Catacombs by John Farris

men who were still in the mood, or cups of the strong, locally grown coffee. The lights in the room had been dimmed to the approximate number of footcandles afforded by the firelight. After a full evening of social discourse none of the men were very talkative, and a few seemed edgy with nerves. They tried to get comfortable, listened to the bats stirring under the roof and glanced expectantly at the pair of doors to the room.
    Dr. Kumenyere entered, carrying an attaché case and two gold, leather-bound notebooks under his arm. He stood aside for Jumbe Kinyati, who followed him with his great old head bent at what seemed to Morgan an alarming angle. He had a black wood staff in one hand. He was wearing a plain red-ochre shuka and a strip of leopard or cheetah pelt that was bound around his forehead like a sweatband. Morgan had never seen Jumbe when he wasn't wearing a western-style business suit, usually with a white shirt open at the throat; frequently he had also affected a tarboosh, as a gesture of solidarity with the Muslims of Zanzibar.
    His feet were in sandals that softly slapped the concrete floor. He took his place at the head of the table, where there was no chair, and stood contemplatively with his fingertips pressing down on the onyx. He didn't look at the assembly. Kumenyere placed the two fat loose-leaf notebooks and the case near Jumbe, and went to close the windows. Jumbe seemed to tremble as the louvers snapped shut.
    "Good evening," Jumbe said. His voice gained strength as he drew a deep breath and raised his head slowly. In Africa the buffalo, nyati, and not the lion, is the most respected of' all the animals, for its speed and power and unpredictability. Jumbe's head was, unmistakably, the head of a buffalo, with even the suggestion of horns in the way his hair grew back over his ears from a kind of tough, wiry gray pompadour. For an African he had small eyes. They were yellow as egg yolk, and widely spaced. His face was angular, narrowing to a clump of gray beard. His massive shoulders were rounded, and there was a hump between them that had grown more prominent with the years. Even in illness–it was obvious Jumbe was not well–he continued to be impressive.
    "To my friends Morgan Atterbury and Victor Kirillovich Nikolaiev, welcome. I regret I haven't had the opportunity to be with you before." Now he looked at the other faces around the table. "Much of what I am about to relate is already known to the majority, but I would like to bring our visitors from America and the U.S.S.R. up to date."
    Kumenyere took a chair beside Jumbe and sat back, folding his hands, surveying the company with his beautiful, imperturbable eyes. The president stood gazing at the fire for a few moments, then continued softly, "Nearly a year ago the Chapman Institute of the University of London applied to our government for the necessary permits to conduct an archaeological investigation along the eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika, where some evidence of a prehistoric burial ground had been found. Permission was granted. An expedition funded by the Institute was mounted, with the famous archaeologists and explorers Chips Chapman and Erika Weller as field directors."
    At mention of Chapman's name Morgan glanced at Robeson Kumenyere, recalling the scene at the airport, the impassioned young man who had said he was Chips Chapman's son. His glance went unacknowledged.
    "Their expedition," Jumbe continued, "established a base camp near the designated site in one of the more remote and least accessible areas of Tanzania. There are no roads and few villages in a mountain fastness of some eighteen hundred square miles.
    "Shortly after they began their explorations, all radio contact with the camp ceased. After several weeks of silence, government troops were sent into the district to search for the explorers. Remains of the camp were found, but they had all disappeared. We believed that they had set out along the lake in rubber boats to