Genus Homo

by L. Sprague De Camp

  They discussed the history of the gorillas for a little longer, then Ruth said. "It will be very nice to have our freedom again, T'kluggl, but where are we to live? You know, we were accustomed to houses in our former life, and this sleeping in the open has been a most uncomfortable experience."

  "Mmm—that will require thought," the ape replied. "We in Dlldah are somewhat crowded, as you have seen. There have been several new arrivals recently, and all our dwellings are occupied. We might arrange to have you share the quarters of some of our families, but I suppose it will eventually be necessary to build new houses for you. Your people will have to assist with the work however—we have little labor to spare now, for there are several projects which must be finished before winter—a new hothouse, an addition to the factory, and other things."

  "Oh, I'm sure we can work out some satisfactory arrangement," Bridger hastened to say. "But how about your hothouses? I should like to see them; in my former life I knew something about those used by my people."

  "And," put in Ruth, "I should like to see one of your schools."

  "You shall have the opportunity tomorrow," T'kluggl assured her.

  "And I want to begin studying your written language," the girl went on.

  "You will need assistance for that—but here is a book of instruction, telling the simple facts about the larger animals of this country. It is written for beginners in reading, so it might amuse you to see what you can make of it without help."

  Bridger felt of the paper. "What is this made of, T'kluggl?" he asked. "It looks like paper such as we formerly used, but it feels different."

  "The main constituent is rubber," the ape explained, "but it also contains wood fibers and—" a string of chemical terms.

  "Is it strong?"

  T'kluggl picked a scrap out of his wastebasket, which was suspended from a hook on the wall. "Judge for yourself."

  Bridger tried to tear it. His face turned red through the tan, and the veins on the backs of his hands stood out, but the paper, instead of tearing, slowly stretched.

  "It's strong enough to suit me!" he said, handing it back. T'kluggl crumpled it in both hands, grunted, and pulled it out to three times its original length, when it snapped. He grinned slyly at his human guest.

  Back at the stockade, the rest of the party did not seem displeased at Bridger's news of the gorillas' plans for housing them. "It still don't seem right, a bunch of apes ordering us around," Macdonald objected, "but as long as they got all the chow, there ain't much we can do about it."

  Next morning the entire band was led forth, and shown to their temporary lodgings, which consisted mostly of odd corners in assorted gorillas' houses. Toomey objected violently when he found he would have to share his quarters with a huge cinnamon bear, and was found another place in a house where there were no pets.

  True to his word, T'kluggl took Ruth around to the school building in the morning. His assistants were putting the infants through their paces. Gzigg'lilth was working on a small group of ten-year-olds: one of the imps was standing beside the teacher's desk—which was, as might have been expected, a bare two feet high—engaging the rest of the class in a furious argument. Ruth's appearance stopped the debate cold, as the half-grown apes began to fire questions at their instructor and at the embarrassed girl.

  Gzigg'lilth finally got his class going again, but only half-heartedly.

  Kha Khang's class was of younger apes. As he got up to greet his callers, there was a sharp wop! as one of his charges brought a leather-bound book down on another's head. The resultant uproar failed to disconcert the teacher; he quietly ordered two of his larger pupils to separate the combatants, and went on talking to Ruth and T'kluggl.

  Meanwhile Elizabeth Friedman, Dave Toomey, and Mortimer Wilson, accompanied by Bridger, were being shown through the factory by a female gorilla named Ksidd Ma-ukh. At the sight of the machinery, Toomey suddenly came to life; his sullenness vanished, and he tried to ask their guide questions about the works in his sadly inadequate gorilla. After groping helplessly for the words, he turned to Bridger.

  "Listen, Doc," he begged, "can't you tell her what I mean? You know this lingo." Bridger, secretly delighted at seeing the bus-driver show signs of adjusting to their situation, spent the rest of the morning acting as interpreter.

  Early the next morning they met at T'kluggl's home to consider sites for their permanent homes. "What sort of night did you spend, John?" Enid Hanson asked Macdonald, "I had the best sleep in ages."

  "The bed was okay, after what we've been having, but my landlord has a brat about two years old. First sneaked up behind me and pulled my hair. Then it swiped my shoes, and threw 'em at me when I wasn't looking. Then when it got tired of playing, it wanted to curl up in my lap and go to sleep."

  "You should have been at my place, Mac," put in Margaret Kelleigh. "My folks had a half-grown one who just dropped in for the evening and spent three hours cross-examining me. I don't know their language any too well, but from what I gathered some of its questions were on the embarrassing side. These apes certainly learn the facts of life early!"

  "The kid or pup or whatever you'd call them at my house didn't ask many questions," said Zbradovski, "but she spent a couple of hours doing stunts on a horizontal bar, and after each one she'd look at me and say 'Bet you can't do that,' or words to that effect. And dammit, I couldn't. I used to think I was pretty good at that stuff, but these monkeys have me stopped."

  "Don't let 'em hear you calling 'em monkeys, Sneeze," Scherer warned. "They may not like it."

  "All right—apes. What's the difference—no tails?"

  "That, and the shape of their skulls, and things like that—it's pretty technical," the zoologist replied. "By the way, I was hoping for a good bath after the muck we've been bedding down in, but our friends don't seem to have bathtubs."

  "There's a pool over the other side of town," Alice Lloyd explained. "They go over there once in a while and splash around, but mostly they go in for brushing and combing themselves on a large scale. You should have seen the pair I stayed with—the male was called Ga-blung Ga-blung, or something like that. He and his wife went over each other with stiff brushes like curry-combs. They asked me if I wanted to be brushed, but I said no, thanks, as politely as I could. They'd have skinned me alive!"

  T'kluggl showed the people the site that had been selected for their houses, outside the palisade. "We shall soon have to extend the wall out around this area anyway," he explained. "This foundation that you see is for a new storehouse; it merely means taking in a larger space. We think that four houses should do for the present."

  "All your houses seem to be built of wood," said Morelli. "What about the danger of fire?"

  "There will be no risk of fire," T'kluggl answered. "We shall use the same treated wood as for our own buildings. It can be charred, but it will not burn."

  "Well, there goes the fire insurance business," Morelli lamented, "but I'll bet I could sell 'em policies against being eaten by wild animals."

  "What would you use for money?" asked Wilson.

  "Yeah—just what do they have, I wonder? Hey, T'kluggl,"—he dropped back into gorilla—"how do you—well, what I mean is, what does one of you give somebody, when the other one gives something to him?"

  "You mean when I want something from the stores? Well, each of us has an account at the stores of a certain number of pith-fiah. In our language, pith-flah means a kind of nut of which we were very fond back in Fonmlith. They did not grow in our part of that land, and had to be brought in from the outside. Many cycles ago, the custom grew of passing these nuts from hand to hand in exchange for all sorts of goods. Only those who had accumulated more goods than they could use at the moment would think of eating their pith-flah.

  "Finally our scientists bred a variety that would grow in our country, so that the nuts became much commoner. This caused great confusion, because we had been accustomed to thinking of a house as worth so many pith-flah, an axe as worth
so many, and so forth. Those who had accumulated hoards of pith-flah found that others could now amass equal numbers quite easily by simply planting one of the new nuts and waiting for a tree to grow.

  "At first our government tried forbidding the growing of these new nuts, but that didn't work. Finally it was decided that, inasmuch as by that time we were getting all supplies from the common storehouse anyway, it would do no harm to continue giving each thing an imaginary value in pith-flah, regardless of how many were in actual existence. Now, when one does a certain amount of work or turns certain commodities in to the store, he is credited on the books of the community with a certain number of these imaginary nuts, and when he takes something out of the stores, the proper number is deducted from his account.

  "Of course, this is just a bare outline of the story. If I tried to tell you everything that happened about those miserable nuts, it would take days! But, briefly, that is how we came to exchange goods for pith-flah which do not really exist. The only specimens of these nuts that anyone now living has seen are a few in our larger museums."

  13

  INVASION

  That afternoon Nelson Packard took Bridger aside. "I've been meaning to speak to you, Henley," the lawyer said, "but I haven't had the chance. I have the marriage ceremony all worked out, if you want to announce it before we go home tonight."

  "Good idea, Nelson. Hey, folks! I have a little announcement to make. Nelson Packard here, as our magistrate, is all set to perform marriage ceremonies at the drop of a hat—and if you can't find a hat, I'm sure he'll be willing to dicker. Dave—may I speak to you a minute?"

  There was a whispered consultation, and Bridger turned to the crowd again: "The first pair to be united in the bonds of matrimony will be our old friends Elizabeth Friedman and Dave Toomey. Step up, Elizabeth—I'm sure we all wish you all the happiness in the world. Now, if the rest of you will form a circle—"

  "I'll say one thing for you, Henley," Packard Murmured. "When you once get an idea you don't waste any time putting it into effect." He assumed his best pontifical manner, somewhat hampered by the shrinkage of his waistline under the effects of simple food and abundant exercise. "Harrumph! Do you David, take this woman to be your lawful—" He went on through a fair rendition of the customary ceremony, closing with "—in the presence of these witnesses, and under the laws of the human race, I now pronounce you man and wife!"

  "We are the human race, you know," he added seriously.

  Leaving the rest chattering congratulations and sentiment, Packard and Bridger strolled down the street toward their lodgings. "Hey!" came a voice behind them. "Could you do another one tomorrow?"

  "Why, Mac!" said Bridger. "Do you mean that you want to get married too? Who's the lucky girl?"

  "Enid and I," Macdonald said simply.

  "Enid? You mean Miss Hansen?"

  "Yeah, Miss Hansen, and you don't have to look at me like that. We fixed it up quite a while back. She's only four years older than I am, and she don't look it. For some reason she seems to think I'm pretty hot stuff. So what about it?"

  The two men assured him that nothing would make them happier. "Wonder who'll be next," Packard mused as the former cop turned away. His eyes traveled to Ruth Pierne, deep in conversation with one of the gorillas, then back to Bridger. The glance was not lost on the chemist, who felt unreasoning anger rising within him. If they'd mind their own business! He was thankful for his beard; it was a great help in maintaining some outward appearance of composure.

  "Well," he said, "I guess we all know about the Stern Hooper-Franchot situation, and it looks as if Eleanor has the lead. And your friend Charley seems to be pretty thick with Mary Wilkins."

  "That's a possibility," Packard admitted with due legal caution. "But have you realized that we're going to have a surplus of—let's see—four women? When a few more pairs get eliminated, the competition for the men who are left is going to be something fierce."

  "I suppose we'll have to face it—especially when the older ones like Miss Hansen seem to be setting the example. We might try some form of polygamy—just for this generation, of course."

  "But that wouldn't be—no, I'm thinking of the laws of the sovereign state of Ohio again. I suppose we'll have to make our own laws to suit the circumstances."

  Work on their new houses began next day. Bridger drove his crew, realizing that they would show plenty of energy for a while after the boredom of their captivity. Barnes, Toomey, and Papa Aaronson soon shaped up as the straw-bosses of the outfit. The rest were willing enough, but they fumbled with the unfamiliar tools, got in the way of the workers, and gave each other copious advice. Little by little the raw edges began to wear off as the buildings took shape.

  The Hooper-Franchot wedding came off in due course. Bridger, watching Packard perform the ceremony, thought: Ronnie looks like a man doing a high dive into a wet sponge! He'd like to get out of it, but he hasn't the nerve to balk. Too bad—Ronnie's a pretty good egg even if he is a lightweight.

  Scherer sought out the chemist afterward. They talked for a while about biology and house-building; then Scherer said, "Well—poor Ronnie's cotched at last. But you might say that he asked for it. I didn't think Ruby Stern would come to the wedding, but she never batted an eyelash. She's got guts, that girl! By the way, Mildred Henry and I are going to try it too."

  "What? Well! Congratulations and all that. You would pick the best looker of the bunch!"

  "When are you going to do your duty by the race, Henley?" the zoologist demanded bluntly. "Take Ruth Pierne, now—"

  "Now look here, Emil—you're a good friend of mine, but that's one thing I'd just as lief not be kidded about."

  "I'm not kidding. She may not be a dazzling beauty, but I've noticed that most of the men look up when she comes around, and she has a swell figure and plenty of brains. She doesn't exactly hate your guts, either, you know."

  Bridger felt the blood rising in his face; it made his beard itch. "Dammit, Emil," he insisted, "I just plain don't want to marry anyone! Running this show is a fulltime job, and I can't afford to get tied up."

  Scherer had a twinkle in his eye and a broad grin was growing in his beard. "Henley," he said, "that's bunk, and you know it. Now that we're getting places to live, and work to do, the fuehrer business is going to get easier every day. Personally, I think we're going to have to wind up by accepting the gorillas' culture or cutting loose from them entirely: otherwise we'll be a thorn in their side, and they'll seem more and more like brutes to us. I don't have to tell you the kind of trouble we had in our own time with minorities who insisted on staying minor and different."

  "Still planning the destiny of the race?" Wilson cut in. "Say—do you guys know what these monks have got? Hard cider! I tried it, and it's got the old stuff! Oh—I was supposed to tell you there'll be a concert in the square tonight, and you're invited."

  The concert started shortly after sunset. The people sat in little groups on the ground among the motionless rows of black apes.

  The first performer was a soloist who played an instrument resembling an overgrown semicircular xylophone. He sat inside the circle and walloped the plates of the instrument with a pair of clubs the size of baseball bats. Bridger thought successively of stoves falling downstairs, automobile crashes, and a convention of the blacksmiths' union, but he noted that Sneeze Zbradovski and a couple of the girls seemed to be enjoying the stuff. At that, it didn't sound too unlike some of the things he'd heard on the radio back there in 1939.

  Next came the local glee-club of sixteen gorillas. Their performance was hardly easier on the nerves. The apes pounded their chests rhythmically and shrieked in unison. T'kluggl, whispering in Bridger's ear, tried to point out to him the fine points of the alleged harmony, and to explain the extremely complex rules on which he said it was based. But Bridger remembered a trip he had made by boat from Los Angeles to San Francisco, with thick fog all the way, when he had had a stateroom directly under the whistle.

&nbs
p; Afterwards food was served, buffet style, in the square, with wooden noggins of cider all round. Bridger tried for a while to keep up with T'kluggl's consumption of drinks, but after his second mug he saw that he was hopelessly outclassed. He explained to the ape the unfortunate consequences which would ensue if he continued.

  Later, as he was getting ready for bed, the sound of voices approached. He went to the window opening on the street. In the moonlight he saw four figures weaving slowly toward him, arms draped over each other's shoulders. Something about the fearful racket was familiar. Then he saw that the figure on the right was that of a man, and that the other three were gorillas Mort Wilson, his hat on the back of his head, marched arm in arm with a black giant who might have been the imperturbable Kha Khahng.

  The four happened to hit a line of their ballad at about the same time. "Soo-et Ad-aw-lah-een—mah-ee Ad-aw-lah-een!" Bridger heard, in an indescribable mixture of human and gorilla English. If only I could go back a few million years and tell people about this, the chemist thought.

  As he stretched himself out on the pile of cushions which T'kluggl had supplied for a bed, the quartet had changed to a tender number in equally unintelligible gorillaese.

  T'kluggl and Bridger stood on the roof of the tallest house in Dlldah. Two other gorillas were there; one peered through a telescope at a distant hilltop, and spoke to the other, who made notes. Overhead a great semaphore spread its arms. Presently the gorilla at the telescope left it and began working the arms of the semaphore. The second gorilla handed T'kluggl his notebook: "Here," he said, "this concerns you. You might like to read it before I set it up."

  T'kluggl ran his eye over the wiggles. "More visitors," he remarked to Bridger. "Tsugg Oof is coming back and bringing some friends with him. One of them is Kik-Kee-Whee, the ambassador from the G'thong-smith."