schools, agricultural programs, cultural exchanges, and technological progress for everyone in East Africa. Already ZAPPA—the Zarakali Administration for Peace and Prosperity through Astronautics—has been revived, and you can bet your ostrich feathers that an African will walk on the moon before this decade is out. That’s what President Tharaka and Minister Kampa had in mind when they made construction of this complex a top national priority only six or seven years ago. Why, Mr. Kampa gave up a place on the lucrative American lecture circuit just to return to Zarakal and run for a seat in the National Assembly. He’s a credit to his country—both his countries—and I think he deserves another round of applause.”
We got it, Manny Barrelo and I, a bigger round than we had received before (even though Barrelo had grossly muddled the facts about my desertion of the “lucrative American lecture circuit”), and Admiral Cuomo patted me on the back. At the adjacent table Dirk Akuj smiled at me cryptically.
“But enough talk. It’s time for these festivities to begin, and our opening act, our overture, is a tribute to Mr. Kampa, his beautiful daughter Monicah, and the emergence of Zarakal as a potential space-age power. . . . Ladies and gentlemen, for your pleasure, Lisa Chagula and the Gombe Stream Chimps!”
Manny Barrelo gestured toward the right-hand wing, then spun the President’s chair around so that they could exit stage left. The Marakoi Pops broke into an up-tempo version of Thus Spake Zarathustra, and applause again filled the hall.
The zebra-striped curtains parted to reveal a back-lighted scrim upon which a convincing, two-dimensional replica of a volcano was erupting over a muted pastel landscape. A many-pronged bolt of lightning flashed against this scrim, and about the trunk of a papier-mâché baobab, streamers of red and orange crepe paper danced like flames. Wearing African garb from the Lake Tanganyika region, Lisa Chagula entered and positioned herself on the outer apron of the stage. Then she whistled.
Five chimpanzees swaggered in from stage right, one of them having been shaved to simulate a quasi-human nakedness. I saw through the chimp’s imposture immediately, and so did everyone else who knew the details of my legendary trip into the distant past, i.e., everyone in attendance. The ape was supposed to be me. A further clue to its assumed identity was the pink plastic doll cradled in its arms, a surrogate for Monicah in her original incarnation as the Grub. The chimps quailed from the “flames” surrounding them.
“Oh, God,” murmured Monicah, and my heart misgave me.
For two years after the trauma of my involvement with White Sphinx, I had made a good living in the States recounting my adventures for college students, television talk-show hosts, and the readers of Sunday magazine supplements. Because the Air Force and the U.S. government routinely ridiculed my claims, and because I would allow no one with a degree in physical anthropology to examine Monicah, I had been widely regarded as an amusing crackpot. For a time my notoriety grew, bringing me more money, an unwanted retinue of hangers-on, and the curse of instant recognition on any street or side road in my readopted homeland. Then the bottom had fallen out, and I had gone the way of yesterday’s superstar, straight down the lonely cul-de-sac of media neglect to the crumbling brick wall of oblivion.
My mother and my sister’s testimony dismissed as worthless, my amusement value squandered, my livelihood compromised, I had dropped from the semireputable status of a psychic or a newspaper astrologer to the pathetic one of a palmist or a flying-saucer nut. Too proud to accept my mother’s charity, I had briefly, and altogether seriously, considered going back to work for Gulf Coast Coating in the Florida panhandle—whereupon, through a consular official in Washington, D.C., President Tharaka had publicly confirmed my story, chastised the United States Air Force for making me out a liar, and invited me to return to Zarakal. “I have important work for you to do,” read the portion of the communiqué addressed directly to me; “please come home.” Grateful for aid from this unexpected quarter (President Tharaka and Alistair Patrick Blair had maintained an impregnable silence for two years), I made haste to emigrate, leaving behind a thoroughly bewildered American public and a rancorous congressional debate about abuses of power in the Pentagon and the executive branch.
In Marakoi I was served with a subpoena hailing me before a Senate investigative committee, but with Mutesa Tharaka’s blessing I ignored it and began laying