Pan Satyrus

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The morning was cloudless; shuffling from the plane. Pan covered his skull with his long fingers. Happy took off his white cap and gave it to him.

"Thanks," Pan said. There was an undertone of groaning to his voice. "Between the sun and the hangover, my head feels full of torpedo juice."

Happy laughed, not too happily. "Fry your brains and you might devolute some more and come out a real sailor."

"Retrogress," Pan said. "No, I'm afraid that won't do it."

Cars were waiting for them; they were driven to a long, low building near the launching pads. Mr. MacMahon hopped out of his car first and held the door for them, and they went in, Dr. Bedoian and Pan first, then Happy and Ape. The two sailors looked at General Maguire, bestarred behind his desk, and took up posts on either side of the door, at easy attention.

The general was flanked by civilians; no one Pan hadn't met before. One of the men said, "Good morning, Aram," to Dr. Bedoian, who said, "Good morning, doctor," in return.

"Nice to see you again, General," Pan Satyrus said. "And your good wife?"

"In Connecticut,'' General Maguire said. "So, he's decided to come to his senses', eh, doctor?"

"You can speak directly to me," Pan said. "It's all right. Why, yes, General. After seeing New York and all its might and panoply, if you will pardon a rather flowery expression, I have come to a conclusion: Don't sell America short."

"That's what I always say," the General said.

"I thought so," Pan said. He turned to the man on the general's right. "If you have my old spaceship — old Nameless — set up on a pad. I think I can show you what you want to know."

"Superluminous flight, Mem?"

"Please, Pan. Or Mr. Satyrus. Yes, superluminous flight."

"Can't you tell me?"

Pan shook his head. He yawned alarmingly, rubbed his scalp with both hands. Then he sat down on the floor, and scratched his head with one of his hind feet.

"You're the only chimpanzee I've ever seen do that," the senior doctor said.

"I know, sir," Pan said. "And I beg your pardon. I started it when I was about one and a half; the visitors to the zoo thought it was cute. It's grown to be a habit." He yawned again, turned back to the grave man who had been questioning him. "Bad night, last night," he said. "Can't we get this over with and let me get back to being a laboratory animal?"

There was a moment of silence. "No, Pan, we can't. The other chimpanzees are all in control of all kinds of secret things. You can talk English, and I presume you can talk chimpanzee. You'd soon have more secret, dangerous knowledge than we have ever allowed one person to accumulate."

Pan doubled his knees and swung on his knuckles. I'm to be in solitary the rest of my life?" He scratched his head and added, "For once I'll overlook being called a person."

"It won't happen again. No, you won't be in solitary. Give us the information we want, and we'll buy you two lovely young female chimps. Fair enough?'

Pan swung more vigorously. "Spoken like a man, professor, if I may call you that."

"I've been one."

"The trouble is, I can't tell you," Pan said. "I'm only a simple ape, and my vocabulary wouldn't run to anything like that."

Happy coughed. But Ape Bates had been in the Navy thirty-five years; he never varied from attention.

"And how about a diagram?" the professor asked.

Pan held up his short-thumbed hands in the piteous gesture of a street beggar in a movie about India. On the late show.

"But I could show you," he said.

General Maguire said, "Last time this monkey got in a spaceship, all hell broke loose. I won't finish the paper work on that for six months."

"Yes, I know," the professor said. "And anyway, your ship has been completely pulled apart, Pan. Trying to find out what you did to it."

"There was a Mark XVII ready to go when I went," Pan said.

The room filled with silence. General Maguire, not surprisingly, broke it.

"By God, we're going to have a security check on this base that'll be a honey. Nobody leaves the post till it's done, either, and—"

Pan Satyrus swung easily to the desk, sat cross-legged on it. "Don't blow your stack, General," he said. "The word gets around the laboratory zoo, you know."

The professor said, "I could quote Hamlet to Horatio about philosophy, but I'm not going to. You could rig a Mark XVII to go faster than light?"

"Any ship you have, sir. They all work on the same principle."

"Let me think," the professor said. "With what brains haven't been startled out of my head. The M-17 is smaller than your ship. Purely experimental. We were sending a macaque up in it."

"A Japanese ape?" Pan laughed. "If it's the one I think it is, hell be small loss. Okay, sir. I volunteer to take his place."

The professor shook his head. "You're twice as big."

Pan nodded. "Take out the vector anal—" Happy coughed. "That doodad thing in the bottom of the Cabin, and there'll be plenty of room."

The professor leaned forward, put his hands flat on the desk and looked into Pan's eyes. "How do I know this isn't a gag?"

"Monkey business? How do you know you can't fly faster than light? Get up there and try it."

The four eyes, two simian and two human, were not an inch apart. The professor gave up first. He let his breath out into Pan's face, lifted his hands, and leaned back. 'We'll take the chance."

"I'm against it," General Maguire said. "I want that to be on the record."

The professor sounded very tired. "There is no record. General. This conference is off the cuff. Our senior medical officer and Dr. Bedoian here both are willing to say that this chimpanzee, variously known as Sammy, Mem and Pan Satyrus, is nearing the end of his usefulness."

"I'm willing to testify to that, too," Pan said. "I can feel myself getting rougher and more rebellious all the time." He inched down the desk on his knuckles till he could stare into General Maguire's face. Then he bared his long teeth.

General Maguire said, "If there isn't a record, let's start one. Has it occurred to anyone that perhaps this isn't a chimpanzee, but a disguised Russian?"

Even a beginning art student could have painted the silence; it was as thick as oil in the Arctic. Happy swore later that he could hear Ape's heels clicking, but Ape denied it.

Dr. Bedoian had the first inspiration. "That is a slur on my professional integrity, sir," he said.

The Senior Medical Officer muttered, "You just got promoted, son."

"Yes, yes, I hadn't thought of that," General Maguire said.

"Get the security set up, General," the professor said. "No news releases on this one till after it's over. Then a very short handout: a chimpanzee was put into orbit; successful or not successful."

"Go or no go," General Maguire said, and went.

Pan Satyrus got off the desk and shuffled over to the door, so that he could stand between Happy and Ape. He reached up and took one of their hands in each of his.

"Are you men capable of handling him?" the professor asked.

"Yes, sir," Ape said.

"Take him in one of the other rooms, then."

But as they started out, the senior doctor spoke.

"Pan, it will be about a half an hour. The macaque is already strapped in; we just have to take him out and remove the — gizmo — you mentioned."

"All right."

"You'd better not eat or drink anything."

"All right."

The doctor looked at Happy. "Especially not drink," then he went away.

"That's one smart cookie," Happy said. They followed the doctor out into the corridor.

Mr. MacMahon was there. Pan let go of Happy's hand and held his own out to the security man. "I've given you a hard time, G-man, but it's almost over," he said. "I'm going to be shot into space in a half an hour. Back into space."

Mr. MacMahon looked over Pan's shoulder to Dr. Bedoian. "Is he okay, doc?"

Dr. Bedoian shrugged. "He wants to do it."

Mr. MacMahon said, "Hell, that's no way to treat him. Pan, you want to get out of this, I'm not a bad finagler…"

Pan Satyrus stared up at him. "You're not human after all!"

"Huh?"

"Coming from Pan, that's the highest kind of compliment," Dr. Bedoian said.

"But I want to go. And your country wants me to go; it's their only way of learning about super-light flight."

Pan added, "You're supposed to keep us in a room till my ship is ready. I'm not to eat or drink anything, but I would like some chewing gum."

"What the hell," Mr. MacMahon said. His security facade seemed to be completely gone. "Do you want me to send for it, or do you want to get it yourself?"

"I'd like to go get it. If we all sit around a room for a half an hour, well start getting as sloppy as people."

They made a little procession going towards the PX: Pan in the lead, wearing Happy's cap, then the two sailors, then Dr. Bedoian and Mr. MacMahon. Far, far behind them, waved back by the executive MacMahon hand, trailed a great number of security men.

Across their bows came a knot of children, a class from the installation school for dependents. Cape Canaveral children are not startled by anything; they glanced at the chimpanzee leading a group of men, and glanced away again. But then one of them yelled, "Hey, that's the chimp that was on TV," and they broke away from their teacher and ran up, waving copybooks and fly leaves for autographs.

Pan restrained Mr. MacMahon from calling up his dogs. "I want to talk to them." He raised his pink palm for silence, settled Happy's cap on his head more firmly, and said, "Children."

"Hey, he talks. I thought that was just a TV gag," one of the kids said.

"Aw. lots of those actors do their own talking."

"There seems to be some confusion here," Pan said. "I am not a television actor, but a real, live chimpanzee. You, while you can never become apes, can achieve an ape-like life: or perhaps you can just grow up as people, and make your children more ape-like. Now, listen to me, because it may be the only chance you have in your lives to be addressed by a genuine pongina."

The children were quiet; they were used to being addressed by teachers, principals and passing politicians.

"To achieve an ape-like state, it is only necessary to stop and think before you act, and particularly before you create," Pan said. "That sounds very simple, but it is the one thing man hates to do. It isn't peoplish to think when you could be acting. It isn't even safe; you can get fired for it, and unemployed men are the lowest of their species. Think, children. Don't build fast cars before you build roads that are safe for fast cars. Don't grow a whole stack of wheat before you can dispose of it to someone who wants it. Don't move someplace too hot or too cold for you just to get something you don't want when you get there. Just take it easy; it's that simple.

"Be a little more like the apes, children, and you may not live longer, but you will have a better time while you live. In other words, don't be ambitious without knowing what you're ambitious for."

He lowered his hand, and seemed to smile on them benevolently, but not even Dr. Bedoian could always be sure which expression Pan was using.

Then he strolled on to get his chewing gum.