Pan Satyrus

CHAPTER THREE

The waterfront at Floridaville was crowded. For three hours the Cooke had been maneuvering, feinting for Miami first and then for Key West, and NBC and ABC and CBS were whooping it up in those cities, dodging from dock to dock, but me, Bill Dunham, I had been in the trade a long, long time, and I saved my mileage and used the money for a helicopter, and here I was at Floridaville, the only TV man on the spot, complete with my crew, and ready to go.

Oh, there were a couple of newsmen, a local and an AP guy there, but let them have it. With any luck, I would be the first man ever to get a chimp to talk through his mike, and mister, that was money in my pocket. Let the other guys get the Emmies and the Peabodys; I love that cash.

One of my crew had an ultra short wave radio and the other had a broadcast band, so we could hear what the opposition was up to. NBC had hit three bars, they had the admiral on, the one who had flown out to talk to the monkey and then had flown back again. CBS was kind of badly scooped; all they had was Brigadier General Billy Maguire saying nothing because he didn't know anything since the rocket had gone up. ABC had a good radio story, but no video; they had a man aboard the plane that was flying Dr, Aram Bedoian down to his favorite patient in Floridaville.

So now the opposition knew where the story was. I guess they knew where I was, too, because our boy Tom Leiberg was filming the helicopter pilot I had hired; he'd gone back to Miami when I was through with him. The pilot said he saw the glint of gun barrels when he flew over the USS Cooke, but nobody had fired on him. What did he expect on the deck of a Navy ship, the rustle of triplicates?

The Cooke didn't tie up at Floridaville. She was a long, rangy looking ship with a flight deck bulging her out like a thin woman in her eighth month. I don't see how she ever tied up to anything that didn't have a hole in the middle.

I directed my cameraman to get every foot of the Cooke he could, and went on the air, interrupting Tom Leiberg's interview, which was getting pretty thin, anyway; the pilot hadn't even seen the monkey.

So I described the Cooke, and then I got to tell how they were putting a motorboat over the side, and I found a cracker from Floridaville — the whole town had come down to the water when our mobile unit rolled in — who had been in the Navy, and he told me that was a whaleboat they were launching. So the Navy hunts whales on our taxes?

"Three men are going over the side and down the rope ladder to the whaleboat," I told my breathless audience. "No, no folks. I'm wrong. Two men, and— whatya know — it's old Mem, the chimponaut himself, coming ashore."

I thought that "chimponaut" was pretty good stuff. I've heard it since, and it makes me proud to know I added a good word like that to the English language.

All the time I was talking, my cameraman held the whaleboat in his telephoto lens, and she came in fast. Then another boat was put over — the local Neptune said it was a workboat, which sounds better from the taxpayers' point of view — and a couple of sailors and two civilians and one guy I wasn't too sure of got in. I mean, I wasn't too sure of this guy, because he had on those light blue Navy dungarees, but no cap. You can't tell the armed services without their hats.

The whaleboat came in and then turned and right angled to us and cut its speed, and we got a beautiful shot of the chimponaut trailing his hand in the water, like an old-fashioned picture of a lady in a canoe.

So the workboat came in first, and one of the sailors threw a rope up around a gizmo on the dock, and jumped up, and helped the three passengers up. They all pulled guns when they got on the dock, and one of them yelled, "Are the local police here?"

We got that, and we got a shot of a chubby Florida cracker showing a badge pinned to his suntan shirt and saying, "I'm them," and then the guy who had spoken showed a card, and said, "I want all these people cleared away."

The workboat was going back to the ship.

The chimp had pulled his hand in and was wiping off the salt water on the fur on his chest. He hadn't gotten in for a close shot yet, moreover a close-up, but I'd caught him at the Cape that morning, getting into his capsule, and shaking hands with his doctor — those monkeys are all hams — and I knew what he'd look like. Which is not much, you ask me. There's not enough contrast in a chimp's face to make him photogenic, for my money.

I know Hollywood uses them, but I'll bet they make them up. When the doctor got there, this Bedoian, I'd ask him if he'd put makeup on old Mem's kisser. I wasn't going to do it myself. I'd seen those arms and those teeth.

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.