Pan Satyrus

by Richard Wormser

  We were filming the local chief of police and the Federal men, who were having an argument; the chief wouldn't pull a gun on his taxpayers, and I guess the Fed boys weren't too anxious to shoot the citizenry, either — when my legman, Iggie Napoli, pulled at my sleeve. "Hey, look, Bill. That man o' war's pulling out without her whaleboat."

  Sure enough the Cooke was heading for sea again, the workboat going up in its elevator or I guess I should say davits, but the whaleboat was still lying off the dock there.

  "They'll be in a helluva spot if they meet any whales," I said, but off-mike.

  The law was deadlocked there on the dock. They couldn't clear the people away and the head Fed was saying that the chimp couldn't land till they did, and he was pointing out that the monkey was Government Property, and they were endangering Government Property, and what could happen to people who did that.

  He wasn't impressing all of Florida, or even all of Floridaville.

  Then this guy at the wheel of the whaleboat — how's that for a phrase? — lets out a bellow like he had a built-in P.A. system in his throat. He yells, "Hey, Mr. MacMahon, Mr, Satyrus is getting seasick."

  I snap my fingers at Iggie for the glasses, and take a look. Sure enough, the wake of the Cooke has really set that whaleboat rocking, and the chimp is leaning over the side. Mr. Satyrus, that was the chimp, but I didn't find out why till later.

  The fuzz named MacMahon throws up his hands, not really, but from his expression, and says, "All right, all right. Signal them to come in, Piquin. But you people here, stand back. Just remember that this man, this chimpanzee, has been around the earth, out in space, since morning. Don't crowd him."

  I am certainly glad I got that. I knew these top security men think we're all monkeys, but I didn't know they thought monkeys were men.

  So the whaleboat came in and tied off where the workboat had been — if I still have my boats straight — and my cameraman switched from telephoto to a zoomar, and I yakked it up while they tried for the first close-up.

  I waved to the truck to come on out towards me. That close-up was like gelt in the pocket.

  If we didn't get it right away, we might never, because those three G-men and the local cop were likely to close in and maybe shield the chimp from us. He was tall for a monkey, but that ain't John Wayne.

  The sailor who threw the line for this boat and then jumped up to the dock was old for a guy in a sailor suit. The one at the wheel was even older, but he had on like an officer's uniform, and I asked Iggie what to call him. He said he was a Chief.

  The monkey came up the line like a monkey, and sat down on the hunk of wood that the boat was tied off to. First he wiped his mouth with one hand and then with one foot, and I had to switch the camera crew down to the boat fast, on account of a close shot of a chimp wiping his mouth with his foot is not for family viewing, especially a male chimp. Not right in the camera, I mean.

  The old boy that I should call Chief came up on the dock, and he said, "Feel better, Pan?" The monkey nodded. Then the old chief turned to the sailor, and said, "The Cooke took off without us, Happy."

  "We're on unlimited shore leave, Ape," Harry said. "The skipper's not allowed to bring the Cooke in except in guarded shores."

  Me, I was pushing forward. I shoved the mike out at the chimp and said, "Is it true you can talk, now, Mem?"

  For a minute I thought he wasn't going to answer me. In fact, for a minute I thought he was going to take the mike and make me eat it. Which is about the only thing I haven't done with a mike.

  But then he smiled — I guess — and said, "Of course, you don't know any better than to call me Mem. My name is Pan Satyrus, sir. And yours?"

  I told him mine. It doesn't hurt you to get your same out on the air as often as you can. I let a beat 20 after it, and then asked him, "How come you can talk?"

  He thought that over. "A very good question, Mr. Dunham. If I were to ask it of you, how would you answer it?"

  Sixteen years on the air, and you don't get stumped easy. "Cause my whole family has talked, for years. How about yours?"

  He gave me that smile again. I am pretty sure it was a smile. "Let us just say that they haven't cared to. Fair enough?" Then he shrugged. I wished he wouldn't; when he moved those arms and shoulders I remembered he didn't even have a chain on him.

  The chief named Ape — pretty good name, too — said, "This guy's bothering you, Pan, Happily give him the deep six."

  "Oh, no," the monkey said. It was sure a funny thing to be talking to a monkey. He had an accent something like I remember Roosevelt's. But with a little Bronx on top. "He has his living to make. Ask anything you want, Mr. Dunham."

  MacMahon, the top G-man — Special Agent in Charge, I guess — yelped, "No security questions. Nothing about the spaceship or the — the Cooke!"

  The chimp grinned again. I've seen smaller teeth on a horse, and the winner of the Derby hit me one year, right in the circle of roses. "You gonna keep on talking? I mean, now you started?"

  "I know what you mean," he said. "And I'm afraid the answer is yes."

  Then I was stopped, me, Bill Dunham. But only for a second, of course. "Tell me — you mind if I call you by your first name — Pan, tell me, do all chimps talk to each other. I mean, is there a chimp language?"

  His eyes looked into mine, and for a minute I forgot his teeth and those shoulders. I mean, for a minute, I was like back just getting out of journalism school, all full of good English and ideals. He had awful sad eyes.

  "You don't happen to have a piece of chewing gum, do you, Mr. Dunham?" he asked. "I have a foul taste in my mouth."

  Iggie shoved a stick of gum into my hand, off camera. That Iggie is sharp. Maybe too sharp for an assistant. I better watch it. The camera moved in for a big-head close-up as the chimp put the gum in his mouth, gave it a few chews and swallowed. Then he said, "Thanks," and the picture came back to a two-shot, him and me.

  "What do you think of American women, Pan?"

  "Well, they aren't chimpanzees, you know. But I do suppose they're good enough for American men."

  The guy who drives our mobile unit, MacLinsky, had been blocking off the AP man, but now the reporter got away from him and came up. All right with me; the people like to see an interview, and we had the only picture.

  The newspaper fellow said, "I'm Jerry Leffingwell, AP." He had a cracker accent you could have spread on pancakes. A local stringer. "How was the view from up in the spaceship?"

  "Monotonous. I could see all of Florida at once."

  MacMahon bawls, "No questions about the spaceship."

  I think the chimp laughed. I wasn't sure. He didn't do anything quite like anybody else I had ever interviewed.

  When I cut back in it was with what I considered a real sharp question. "How about saying something for us in monkey talk?"

  Then I wished I hadn't. The chimp looked at me in a way that made me wish we had some bars between us, and I didn't care if I was in the cage or he was. He waited almost a minute, and then he asked, "Tarsier, tupia, marmoset, rhesus?"

  "Well, your own kind."

  "I am not a monkey, sir, any more than you are,".

  This was getting worse, and us on the air. The two sailors were laughing at me, too, and I wasn't sure that the camera crew had them out of the frame. The older one, the chief, said, "Ask him about them rhesus monkeys, mister." Something in the way he said it told me not to.

  Eight then another hot idea came to me. "Do you chimps at Cape Canaveral and White Sands — your home base is White Sands, isn't it? — take any pride in what you're doing for science?"

  Again he waited a little before answering. "I can only speak for myself. The answer, I think, is no."

  'You don't feel any patriotism in the cold war?"

  He looked at me a little more kindly than he had. "You know, when you get over being so eager, Mr. Dunham, you almost talk like a man of education. Why, not all the work we do — that I have done— has been in the interests of
war. They have used me— and it is never nice to be used without your consent — in medical research. And the male nurse that watched me was reading an article on the exploding population crisis. Ironical, don't you think?"

  Don't let my public know it, but I went to college. Not since then had I had my nose bumped so hard; it was a philosophy professor that did it that time, instead of a chimpanzee. "I guess our idea is, stop the diseases first, and mankind will work out a way to feed them all later."

  "Pretty risky," he said.

  The AP man crowded back in just when it was getting interesting. "Is there a lady chimp at Canaveral or White Sands you're interested in?"

  Mr. Satyrus looked at the cracker. "Did you know, Mr. Leffingwell, that there is the greatest variety of skin pigment in chimpanzees of any mammal not cultivated by man?"

  AP said, "Aw, now." A brilliant answer. I could have made it myself.

  "So I have to watch out, while in Florida, against love, or you might say passion," Mr. Satyrus said. "Since I am a brown-skinned chimpanzee, supposing I fell in love with a white-skinned one? I'd be liable to arrest."

  Leffingwell said, That law doesn't apply to monkeys."

  Mr. Satyrus said, "I was not talking of monkeys, sir," and turned back to me. "I never finished answering your question, Mr. Dunham. About the cold war. My contacts have been limited — keepers, scientists, doctors, other chimpanzees, an occasional gorilla. War might be a good thing if its purpose was to abolish the other side, and use their living room and their resources. As a man of the world — which you are — does this ever happen?"

  For the first time in years, I forgot I was on the air. I let some time go dead while I chose my own answer, and for that you can have your lapel mike stripped away in broad daylight in Radio City. I said, "Not since the Middle Ages. Nowadays, the winner always quits in time to help the loser build himself back to strength."

  "You have answered your own question, I think," Mr. Satyrus said. Then, without warning, he sat down on the dock, and put both his big hands over his head. "The chimpanzee," he said, "if I may quote Ivan Sanderson, and every chimpanzee has read him over at least one shoulder, is found only where there is tall closed forest. In other words, gentlemen, I need shade."

  He got up, as far as chimps ever get — his knuckles still on the ground — and shuffled forward. The two sailors trotted along after him. For a moment I thought he was going to try and knock our five-ton mobile unit into the sea, but then he swerved and went alongside it. The sailors had caught up with him by then. The younger one took off his white cap, and put it on Mr. Satyrus* head, and the chimp reached up and patted him on the shoulder.

  The sailor staggered a little, but kept going forward.

  The plainclothes men led by MacMahon, followed them, at a good, safe distance, and the interview was over.

  Leffingwell, the local AP stringer stared after them. "Good gawd," he said, "that monkey is an integrationist,".

  "Not at all," I said. "He strongly objects to being classed with monkeys. He's the worst sort of racist."

  "I need a drink," Leffingwell said.

  "I'll buy it," I said.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  All his myths deal with amorous affairs.

  Article on Pan

  The Columbia Viking Desk

  Encyclopedia, 1953

  Floridaville had only one hotel, and it wasn't the best in the world. But it had one advantage: the salesman's suite, which had a bedroom that could only be entered through a somewhat larger sample room.

  Pan Satyrus, Chief Ape Bates and Happy Bronstein were in the bedroom. MacMahon, Piquin and Crawford were in the sample room, guarding them. Crawford was now dressed in a suit of blue-and-white seersucker that had been cut in the early 1930's.

  None of the security men looked happy.

  In the bedroom a certain amount of joy reigned. Happy Bronstein had gotten permission from their guards to go downstairs and select a basket of fruit for Pan Satyrus; when he brought it back, the bananas and oranges, grapefruits and mangoes covered a pint of blended whiskey and a pint of gin.

  Happy and Ape had been at sea for three months; in fact, the crew of the DAC had been exchanging the not-original crack that they weren't going ashore till it was time to re-enlist.

  As for Pan Satyrus, he had never had enough to drink in his life; just a medicinal shot now and then when his bronchial tubes — delicate in all his species — bothered him.

  Never one to depend on physical appearance to command respect, Pan Satyrus lay on the floor, on his back, waving the pint of whiskey in one hand, while he peeled bananas with his feet, tossing the peels at the old-fashioned chandelier, where a few of them hung.

  "That's a good trick," Ape said. "You think if I'd never worn shoes I could do it?"

  "Hardly," Pan Satyrus said. "The opposed big toe is not a characteristic of Homo sapiens."

  "Come again?" Ape asked.

  "The scientific name for man — as Pan Satyrus is for chimpanzees — is Homo sapiens. The sole species of present Homo."

  "Ape's been called a lot of things in his time, but never Homo before," Happy said. He started singing Old Deacon Kelly.

  Ape took a swig of the gin and tossed the pint to Happy to shut him up. Then he started singing The Bastard King of England.

  Pan made three banana skins in a row land and stay on the chandelier.

  Happy said, "What we need is girls."

  Ape stopped singing and looked at Pan Satyrus.

  Pan said, "Not a chance. Those white-collar bastards out there wouldn't understand."

  "You may not look like a sailor, but you talk and think like one," Happy said.

  "As a matter of fact," Pan said, "it wouldn't do. I mean, let's face it, the kind of girl who would have an affair with a chimpanzee would bore me."

  "I dunno." Ape thought it over. "You're a celebrity. Girls go for that. Look at those Hollywood actors, those movie stars."

  "I have never seen a movie," Pan said, "but if they use the same actors they do on television, I am not flattered."

  He became bored with peeling bananas, transferred the whiskey bottle to his feet, and used his hands to feed himself oranges, spitting an occasional seed at the chandelier, so it would not feel neglected.

  At this point the door opened, and a thin man entered, carefully shut the door behind him, and said, "Sammy, you're drunk."

  Happy and Ape got up to give him the old heave-ho.

  Pan waved a negligent foot and the whiskey bottle, and said, "Let him stay, boys. He's my doctor, his name is Bedoian. My name used to be Sammy before that unspeakable Maguire woman named me Mem. Have a drink, Aram."

  Dr. Bedoian looked around the room. "When in Rome, to coin a phrase," he said. He accepted the gin bottle from Happy and drank. "I have to examine you, Sammy."

  "My name is Pan Satyrus. I changed it."

  "You changed a lot of things," Dr. Bedoian said, and took a stethoscope out of his pocket. "When did you decide to take up talking?"

  "I can't help it," Pan said. "I went faster than light, and you know what Einstein says about that."

  "No, I don't. I'm a simple GP. You're all right, Sammy. I mean, Pan." The doctor looked at the chimpanzee, and then he looked at the two sailors, and then he smiled a little. He went to the door, opened it a crack, and said, "Mr. MacMahon, you can issue a press statement. The trip into outer space had no deleterious effects. Between you and me, however, I'd appreciate it if you would get us a bottle of bonded bourbon. My patient is a little depressed."

  They heard one of the men in the outer room say, "I would hate to see him when he's boisterous," but by then the doctor had closed the door.

  "Bonded bourbon," Ape Bates said.

  "The government's paying," Dr. Bedoian pointed out. "Pan — the name fits you, you reprobate — you were about to say something profound about talking and Dr. Einstein."

  "Only that I've retrogressed. I have a compulsion to talk, like a human being. I wouldn't be su
rprised if my hair fell out and my big toes froze straight. I have retrogressed from travelling faster than the speed of light."

  "I think the word is devolve, but let that go," Dr. Bedoian said. "Are you sure you haven't evolved instead?"

  "Evoluted? Hardly. Everyone knows chimpanzees are more advanced than humans."

  Dr. Bedoian chuckled happily. "Pan Satyrus for president."

  "Certainly not," Pan said. "Too much responsibility, leading nowhere. Though I do like his wife's hair."

  "Lay off," Dr. Bedoian said. "You haven't introduced me to your friends."

  "Chief Bates, Radioman Bronstein," Pan said. "Dr. Bedoian. What a lot of titles. What do we do now, doctor?"

  "Call me Aram," the doctor said. '1 don't know what we do now. I was sent here to examine you and—" He broke off.

  "Examine my health or my — state of mind?" Pan asked gently.

  "Both," the doctor said. "You seem to have picked up enough top secrets to ruin the U.S. of A."

  "How to make a spaceship go faster than light?"

  Dr. Bedoian nodded. "There is that," he said. "And the ship that picked you up is highly secret."

  "You ain't just snorting," Ape Bates said. "They don't let us guys go ashore ever. I mean, that's okay for the officers, but a sailor needs a little of this now and then." He waved a bottle. "And other things," he added. "You married, doc?"

  Dr. Bedoian shook his head. He went to the window and looked out. Floridaviile, in all its simplicity, stretched from the hotel to the shining sea. "Pan," he said, "you certainly picked a lovely, lovely place to land in."

  "I didn't pick it; we came ashore here from the DAC."

  The doctor sighed. "You aren't even supposed to know the Cooke is a DAC. Or that there are DACs. They had to tell me, so I could come down here and question you, find out what you knew and who you're going to tell it to."

  Happy Bronstein laughed. "He calls it a DAC because we do, doc. He doesn't know what it means."

  "It is supposed to mean DESTROYER-ATTACK CARRIER," Pan said. "Because it carries a few planes, and is approximately the length and speed of a destroyer. But the letters, rearranged, also refer to Atomic Depth Charge."