UNNATURAL SELECTION By Laird Long

MALCOLM and I were basking in the warm afterglow of a fine dinner at his secluded country estate. Yet, I sensed a certain degree of uneasiness on the part of my friend of many, many years. He stared at me across the table, swirled coffee around in his fine, bone-china cup, and then announced abruptly, "Let's go into the study."

I gulped down the last of my port, and we left behind the carcasses of Cornish game hens, a pair of empty wine bottles, and other assorted shells and husks of culinary delights, and retired to the book-lined study that served as my friend's office-away-from-office. He carefully closed the huge, oak-paneled door behind me, and then took the unusual step of locking it securely.

"Thank you again for the excellent meal," I remarked cheerfully, taking a seat in one of the overstuffed Victorian leather chairs that fronted Malcolm's massive, mahogany desk.

"Yes, yes..." he replied absently, walking around the desk and seating himself behind it. He gazed at me intently across the vast, gleaming expanse of the desktop. His long, narrow face seemed even paler than usual, and perspiration stood out on his broad forehead. It took a good deal to get Malcolm flustered, as years as a barrister had only served to reinforce his naturally calm and collected demeanor.

"I say, old boy, what's the matter? It looks like you've seen a ghost," I joked.

He gave a start and fumbled with his hands, his long, thin fingers interlacing and then breaking apart to harshly drum the surface of the desk. "You're close, David. Bloody close, at that. But I haven't seen a ghost ... I've heard from one."

"What!?"

He thrust a trembling hand through his lank, black hair, and a heavy silence fell over the night-shadowed room. "You're familiar with my great-uncle, Sebastian Moore?" he finally asked.

It seemed a foolish question, given that the two of us had discussed the man on several occasions in the past. "Indeed I am. An adventurer of some renown," I replied. "Disappeared in the jungles of Rho--... Zimbabwe back in the '30's, if I recall correctly."

"You do. And now he has reappeared."

I sat there stunned.

Malcolm opened a finely-crafted cigar box and pushed it towards me. I shook my head, and he picked out a cigar for himself, put it to his lips, and lit it with some difficulty. "I mean to say," he continued in a nervous voice, "that his diary has reappeared, and with it, an explanation for his disappearance; and his father's disappearance, for that matter. A bizarre and unsettling explanation."

I opened my mouth to question him when he held up his hand and stopped me.

"Better you read it yourself," he said, and unlocked one of the desk drawers and carefully removed from it a dirty, leather-bound journal. He placed the battered tome on the desk and slid it over to me. "Read that," he said abruptly, before clenching his cigar between his teeth and puffing determinedly.

The journal was old, its pages yellow and brittle to the touch. "Where did you get this?" I asked.

"I recently recovered it from an antiquarian book dealer in Harare."

"But whose--"

"Read it!"

I flipped the volume open to the first page.

'October 3, 1925--Anticipation! I have finally arrived in Salisbury with Professor Ernst and his four-man team of researchers. We will very shortly begin our trek into the jungles of Rhodesia in search of the archeological ruins abandoned by my father twenty years earlier. Simply put, we are seeking the origins of man. And, for myself personally, I am seeking an answer to the mystery of my father's disappearance.'

Malcolm interrupted my reading by saying, "Skip to December 2."

I nodded and turned the tattered pages until I reached the correct date. I glanced up and noticed that Malcolm was watching me intently, then I bent my head back down to the diary.

'December 2, 1925--An unsettling day. Our native guides fled back down the trail. They have been frightened by strange noises emanating from the jungle for some time now, and by the tales, described by wide-eyed local tribesmen, of unnatural and obscene acts taking place in the uncharted region towards which we are steadily pushing; the region where my father vanished from the face of the Earth.

The loss of the guides is an ominous sign, to be sure, and the hot, sticky atmosphere is thick with foreboding, but we are pressing on. We have not come this far to be deterred by native superstitions.

December 3, 1925--More laborious hiking through the jungle. We continue to make fair progress, but the heat and humidity have been even more oppressive than usual today. We saw no animals, birds, or reptiles of any kind, and the sky is a distant memory above the suffocating green canopy of uncommonly huge vegetation. It is as if we have entered a world not of this world--a place cut off from man, and God's creatures. One or two of the members of the research team are alarmed by these phenomena, but not the Professor; on the contrary, he is quite excited--he feels that we are on the verge of an enormous discovery.

I curse the wet blanket of heat and sleep with my rifle.

December 4, 1925--Breakthrough! Today, after hacking our way through jungle so dense that it actually seemed a living thing intent on bodily holding us back, we stumbled upon a group of mammals the likes of which I have never seen before. It happened just before dusk, when we cut our way into a slight clearing in the steaming jungle.

"Stop!" Professor Ernst whispered fiercely to the five of us following behind him.

We stopped dead in our tracks as we saw what the Professor had observed first. On a grassy plateau directly ahead of us, a group of apes were frolicking, a semi-circle of disheveled, grass huts visible behind the apes.

"There must have been a village here at one time," I remarked to the Professor, unimpressed by the scene. Anyone who has been to Africa before, as I have, has seen plenty of apes and plenty of huts.

The Professor doffed his pith helmet and mopped the perspiration from his florid face, his pale blue eyes looking even larger than normal behind his steel-rimmed glasses. "There is a village here now," he said breathlessly, and pointed at the apes. "Look at those creatures closely, Moore; they have the unmistakable characteristics of..."

The Professor's voice, subdued though it was, reached the apes and whipped them into a frenzy. They vigorously thumped their chests and wildly shook their clenched fists at us. Then one of them seemed to voice some sort of command that sent them charging towards us as a group, moving with incredible speed. A few of them, the smaller ones, came forward with the bent-over, loping gait of the gorilla or chimpanzee, but most of them ran, actually ran--on two legs, like men would run!

"...humans," the Professor completed his statement, then beat a hasty retreat with the rest of the party into the enveloping jungle.

I stood my ground, unslung my rifle, and fired a warning shot into the air. That stopped the on-rushing apes in their tracks, and brought the Professor and his men back out of the bush.

And indeed, as we more closely examined the strange creatures, and they examined us, many were the visible characteristics that they shared with us. They walked upright, or only slightly crouched over, and their bodies were fur-covered, but not as fur-covered as the normal ape, and their craniums were undeniably human in shape, with high foreheads and only a slight ridging above the eyebrows.

We spent the remains of the day observing the animals from a good, safe distance. Our presence disturbed them greatly, as theirs did us--or, at least, me. Fortunately, however, common to both animal and man, they had a healthy respect for my carbine. When night fell, we lit a large fire, despite the dense heat, and set up camp. I shared a tent with the Professor, and his excitement precluded sleep.

"Don't you see, Moore, we are on the cusp of history here! I believe that these creatures are the missing links!" He stared into my face, but his gaze went well beyond my tired visage. "They represent the final proof of evolution! I would venture to say, even after our very brief examination tonight, that these animals are perhaps at the mid-point between ape and human on the evolutionary scale."

I was forced to listen to that sort of talk all night. Although I share a great deal of the Professor's scientific curiosity and exuberance, my purpose for the journey has always been more personal than professional, and, therefore, for me, these half-ape, half-human creatures which I fear my father may have encountered with perhaps tragic consequences, are abominations of nature. So, the Professor's equal-part enthusiasm was mixed with my equal-part horror.

December 5, 1925--More disturbing discoveries. Our party spent the day discreetly studying the ape-men and their village (if that's what it can be called). Only a few shots from my rifle, fired both into the air and the ground, kept the beasts from attacking us on a number of occasions. They are extremely aggressive brutes, both towards us and with each other--not the kind of behavior I have encountered with apes in the past.

We entered their crude village--really nothing more than a collection of crumbling huts almost entirely overgrown with jungle vegetation--and I secured the perimeter while the Professor and his men made a quick but thorough sweep through the huts. As I maintained my vigil, I observed a group of the larger ape-men off in the distance, as they ran down and trapped a wild pig--and then fell on it and tore it apart and ate it raw!

Now, my expertise on primates is far from superlative, but I know enough about them to know that they are not carnivores. So, to see the ape-men eating meat was a shock indeed, and my consternation was only increased when the Professor made another startling discovery later in the afternoon.

He jogged up to me as I was polishing my rifle in full view of a handful of the ape-men, sincerely hoping that they understood the message I was not-so-subtly sending them. "Moore, I must talk to you!" he wheezed, out of breath.

"Go right ahead," I replied, scowling at the restless group of monstrosities. They imitated my facial expression in a chillingly realistic manner.

"No, no, in our tent!"

We crowded into the small tent and the Professor dropped the canvas flap over the opening. The air was absolutely stifling, clotted with the fetid stench of jungle decay, and the Professor and I were drenched in perspiration. We could have been squatting in the very bowels of hell.

"What is it, Professor?"

"I have spoken to one of the ape-men!"

"What!?"

"Yes, yes. I found an old, gray-furred creature in one of the abandoned huts who definitely addressed me in some sort of dialect!"

"You mean to say that he actually spoke ... a language?"

"Yes, of some sort. I'm not familiar with it, and he seemed to have a great deal of trouble forming some of the words, but it was definitely a language."

I sat there staring at the Professor's red face, the queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach worsening. My head was dizzy from the towering heat and humidity, and from the odd, disturbing notion that suddenly occurred to me. "Professor, have you noticed how old and dilapidated these creatures' huts are?"

He stroked his chin and regarded me thoughtfully. "Yes, it does seem strange..."

"And why, as you say, does one of the oldest of the group have the ability to speak, if we can call it that?"

We discussed those, and other difficult, disturbing questions, well into the night.

December 6, 1925--Trouble! I woke to find my rifle missing! I searched the entire camp but could not find it. My misgivings about the grotesque creatures we have discovered are intensifying. As we watched them forage for food in the morning, my yearning for discovery and knowledge was overwhelmed by a primitive, primordial desire to bash in the skulls of those lumbering ape-men--to rid the world of their ugly, mutated blasphemy.

Instead, myself and the Professor and his team held an impromptu conference to consider our next move. We were all equipped with machetes, of course, but my opinion was that those crude weapons would not be enough to hold off the ape-men if they suddenly charged us--or learned to use the rifle they had almost certainly stolen. The argument, therefore, was whether to retreat and re-arm, or stay and study the creatures further.

Our disagreement was rendered mute, however, when my worst fears were realized and a gang of the ape-men materialized out of the jungle and rushed us. I managed to draw my machete out of its sheath and was about to bring it down blade-first on one of the hellions when another seized my arm and twisted it behind my back. His strength was enormous, and he easily plucked the machete out of my hand. He proceeded to wield the weapon in a most threatening manner, giving me the impression that he knew how to use it.

The brutes quickly subdued us, and then performed an obscene victory celebration that was a truly horrific sight to behold. Their ugly faces were alternately contorted into masks of violent, insane joy, and intense pain--a veritable roiling sea of excruciating emotional expressions unlike any I had ever seen on the face of ape or man. They stank as unearthed bodies left to rot under a blazing sun stink, and they shook as if with disease.

The bile rose in my throat as I watched their disgusting capering. I managed to shake off the creature who held me and was about to attack him with my hands when he brought the machete down on my head, and all became black.

December 7, 1925--Desperation! The ape-men have thrown us in a pit, the top of which is a good fifteen feet above our heads, and the bottom of which is strewn with the bones of animals ... and humans!

The Professor and the members of his team have conversed at length and are in unanimous agreement as to the origin and ultimate destiny of these ape-men. And even I have to admit the unthinkable and agree with their findings. The crumbling conditions of the huts, the oldest member of the group having the ability to speak; all of this evidence points to the inescapable conclusion that these creatures are not, in fact, evolving, but rather, devolving! They were most certainly once a tribe of human beings!

OUR own fate is uncertain, but the fate of mankind, I fear, is sealed.'

I dropped the musty journal in horror and stared at Malcolm with the terrified eyes of one who has just witnessed the end of the world.