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part of the world. Do they have a zoo in Kabul?”
    “This is from no zoo,” de Morgan panted. “And it’s no chimpanzee. Careful, lads . . .”
    The
sepoys
got the net off the animal. Its fur was soaked with its own blood. It was curled into a ball, its legs drawn up to its chest, and its long arms wrapped over its head. The men held sticks that they wielded like clubs, and Josh saw weals on the animal’s back.
    The animal seemed to realize that the netting had been taken away. It lowered its hands, and with a sudden, fluid movement it rolled and came up to a squatting position, its knuckles resting lightly on the ground. The men backed off warily, and the animal peered at them.
    “It’s a female, by God,” Ruddy breathed.
    De Morgan pointed to a
sepoy
. “Make it stand up.”
    Reluctantly the
sepoy
, a burly man, came forward. He reached out with his stick and prodded at the creature’s rump. She growled and snapped her large teeth. But the
sepoy
kept at it. At last, with grace—and a certain dignity, Josh thought—the creature unfolded her legs, and stood
upright
.
    Josh heard Ruddy gasp.
    She had the body of a chimp, there was no doubt about that, with slack dugs and swollen pudenda and pink buttocks; her limbs had an ape’s proportions too. But she stood straight on long legs, which articulated from her pelvis, Josh saw clearly, like any human’s.
    “My God,” Ruddy said. “She is like a caricature of a woman—a monstrosity!”
    “Not a monstrosity,” Josh said. “Half human, half ape; I have read that the new biologists talk of such things, of the creatures that lie between
us
and the animals.”
    “You see?” De Morgan was glancing from one to another of them with greed and calculation. “Have you ever, ever seen anything like this?” He walked around the creature.
    The burly
sepoy
said, his accent thick, “Have a care,
sahib
. She’s only four feet high but she can scratch and kick, I can tell you.”
    “Not an ape, but a
man-ape
. . . We have to get her back to Peshawar, then to Bombay, and to England. Think what a sensation she will be in the zoos! Or perhaps even the theaters . . . Nothing like this—even in Africa! Quite the sensation.”
    The smaller animal, still in its netting, seemed to wake. It rolled and mumbled, its voice feeble. Immediately the female reacted, as if she had not realized the little one was here. She leapt toward the infant, reaching.
    The
sepoys
clubbed her at once. She whirled and kicked, but she was battered to the ground.
    Ruddy waded into the melee, eyebrows bristling. “For God’s sake, don’t strike her like that! Can’t you see? She’s a
mother.
And look in her eyes—look! Won’t that expression haunt you forever? . . .” But still the man-ape struggled, still the
sepoys
threw their clubs at her, still de Morgan yelled, fearful of his treasure escaping—or, worse, being killed.
    Josh was the first to hear the clattering noise. He turned to the east, to see clouds of dust thrown into the air. “There it is again—I heard it before . . .”
    Ruddy, distracted by the violence, muttered, “What the devil now?”

4: RPG
    Casey called, “We’re nearly on station. Going to low cap.”
    The chopper dropped like a high-speed elevator. Despite all her training, Bisesa’s stomach clenched.
    They were passing close to a village now. Trees, rusty tin roofs, cars, heaps of tires fled through her field of view. The chopper tilted and began circling counterclockwise. “Low cap” meant a sweeping surveillance circle. But given the way Bisesa was crammed onto her little bench, she could now see nothing but sky. More irony, she thought. She sighed, and checked over the small control panel fixed to the wall beside her. Sensors, from cameras to Geigers, heat sensors, radars and even chemical-sensitive “noses,” were trained on the ground from a pod suspended under the chopper’s body.
    The Bird was embedded in the world-spanning communications