Chapter 7

Martin had been racked with guilt, but Renee never once looked back, content with the small object, firmly secured in her pack, which she was sure would provide her salvation. They had met the helicopter without incident and once back in Brazzaville told the authorities the group had become lost and the anthropologist and his wife had somehow wandered off in search of water and they had become separated. Since quite a bit of money had changed hands, Raluu gave a similar account and the helicopter pilot led a government search team more than two hundred miles south of the Mabuka village. After three weeks of intensive searching, the hunt was finally called off, the assumption being that the inexperienced couple had probably fallen prey to some of the larger jungle animals.

Renee was frantic to return to the U.S. with her prize, but she also knew they must keep up the pretense of concern for their friends and so the twenty-one days crawled by while Martin continued to be racked with guilt and remorse.

At last, however, they were notified the government was convinced the missing couple could not have survived and so they were winging their way out of Africa by the next morning. Renee knew they would have to repeat their story for the American authorities as well and maintain an air of sorrow for an acceptable time, but she had what she wanted and nothing would deter her now. Christine never entered her mind again.

Martin, however, looked out the airliner window as the African coastline disappeared and thought of little else. He knew he would never be able to forgive himself for deserting the poor woman, so frightened, so defenseless. Her screams would haunt him to the end of his days. He wondered about her fate.

Christine would spend the rest of her life creating babies for the Mabuka. Twenty-five years old when deserted by Renee and Martin, she would die at forty-two giving birth to her third set of twins, her body simply worn out. Through the remaining seventeen years of her life, she would give birth to no less than twenty-five children. The Mabuka would allow her only one week after giving birth before impregnating her again. She fought them the first few times, but when it became obvious that rescue would never arrive, she submitted without resistance. After the first half dozen babies and lack of time for her body to recuperate between pregnancies, it made little difference as her vagina remained stretched to such extent that she was hardly aware of their entering her.

Since the Mabuka had no burial custom, her body would be unceremoniously dumped down a steep ravine, the same ravine where Ben's body had been deposited seventeen years earlier. Within a week, the jungle animals and insects would leave no trace of her existence.

The next six months were torture for Renee. Martin had an old warehouse converted to a suitable environment for the Luaki. Forty-seven truck loads of the best top soil were brought in, special lighting, watering, temperature and humidity systems were installed. Almost overnight the seed sprouted and began growing at a phenomenal rate, but there was still no sign of the development of the tentacles which would signal its ability to affect the "renewal".