The Last Odyssey (Sigma Force #15) - James Rollins Page 0,103
to remove the stern mooring line. “He is in the cabin, making sure all is ready before we depart. Always busy, that one.”
The woman whistled sharply.
From the open door of the enclosed little wheelhouse, a small shape bounded out, rabbit-hopping on its hind limbs, and bracing on its front. The small monkey leaped from the deck and onto Charlie’s shoulder as she straightened from freeing the rope.
Everyone was amused by the new arrival—except for one passenger.
Joe groaned and stepped farther back.
10:55 A.M.
What is it about women and monkeys?
Kowalski grimaced. He’d had bad experiences with these little savages in the past. While he had learned to love Baako, at least the gorilla was regular sized and knew sign language—and even so, it took Kowalski a while to warm up to the kiddo. Whereas this little guy creeped him out, with its tiny old-man face, like a wizened apple, and those beady black marbles for eyes.
No, thank you.
While he backed away, everyone else drew closer.
“This is Aggie,” Charlie introduced. “Short for aghilasse, which means ‘lion’ in Tashelhit, the local Berber dialect.” She made a growly face at the creature, and Aggie mimicked it, showing sharp teeth and long fangs.
Kowalski shivered with disgust.
“See,” Charlie said with a big smile, “he’s very tough, a real Barbary lion.”
Maria examined the monkey closer with the eyes of an experienced primatologist. She checked out his brown fur, which turned more yellow over the belly. “But he’s really a Barbary macaque, isn’t he? Native to this region, endangered, too, as I recall.”
“Very much so. Aggie was orphaned. His parents killed by poachers. Barely four months old at the time. He came to a rescue center with a broken arm.”
“How old is he now?”
“Shy of a year. So he’s got a way to go until he’s mature enough to join a troop.”
“When is that, around four years for males?”
“Indeed, for sexual maturity, but we’ll look to start reintroducing him in half that time.”
The two women continued to talk about Aggie in more detail and headed toward the cabin. Besides being an experienced riverboat pilot, Charlie was a zoology student, currently on summer break. But she clearly knew boats, which Kowalski appreciated.
In short order, the cruiser was untied, slipped free of its berth, and headed upriver with a rumble of its outboard motor.
Maria eventually came back to join him, leaving Charlie to navigate up the narrowing channel. “Cute, huh?” Maria said with a grin.
“Charlie? Sure. A stunner.”
Maria punched him in the shoulder. “I meant Aggie.”
He rolled his eyes and pointed to the cabin. “I heard you call it a monkey. But it’s got no—” He motioned to his backside.
“A tail?”
“Without that, doesn’t that make it an ape? Back in Africa, you kept correcting me whenever I called Baako a monkey.”
“Macaques do have tails, only vestigial, maybe half an inch long.”
He shuddered. “Somehow that’s even worse.”
Maria sighed and shook her head. Mac and Father Bailey settled down onto benches along the gunwales. Gray and Seichan stayed with Charlie in the tiny enclosed wheelhouse. The door was propped open, so Kowalski overheard some of their talk, mostly about the river itself.
He only half-listened. He stared out at the chain of mountains, rising in jagged peaks, cut through by tributary streams and cascading waterfalls. He caught glimpses of deep wooded gorges, glints of lakes and pools, the sunlit glow of green pastures and meadows.
According to what he overheard, the Sous drained for hundreds of miles out of these mountains, but its flow was strangled and controlled by the Aoulouz Dam, some ninety miles upriver.
Kowalski heard Charlie’s view on it. “Before the dam was built in the late eighties, the river was both stronger and more capricious. It flooded regularly—after winter storms or during the snowmelt of spring—but by summer’s end, it could fade into a trickle, making it hard for farmers to irrigate. So, while the Aoulouz has certainly tempered the river’s extremes, it’s also a bit sad to have her so tamed.”
Kowalski found himself nodding at this sentiment, preferring nature wild and as little touched by man as possible. Let a river be a river. But then, he wasn’t the one whose house risked floating away during a flood or whose fields could dry up from lack of water.
Charlie continued with a wave to encompass the entire fertile valley between the High Atlas range to the north and the Anti-Atlas to the south. “It’s said that long ago, millennia in the past, the Sous used to fill this entire area, making it