The Great Man said, "Governor, we're not dominating this interview."
The Governor was chuckling. "Routed by a Pan Satyrus," he said.
The Great Man took over. "Mr. Satyrus, at least we made this a bipartisan conference. An honor to you."
Pan frowned, or so it seemed. Chimps' features do not quite assume the same expressions as men's. "Oh? Is one of you a Communist?"
The shocking word lay on the conference like a slow rain on a picnic. General Maguire looked as though he wished he were leading the Charge of the Light Brigade.
But Number One was suave and urbane and practiced with hecklers. "Hardly," he said, his voice flat and nasal. "What do you know about Communists, Mr. Satyrus?"
"Why, they're the other party," Pan said. "They're the reason for all the projects that I and a couple of hundred other chimpanzees have been run around the country lately. Los Alamos, Alamagordo, Canaveral, Vandenberg. It seems — or so they keep saying on the radio and the television — that men have split up into two parties, Communist and the Free World Party. Which of you is which?"
"You never heard of Republicans and Democrats?" the Governor asked.
"Oh, that," Pan Satyrus said.
"He's been in the South too long," the Governor said. "He's turned into a one-party man."
"One-party chimp," Pan Satyrus corrected him, "If anything. No, the keepers usually turn off the radio when that sort of thing comes on. Have you ever thought of separating men into two parties, on an evolutionary basis?"
The Great Man said, "Governor, I'm beginning to think I shouldn't have invited you to this shindig. I think a new political principle is about to be laid down."
"Share and share alike," the Governor said. "How do you separate people into two evolutionary parties, Mr. Satyrus?"
Pan Satyrus swung down from the desk. A fly had somehow gotten into the austere room; Pan caught it with an absent-minded flick of his pink-palmed hand, and crushed it and threw it on the floor. "Well," he said, "as you must know, some people have evoluted much more than others., For instance, look at these people here. Chief Bates has gone very far; in fact, he closely resembles a very young gorilla. His friends in the Navy notice it, they even honor him with the title of Ape, though he's a good ten thousand years from that. And then, on the other hand, take General Maguire. There's a gap of a half a million years there, gentlemen, and then only if you breed all the Maguires to very intelligent women."
The Governor said, "I'm beginning to wish you hadn't invited me, sir. This is getting much too personal. I hope I'm not next."
Pan Satyrus's glowing gaze rested on him a moment.
Then he turned to Dr. Bedoian. "Remember what we were talking about just outside the door there, doctor?"
"When you call me Aram, I always remember."
"Flattery," Pan Satyrus said, "Don't be frightened, I'm not planning any violence. Men divide themselves, and then divide themselves again, gentlemen. Chimpanzees don't."
The Governor leaned forward. "But men capture chimpanzees and make them slaves. And do chimpanzees ever capture men?"
"Who wants them?" Pan asked.
Both the great men had been highly educated at those Eastern schools maintained to remove the embarrassment that inherited riches gives young men. The Number One Great Man said, "Man is the only animal that dominates his environment, and therefore is the most highly evoluted animal."
"Stick to that, sir," Pan Satyrus said. "Because men's are the only votes you are going to get. Do you ever see a chimpanzee at the polls?"
"I am not always sure," the Governor said.
But the Great Man was intent on his question, "You don't agree with that definition of evolution?"
Pan Satyrus swung back to his perch on the corner of the desk. "Of course not," he said.. "This is like making work, and then being proud because you did the work you made necessary. The most highly evoluted animal is the one that has arrived at an ecology completely suitable to his needs — and then has enough sense to stay with it. In the case of the chimpanzee, everything we need is in a tropical closed forest, preferably deciduous. So where do you find chimpanzees?
In closed, deciduous, tropical forests, living a life of ease. Not at the North Pole, shooting polar bears in order to get the fur to wear to keep from freezing to death."
"You make a good case," the Governor said.
"Wait a minute," the Number One interposed. "What is the point to a chimpanzee's life? What do your people do with all this wonderful adjustment?"
"Not my people. My apes. We are not people. Or we weren't. Now I am, and I deeply regret it. Why, we have what you desire: time for long, slow chats with each other; time for speculation and rumination; perfect digestions; sex, of course; and we stay home and watch our children grow up. Sheer pleasure."
He stretched his long arms and yawned. Then he hastily explored his coat. There was the cracking noise of his fingernails. Pan Satyrus said to the Great Man, "You ought to fumigate more often."
"Subtropics," the Great Man said, succinctly. "The natural environment for insects."
Pan. Satyrus nodded. "You may think you have a point. But chimpanzees seldom sleep in the same bed twice; so we are not bothered."
"All right." The Great Man brought his hand down on the table, and was again an executive. "This has been a nice talk. Food for thought, when my worries keep me awake at night — which I'm sure never happens to a chimpanzee. But you know why we wanted to see you. And you know why I asked the Governor to be here: so you could be sure that the information we want from you is for the world and not just for my political advancement. How do you make a spaceship go faster than light?"
"You rearrange the controls," Pan answered.
There was a long sigh from everybody in the room — every man — except Ape Bates and Happy Bronstein, who were still standing at attention with the ease of long practice.
Then there was a silence.
Then there was the bleat of Genera! Maguire. "Sir, this ape has no intention of telling us. He's disaffected."
"Three-quarters of a million years," Pan Satyrus said, "and then you'd only have a baboon, or maybe a rhesus."
"General, you can wait outside," the Great Man said.
General Maguire saluted, about-faced, vanished.
The Great Man said, "Mr. Satyrus, consider that unsaid. It is ridiculous to suppose that you are an agent or a sympathizer of the Russians."
"Correct," Pan Satyrus said, "or of yours. Or of any men."
"So let us try and convince you that we are on the side of the angels," the Great Man said. "And, Governor, you take your licks when the time comes; I don't think this is going to be a soft sell."
The governor laughed. "You've already made a mistake, mentioning angels. Mr. Satyrus was about to ask you if you ever heard of any saintly chimpanzees."
"Not bad," Pan said. "Does that screen come out of that window?"
"I suppose so," the Great Man said.
"Happy, if you would," Pan Satyrus said.
Happy Bronstein was a Radioman First. He had a screwdriver about his person; just where, since he was wearing whites, it was hard to say. But it appeared in his hand, and he stepped forward and in a couple of minutes the screen was out.
And so was Pan Satyrus. Off the table and on the windowsill and then gone, into the warm Florida air, flying through it to land in the shaggy date palm outside the window. Happy, still holding the screen, said, "Look at him going down that trunk like a monkey." Then he said, "Sorry, sir," to the Great Man.
The Great Man said, "He is a monkey, Sparks."
"You forget it when you're around him a while," Happy Bronstein answered.
"Shouldn't we alert security?" the Governor asked.
"He can't escape," the Great Man said. "In a country full of people, he stands out. And I don't think he could disguise himself well enough to fool anybody."
Pan Satyrus was now down in the garden, appearing and disappearing among the lush semi-
tropical foliage. Then he reappeared, and shinnied up the palm and swung back into the room. His feet were grasping a number of vegetal objects. "Put title screen back in, Happy," he said. "The insects are bad, at these latitudes."
He sat down on the floor, sorted his loot. "Bananas," he said. "Not the sweet ones, but those nice little red ones that do so well here in Florida. Carob pods. I love them. You have a nice garden, sir. I could support a family of five out of it."
The Great Man said, "There are some lath houses and so on in back that grow real vegetables. Carrots and cabbage and tomatoes and so on."
"Nature's bounty, not man's, contents me," Pan Satyrus said. "Carob pod, anyone?"
"No thanks."
"When hungry, eat," Pan said. "When tired, sleep. And let man dominate his environment."
The Governor said, "When I am cornered in an argument, I get unbearably hungry. Most thin men do. You look to me like a thin chimpanzee, Pan Satyrus. Right, doctor?"
Dr. Bedoian answered. "Tall and thin for his species, sir."
"Pressure getting bad, Mr. Satyrus?" the Governor asked. "Did you find yourself weakening?"
Pan Satyrus pulled a carob pod through his teeth, spat the skin towards a wastebasket. It missed. He chewed the seeds thoroughly and swallowed. "I hadn't heard any arguments yet. Ill propose a question. Why should I help one group of men to get a weapon that will kill another group of men and thus start a war that might sweep over the tropics?"
"The closed, deciduous forest of the tropics," the Governor put in.
"Right." A red banana skin landed on the other side of the wastebasket.
The Governor turned to the Great Man. "Check to you."
The Great Man said, "We sincerely believe that what you call Our Side — and we call the Free World — is right, and will triumph in the end because it is right. We believe the other side is led by men who rob other men — very many other men — of their freedom in order to gratify a neurotic, even a psychotic, craze for power."
"You forget one thing," Pan said.
"What's that?"
"Seven-and-a-half year old chimpanzees can't vote."
"That's flippant," the Great Man said. "All right. I will try again. If we had the power to make an object go faster than light — which power you seem to have — we would build what we call an anti-missile missile which would render us invulnerable to rocket attack. And then peace would come to the world, including the closed, deciduous forests of the tropics."
Pan Satyrus explored a tooth with one of his long fingers. It happened to be a finger on his left foot "You say this is what you would do. But you are an elected officer, in power for a limited time. Suppose your successor decided to make a missile instead of an anti-missile missile?"
The Great Man laughed. "My successor, nine chances out of ten, will be either a man I nominate, or the Governor here. Nine chances out of ten, a man can't get better odds than that."
"I am not a man, I am a chimpanzee. And I don't think I'll tell you. I don't think you — nothing personal — are highly enough evoluted to have a secret like this."
"Who is?" the Governor asked.
"Species who know enough not to use such information. Species who know enough to live naturally, without trying to dominate an environment they shouldn't have migrated to in the first place."
"Back to Africa," the Great Man said.
"Don't sound so sour, sir. I'll go this far with you: I have no intention of dealing with the Russians, either."
'That is not enough."
"It's a good deal," Pan Satyrus said. "After all, the Russians didn't put my mother into the cage in which I was born. They didn't take me out of that cage and strap me to space sleds and pressure chambers and rocket capsules."
"They would have if one of their expeditions had trapped your mother, instead of one of ours."
"Oh, they are men, all right," Pan Satyrus said. Then he yawned, spreading his thick gums wide, exposing his huge teeth. "Doctor, I'm getting tired."
The Great Man said, "I haven't had anybody say that in front of me since I took the oath for this high and noble office." He laughed. "May I ask one more question, Mr. Satyrus?"
Pan Satyrus was combing his coat with his fingernails again. He nodded, gravely and judicially. "If I may ask you and your friend one."
"You seem very fond of reading. Are there any libraries in your closed canopy, deciduous, tropical, African jungle?"
Pat Satyrus said, "There's hope for you. " Then he thought, and absent-mindedly his fingernails clicked again as they found another guest in his fur. "I suppose there are no libraries. But, you know, fond as I've been of reading, I think it's because I've always been a captive. What is there to look at in a Primate House, or a biological laboratory, except a book, over some attendant's shoulder? When you've admired the exploits of the rhesus monkeys, they begin to bore you."
"Dr. Bedoian, get Pan Satyrus the life and writings of Thoreau," the Governor said. "He's under the same delusion, that the simple life is best."
Dr. Bedoian said, "Yes, sir. I suppose it's my shoulder he's read over most."
The Great Man looked closely at the doctor. But all he said was, "What was your question, Pan?"
Pan Satyrus sat up straight, resting his palms on the floor, all four of them. "You and the Governor," he asked, "do you value the high offices you hold?"
Both men nodded, cautiously.
"I mean, you regard them as high offices?"
Again they nodded, in beautiful unison, though they were of rival political parties.
"You deem them more important than the fortune your father, sir, and your grandfather, Governor, accumulated?" Pan stood up. "Which would you give up first? Office or fortune?"
Neither man moved this time. Their expressions were so similar that it seemed that the gap created by Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson had finally closed.
People do not leave the presence of great men until they are dismissed.
Chimpanzees do.
CHAPTER SEVEN
He had tested this vaccine on 10,000 monkeys, 160 chimpanzees, and 243 humans. The volunteers were mostly inmates of Federal penitentiaries.
The Virus Hunters Greer Williams, 1960
Once again they were rolling north. But this time there was a different air to the procession. A security man rode with them, and there was little doubt that the driver was an officer, too; in his light tropical worsteds it was impossible to hide a gun. Happy Bronstein was in the front car, Ape Bates in the rear one, and only Dr. Bedoian, of his friends, remained with Pan Satyrus.
As before, a car went ahead of them and another car behind them, but now the first car used its siren, and they didn't stop for anything.
"Am I under arrest?" Pan Satyrus asked.
The man beside the driver said, "You are not to talk."
"But I have to. I retrogressed — or devoluted — and I have a compulsion to talk. Like a human being."
The security man reached into his coat. "This is a revolver, a.38. This other gun has a narcotic in it, a powerful one. I am under orders to shoot you with the narcotic, and if that does not stop you, I am allowed to use a lead bullet. Do not talk."
"Wait a minute," Dr. Bedoian said. "This is my patient".
"Is he sick?"
"No."
"Then he is not your patient. And do not talk."
Pan Satyrus reached out and took the doctor's hand, gently, in his own big one. He clung to it as though he were frightened, but how could he be, a big chimpanzee who had flown faster than light?
The cars rolled on, the siren moaning monotonously.
Eventually the little motorcade left the main highway, and followed a paved road off into non-coastal Florida, a land of sandhills and swamps and small, muggy lakes, cattle and poor farms and the rich mucklands of the commercial tomato men.
Pan Satyrus looked out at the green and red globes on the plants, and said, "I am getting hungry."
The security man glower
ed.
Dr. Bedoian said, "He requires several meals a day."
"That's right," Pan said. "Because I'm a vegetarian. Even the legumes Jack the concentration of energy of the animal proteins."
The security man looked frustrated. "You're not supposed to talk," he said.
Dr. Bedoian said, "Pan, you have read the strangest things."
"I have been tended by some very strange people. Night watchmen in the Primate House, or in an animal laboratory, are very often studying to be something else. Better, you men would say. And then, when I've been ill, I've been nursed by medical students."
"Please stop talking," the security man said.
"Not until I am fed," Pan Satyrus answered. "Talking takes my mind off my stomach."
"Well be — where we're going — in half an hour."
Then I shall talk for half an hour."
The security man said, "Oh, all right. What can I do about it?"
"Shoot a capsule into me," Pan Satyrus said. "Queer. Yesterday I was in a capsule, today a capsule may be in me. Dr. Bedoian, your language lacks definition."
"I am a doctor, not a linguist. And call me Aram. It makes me feel comforted in a world that is about to go bleak and grim. Couldn't you have picked some other time to be subversive?"
Pan Satyrus said, "You have handled chimpanzees before. At a certain age don't they all become difficult, no, impossible to handle? No, not impossible; positively perverse. Maybe I'm reaching that age."
"Oh, lay off," Dr. Bedoian said.
"Alone in a friendless world. Do you think I could join the FBI?"
Both the men in the front seat chuckled. "You have to have a law degree," the driver said, over his shoulder.
"You had to go to law school to be a chauffeur to an ape?" Pan Satyrus asked.
"Sometimes I do other things," the driver said.
"We're not supposed to talk, or let them talk," his companion said.
"I could always get a job in a filling station," the driver said.
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