Pan Satyrus

CHAPTER FOUR

Floridaville had only one hotel, and it wasn't the best in the world. But it had one advantage: the salesman's suite, which had a bedroom that could only be entered through a somewhat larger sample room.

Pan Satyrus, Chief Ape Bates and Happy Bronstein were in the bedroom. MacMahon, Piquin and Crawford were in the sample room, guarding them. Crawford was now dressed in a suit of blue-and-white seersucker that had been cut in the early 1930's.

None of the security men looked happy.

In the bedroom a certain amount of joy reigned. Happy Bronstein had gotten permission from their guards to go downstairs and select a basket of fruit for Pan Satyrus; when he brought it back, the bananas and oranges, grapefruits and mangoes covered a pint of blended whiskey and a pint of gin.

Happy and Ape had been at sea for three months; in fact, the crew of the DAC had been exchanging the not-original crack that they weren't going ashore till it was time to re-enlist.

As for Pan Satyrus, he had never had enough to drink in his life; just a medicinal shot now and then when his bronchial tubes — delicate in all his species — bothered him.

Never one to depend on physical appearance to command respect, Pan Satyrus lay on the floor, on his back, waving the pint of whiskey in one hand, while he peeled bananas with his feet, tossing the peels at the old-fashioned chandelier, where a few of them hung.

"That's a good trick," Ape said. "You think if I'd never worn shoes I could do it?"

"Hardly," Pan Satyrus said. "The opposed big toe is not a characteristic of Homo sapiens."

"Come again?" Ape asked.

"The scientific name for man — as Pan Satyrus is for chimpanzees — is Homo sapiens. The sole species of present Homo."

"Ape's been called a lot of things in his time, but never Homo before," Happy said. He started singing Old Deacon Kelly.

Ape took a swig of the gin and tossed the pint to Happy to shut him up. Then he started singing The Bastard King of England.

Pan made three banana skins in a row land and stay on the chandelier.

Happy said, "What we need is girls."

Ape stopped singing and looked at Pan Satyrus.

Pan said, "Not a chance. Those white-collar bastards out there wouldn't understand."

"You may not look like a sailor, but you talk and think like one," Happy said.

"As a matter of fact," Pan said, "it wouldn't do. I mean, let's face it, the kind of girl who would have an affair with a chimpanzee would bore me."

"I dunno." Ape thought it over. "You're a celebrity. Girls go for that. Look at those Hollywood actors, those movie stars."

"I have never seen a movie," Pan said, "but if they use the same actors they do on television, I am not flattered."

He became bored with peeling bananas, transferred the whiskey bottle to his feet, and used his hands to feed himself oranges, spitting an occasional seed at the chandelier, so it would not feel neglected.

At this point the door opened, and a thin man entered, carefully shut the door behind him, and said, "Sammy, you're drunk."

Happy and Ape got up to give him the old heave-ho.

Pan waved a negligent foot and the whiskey bottle, and said, "Let him stay, boys. He's my doctor, his name is Bedoian. My name used to be Sammy before that unspeakable Maguire woman named me Mem. Have a drink, Aram."

Dr. Bedoian looked around the room. "When in Rome, to coin a phrase," he said. He accepted the gin bottle from Happy and drank. "I have to examine you, Sammy."

"My name is Pan Satyrus. I changed it."

"You changed a lot of things," Dr. Bedoian said, and took a stethoscope out of his pocket. "When did you decide to take up talking?"

"I can't help it," Pan said. "I went faster than light, and you know what Einstein says about that."

"No, I don't. I'm a simple GP. You're all right, Sammy. I mean, Pan." The doctor looked at the chimpanzee, and then he looked at the two sailors, and then he smiled a little. He went to the door, opened it a crack, and said, "Mr. MacMahon, you can issue a press statement. The trip into outer space had no deleterious effects. Between you and me, however, I'd appreciate it if you would get us a bottle of bonded bourbon. My patient is a little depressed."

They heard one of the men in the outer room say, "I would hate to see him when he's boisterous," but by then the doctor had closed the door.

"Bonded bourbon," Ape Bates said.

"The government's paying," Dr. Bedoian pointed out. "Pan — the name fits you, you reprobate — you were about to say something profound about talking and Dr. Einstein."

"Only that I've retrogressed. I have a compulsion to talk, like a human being. I wouldn't be surprised if my hair fell out and my big toes froze straight. I have retrogressed from travelling faster than the speed of light."

"I think the word is devolve, but let that go," Dr. Bedoian said. "Are you sure you haven't evolved instead?"

"Evoluted? Hardly. Everyone knows chimpanzees are more advanced than humans."

Dr. Bedoian chuckled happily. "Pan Satyrus for president."

"Certainly not," Pan said. "Too much responsibility, leading nowhere. Though I do like his wife's hair."

"Lay off," Dr. Bedoian said. "You haven't introduced me to your friends."

"Chief Bates, Radioman Bronstein," Pan said. "Dr. Bedoian. What a lot of titles. What do we do now, doctor?"

"Call me Aram," the doctor said. '1 don't know what we do now. I was sent here to examine you and—" He broke off.

"Examine my health or my — state of mind?" Pan asked gently.

"Both," the doctor said. "You seem to have picked up enough top secrets to ruin the U.S. of A."

"How to make a spaceship go faster than light?"

Dr. Bedoian nodded. "There is that," he said. "And the ship that picked you up is highly secret."

"You ain't just snorting," Ape Bates said. "They don't let us guys go ashore ever. I mean, that's okay for the officers, but a sailor needs a little of this now and then." He waved a bottle. "And other things," he added. "You married, doc?"

Dr. Bedoian shook his head. He went to the window and looked out. Floridaviile, in all its simplicity, stretched from the hotel to the shining sea. "Pan," he said, "you certainly picked a lovely, lovely place to land in."

"I didn't pick it; we came ashore here from the DAC."

The doctor sighed. "You aren't even supposed to know the Cooke is a DAC. Or that there are DACs. They had to tell me, so I could come down here and question you, find out what you knew and who you're going to tell it to."

Happy Bronstein laughed. "He calls it a DAC because we do, doc. He doesn't know what it means."

"It is supposed to mean DESTROYER-ATTACK CARRIER," Pan said. "Because it carries a few planes, and is approximately the length and speed of a destroyer. But the letters, rearranged, also refer to Atomic Depth Charge."

Master Chief Torpedoman Bates came off the bed on which he was lounging. "Who the hell told you that?" he asked. "Even Happy here don't know about—" He stopped.

"That is a fact," Happy said.

Pan Satyrus said, "I have retrogressed, but not completely; I can still use the eyes and the brain I inherited. Even if I do talk all the time, and I must say I am getting tired of the sound of my own voice. Why there were depth bombs on your deck, Ape. And to someone who has spent five and a half years being dragged from one atomic laboratory to another space project, it was obvious that they are built to take atomic warheads. The bayonet sockets—"

Ape Bates said, "Shut up, Pan! They'll put you up against a wall and shoot you."

"Don't talk like a stump-tailed macaque, Ape," Pan said. "If they can find out from me how to go faster than light, they can make the Russians look like monkeys. Rhesus monkeys."

"Sometimes I think you got a racial prejudice against those rhesuses," Happy said.

"The giant rhesus is about as intelligent as any animal I have ever known," Dr. Bedoian said. "Though I haven't worked with baboons."

"Two of the stupider branches of the great order of primates," Pan said. He looked a little angry. "I believe, doctor, you have mistaken docility and the willingness to be the dupe of humans for intelligence."

"Have it your own way, pal," Dr. Bedoian said. "All right. I'll do my duty by my country. If you will agree to surrender your great secret — how you made that spaceship do what it did — I'm authorized to give you anything you want."

"By whom?"

"General Maguire."

"That giant with the brain of a marmoset? Try higher, doctor."

Dr. Bedoian threw up his hands. "Pan, I made a damned bad Judas goat, if you know what that is. Take my advice and keep your mouth shut."

"You was just about to have a bad time, doc, before you said that," Ape Bates said. "Yeah, you listen to the doc, Pan. Tell 'em nothing."

Happy Bronstein said, "But is he going to be able to? Whatever went wrong with him, it seems to make him talk."

Pan Satyrus put his hands over his face and began to make peculiar noises. The two sailors were on their feet with alarm; but the doctor said, "He's laughing."

When he could control himself, Pan said, "I couldn't possibly explain without a diagram. And I retrogressed back to where I have to talk; but not to where I have to draw drawings and made sketches. I'm still a little better than human."

"I never wrote on the wall of a head in my life," Ape Bates said.

"Neither have I," Happy Bronstein said. "But I've never been in a Stateside head yet that something hadn't. And it's a damned safe thing it wasn't any chimpanzee."

Dr. Bedoian said, "I have an idea."

He went to the outer door, opened it. The three security men had been joined by two more, different in size and coloration, but identical in attitude. "Gentlemen, I have been unable to persuade Pan Satyrus to talk. In fact, he is distinctly nervous. He resents having you guard the door of his chamber."

Pan Satyrus promptly swung up to the chandelier, hung by one hand, and started beating himself on the chest with the other. Happy Bronstein retreated nervously to the window.

"Sorry, doctor, we have your orders," MacMahon said. "And you do, too. Make that chimp talk."

"How?" Dr. Bedoian asked.

"Isn't there something called truth serum?"

"Do I tell yon how to give loyalty oaths? I am a physician, Mr. MacMahon and as such I don't take clinical suggestions from laymen."

One of the new arrivals got up. "You're not a vet?" he asked.

"I studied the human being, Homo sapiens, seven years before graduating to the other primates-"

At this point the chandelier came loose from the ceiling; the planners and electricians and plasterers of the Floridaville House had not anticipated gymnastic chimpanzees in their commercial suite. The five security men went for their guns. Pan Satyrus landed agilely on his feet, still holding the chandelier, from which ancient wires now sprouted like whiskers on a hog's jowl.

Ape Bates was inspired to bark, "Stow them guns! They bother Mr. Satyrus!" He had been a petty officer much longer than any of the young men had been security men; they stowed their guns.

The phone began ringing. Happy Bronstein answered it. He said, "Yeah," once in a while and "naw!" once in a while and then he hung the phone up. "Management. Want to know what's what. The juice has gone off all over the house."

"As the only authority on the pongidae present," Dr. Bedoian said, "I can assure you that it is not the government's habit to house chimpanzees in a structure as flimsy as this. I'd suggest that you do as my patient suggests and retreat, leave him to calm his nerves."

Pan Satyrus took this as a cue to advance upon MacMahon, waving the wiry end of the lighting fixture under the FBI man's chin. MacMahon stood his ground, till Pan Satyrus added what he could remember of the Bastard King of England to the act. He was not well equipped musically.

MacMahon was a brave man, though. He whipped out his notebook, glanced at his wristwatch and wrote. Then he held the ballpoint pen (gold) and the notebook out to Dr. Bedoian. Your responsibility, doctor. General Maguire said you were to take charge of the. the patient, and we were to cooperate."

Dr. Bedoian signed. The five pairs of cops' feet went down the splintery stairs in a clatter.

"I suspect I am a traitor to my country," the doctor said.

Pan Satyrus threw the chandelier into a corner of the room. Glass tinkled.

"Okay," Ape Bates said, "get on the horn, Happy."

"What for?" Happy asked.

"Dames," Ape said. "Tell the hotel to send up four dames. Whatya think the doc got rid of the G-men for? He's been itchy ever since we brought the subject up."

"Have I?" Dr. Bedoian asked. "Yes, I guess I have. Of course, that's why I sent those white-collar cops away. I just didn't realize it."