The Missing Link and Other Tales of Ape-Men

by Georges T. Dodds

  “Bunch of scoundrels! You fear my words. And you who hold the title of Minister of Labor, Perrette, dirty thief and speculator!”

  “Thief yourself,” fumed Perrette leaping from his majority seat onto the orator, seizing him by the throat.

  For a moment, the two men fought to see who would throw the other from the podium. Above them, the president was content to remain in cover and to frequently set off the great horn nearby, which had replaced the old bell. But already each group within the Commons was flying to the support of their champion: the right to Vandrax, the left to Perrette.

  “Ah! Now they’re getting to the point!” Alix exclaimed as she looked towards Murlich. “Huh? What do you think of that?”

  In the deafening din, among the bursts of shouting, and the bellowing of the horn, the dumbfounded scientist replied: “This is unheard of! Unheard of!”

  Vandrax’s secretary had long since slipped over the gallery’s banister, to go down through the tiered seating, to the middle of the arena. He made the thumbs-down sign beside his master. The melee was now generalized, people no longer fought in defense of Perrette or Vandrax, but for themselves, to allay their personal grudges and express their distaste for one another. Isolated duels were increasing in frequency with many such conscientious pairs beating on each other between the benches, with only their legs and arms sticking out.

  Beneath the impassible bust of the Republic, the president overlooked the proceedings, scoring the blows as if it were a vote. Finally, when a last blast on the horn had no effect, he quickly took off his hat, his suit, and pulled up his sleeves revealing that he was an athlete. Bulging like knotted ropes, his strong muscles ended with his huge fists which hung down beside him. He climbed down with an escort of bailiffs, and began to clear a path, leaving a trail of broken noses and black eyes. Behind him, his phalange of bailiffs cleared the way, picked up the wounded and directed them to the adjoining infirmary. This happened quickly, only the front ranks on either side suffered much, the others disengaging themselves quickly. Perrette had to be taken off, Vandrax having broken three teeth from his dentures. The president of the council, against whom many of the people’s representatives had obstinately continued to fight, had his clothes torn to rags. As for the furniture, its fragments littered the floor. Thus had bomb fragments, in the age of wars, been strewn over the battle field.

  But both sides of a double door had opened on one side of the chamber. A muddled group entered the chamber and opened their session. Their uniform clothing, pressed short pants showing their black stockinged legs, portfolios tucked under their arms, gave the House’s feminist contingent the look of a bunch of aging schoolmarms. Ignoring the recent blows exchanged around them, as if nothing in the world was easier, they spread out over the tiers, they held forth and argued, adding their shrill voices to the more virile hubbub of the dwindling battle.

  Everything seemed to be calming down. The president, back in his seat, solemnly put his suit back on, waiting only for a sign that relative calm had returned to the assembly, to reopen the proceedings, when a terrible, unbelievably raucous cry rang out. The great amphitheater’s walls seemed to multiply and allow this inhuman cry to persist.

  And Gulluliou appeared halfway between the gallery and the rostrum, standing on an empty chair. For a moment he paused, hesitant, then with lightning speed he tore the clothes from his torso, tossing them into the stunned crowd. Covered only by his pants, he leapt, clearing several rows of seats. He roared out his cry again, and leapt again.

  However, he had been recognized; terrified voices exclaimed: “Gulluliou! The pongo, Gulluliou!” And they fled.

  Back in the gallery, others were shouting. Murlich and Alix, were drawn to their feet in bewilderment at the ape’s sudden frenzy, at this bout of madness. No one had seen him run off; suddenly beside himself, excited by the spectacle of the fight occurring before him, he must have taken advantage of a moment’s inattention.

  All was lost in the hubbub which pervaded the room. Gulluliou sprang forward again, reached the rostrum, which had been evacuated in the blink of an eye, and found himself, thrusting out his chest adorned with reddish-brown hair, swinging his long arms, thrusting forward his muzzle which a joyful laugh split from ear to ear, in the very spot in which Vandrax had lately been so eloquent. There was an epic moment; the entire assembly, men and women alike, were standing, shaking in fear before this furious beast. They waited to see what Gulluliou would do; the general hubbub had been followed by a heavy, anxious silence.

  They saw the ape fill the water glass that stood nearby, and drink, though not without a thousand contortions. Then he stood still for a brief moment in order to take up a pose, and in a guttural and piercing voice, he shouted: “Ceeteezens!” He struck the desk with his fist, leaned out, then back: “Ceeteezens!”

  A single word, remembered because of its frequent use, punctuated every gesture…”Ceeteezens!”…Finally he picked up steam, roaring out his name amidst a great guffaw of laughter, as if he wished to present it as a victory banner to those who watched him: Gul…lul…iou!”

  But suddenly the parody took on another form. The nervous shock the creature had received, and the fact that he had stripped himself of his clothes, mimicking the president removing his suit to go down on the floor, could imply nothing less than a sub-latent thought of fighting. The speech represented nothing but the preliminaries. Gulluliou rocked forward, extending his fists towards his imaginary enemies, creating a stampede in the assembly. In one motion he swept the podium clean: ink-pot, paper, pens, glass, water jug…everything went flying. This notwithstanding, with the look of a warrior marching to the most holy of crusades, he leapt to the floor, moving forward with the appearance of a wrestler. Woe to him who stood in his way; Gulluliou, wishing to play his role to perfection, would have floored him with a friendly slap!

  But the place had emptied out, the exits were closed, the gallery evacuated, only a few members on the upper tiers, still jostling one another, trying to quickly find a way out, and a few bailiffs trying to put together the semblance of a barricade.

  In the distance, through the walls, a cadenced noise of troops could be heard; a detachment of the Civic Guard was arriving.

  Meanwhile, on the battleground, someone was coming down towards the ape: Murlich. A fixed gaze coming from behind his blue-tinted glasses, speaking only the name Son-of-Doves, the scientist went to his student, striving amidst his personal turmoil to keep the necessary tone of authority in his voice. They were in front of one another. The pongo, naked to the waist, arms hanging, legs bent, ready to bolt again, turned his head for a moment and made as if to escape. Murlich felt as if he was losing him, that the soul which had been stolen from this body was lost to him forever.

  But a clear voice had just arisen, and in turn called out: “Gulluliou!” The ape looked across to the gallery at the back and recognized Alix. His eyes flickered, fixed in a melancholy glow. To the brute’s instinct, quasi-human intelligence succeeded.

  Tamed, Gulluliou allowed Murlich to put his hand on his shoulder, and seeing that he was undressed, crossed his arms to cover his chest. He reverted to a man once more; his halting, wheezing breath betraying his weariness. A bout of hoarse coughing took hold of him.

  The same night, Gulluliou spat up blood; he was consumed with fever. Immediately upon his return to Auteuil, the doctor had been called. When Darembert arrived, already aware of the events through the afternoon’s newspapers, he shrugged his shoulders like a churlish man who has been disturbed for no good reason.

  “What the blazes do you expect me to do?” he said. “You amuse yourself allowing him to kill himself, and then you come looking for me!”

  Nonetheless, he remained at the patient’s bedside; no one slept in the house that night, each in turn sitting up for a portion of the night. Everything was a mess, the elder Murlich’s strong constitution was shaken by this unexpected turn of events. His clear-sightedness made it impossible for him no
t to be anxious. Alix, disconsolate, blamed herself for bringing on this situation; but the scientist did not begrudge her this, his experience having taught him to bow before the whims of destiny.

  CHAPTER VIII

  The next morning, Darembert returned. The fever had not gone down, and despite all the potions and herbal teas, the bouts of coughing were increasingly frequent. In the drawing-room downstairs, the doctor had a long talk with Murlich, warning him that the situation was extremely serious, especially since Gulluliou was beginning, after a short return to lucidity, to slip back into a state of delirium.

  Darembert was truly perplexed as to what to do to treat such a condition. His science applied to a man would undoubtedly have effected a miraculous result. But in the case of an ape, notwithstanding medicine’s already advanced understanding of the anthropoidal physiology, it was difficult to be confident of oneself. Darembert, gruff and frank, did not conceal his doubts and fears.

  “We are virtually colleagues, are we not? I can tell you anything. Well then! We’re going through a bad bout, a very bad bout. I would have kept him alive, I don’t know how long, if he hadn’t acted so irresponsibly! Hadn’t I made my recommendations clear in any number of ways: the greatest prudence was required, and no excitement! That crazy adventure in the commons was the straw that broke the camel’s back. We are, my dear professor, before a body which has been completely sapped—do you understand?—by a sickness that was only progressing very slowly, but has suddenly flared up under the shock!”

  Murlich bowed his head:

  “It is destiny,” he muttered.

  Upon these words, the doctor, who had just sat down to write out the recipe for a potion, looked at Murlich and shrugged his shoulders heavily.

  “You believe in destiny!” he said, a tinge of disdain in his voice. “That would be the last thing I would believe in. I believe in man. Man creates his own destiny. You’re rather more of an ideologue, are you not, doctor?”

  “What can you do, it’s one of my weaknesses,” confessed Murlich with a somewhat flippant composure. “My scientific experience and speculations do not preclude me from believing that there may exist forces which eclipse human will. Take, for example, what the great Hetking called the supra-vital vortex, except that where Hetking’s theories only apply to the evolution of the races, I would extend the influence of the supra-vital vortex to a sequence of events; I give it a subjective significance.”

  Darembert replied:

  “While I will submit myself to your authority in such matters, I do not agree with you. I believe that in our era we must throw off all moral constraints, as we have shed all our material ones, and the day will come when man will be able to be on an even footing with Nature. We can produce rain, hail, storms on demand, so what would stop our children from altering the course of our seasons, and thus, at their whim, modify the balance of forces which has so far dictated our climatological and, consequently, our societal conditions throughout the world. They shall be masters not only of physical phenomena, but also of their own destinies. This is why we needn’t worry ourselves regarding their fate, for, after us, they will know how to rejuvenate the Earth, such that it will last forever, with no unforeseen circumstances!”

  “You believe this, doctor?” interrupted Murlich, fastening his penetrating eyes on him, through his tinted glasses. “Well then, I’ll further surprise you,” he went over to some book-filled shelves at the back of the room, and showed Darembert a small pamphlet, “by telling you that I have made this the cornerstone of my life.” And he read the title on the grayish cover: A Christian’s Revelation.

  “A Christian’s!” the doctor blurted out in a low voice. “Is this something modern? Are there still Christians around?”

  Murlich smiled:

  “Oh! Christians, I’m sure there’re still some around, just like there must still be some devotees of all the religions which have existed. I’m not acquainted with any myself…as for this pamphlet, it is roughly a century old. I obtained it from my father’s library, it has always been in my family. It is most curious, this account of an ecstatic state which the author, who goes by the name of Florian, Catholic abbot, presents.”

  “Yes, a pamphlet! There were tons of them in that era.”

  “Wait…in this ecstatic trance, God appeared to him to announce the coming of a deluge comparable to that which had devastated the Earth in the earliest Antiquity. Of course, this in and of itself is not so extraordinary, but what is, is that with regards to a coming deluge, the visionary in question agrees with Hetking: and the American scientist only expressed this opinion many years after the probable publication date of this pamphlet.”

  “So what then?” asked Darembert. “Is this why you admire it so much?”

  “Primarily for that reason…because the idea set forth corresponds closely to my conception of our planet’s future, and especially because of the philosophical pleasures its reading has afforded me. Yes, I admit, I sometimes like to unwind from my work by wandering into a less materialistic field. This is where we butt heads, doctor, is it not?”

  The doctor objected:

  “My dear professor, you have just now cited Hetking. You have named, if you’ll allow me to point out, one of the greatest of materialists…For you to have adopted his doctrine of the supra-vital vortex would seem to preclude any such metaphysical leanings in your views. Have we not heard you, at the Museum of Natural History no less, declare the religious practices of yesteryear…”

  “Oh! I’m not talking about the rites themselves, for I would be the first to proclaim their vanity. History has shown us that the exterior manifestations of a cult of divinity have always been inversely related to freedom of thought. Truly, a God who forces you to remain under his yoke, rather than drawing you to him with love, must be rejected. However, were I to tell you that I did not aspire towards a certain spiritual ideal greater than the current state of humanity, I would be lying. Would you reproach me espousing Hetking and his law, rather than pure materialism? Did our ancient cosmogonies offer no more grandiose a view than that presented us by species after species, linked one to another, through endlessly mutating matter!... How do you see this leading irrevocably to atheism?”

  “But,” said Darembert, “Hetking’s theory, an extension of Darwin’s, closes the cycle of organic evolution. Now Darwin, showing the links which united all species since the Earth began, established not only the analogous nature of their physical constitutions, but also that of their emotional makeups. In so doing he demolished his era’s fortress of dogmatism: the belief in the immortality of the soul. He proved that there reigns, over any emotional baggage any animal, including man, might have, the so-called ‘universal law of the conservation of matter and energy.’”

  “Every Biblical fable demolished, the mystical theories of Plato, of Christ, of Mohammad—all sapped. This is what Darwin did, and especially what Hetking, who extended his work, did…So you see, my dear professor, that from there to pure rationalism…”

  Murlich shook his head:

  “Rationalism, yes, a word that well describes an era of reasoning taken to extremes. Ah! Reason, we’ve got plenty of that, so much so that the tree has dried up to its very core from keeping its branches bent to earth. Well then,” he raised his brow, and the light played upon the lens of his glasses, “I say that, far from driving me from the concept of a conscious finality having directed all the different transformations of Nature leading to our creation, Hetking’s system forces me to such a conclusion!...Do you think our morals would be hindered by it?”

  But Darembert, visibly annoyed, grumbled:

  “How about we talk about our patient instead?”

  Sadness immediately returned to Murlich’s features, who, as was his custom, had lost himself for a moment, contributing all of his scientific earnestness to the discussion!

  “You’re right!” he said, his voice suddenly tinged with fear.

  “Now,” Darembert added, “you
needn’t give in to despair! I still have a few tricks up my sleeve! Let’s deal with the fever first, that’s what worries me most, as it brings on delirium.”

  And he prescribed, based on a new method which he had just inaugurated at his clinic at the National Homeless Shelter, febrifugal injections, coupled with the administration of a sedative. At the same time, an intravenously-administered physiologically-adapted serum would sustain the patient.

  “I will come every day,” he concluded. “Besides, I’ll contact two colleagues for a consult. The days I am unable to come myself, I’ll send one of my assistants.”

  “Thank you, thank you doctor,” Murlich repeated, shaking Darembert’s hand. The latter, crossly, but not spitefully, added:

  “No need to thank me, the case interests me. And besides, even were it only for you!”

  CHAPTER IX

  Alix kept watch over Gulluliou. The delirium had held for a week. He was a reduced to a withered rag, now exuberant, now prostrate, a wretched ghost, spitting blood, torn by a horrible cough, swinging his arms about, haunted by visions translated in hiccups, a mishmash of words, of sobs, of laughs. He relived both his former years and the present in a nightmarish fog, his life in Borneo and his European life inextricably tangled, addressed his brothers from back home, his master, the crowd at the Museum of Natural History, shouted out his name, reenacted the scene in the Chamber, exerting himself to exhaustion. Then, fallen back on the pillow, calmed down by friendly hands, he whispered in a sibilant voice his doll’s song:

  Minnili, Minnili, the little

  Bird, hops about the branches