Pan Satyrus

CHAPTER SIX

Morning brought Mr. MacMahon and his merry men from Naval Intelligence, NASA security, the FBI and kindred organizations. It is only in the works of youthful poets that dawn brings harbingers of happiness.

Mr. MacMahon brought an official document.

Happy Bronstein, who had answered the door — he had slept on the couch in the sample room, Ape and Dr. Bedoian had had the beds, and Pan Satyrus had contented himself with an overstuffed chair — went and got Dr. Bedoian, as required by their visitor.

Dr. Bedoian accepted the document in silence; in silence he read it. Then he looked at the FBI agent There was no special expression on Mr. MacMahon's face; duty was duty to him, and no more.

"An hour," Dr. Bedoian said.

I'll lay transportation on," said Mr. MacMahon, thus betraying previous service in England or with British officers.

"Do so," said Dr. Bedoian.

Ape said, "Happy, get on the horn. Razor, toothbrushes, clean socks — I wear thirteen — clean skivvies, and can they wash and dry our uniforms in a half an hour." He looked at Dr. Bedoian apologetically. "We came ashore in what we was wearin'. We wanta look like man o' war's men."

Happy made no move to phone. "What's the poop, doc?" he asked. "We gotta stand a court?"

"The brass — the very highest brass — wants to meet Pan at noon, up the coast." He held out the orders. Happy took them, whistled, and handed the sheet to Ape. Ape took it and whistled, more slowly. He said, "Belay them orders, Happy." He went to the phone himself, put in a long distance call. "Gimme Chief Sadowski," he said, after barking various extension numbers at various people. "Pipe it to his quarters, he ain't on deck yet. Chief Bates callin'." He held the phone dreamily away, stared at it. "Ski, this is Ape. Now get this, an' get it right, or your old lady hears about Singapore, an' this time I ain't just yappin'. Class A tropical uniform for me, about an inch bigger in the waist than last time I saw you. Yeah, and I made E-9, get the stripes right. Okay, an* a suit of whites for a Radioman First, about five nine, a hunnered-eighty. Got it? Yeah, an' a suit of civilians, tropical weight, anything in a nice light color, about five-ten — whatya weight, doc?"

Dr. Bedoian stared. "I take a forty, regular," he said.

"He takes a forty regular. Good quality, we'll pay yuh when we see yuh. How you been, Ski? You made E-8? I always knew there was a future in the Navy." He cleared his throat. "Well be at your place in two hours, no more'n three. Right."

He hung up. "Ski'll come through. Wisht I had my ribbons, but we can pick some up at the PX there. Okay, Happy, the horn. Add shoe polish to the order. Brown for the doc."

Pan Satyrus was huddled in his big chair, caressing the thumbs of his feet. "They don't feel any different," he said. "I'd hate it if they'd turn human, like my tongue has. If this is the way people feel in the morning, chimpanzees ought to be grateful every day of their lives."

"Well get some cold orange juice into you, perhaps some aspirin, and you'll feel better," Dr. Bedoian said. "You have a hangover."

"I've heard of them," Pan Satyrus said. "Keepers talk of nothing else on Sunday morning… I wish I'd gone on just hearing about them."

"It creates a problem," Dr. Bedoian said. "The chimpanzee reaction to aspirin is quite different from the human. Which are you?"

"My toes are still chimpanzee," Pan Satyrus said, "but my head and stomach feel different than they ever have before. But I suppose that's the hangover. I don't think my body has retrogressed. Or devoluted. Or whatever it is."

He somersaulted over the back of the chair and shuffled into the bathroom. They heard a deep sigh of relief. "Not a hair missing from my face," he said. "I'm glad. I don't want to be human."

"Aren't you curious about our orders?" Dr. Bedoian asked.

Pan Satyrus shuffled back into the room, carrying a dry towel with which he was giving himself a vigorous rubdown. "I presume from the reaction we are going to meet some very important men. I have met some very important men. Scientists and generals, admirals and senators. Which are these?" "Political figures," Dr. Bedoian said. "Statesmen." "Your disclosure has done nothing for my hangover," Pan Satyrus said. "Absolutely nothing." He tossed the towel in a corner, and began combing his coat with his fingernails. "Have any of you been to Africa?"

"Capetown," Happy said. "Port Said. Nothing in between."

"Do you realize I have never seen chimpanzees living in a state of natural chimpanzeeship?" Pan Satyrus said, "It comes over me when I am melancholy, as at present. Do you think if I tell these people what they want to know that they'd take me back to Equatorial Africa? That's where we came from, you know. Perhaps my father is still there."

"Who was your father?" Dr. Bedoian asked.

"I don't know, really. My mother was pregnant when they — captured her. She never liked to talk about the old days, in the jungle. Chimpanzees can't stand much unhappiness, you know."

"Better lay off the gin, then," Ape advised. "Try rum."

Pan Satyrus said, "Isn't there a word, teetotaller? It is what I feel like becoming."

"Never swear off while you got a hangover," Happy said.

The breakfast and the shaving gear arrived then.

They went north in three cars, the security men riding in front of and behind them, civilian and military police clearing the way. There was a slight argument with Mr. MacMahon about stopping at Ski's base to pick up the clean clothes, but in the argument the security men forgot to watch Pan Satyrus, who again captured Mr. Crawford.

The pleas of his colleague moved Mr. MacMahon's heart, and he agreed that he could stop if Pan promised not to get out of the car at the Naval Base.

So it was still short of noon when they went, sirens screaming, between lines of plainclothes men and up to the portico of a very, very private house. Dr. Bedoian, in his new, government-bought, suit was drowsing beside the driver. He woke up and got out first.

General Maguire was coming down the steps of the private house. He was in full Class A this time instead of tropical Class A. "I am to take Mem in," he said. "In fact, my orders are, I am to consider myself Mem's aide-de-camp."

Pan Satyrus said, "Don't call me by that ridiculous name."

"But it is your name. If you could see the mornning papers, you'd know, we've really pulled a scoop! What we did yesterday is on all the front pages, we have never had such good publicity. You can't change your name now."

"I see you have two stars again," Pan said. He reached a hand out.

General Maguire jumped back. "After your — when you come out again, the reporters want to see you."

"Kissing your wife?"

"Mrs. Maguire has gone north to consult her physician in Baltimore. Please, won't you cooperate? My whole career depends on it."

Pan sat down on the crushed shell driveway. He picked up a handful of shell, tasted it, spat it out. "Oily," he said. "Yet, I felt a desire for oyster shell. Calcium deficiency, doctor?"

Dr. Bedoian said, "I'll make a note of it. Maybe well try calcium gluconate. It tastes like candy, Pan."

General Maguire said, "It — he — seems to respond to you, doctor. Won't you please reason with him? If anything goes wrong in the next hour or so, I'll be a colonel on the retired list."

Dr. Bedoian shrugged.

"Tell me, General," Pan asked, "would you be able to eat any more if you had two stars on each shoulder instead of one? Would you be able to drink more and have a smaller hangover? Could you have two young wives instead of one old one?"

"By God, I wish I had you in the Army for a few days, Mem," Maguire answered.

'The name is Pan Satyrus. Mr. Satyrus except to my friends."

The general clenched his teeth. Through his slit lips he said, "All right, then. Mr. Satyrus. But come along. You can't keep men like this waiting. Nobody ever has."

"I'm not somebody. I am a simple chimpanzee."

"Yes, sir. You are a simple chimpanzee."

"And last night you would have shot me if you had had a gun on."

"Forget last night, Mr. Satyrus. Last night you had a good time, and I had a horrible one."

"You're learning,*' Pan said. He stretched his arms to their full lengths and pulled up his legs, so he could swing on his knuckles. "I'm cramped from riding in the car," he explained. "Okay, pal. The doctor walks with me, Chief Bates and Radioman Bronstein fall in behind, and you can bring up the rear, Maguire."

"That isn't military," the general screamed. Then he got control of himself again. "AH right, sir. As you say, Mr. Satyrus."

Pan Satyrus gave his gruesome laugh. I'm looking forward to seeing those papers. I must be the biggest thing since the Twist."

General Maguire said, "The man who wrote the Twist already has a new dance out called the Chimpango." He swallowed, and added, "Sir."

"Then let us chimpango, by all means," Pan said. I'll tell you something, General. I'm really very easy to get along with. All chimpanzees are, given a chance to be natural. And I'll tell you something else; Mrs. Maguire can come back. I don't really have designs on her."

And so they left the crushed-shell driveway, and went up the steps, and past the Marine guards — who presented arms, and were saluted in turn by Pan Satyrus — and into the cool interior of the house.

Here a suave version of a security man stopped them, and said, politely, "I'll have to ask for your identification, gentlemen."

General Maguire snapped out a gold-edged, plasticine-covered I.D. card. Ape and Happy got theirs out only a little slower. Dr. Bedoian produced his NASA pass.

Pan Satyrus swung on his knuckles, and said, "I left mine in my other pants."

The security man said, "But you're not wearing any. Oh."

"Then I guess this interview's off," Pan said. "Doctor, do you think we could get to Canaveral by—"

"I was ordered to bring him here!" General Maguire said. His voice bleated; it was still martial, but pretty much that of a martial goat.

The security man said, "My orders; nobody in without I.D."

Happy Bronstein looked even happier than usual, Ape Bates even more gorilla-like.

General Maguire said, "Surely, you recognize this — this Mr. Satyrus."

"Does he?" Pan Satyrus said. "Do you? I am a male chimpanzee, seven and a half years old. Maybe Dr. Bedoian could tell me from any other male chimpanzee, my age, in good health. But I doubt if anybody else could."

"You are the meanest person I ever met, Pan," Dr. Bedoian said.

"I am not a person. I am a chimpanzee. We don't mind trouble. We like it."

"Trouble for other people?"

"No, Aram, not necessarily. Just trouble. Nobody ever handled a ten-year-old chimp, did they? Not in the movies, or on the stage, or in a strait jacket in a capsule. It can't be done. Because chimps like trouble."

"Damn it," General Maguire said, "we can't stand here like a bunch of quartermaster sergeants. I'll vouch for this — this—"

"Chimpanzee," Pan said. "Pongina. Great ape. Pan Satyrus."

"I'll vouch for him," said the voice of the military goat.

The security man stepped aside.

Ape Bates said to Happy, "I think they're making a mistake. Pan's up to something." His lips did not move as he said it.

Another security man opened the door, and there was the Great Man, Number I, facing them.

He was seated behind a light table, leaning back in a rocking chair. And he was not alone. With him was a governor, another great man.

Pan Satyrus swung forward, using his arms as crutches, flew through the air, and landed on a corner of the table. It was better built than it looked; it did not creak, just swayed a little.

General Maguire came to attention, and said, "Mission completed, sir."

The Great Man said, "So I see. Introduce us, general."

"Sir-"

"It isn't necessary," Pan said. "I call myself Pan Satyrus. As college men, you both know — I am sure— that this is the proper scientific name for my species. The only species of chimpanzee there is, in fact, though there are two species of orangs and two of gorilla. And I know who you both are. I've seen your faces dozens of times."

The Governor had charm, almost as much as Number One. He leaned forward. "How interesting. Where did you see our faces?"

"On the floor of the Primate House," Pan said. "You'd be surprised how many newspapers there are there, on Sunday night, when the keepers finally run the crowd out. Crumpled newspapers, mustard-stained newspapers, walked-on newspapers. Filthy, and all of them — or nearly all — with one of your two faces on them."

The Great Man said, "Governor, we're not dominating this interview."

The Governor was chuckling. "Routed by a Pan Satyrus," he said.

The Great Man took over. "Mr. Satyrus, at least we made this a bipartisan conference. An honor to you."

Pan frowned, or so it seemed. Chimps' features do not quite assume the same expressions as men's. "Oh? Is one of you a Communist?"

The shocking word lay on the conference like a slow rain on a picnic. General Maguire looked as though he wished he were leading the Charge of the Light Brigade.

But Number One was suave and urbane and practiced with hecklers. "Hardly," he said, his voice flat and nasal. "What do you know about Communists, Mr. Satyrus?"

"Why, they're the other party," Pan said. "They're the reason for all the projects that I and a couple of hundred other chimpanzees have been run around the country lately. Los Alamos, Alamagordo, Canaveral, Vandenberg. It seems — or so they keep saying on the radio and the television — that men have split up into two parties, Communist and the Free World Party. Which of you is which?"

"You never heard of Republicans and Democrats?" the Governor asked.

"Oh, that," Pan Satyrus said.

"He's been in the South too long," the Governor said. "He's turned into a one-party man."

"One-party chimp," Pan Satyrus corrected him, "If anything. No, the keepers usually turn off the radio when that sort of thing comes on. Have you ever thought of separating men into two parties, on an evolutionary basis?"

The Great Man said, "Governor, I'm beginning to think I shouldn't have invited you to this shindig. I think a new political principle is about to be laid down."

"Share and share alike," the Governor said. "How do you separate people into two evolutionary parties, Mr. Satyrus?"

Pan Satyrus swung down from the desk. A fly had somehow gotten into the austere room; Pan caught it with an absent-minded flick of his pink-palmed hand, and crushed it and threw it on the floor. "Well," he said, "as you must know, some people have evoluted much more than others., For instance, look at these people here. Chief Bates has gone very far; in fact, he closely resembles a very young gorilla. His friends in the Navy notice it, they even honor him with the title of Ape, though he's a good ten thousand years from that. And then, on the other hand, take General Maguire. There's a gap of a half a million years there, gentlemen, and then only if you breed all the Maguires to very intelligent women."

The Governor said, "I'm beginning to wish you hadn't invited me, sir. This is getting much too personal. I hope I'm not next."

Pan Satyrus's glowing gaze rested on him a moment.

Then he turned to Dr. Bedoian. "Remember what we were talking about just outside the door there, doctor?"

"When you call me Aram, I always remember."

"Flattery," Pan Satyrus said, "Don't be frightened, I'm not planning any violence. Men divide themselves, and then divide themselves again, gentlemen. Chimpanzees don't."

The Governor leaned forward. "But men capture chimpanzees and make them slaves. And do chimpanzees ever capture men?"

"Who wants them?" Pan asked.

Both the great men had been highly educated at those Eastern schools maintained to remove the embarrassment that inherited riches gives young men. The Number One Great Man said, "Man is the only animal that dominates his environment, and therefore is the most highly evoluted animal."

"Stick to that, sir," Pan Satyrus said. "Because men's are the only votes you are going to get. Do you ever see a chimpanzee at the polls?"

"I am not always sure," the Governor said.

But the Great Man was intent on his question, "You don't agree with that definition of evolution?"

Pan Satyrus swung back to his perch on the corner of the desk. "Of course not," he said.. "This is like making work, and then being proud because you did the work you made necessary. The most highly evoluted animal is the one that has arrived at an ecology completely suitable to his needs — and then has enough sense to stay with it. In the case of the chimpanzee, everything we need is in a tropical closed forest, preferably deciduous. So where do you find chimpanzees?

In closed, deciduous, tropical forests, living a life of ease. Not at the North Pole, shooting polar bears in order to get the fur to wear to keep from freezing to death."

"You make a good case," the Governor said.

"Wait a minute," the Number One interposed. "What is the point to a chimpanzee's life? What do your people do with all this wonderful adjustment?"

"Not my people. My apes. We are not people. Or we weren't. Now I am, and I deeply regret it. Why, we have what you desire: time for long, slow chats with each other; time for speculation and rumination; perfect digestions; sex, of course; and we stay home and watch our children grow up. Sheer pleasure."

He stretched his long arms and yawned. Then he hastily explored his coat. There was the cracking noise of his fingernails. Pan Satyrus said to the Great Man, "You ought to fumigate more often."

"Subtropics," the Great Man said, succinctly. "The natural environment for insects."

Pan. Satyrus nodded. "You may think you have a point. But chimpanzees seldom sleep in the same bed twice; so we are not bothered."

"All right." The Great Man brought his hand down on the table, and was again an executive. "This has been a nice talk. Food for thought, when my worries keep me awake at night — which I'm sure never happens to a chimpanzee. But you know why we wanted to see you. And you know why I asked the Governor to be here: so you could be sure that the information we want from you is for the world and not just for my political advancement. How do you make a spaceship go faster than light?"

"You rearrange the controls," Pan answered.

There was a long sigh from everybody in the room — every man — except Ape Bates and Happy Bronstein, who were still standing at attention with the ease of long practice.

Then there was a silence.

Then there was the bleat of Genera! Maguire. "Sir, this ape has no intention of telling us. He's disaffected."

"Three-quarters of a million years," Pan Satyrus said, "and then you'd only have a baboon, or maybe a rhesus."

"General, you can wait outside," the Great Man said.

General Maguire saluted, about-faced, vanished.

The Great Man said, "Mr. Satyrus, consider that unsaid. It is ridiculous to suppose that you are an agent or a sympathizer of the Russians."

"Correct," Pan Satyrus said, "or of yours. Or of any men."

"So let us try and convince you that we are on the side of the angels," the Great Man said. "And, Governor, you take your licks when the time comes; I don't think this is going to be a soft sell."

The governor laughed. "You've already made a mistake, mentioning angels. Mr. Satyrus was about to ask you if you ever heard of any saintly chimpanzees."

"Not bad," Pan said. "Does that screen come out of that window?"

"I suppose so," the Great Man said.

"Happy, if you would," Pan Satyrus said.

Happy Bronstein was a Radioman First. He had a screwdriver about his person; just where, since he was wearing whites, it was hard to say. But it appeared in his hand, and he stepped forward and in a couple of minutes the screen was out.

And so was Pan Satyrus. Off the table and on the windowsill and then gone, into the warm Florida air, flying through it to land in the shaggy date palm outside the window. Happy, still holding the screen, said, "Look at him going down that trunk like a monkey." Then he said, "Sorry, sir," to the Great Man.

The Great Man said, "He is a monkey, Sparks."

"You forget it when you're around him a while," Happy Bronstein answered.

"Shouldn't we alert security?" the Governor asked.

"He can't escape," the Great Man said. "In a country full of people, he stands out. And I don't think he could disguise himself well enough to fool anybody."

Pan Satyrus was now down in the garden, appearing and disappearing among the lush semi-tropical foliage. Then he reappeared, and shinnied up the palm and swung back into the room. His feet were grasping a number of vegetal objects. "Put title screen back in, Happy," he said. "The insects are bad, at these latitudes."

He sat down on the floor, sorted his loot. "Bananas," he said. "Not the sweet ones, but those nice little red ones that do so well here in Florida. Carob pods. I love them. You have a nice garden, sir. I could support a family of five out of it."

The Great Man said, "There are some lath houses and so on in back that grow real vegetables. Carrots and cabbage and tomatoes and so on."

"Nature's bounty, not man's, contents me," Pan Satyrus said. "Carob pod, anyone?"

"No thanks."

"When hungry, eat," Pan said. "When tired, sleep. And let man dominate his environment."

The Governor said, "When I am cornered in an argument, I get unbearably hungry. Most thin men do. You look to me like a thin chimpanzee, Pan Satyrus. Right, doctor?"

Dr. Bedoian answered. "Tall and thin for his species, sir."

"Pressure getting bad, Mr. Satyrus?" the Governor asked. "Did you find yourself weakening?"

Pan Satyrus pulled a carob pod through his teeth, spat the skin towards a wastebasket. It missed. He chewed the seeds thoroughly and swallowed. "I hadn't heard any arguments yet. Ill propose a question. Why should I help one group of men to get a weapon that will kill another group of men and thus start a war that might sweep over the tropics?"

"The closed, deciduous forest of the tropics," the Governor put in.

"Right." A red banana skin landed on the other side of the wastebasket.

The Governor turned to the Great Man. "Check to you."

The Great Man said, "We sincerely believe that what you call Our Side — and we call the Free World — is right, and will triumph in the end because it is right. We believe the other side is led by men who rob other men — very many other men — of their freedom in order to gratify a neurotic, even a psychotic, craze for power."

"You forget one thing," Pan said.

"What's that?"

"Seven-and-a-half year old chimpanzees can't vote."

"That's flippant," the Great Man said. "All right. I will try again. If we had the power to make an object go faster than light — which power you seem to have — we would build what we call an anti-missile missile which would render us invulnerable to rocket attack. And then peace would come to the world, including the closed, deciduous forests of the tropics."

Pan Satyrus explored a tooth with one of his long fingers. It happened to be a finger on his left foot "You say this is what you would do. But you are an elected officer, in power for a limited time. Suppose your successor decided to make a missile instead of an anti-missile missile?"

The Great Man laughed. "My successor, nine chances out of ten, will be either a man I nominate, or the Governor here. Nine chances out of ten, a man can't get better odds than that."

"I am not a man, I am a chimpanzee. And I don't think I'll tell you. I don't think you — nothing personal — are highly enough evoluted to have a secret like this."

"Who is?" the Governor asked.

"Species who know enough not to use such information. Species who know enough to live naturally, without trying to dominate an environment they shouldn't have migrated to in the first place."

"Back to Africa," the Great Man said.

"Don't sound so sour, sir. I'll go this far with you: I have no intention of dealing with the Russians, either."

'That is not enough."

"It's a good deal," Pan Satyrus said. "After all, the Russians didn't put my mother into the cage in which I was born. They didn't take me out of that cage and strap me to space sleds and pressure chambers and rocket capsules."

"They would have if one of their expeditions had trapped your mother, instead of one of ours."

"Oh, they are men, all right," Pan Satyrus said. Then he yawned, spreading his thick gums wide, exposing his huge teeth. "Doctor, I'm getting tired."

The Great Man said, "I haven't had anybody say that in front of me since I took the oath for this high and noble office." He laughed. "May I ask one more question, Mr. Satyrus?"

Pan Satyrus was combing his coat with his fingernails again. He nodded, gravely and judicially. "If I may ask you and your friend one."

"You seem very fond of reading. Are there any libraries in your closed canopy, deciduous, tropical, African jungle?"

Pat Satyrus said, "There's hope for you. " Then he thought, and absent-mindedly his fingernails clicked again as they found another guest in his fur. "I suppose there are no libraries. But, you know, fond as I've been of reading, I think it's because I've always been a captive. What is there to look at in a Primate House, or a biological laboratory, except a book, over some attendant's shoulder? When you've admired the exploits of the rhesus monkeys, they begin to bore you."

"Dr. Bedoian, get Pan Satyrus the life and writings of Thoreau," the Governor said. "He's under the same delusion, that the simple life is best."

Dr. Bedoian said, "Yes, sir. I suppose it's my shoulder he's read over most."

The Great Man looked closely at the doctor. But all he said was, "What was your question, Pan?"

Pan Satyrus sat up straight, resting his palms on the floor, all four of them. "You and the Governor," he asked, "do you value the high offices you hold?"

Both men nodded, cautiously.

"I mean, you regard them as high offices?"

Again they nodded, in beautiful unison, though they were of rival political parties.

"You deem them more important than the fortune your father, sir, and your grandfather, Governor, accumulated?" Pan stood up. "Which would you give up first? Office or fortune?"

Neither man moved this time. Their expressions were so similar that it seemed that the gap created by Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson had finally closed.

People do not leave the presence of great men until they are dismissed.

Chimpanzees do.