.
He realized with a start that it was nearly one in the morning, four hours since Rosa had brought him his dinner of fettuccine con funghi drenched in the dark mushroom sauce he loved. Rosa would be long since in bed, asleep.
But when he slid naked between the fresh fragrant sheets, as he always slept except for a T-shirt during the cold winter months, Rosa sighed in contentment and turned to him in silent hunger, still half-asleep, with open arms and hungry mouth, her tongue finding his, their hands finding each other’s bodies as she drew him with her into the silken wonder of their love.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Shady Lady was at it again. She was very obviously in estrus, the perineum around her genitals swollen into a great pink blossom. Will had named the chimp Shady Lady because when he had last seen her two years ago, she had been in the same state and methodically soliciting every stud in town for a quick wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am. Or rather, wham-bam-thank-you-sir.
“Town” for the moment was a giant mucuso fig spreading its great canopy arms over the forest floor in the middle of the Kibale Forest Preserve a lot of miles from any people besides Will. Fort Portal, the closest human town, was thirty miles of mud track away. The mucuso was crammed with ripe fruit, and first had attracted three male chimps, led by Randy Andy, a prime male with a sagittal crest more like a gorilla’s than a chimpanzee’s.
They had begun the haunting pant-hoot cries by which chimps communicate over long distances of forest, calling others to the feast, and soon nine males and three females were there, eating figs as fast as they could stuff them into their mouths.
Will shifted slightly in his uncomfortable perch two hundred feet away from the forest giant. He had bent African ginger and giant ferns down on top of one another to make a sort of nest offering partial concealment. The binoculars brought the troop of apes up to within a few startling feet of him.
He got a tremendous jolt, as always, seeing these forest people in their natural habitat. It was nothing like Bedtime for Bonzo or the chimpanzee named Cheetah in the old Johnny Weismuller Tarzan movies. These were wild animals and yet were so close to man in their actions, facial expressions, ways of moving and thinking and communicating, that it was like seeing your own slightly distorted mirror image, or looking down into the depths of your own being and seeing them crouched there.
The chimps had to use a close-by, smaller tree to gain access to the mucuso, which was smooth-boled, without limbs, its great crown spreading itself almost a hundred feet above the forest floor. It was a perfect scene of male bonding-the males were ignoring the females-until Shady Lady climbed up the egress tree to the feast from the wet, steaming jungle below.
Randy Andy, so named by Will because he was always ready for any quickie he could get, was the first to realize Shady Lady was in heat. Being a dominant male, he immediately began trying to monopolize her in what scientists like to call “possessive mating.” This meant staring at her intently as she sashayed around the giant limbs of the fig tree, until he was sure of her attention, then flicking his relatively large erect penis suggestively with his fingers.
This was all poor sex-crazed Shady Lady needed. She turned to thrust her hugely swollen perineum almost into his face, letting her sexual perfume waft past his nostrils, then pushed back against him. He thrust into her with great speed, thirteen times to completion, and she screamed-Will didn’t know if it was her own complementary completion or what-and moved away from him. Chimpanzees’ matings, though frenzied, were of very short duration. Often only ten seconds from intromission-another one of those sexy scientific words-to completion.
Randy Andy swaggered after her to prevent any other male from mounting her. But a particularly juicy fig dis tracted his attention for a precious few moments, and Lefty, so named by Will because he had lost his right hand to a poacher’s wire snare, managed to grab Shady Lady from behind one-handed and pump into her for seven seconds before Andy charged him, screaming threats.
Lefty fled to safety by leaping into the egress tree and plummeting like a stone eighty feet to the ground, somehow making do for holds with his single hand, then disappearing between the giant buttress roots of the mucuso. Andy followed him partway down, baring his fangs and screaming extravagant insults, even throwing a fistful of underripe figs after him. Then he started back up with self-satisfaction oozing from every pore.
A victory, but bad tactics. Will’s glasses showed him that as soon as Andy had torn off in pursuit of poor old Lefty, Knuckles had sidled up to Shady Lady with his penis erect. She presented, he mounted her, thrust to completion. They uncoupled, turned away from each other as Captain Hook slipped up behind her to take his turn.
And to be charged by a roaring Andy, newly returned. But the Captain was no Lefty. He stood his ground for several seconds, jumping up and down and screaming insults in turn.
Long enough for Shady Lady to spot another as yet unseduced male eating figs behind a screen of foliage, and climb up to present. When he mounted her, Will saw that he was Zonkers, whose distinctively short, light hair showed his unusually well muscled physique to good advantage.
Will called him Zonkers because he was the first chimp crazy enough to take Will at face value when he had connected up with one of the troops in the forest. Zonkers not only tolerated him as a silent watcher, but by his nonchalance at Will’s presence made the scientist at least partially forgettable and thus partially invisible to the other chimps.
Then Zonkers became as curious about him as he was about them. Zonkers would fake charges, rushing along a limb toward him, slapping the smooth bark with his hands. Will would scratch under his arm and exhibit other nonaggressive behavior, and Zonk would return to his fruit, his sta tus raised among the other males by his daring maneuver. Sometimes, if alone, he would sit in a tree for a half hour just staring at Will fifty yards away, then drop down to disappear into the understory foliage and pant-hoot away into the distance.
Zonk didn’t have his permanent canines yet, suggesting he was a couple of years from full adulthood-maybe thirteen years old. Since the chimpanzee life span, barring sickness or accident or fatal wounding, could reach around forty, he was a wonderful connection who could be a valuable asset for years to come.
But he was so much more than just an asset. After those first encounters, Will had seen him often enough that a sort of long-distance relationship had grown up between them. Then one day Zonkers had dropped out of a fig tree a hundred feet ahead and had strolled provocatively-if the chimps’ rolling side to side knuckle-walking could be called strolling-down one of the tunnel-like game trails through the thick underbrush. And Will had followed, crouched and stealthy, praising himself on moving so quietly that Zonkers didn’t even know he was back there.
After some twenty minutes, during which he never caught another glimpse of the ape, Will paused in a small clearing to stand erect and stretch his stiff back-he had to move through the tunnels bent over because he was so much taller than the chimps.
A dozen yards ahead was Zonkers, sitting on a tree limb that extended over the trail. He had his elbows on his knees and his chin resting on the backs of his crossed wrists, and was studying Will intently. When he met Will’s eyes, he made a funny grimace that was surely a grin, stood, stretched himself, and melted into the understory foliage without sound or even apparent movement. He obviously had arranged the whole scenario.
An even more remarkable encounter came a month later, when Will was hurrying back to his hut at dusk, having kept vigil at a huge dawei tree where the chimps were feeding. He had stopped to pick a pocketful of figs to stretch his own din ner, and had no flashlight. Stumbling over a clump of twisted roots on the narrow footpath, he went down on one hand and one knee. When he started to push himself erect, Zonkers was sitting on the path only ten feet away, regarding him intently over one shoulder.
This was the sort of close encounter he had only dreamed of. Zonkers wrinkled his forehead and briefly scratched his left arm. His fingers sounded like sandpaper on his rough hide. Will immediately sat down and scratched himself vigorously in the same way. Zonkers didn’t move away and didn’t even look nervous, only unsettled. What further was possible?
Will slowly reached into his pocket for his figs. He had eight of them-which by chance was, observation had taught him, just about what a chimp could stuff into his cheeks at one time. Will held them in his open hand, then very very slowly leaned forward and even more slowly stretched out his hand and with a little flick of the wrist
