As she works, she sips from a cup of whiskey. Excited, she drinks more than usual, finishing two full cups. The liquor leaves her a little disoriented, and she sways as she follows Jake to the janitor’s lounge. She curls up close beside him on the couch. He relaxes with his arms resting on the back of the couch, his legs stretching out before him. She moves so that she is pressed against him.
He stretches, yawns, and rubs the back of his neck as if trying to rub away stiffness. Rachel reaches around behind him and begins to gently rub his neck, reveling in the feel of his skin, his hair against the backs of her hands. The thoughts that hop and skip through her mind are confusing. Sometimes it seems that the hair that tickles her hands is Johnson’s; sometimes, she knows it is Jake’s. And sometimes it doesn’t seem to matter. Are they really so different? They are not so different.
She rubs his neck, not knowing what to do next. In the confessions magazines, this is where the man crushes the woman in his arms. Rachel climbs into Jake’s lap and hugs him, waiting for him to crush her in his arms. He blinks at her sleepily. Half asleep, he strokes her, and his moving hand brushes near her genitals. She presses herself against him, making a soft sound in her throat. She rubs her hip against his crotch, aware now of a slight change in his smell, in the tempo of his breathing. He blinks at her again, a little more awake now. She bares her teeth in a smile and tilts her head back to lick his neck. She can feel his hands on her shoulders, pushing her away, and she knows what he wants. She slides from his lap and turns, presenting him with her pink genitals, ready to be mounted, ready to have him penetrate her. She moans in anticipation, a low inviting sound.
He does not come to her. She looks over her shoulder and he is still sitting on the couch, watching her through half-closed eyes. He reaches over and picks up a magazine filled with pictures of naked women. His other hand drops to his crotch and he is lost in his own world.
Rachel howls like an infant who has lost its mother, but he does not look up. He is staring at the picture of the blond woman.
Rachel runs down dark corridors to her cage, the only home she has. When she reaches the corridor, she is breathing hard and making small lonely whimpering noises. In the dimly lit corridor, she hesitates for a moment, staring into Johnson’s cage. The male chimp is asleep. She remembers the touch of his hands when he groomed her.
From the corridor, she lifts the gate that leads into Johnson’s cage and enters. He wakes at the sound of the door and sniffs the air. When he sees Rachel, he stalks toward her, sniffing eagerly. She lets him finger her genitals, sniff deeply of her scent. His penis is erect and he grunts in excitement. She turns and presents herself to him and he mounts her, thrusting deep inside. As he penetrates, she thinks, for a moment, of Jake and of the thin blond teenage girl named Rachel, but then the moment passes. Almost against her will she cries out, a shrill exclamation of welcoming and loss.
After he withdraws his penis, Johnson grooms her gently, sniffing her genitals and softly stroking her fur. She is sleepy and content, but she knows that they cannot delay.
Johnson is reluctant to leave his cage, but Rachel takes him by the hand and leads him to the janitor’s lounge. His presence gives her courage. She listens at the door and hears Jake’s soft breathing. Leaving Johnson in the hall, she slips into the room. Jake is lying on the couch, the magazine draped over his legs. Rachel takes the equipment that she has gathered and stands for a moment, staring at the sleeping man. His baseball cap hangs on the arm of a broken chair, and she takes that to remember him by.
Rachel leads Johnson through the empty halls. A kangaroo rat, collecting seeds in the dried grass near the glass doors, looks up curiously as Rachel leads Johnson down the steps. Rachel carries the plastic shopping bag slung over her shoulder. Somewhere in the distance, a coyote howls, a long yapping wail. His cry is joined by others, a chorus in the moonlight.
Rachel takes Johnson by the hand and leads him into the desert.
—
A cocktail waitress, driving from her job in Flagstaff to her home in Winslow, sees two apes dart across the road, hurrying away from the bright beams of her headlights. After wrestling with her conscience (she does not want to be accused of drinking on the job), she notifies the county sheriff.
A local newspaper reporter, an eager young man fresh out of journalism school, picks up the story from the police report and interviews the waitress. Flattered by his enthusiasm for her story and delighted to find a receptive ear, she tells him details that she failed to mention to the police: one of the apes was wearing a baseball cap and carrying what looked like a shopping bag.
The reporter writes up a quick humorous story for the morning edition, and begins researching a feature article to be run later in the week. He knows that the newspaper, eager for news in a slow season, will play a human-interest story up big—kind of Lassie Come Home with chimps.
—
Just before dawn, a light rain begins to fall, the first rain of spring. Rachel searches for shelter and finds a small cave formed by three tumbled boulders. It will keep off the rain and hide them from casual observers. She shares her food and water with Johnson. He has followed her closely all night, seemingly intimidated by the darkness and the howling of distant coyotes. She feels protective toward him. At the same time, having him with her gives her courage. He knows only a few gestures in ASL, but he does not need to speak. His presence is comfort enough.
Johnson curls up in the back of the cave and falls asleep quickly. Rachel sits in the opening and watches dawn light wash the stars from the sky. The rain rattles against the sand, a comforting sound. She thinks about Jake. The baseball cap on her head still smells of his cigarettes, but she does not miss him. Not really. She fingers the cap and wonders why she thought she loved Jake.
The rain lets up. The clouds rise like fairy castles in the distance and the rising sun tints them pink and gold and gives them flaming red banners. Rachel remembers when she was younger and Aaron read her the story of Pinocchio, the little puppet who wanted to be a real boy. At the end of his adventures, Pinocchio, who has been brave and kind, gets his wish. He becomes a real boy.
Rachel cried at the end of the story and when Aaron asked why, she rubbed her eyes on the backs of her hairy hands. —I want to be a real girl, she signed to him. —A real girl.
“You are a real girl,” Aaron told her, but somehow she never believed him.
The sun rises higher and illuminates the broken rock turrets of the desert. There is a magic in this barren land of unassuming grandeur. Some cultures send their young people to the desert to seek visions and guidance, searching for true thinking spawned by the openness of the place, the loneliness, the beauty of emptiness.
Rachel drowses in the warm sun and dreams a vision that has the clarity of truth. In the dream, her father comes to her. “Rachel,” he says to her, “it doesn’t matter what anyone thinks of you. You’re my daughter.”
—I want to be a real girl, she signs.
“You are real,” her father says. “And you don’t need some two-bit drunken janitor to prove it to you.” She knows she is dreaming, but she also knows that her father speaks the truth. She is warm and happy and she doesn’t need Jake at all. The sunlight warms her and a lizard watches her from a rock, scurrying for cover when she moves. She picks up a bit of loose rock that lies on the floor of the cave. Idly, she scratches on the dark red sandstone wall of the cave. A lopsided heart shape. Within it, awkwardly printed: Rachel and Johnson. Between them, a plus sign. She goes over the letters again and again, leaving scores of fine lines on the smooth rock surface. Then, late in the morning, soothed by the warmth of the day, she sleeps.
—
Shortly after dark, an elderly rancher in a pickup truck spots two apes in a remote corner of his ranch. They run away and lose him in the rocks, but not until he has a good look at them. He calls the police, the newspaper, and the Primate Research Center.
The reporter arrives first thing the next morn
ing, interviews the rancher, and follows the men from the Primate Research Center as they search for evidence of the chimps. They find chimpanzee footprints in the wash near the cave, confirming that the runaways were indeed nearby. The news reporter, an eager and curious young man, squirms on his belly into the cave and finds the names scratched on the cave wall. He peers at it. He might have dismissed them as the idle scratchings of kids, except that the names match the names of the missing chimps. “Hey,” he called to his photographer, “Take a look at this.”
The next morning’s newspaper displays Rachel’s crudely scratched letters. In a brief interview, the rancher mentioned that the chimps were carrying bags. “Looked like supplies,” he said. “They looked like they were in for the long haul.”
—
On the third day, Rachel’s water runs out. She heads toward a small town, marked on the map. They reach it in the early morning—thirst forces them to travel by day. Beside an isolated ranch house, she finds a faucet. She is filling her bottle when Johnson grunts in alarm.
A dark-haired woman watches from the porch of the house. She does not move toward the apes, and Rachel continues filling the bottle. “It’s all right, Rachel,” the woman, who has been following the story in the papers, calls out. “Drink all you want.”
Startled, but still suspicious, Rachel caps the bottle and, keeping her eyes on the woman, drinks from the faucet. The woman steps back into the house. Rachel motions Johnson to do the same, signaling for him to hurry and drink. She turns off the faucet when he is done.
They are turning to go when the woman emerges from the house carrying a plate of tortillas and a bowl of apples. She sets them on the edge of the porch and says, “These are for you.”
The woman watches through the window as Rachel packs the food into her bag. Rachel puts away the last apple and gestures her thanks to the woman. When the woman fails to respond to the sign language, Rachel picks up a stick and writes in the sand of the yard. THANK YOU, Rachel scratches, then waves good-bye and sets out across the desert. She is puzzled, but happy.
—
The next morning’s newspaper includes an interview with the dark-haired woman. She describes how Rachel turned on the faucet and turned it off when she was through, how the chimp packed the apples neatly in her bag and wrote in the dirt with a stick.
The reporter also interviews the director of the Primate Research Center. “These are animals,” the director explains angrily. “But people want to treat them like they’re small hairy people.” He describes the Center as “primarily a breeding center with some facilities for medical research.” The reporter asks some pointed questions about their acquisition of Rachel.
But the biggest story is an investigative piece. The reporter reveals that he has tracked down Aaron Jacobs’s lawyer and learned that Jacobs left a will. In this will, he bequeathed all his possessions—including his house and surrounding land—to “Rachel, the chimp I acknowledge as my daughter.”
—
The reporter makes friends with one of the young women in the typing pool at the Primate Research Center, and she tells him the office scuttlebutt: people suspect that the chimps may have been released by a deaf and drunken janitor, who was subsequently fired for negligence. The reporter, accompanied by a friend who can communicate in sign language, finds Jake in his apartment in downtown Flagstaff.
Jake, who has been drinking steadily since he was fired, feels betrayed by Rachel, by the Primate Research Center, by the world. He complains at length about Rachel: they were friends, and then she took his baseball cap and ran away. He just didn’t understand why she ran away like that.
“You mean she could talk?” the reporter asks through his interpreter.
—Of course she can talk, Jake signs impatiently. —She is a smart monkey.
The headlines read: “Intelligent chimp inherits fortune!” Of course, Aaron’s bequest isn’t really a fortune and she isn’t just a chimp, but close enough. Animal rights activists rise up in Rachel’s defense. The case is discussed on the national news. Ann Landers reports receiving a letter from a chimp named Rachel; she had thought it was a hoax perpetrated by the boys at Yale. The American Civil Liberties Union assigns a lawyer to the case.
—
By day, Rachel and Johnson sleep in whatever hiding places they can find: a cave; a shelter built for range cattle; the shell of an abandoned car, rusted from long years in a desert gully. Sometimes Rachel dreams of jungle darkness, and the coyotes in the distance become a part of her dreams; their howling becomes the cries of fellow apes.
The desert and the journey have changed her. She is wiser, having passed through the white-hot love of adolescence and emerged on the other side. She dreams, one day, of the ranch house. In the dream, she has long blond hair and pale white skin. Her eyes are red from crying and she wanders the house restlessly, searching for something that she has lost. When she hears coyotes howling, she looks through a window at the darkness outside. The face that looks in at her has jug-handle ears and shaggy hair. When she sees the face, she cries out in recognition and opens the window to let herself in.
By night, they travel. The rocks and sands are cool beneath Rachel’s feet as she walks toward her ranch. On television, scientists and politicians discuss the ramifications of her case, describe the technology uncovered by investigation of Aaron Jacobs’s files. Their debates do not affect her steady progress toward her ranch or the stars that sprinkle the sky above her.
It is night when Rachel and Johnson approach the ranch house. Rachel sniffs the wind and smells automobile exhaust and strange humans. From the hills, she can see a small camp beside a white van marked with the name of a local television station. She hesitates, considering returning to the safety of the desert. Then she takes Johnson by the hand and starts down the hill. Rachel is going home.
Sharing Air
MANJULA PADMANABHAN
Manjula Padmanabhan (1953– ) is an Indian playwright, journalist, and fiction writer. She has also illustrated more than twenty children’s books and created a long-running cartoon strip, Suki. Her play Harvest, about the sale of body parts and exploitative relations between developed and developing countries, won an Onassis Prize in 1997. Much of her written work encompasses a pronounced fantastical or science-fictional milieu, ranging from postapocalyptic stories to tales of vampires, monsters, and ogres. Across the span of her work, however, she is often praised for a wry, worldly sense of humor, even when describing sometimes sinister occurrences.
“Sharing Air” (1984) is a short, sharp shock of a story that acknowledges climate-change issues in a way that will resonate even more acutely for a modern-day audience.
SHARING AIR
Manjula Padmanabhan
On the bargain network, today, there was a selection of antique atmospheres advertised. I thought I’d try something different for a change, so I ordered the late twentieth-century “Five Cities” blend. It took two days to appear in the delivery slot and—pheee-yew! It was strong! To think human beings lived in that soup day in and day out! It’s a wonder that their lungs lasted long enough for them to have become our ancestors.
It must have been odd to have had no choice over what one breathed. Unimaginable. No control over water or power, either. That’s beyond what I call civilization. As I wrote to a friend the other day, it’s not really possible for us, living in an age of unlimited vital supplies, to understand the minds of those for whom the very air they breathed was decided by despotic government authorities.
I had forgotten that my friend was proud of tracing her ancestry back to the nineteenth century and so had to listen to a tiresome argument about civic arrangements in those days. “You don’t understand,” she said, “there was no question of legislating for the quality of air supply, let alone deciding that a whole nation must make do on two parts of carbon monoxide for every six of oxygen! We, in our era of continuous electronic monitoring, cannot imagine how little control those early governments a
ctually had….”
But I don’t hold by such accommodating arguments. The simple fact is, those governments sanctioned polluting industries; QED, they controlled the air supply. The only thing that doesn’t make sense is that most government functionaries themselves breathed the same poisons. So perhaps there is some validity to the argument that polluted air causes personality changes as well as the gross physical damage we are all so concerned about. Maybe if you breathe enough toxins, you can no longer distinguish between well-being and ill health. So you make decisions which will only result in more toxins. And so on and on until you set the stage for total civic breakdown. Which is what happened.
Personally, I feel we’ve all benefited from that breakdown. I mean, consider this air I bought today. Granted, it’s only a flavour and can’t actually cause me any harm. But what does it taste like, smell like, feel like, as it rasps its way down my trachea? Madness, that’s what. I’ve always despised those scholars who delight in pointing out that the mix of chemicals in late twentieth-century air was actually intoxicating and that most humans went about in an air-induced euphoria. They would succumb, say these scholars, to depression and delirium tremens if they were to be subjected to the airs we use today. If you ask me, I’ve always believed that these scholars are not only heretics to the modern ethic, but secret self-toxinators as well.
In case you think that self-toxination is an alarmist fantasy, let me tell you it isn’t. I myself know of a society which calls itself the ToxiClub, whose members speak of themselves as “toxies.” They tried to get me to join, but I attended one session and excused myself thereafter, claiming that I was born with Congenital Weak-Lung Syndrome.
The club was the idea of X, who had inherited an old cooling tower from his farsighted grandfather who had bought up decommissioned nuclear power stations cheap, then sold them for a galactic sum when decontamination technology was in place. X assured us that the tower was not radioactive, but I wore my radiation suit anyway, passing it off as an old-fashioned fixation of mine. He had managed to seal the cooling tower so that it could be pumped full of air under pressure. Don’t ask me how he had the money or contacts to have access to such resources. There are some people who can have their own way even in our world. Anyway, whenever he can get enough of his fellow toxies together, they get into that old cooling tower, seal all the air locks, pump in the air, and zap it with chemicals. Sulphur, methane, tincture of titanium, xeon, Freon, fly ash, construction dust, soot, you name it. And then—you may find this shocking, but I assure you it’s true, it happens—all the members of the group remove their breathing tubes and share the air!
The Big Book of Science Fiction Page 176