Genus Homo

by L. Sprague De Camp

  "Is Tsugg Oof the only physician hereabouts?"

  "No—our resident physician, Bubblah Th'kong will be with us, but he is occupied at the moment with his professional duties. It was he who invited Tsugg Oof to come from Mm Uth to observe you. Now, would you and Pyen-nay like to see our factory? It is just outside the town."

  As they ambled down the street, T'kluggl continued: "The things that interested us most among your possessions were those little round things with glass on one side, and rotating slivers of metal under the glass, with a lot of tiny metal wheels inside. I fear that Kha Khahng and I ruined one of them taking it apart, before we discovered how they work. Am I correct in inferring that they are for measuring time?"

  "Yes. We call them 'watches'—and I hope it wasn't mine that you investigated. How do gorillas tell time?"

  T'kluggl pulled out of one of the leather cases that dangled from his belt an object that looked like a household thermometer with an unusually fat stem. He held it under Bridger's nose. "You see," he said. "A string of combustible material is placed in the tube every night, after having been lit at the correct point from the previous string. Then one can tell the time by observing, from these markings on the glass tube, how far the string has burnt. Very simple. It was really those instruments of yours that convinced us that we were wasting our time in giving you such elementary tests of intelligence. We can produce such mechanisms in the laboratory, but to equip every inhabitant with such an instrument, made of rare metals like iron and copper, is not to be thought of."

  Ruth Pierne had been chafing under the long silence as the two chemists, ape and human, chattered on. "Iron rare?" she interrupted. "Why, in our time it was the commonest of our metals. We used immense quantities of it for houses, vehicles, and all sorts of everyday implements."

  "Indeed, Pyen-nay? Then iron must have been commoner in your time than it is now. We have some deposits of the minerals from which iron can be made, but it is much too rare to be used in making houses or any common thing. There was one very large deposit in central Fon-mlith, but the mountains where it was found are now in territory controlled by the Pfenmll."

  "Controlled by what?" Bridger demanded.

  "The Pfenmll? Naturally you would not know about them. They are animals of a different species, yet of the same general group to which you and we belong. They have a primitive kind of civilization, and are very fierce and love fighting. It was they who drove us from Fonmlith to this land in a war lasting for centuries. But that is a long story, and must wait for another time."

  There were no loiterers in the streets, Bridger observed, and no swarms of gorilla infants such as had pestered them in the cage. He remembered what T'kluggl had said about his colleague, Kha Khahng-—a teacher from birth to the sixth year. Education from the cradle to the grave seemed to be the gorilla formula—and no unemployed. They passed through a gate in the town wall and climbed the ridge on which the windmills stood. The heat was intense. Bridger had started out in his shoes and trousers, feeling vaguely that the leader of the party ought to make some concessions to dignity and conventionality. The trousers, comfortable in December, were now clammy with sweat and chafing him at every stride.

  "Why don't you take your pants off, Henley?" asked Ruth, swinging along nonchalantly in a pair of moccasins. "My girlish illusions are gone beyond recall, you know."

  "All right, damn it, I will!" retorted the chemist, suiting the action to the word. If I didn't, she'd make me feel sillier than if I did, he thought, so what the hell? Then he thought, hell's fire, is the woman beginning to run me already? Wish I'd left my pants on and shown her I've a mind of my own—but if I put 'em back on now I'll look like a complete idiot.

  The factory was a long, narrow, one-story building on top of which were mounted the windmills. T'kluggl opened a door to admit them, and the other gorillas filed in after.

  "I regret," their teacher said, "that as there is no wind today the large machines are not working. The workmen are at home or working the fields. We shall have to come again when conditions are more favorable."

  As Bridger's eyes became accustomed to the half-light, he found that he was in a room that at first glance might have been any machine-shop in the world he had known. There was the same forest of shafting overhead, the same belts and gears. As he looked more closely, however, he began to observe differences. The shafts and gears were of wood, beautifully made but still wooden. Some of the smaller gears were of glass. The bases of the machines might easily have been mistaken for iron castings, but close scrutiny showed Bridger the grain of the wood. He was struck by the extraordinarily fine carpentry of these civilized apes.

  At the other end of the room, two gorillas were working on two of the smaller machines, which gave out the intermittent buzzing and rasping of all woodworking tools.

  T'kluggl said, "Blidza, you were speaking of iron. This is how we use it here." He pointed to the lathe, and Bridger observed that the cutting tool was of real steel, though no other part of the machine was metal. A drill-press close by had a steel bit, but the rest of the machine was a strange agglomeration of wood, porcelain, glass, and polished stone. Bridger climbed up on the lathe for a closer look at one of the shafts, and saw that the bearings were rings of porcelain.

  "T'kluggl," Ruth Pierne asked, "are these machines not very fragile, being constructed of such weak materials?"

  "Fragile? You could smash one with a heavy stone, no doubt, but they are strong enough for our purposes. Of course, special training is required to use them properly. I suppose you are thinking of the all-iron machines of your former life. But we have not done badly. Here, try to break this—or let Blidza try, since he is stronger."

  The gorilla removed a glass set-screw from one side of the idle machines and handed it to Bridger, who had clambered down from his perch on the lathe. The chemist laid it on the floor, picked up a wooden handle from a pile of odds and ends, and brought it down on the screw with all his might. The blow merely drove the screw into the planking so that he had to pry it out with a glass-bladed knife borrowed from one of the grinning machinists.

  "You may be short of iron," he said, handing back the screw, "but your glass surpasses anything have ever seen. Our glass was hard but very brittle and easily shattered. Tell me—how do you avoid trouble from wear of moving parts?"

  T'kluggl picked up a short section of discarded shafting. '"Try to cut that with the knife."

  The glass blade, which was razor-sharp and apparently as tough as the screw, would barely scratch the wooden rod. "What is this?" the chemist demanded. "In my time the only woods with such properties were from uncommon trees found in a few hot countries. Have you learned to grow them here?"

  T'kluggl's black face bore a smirk of smug satisfaction. "That is ordinary pine, made hard by proper treatment."

  The two gorilla workmen, while pretending to be oblivious to the antics going on around them, were obviously as interested in the human beings as the latter were in them. T'kluggl explained that they were making parts for a reaping machine.

  "Where do you get the power for these machines," Ruth asked, "now that the windmills are not turning?"

  T'kluggl pointed to the ceiling, from which was hung a granite block the size of an automobile. "That stone is connected to the machines by gearing," he explained. "On windy days we use the excess power of the windmills to haul it up, and on calm days we allow it to descend and drive small machines like these. We have a few cutting and boring machines which are turned by hand or by foot pedals, but we need them only in a very long calm."

  They pottered about for a while longer; then T'kluggl said, "Although her questions have been most intelligent, I fear that Pyen-nay is not mechanically inclined. Suppose we return to my home for some food."

  Ruth, who had been trying unsuccessfully not to look bored, started to apologize, but T'kluggl waved her protestations away: "It does not matter, Pyen-nay—we cannot all like the same things. I am certain that you will find interes
ting many things that fail to attract our friend Blidza. And I am sure that some food will be attractive to all of us. Kee-kee-kee!" He unscrewed the monocle from his eye and polished it carefully with a bit of chamois from his belt, then replaced it, beaming good-naturedly at his charges. He's a good-natured old baboon, Ruth thought; lucky we didn't fall into the hands of the counterpart of some professors I've known! She walked along at the end of the procession, chatting amiably with the gorilla doctor, who admitted to being an expert in obstetrics. I'm glad we have him around, the girl thought. Mrs. Aaronson's nice, but I don't want to entrust any baby of mine to an amateur midwife!

  11

  QUIZ SESSION

  Back at the teacher's home, they sat in a circle on the floor of the main room. Presently another gorilla entered with a pole over his shoulder. From the ends of the pole hung two steaming pots. One contained the usual lumpy oatmeal, and the other a strange purplish goo that looked like dyed rubber cement, and tasted hardly better. Meanwhile their host and hostess wandered about distributing other edibles, some harmless-looking and some distinctly queer to the human beings. T'kluggl made a circuit of the room with a huge armful of celery, handing a large bunch to each guest. Bridger and Ruth hesitated before starting to eat. Like watching the hostess to see which fork she uses, the girl thought.

  The human beings were somewhat handicapped in imitating gorilla etiquette by having only two hands, but they followed as best they could. The first step was to grasp a longhandled wooden spoon in one's left hand and a fistful of celery in the right. Then one scooped out a spoonful of oatmeal, dipped the butt-ends of the celery in the purple goo, and took alternate mouthfuls of oatmeal and celery. The crunching of the celery gave the meal a sound like a burning spruce forest.

  P'plookhl went around at the start of the meal and tied a large bib around each guest's neck. Her pelt was noticeably dirty; she made some remarks about it in rapid colloquial gorilla which Bridger could only partially follow, but he gathered that she had spent the morning plowing.

  T'kluggl, between mouthfuls, began, "Now Blidza and Pyen-nay, you know us all. . ."

  Bridger interrupted: "I beg pardon, T'kluggl, but we do not know this gorilla here."

  "G'smuth! I forgot. We teachers are said to be a forgetful lot. This is T'kong T'kung, who headed the expedition that brought you to Dlldah. His work is to capture wild animals for study, and from his many exploits he has become known as 'he who always brings them back alive.' His capture of your party will be known as his greatest accomplishment."

  T'kong T'kung, who sat on Bridger's left, grinned amiably and said something too rapidly for the chemist to understand. T'kluggl translated: "He says that he will write a book about his exploit, and if it is approved in Mm Uth he will be everlastingly grateful to you."

  There was suddenly a faint "Eeek!" from Ruth, and Bridger felt her grip his arm. Something damp touched the small of his bare back, and over the munching of celery he heard heavy breathing behind him.

  "Don't look now," the girl whispered, "but I think there's a grizzly bear behind you!"

  Bridger felt the hair on his neck rise. He turned his head slowly, and out of the corner of his eye discovered that a huge bear was sniffing at his back.

  "T'kluggl!" he quavered, his voice jumping half an octave, "Is this another friend of yours?"

  T'kluggl clapped his hands sharply. "Here, Iggl!" The beast padded around to him and nuzzled his shoulder. He scratched it behind the ear. "Now, fthoo gong! Mmp!" The bear walked out of the room, its claws clicking on the floor. "She will not harm you, Blidza. We keep them to guard our houses at night, and for work in the fields. They are very useful and intelligent animals."

  "We had similar animals in our time, T'kluggl, but they were not especially docile."

  "Neither were these when we first came to this land, but we have improved them somewhat by careful breeding. They still run away occasionally, but in time we shall cure them of that tendency."

  "I wish you would tell us more about your civilization," the chemist told him. "How your government is organized—what progress you have made in my study of the structure and composition of things—and your history, especially the story of how you come to this land."

  "I shall be glad to, Blidza; but you must excuse me this afternoon. Tsugg Oof here has come from Mm Uth especially to ask you questions, and we must not waste his time by discussing matters with which he is already acquainted."

  That celebrity was lighting his pipe. He looked very directly at Bridger, and said: "First, will you give me a brief summary of the history of your species? Then I should like a short account of your own life up to the time you emerged from your hole in the ground, of I which I have already been informed." Following T'kluggl's example, the historian spoke slowly and distinctly, avoiding contractions and colloquialisms that might prove confusing to the human beings.

  Bridger frowned. "Come," said Tsugg Oof, "did you not understand me? I was told that you had a fair command of our language."

  Bridger was annoyed at the other's tone, but he replied pleasantly, "I am sorry, but I was thinking where to begin. The history of my species extends over thousands of years and includes many distinct civilizations, some of them very important. To compress such a history into an afternoon's talk is a sizable task."

  P'plookhl joined the circle. "Darling," she said, "I am out of m'gunth'gugg. May I have some of yours?"

  T'kluggl passed his tobacco pouch to her, and she filled her pipe and lit up like the rest of the gorillas. The odor made Bridger wish he had a cigarette, but the practical difficulties of getting one were more than he cared to tackle.

  "As you no doubt know," he began slowly, "your race and ours belong to a group of animals having certain peculiar characteristics, among them that of having nails on the fingers and toes instead of claws or hoofs. In our time there were many other species belonging to the group, most of them of small size and having tails. I do not know whether any such have survived to the present.

  "Our kind—'men'—are believed to have branched off from the rest of the group, which we called 'primates,' about—what is your word for a thousand thousands?—right, about twenty-five million years ago. I should not say 'ago': I mean before our time. No very close estimates of the time were possible to us.

  "Between half a million and a million years before our time, there occurred a great spread of ice over the northern lands. About this time we learned to use fire and to make implements of stone and bone. The age of ice lasted until twenty-five or fifty thousand years before our time. During this time occurred changes which resulted in some of our present physical differences from your kind, including the loss of our body hair and the reduction of our canine teeth."

  Tsugg Oof interrupted: "What was the cause of these changes? They would seem more of a handicap than an advantage to such feeble creatures as you appear to be."

  "The former may have resulted from our having evolved in a tropical country," Bridger told him. "The latter may have come from eating soft foods."

  "But why should soft foods account for such feeble teeth? That is a mere negative factor; there should be some positive advantage to produce such a change."

  "Well—I'm not sure that I can give you a definite answer."

  "You do not know? I was told that you are the most learned member of your party."

  Supercilious old bastard! thought Bridger; but he mastered the impulse to defend himself hotly, and continued his outline of history. When T'kluggl made one of his routine attempts to correct the chemist's grammar, Tsugg Oof snapped, "Not now, T'kluggl! The lessons can wait."

  Some of Tsugg Oof's questions suggested downright incredulity rather than a scientific skepticism, but Bridger grimly declined to be heckled and timed his story so that he finished just as the evening meal was due.

  "Very interesting," the historian commented dryly, "and I shall want more details later. Perhaps this man Bonz of whom you speak can enlighten me, if his profession is the
study of ancient things. The impression that you give of your species is not altogether favorable. Apparently they have spent most of their time killing each other because of differences in their beliefs about what you call supernatural beings, whose existence none of them was ever able to prove, or else to further the interests of a few who dominated the rest, and whose orders the rest obeyed for no reason that I can see. I find it hard to reconcile such statements with the degree of civilization which you claim to have reached."

  When Bridger and Ruth returned to the stockade, they were greeted with a chant of "Teacher's pets! Teacher's pets!" Bridger smiled wearily. "Bet either Charley or Ronnie organized that yell," he said to Ruth. "I'd like to see what they'd do with that old wind-bag Tsugg Oof grilling them!"

  Next morning T'kluggl was on hand almost with the sunrise. He took Bridger aside, and said, "I should like you and Pyen-nay to come to my house again today for another interview. At the same time, Kha Khahng and Gzigg'lilth can interview two of the others. Which would you suggest?"

  "If you want information, I should recommend Barnes there," he pointed, "and Scherer. No—it would be better to leave Scherer here to keep an eye on the others, and take Hansen instead."

  And so it was done. As they approached a long, low building on the main street, T'kluggl said, "Why not stop at the museum for a while? It is not far to my house."

  "Why not?" echoed Bridger, trying to keep his composure. Two bears even bigger than T'kluggl's pet were sniffing at his heels. When these had satisfied their curiosity, three small gorillas appeared and ran around the group in circles, staring at the people from all angles. "Hey, little one," Bridger barked in gorilla, "why are you not doing your lessons?"

  The infant nearly fell over in astonishment, and all three retreated to a safe distance, while T'kluggl burst into a fit of "kee-keeing."