small houses built in the mid-1800s and occupied continuously thereafter by Mobile families. Each bore a small medallion next to the front door denoting the house's historical significance. Raff walked on down to them to sit in the shade on a bench next to the first one.
Just as he was settling he heard a chittering sound above his head. He looked up to see a squirrel on the telephone line that crossed the street, balanced like an acrobat on the wire, trying to work its way to a tree canopy on the opposite side. From the thick vegetation there came the same chittering of a second squirrel. Raff focused on the two animals. What was this all about?
He remembered quickly: territory! The two squirrels were engaged in a territorial dispute. Raff knew that sound from the Nokobee tract. The squirrel on the wire was the invader, the one in the canopy the defender. Raff rose from the bench to watch more closely, and his mind connected to the conversation he'd just had with Cyrus. The ownership of land, and the power and security it provided: that was what drove the battles of squirrels. And the cycles of the ant colonies. And that was what Cyrus Semmes was trying to tell him too, in a tragic sense, about what runs the world.
These were no defenders for reserves like Nokobee. No territorial threats emerged from the inhabitants to halt their enemies. The land was falling unopposed to the developers. If the vanishing life within that area was mute, who then would speak for it? Raff started to walk toward the city center again. Now at last he had an idea of where to go and what to do.
29
HE REACHED THE five-story office of the Mobile News Register and walked into its green-walled lobby. With the eye of a naturalist entering a new habitat, he looked about to take in the scene before pressing on. Across the room, in a glass-fronted trophy cabinet, were two rows of plaques and statuettes. To the left on the same wall hung a framed front page of a Mobile News Register, pale yellowish brown with age, with the banner headline "NAZIS INVADE POLAND." Another next to it, in an identical frame, announced "JAPAN SURRENDERS!"
Between the trophy case and elevator was the reception desk and switchboard. Raff asked the young woman there if he could speak to Mr. Bill Robbins. He was connected at once to the environmental reporter and natural history essayist. Before the journalist could say more than "Robbins here," Raff declared, with the kind of urgent tone used by an accident witness calling the police, that he was from Clayville, and a student at Florida State University, and he had a serious environmental problem he wanted to talk about.
Robbins walked into the lobby five minutes later. He ushered Raff into the elevator and up to the main pressroom floor. Sitting across from Robbins's desk, Raff took a first close look at the journalist he had read avidly since he was a freshman in high school. Robbins was about what he expected: medium height and average weight, probably in his late thirties, with a short Lincolnesque beard and neatly combed dark blond hair. He was dressed in chinos and a taupe outdoorsman's shirt with two pockets, one of which was stained at the bottom by a leaking pen. He wore no tie. Good. A tie would have had a disorienting impact on the younger man.
Robbins listened intently as Raff poured out the whole story of Nokobee, up to and including the session he'd just had with Uncle Cyrus. He remained impassive, leaning slightly back in his chair, eyes half closed. He slowly rotated a pencil like a parade baton through his moving fingers.
By the time Raff finished his account, he had worked himself into a tone of despair. His tension was close to dissolving in tears. "I just don't know what to do. I thought I could turn to my uncle for help, but that's been a great big disappointment. I'm sorry I didn't know you personally coming here, but I read all your columns, and I thought you might want to know about all this, and help me decide what to do. I don't think Uncle Cyrus understands the issue. Or if he does, he doesn't care. That's even worse. He doesn't have any idea of what natural environments are all about, and he seems so set on what he's doing I don't think he