Part 32 (1/2)
”A pygmy!”
Raoul looked up in confusion, hands held up defensively. He said something in French that Gilles ignored.
”Wait . . . what pygmy?” Delani demanded. The South African took a cautious step toward Gilles, ready to step between the two men if necessary.
”I saw them in the forest,” Gilles insisted. ”They were hiding in the shadows. They've been following us all along and he's been talking to them.”
”He says he was only singing,” Delani replied. ”You're sure you saw them?”
Gilles' eyes flashed to the forest, and Brandon caught a glimpse of the fire in them. Suddenly, he understood what was happening. When Gilles looked back to Raoul he lifted the gun and squeezed the trigger.
”No wait!” Brandon cried, stepping in front of Raoul.
Gilles froze a split second before firing the shot. His wild eyes turned to Brandon.
”It's the forest,” Brandon tried to explain. ”It's affecting you. Don't believe it. Don't do anything crazy. It's making you imagine these things.”
Gilles shook his head with a small hint of uncertainty. ”I'm not imagining. I saw him. He is a liar and a traitor!”
Delani looked warily back and forth between Brandon and Gilles. His hand had slipped to his belt and fingered the grip of his own pistol, but he didn't draw it yet. ”He's right. Put down your weapon so we can sort this out.”
”He's lying!” This time Gilles turned the pistol on Brandon, the thick barrel aimed at his face. ”Think, Delani. He's the one who led us into this cursed place. He's the one who said that we had to stay here when we tried to leave. He wants our souls, don't you see?”
Brandon stood powerless, held in place by the Desert Eagle.
Gilles whispered in French to a steady rhythm. Although Brandon couldn't understand the words, he knew the meaning of the intonations. It was a prayer. Gilles regarded Brandon as though staring into the eyes of a demon.
Delani moved unexpectedly. Instead of drawing his firearm, his arm flew up, striking Gilles' wrist. The Desert Eagle was thrown wide and Delani tackled him. The two men collapsed to the mud, pistol waving wildly.
”Do you know what these are?” Guy asked as he slid long sheets of paper in front of Sam. They were line graphs with sharp peaks and dips. In some areas the peaks grew more rugged and in others they flattened out to a gentle ripple, like waves on a seismic chart.
”No, I don't.”
”They're brain waves recorded by an electroencephalograph. An EEG machine,” he explained. ”They measure electric activity inside the human brain. When individual synapses fire in your brain they give off an electrical current. The EEG measures the sum of these currents to determine which parts of your brain are active and which are inactive.”
He pointed to a line of particularly dense peaks, packed together like a compressed spring. ”The waves with the smaller amplitudes are beta waves. You will find these in conjunction with active thought and higher learning. Your brain is most likely giving these off at this very moment.”
Guy slid his finger to a point where the peaks spread out. ”If you were to close your eyes and relax in your chair, your brain waves would reduce in frequency until they became alpha waves like these here. You're still awake but you are not problem- solving or partic.i.p.ating in active thought.
”Theta waves have larger amplitudes. They are more common in children, but adults will experience them when they reach either a state of drowsiness or one of arousal. Some have reported detecting them during meditation and they are also commonly a.s.sociated with hypnosis.”
Guy watched her for a moment, as if his last point was important. His finger fell on a series of wide peaks, the widest on the page. ”Finally, we have delta waves. These are common in infants, but occur in adults during sleep.”
She took another sip from her gla.s.s. The champagne only quenched her thirst for a moment. After every drink, her mouth felt drier than before.
”On any day, your brain generates this electrical field through alternating frequencies, each frequency dependent on your level of brain activity. Now this has led some to wonder, what happens to these brain waves when they are subjected to waves from an outside source, such as radio waves or such as the waves generated by your cell phone?”
She glanced curiously down at her cell phone. She rarely thought about how the thing actually worked. To her, it transported voice to her ear as if by magic. She took it for granted, forgetting that the signals were a form of radiation.
”A group of researchers performed an experiment on just that effect,” Guy went on. ”They attached human subjects to EEG machines and then exposed them to radio waves of the amplitude and frequency that pa.s.ses through the cell phone, as it would pa.s.s with the phone held against your ear. In a matter of seconds, they detected a change in the EEG readouts. While the radio waves were administered to awake subjects, ordinary alpha and beta waves were joined by aberrant theta and delta waves. That is, the waves you experience while you are sleeping, resting, or . . .”
”Hypnotized?”
”Yes. Under normal conditions, these aberrations only occur in adults in the case of certain disorders.”
”What does that do?”
”At such a level? Not very much. Perhaps a cell phone can make you feel drowsy or tired. Perhaps it makes you more p.r.o.ne to 'zone out.' Perhaps even, you are more p.r.o.ne to suggestion, or perhaps nothing. What the study does tell us is that beyond any doubt, radio waves affect the human brain.
”People have reported all manner of ailments due to strong electromagnetic fields and the waves given off by power lines: depression, paranoia, aggression, hallucination. When every thought you have is nothing more than an electrical signal and everything you see and perceive is brought to you by means of an electromagnetic field, doesn't it make sense that these outside waves could disrupt those very processes?”
Sam scoffed. People were more than just brainwaves. She held her opinion in check. Instead of speaking, she took another sip from her gla.s.s.
”Would you like more?” her captor asked, tipping the bottle in her direction.
She ran a hand through her hair, knowing she should refuse. She shook her head.
”In experiments on laboratory rats, pulsating radio frequencies have been shown to affect behavior. Certain frequencies increase exploratory behavior when the rats are placed in mazes and others feed their fear and inhibition. Their mood can be changed simply by turning a dial. The same is true with humans.”
Temba watched mystified as the baboons advanced on the leopard. It hissed angrily as it backed away through the thick green fronds. Soon Temba lost sight of the animal.
The buzzing in his ear persisted, but he had reduced the sound to background noise. The rest of his senses were on alert. Something pulsed through the forest and it felt very strong here, as if he stood on some mystical node. His teeth gritted and his fingers tore into the bark of the tree. His muscles yearned to break something, what didn't matter.
Through the darkness and the pounding rain, Temba saw more shapes close in on him. He recognized the hunched forms bounding on all fours as baboons. The creatures meant to make a meal of him.
Let them try, Temba thought angrily. With his whole body ready for a fight, he felt like he might have the strength to rip each of the creatures in two.
At least a dozen surrounded him, cornering him against their sacred tree. Temba reached back and felt Kuntolo's spear, but the long c.u.mbersome weapon wouldn't satisfy his rage adequately. A spear was a weapon of balance and control. He wanted to beat something. So his hand fell to the axe at his belt and thought of it thudding into baboon flesh.
This is insanity.
Insanity . . .
Such angry magic could not be good magic and certainly not wise. Temba resisted the urge to leap at the closest baboon. He a.s.suaged his anger by promising revenge on them later, one at a time and under circ.u.mstances he could control. Why fight the creatures on their own terms? He needed to escape.
Temba glanced up the tree. It stretched out of sight, raindrops streaking past like deadly arrows. His palms gripped the ridges in the bark and the sides of his feet locked against the thick trunk. He scrambled up the first ten feet until he reached the first knot and got a good grip with his fingers. He looked down past one dangling leg at the baboons circling the tree. Their clawed limbs gripped the trunk easily; one-by-one they climbed after him.
He scrambled up the next stretch of tree. He realized the weight of his predicament when one of his palms slipped on the wet bark. The ground loomed far off, the small fumble reminding him how deadly a fall could be. Temba steeled his nerve, using his anger to fuel his adrenaline. He climbed the next length without looking down, his eyes fixed on the closest branch. Finally he looped his wrist around it and pulled himself up. The branch shuddered under the sudden weight.
A baboon closed quickly, already nearing his branch. It bared its fangs and barked at him. Temba pulled his bow from his shoulder and nocked an arrow. He took aim and released. He lost sight of the arrow immediately in the rain and the darkness, but he heard the thump as it struck the small primate.
The baboon stumbled for only a moment, before closing once more. Temba unleashed a second arrow, the tip striking the creature in the shoulder. This time it let go, and he watched it tumble to the ground landing among the roots with a heavy crash.
Temba shouldered the bow and climbed on.
As he climbed higher, the branches grew thicker. Soon he weaved among them, nearby leaves swaying with his movements. But although the branches made the climb less perilous, they also slowed his movements. A second baboon closed in.
Temba paused in a crook between two branches and nocked another arrow. He waited until the baboon climbed onto the nearest branch so he could see its angry yellow eyes, even in the stormy darkness. He released the arrow and watched the creature tumble out of view.
Another came up right behind it. This time, as he reached for an arrow, he found his small quiver empty. The baboon moved in, maw opened to rend his flesh. Temba struck out with his bow, beating the tender wood across the creature's snout. The shaft broke immediately, and he jabbed the broken tip at the baboon's neck.