Pan Satyrus

CHAPTER NINE

The gates clanged when they were shut, but the locks turned noiselessly, because they were well oiled.

The security men had taken away their shoelaces, and Ape Bates's belt. There had been nothing to take away from Pan Satyrus, of course, because he had not worn clothes since he got out of the space suit.

Then they were alone, two sailors and a chimpanzee in three detention cells. "How about the doc?" Happy asked. "You don't think they're doing something to him?"

"Questioning him," Ape said. "I figure they figure hell break sooner than you or me. Or Pan here."

"Break about what?" Pan asked.

"We're an international conspiracy," Happy said. "You shouldn't have landed so the Cooke could pick you up. She's top security secret. What they call an experimental prototype."

You sound like a yeoman," Ape said.

Pan was swinging gently from the bars of his cell, from side to side and then from top to bottom. "This isn't bad," he said. "I'm used to cages."

"We're not," Happy said.

Ape grunted. "Stow it, Happy. I don't know about you, but I bet I spent more time in the brig than Pan is old. What's it, seven and a half years? Yeah, I could give you lessons on being in a cage. Difference is, I never learned to like it."

Pan came to rest on the shelf-cot. "So you think we are here because I learned too much about the Cooke? But I didn't see anything but the deck and your dining room."

"Chiefs' mess," Ape corrected.

"You see? I know nothing about ships. That was the first one I was on. I couldn't compare it with any other, or describe it, really. You think if I tell them that, they'll let us out?"

"How do you make a spaceship go faster'n light?" Happy asked. "That's what they want to know."

"But man isn't ready to know that," Pan said. "He'd use it in war."

"Yeah," Ape said. "So we're in the brig. And likely to stay there."

Pan Satyrus swung from side to side of his cell, rising with each swing till he was at the top. Hanging from one hand, he experimentally pulled a bit of mortar from the crack where the bars met the ceiling, and put it in his mouth. Then he spat it out again and swung back down to the cot. "I'm hungry."

"You shouldn't a told them that," Ape said. "They don't feed you till you talk."

"And he won't talk," Happy said.

"He shouldn't talk," Ape said. "War's no good."

"You're talking like an ape. Starving's no good, either."

"Many a chimpanzee has died sooner than surrender his dignity," Pan said. Then he caught hold of the bars and swung a while, in silence. Then he went back to his cot, groomed himself, and folded his hands over his face.

Two of the men who seemed to be flunkies around the place came in, dressed in the oil company overalls that passed for uniforms there. They stood with drawn guns just inside the cellblock door, and stood guard while another man brought in food, first for Ape and then for Happy. Then he went out again.

Ape said, "How about Pan here?"

"No chow," one of the guards said.

Ape snorted, and took a piece of bread off his tray. "Here, Pan."

"Hold it, sailor," one of the guards said, and brought the muzzle of his gun up.

"You guys aren't human!" Happy exclaimed.

"Yes they are," Pan said. "Precisely."

Ape said, "I ain't hungry. You can take this slum away."

"Mine, too," Happy said.

One of the guards whistled and the flunky came back and took the trays out. Again the metal clanged, and they were alone.

"Now we know," Happy said.

"I guess we had better leave here," Pan said.

The sailors looked at him.

"Human beings specialize too much," Pan said. "It seems there are jail builders and cage builders. At least, no respectable zoo would think of putting a chimpanzee in a cage like this."

He reached out and bent one of the bars up out of its floor socket. Then he bent another one. "I should hate to see what a gorilla would do to a place like this," he said. "What do they take me for, a marmoset?" He bent another bar.

When he had a big enough hole to crawl through, he tied two of the bars into a knot. "The Mark of Zorro," he said. "I read it in a comic book."

"Not over Doc Bedoian's shoulder?" Happy said.

Pan was outside his cell by then. "Hardly," he said. He laughed; at least it sounded as though he did. "Silly," he said. "I have retrogressed or devoluted or whatever it is." He reached out and plucked the lock off Happy's cell door. "I should have done this in the first place. But I like exercise, it makes me feel good,".

He plucked Ape's lock away, too, and loped towards the single, barred window, putting most of his weight on his knuckles.

As he pulled each bar out of the window he passed it to Ape. "No use making any more fuss than we have to," he said. "There. Give me your hand, Happy." Clinging to the outside frame of the window with one hand, he reached down and pulled Happy up, let him climb out by himself. Then he pulled Ape up, jumped out himself, and gave the whole window cell to the chief.

Ape landed on the ground with a grunt. They were towards the back of the fake tank farm, near the woven-wire fence. Pan looked the fence over and grunted in imitation of Ape. "No problem there."

"Watch it," Happy said. "It might be electric." He looked around, then pointed at a live oak. "This place is so G.I. neat, well have to chaw a limb off that No sticks or anything around."

"No sweat," Pan said. He clambered up the tree, snapped a substantial branch off, climbed down with it in one hand. "Here, old boy."

Cautiously Happy leaned the limb against the woven wire. When there were no sparks, he said, "Go ahead."

Pan reached out and pulled the fence down to the ground and they walked out over it.

The two sailors stumbled as they went, their black shoes wabbling on their feet. Pan Satyrus led them into the first clump of hammock, the hardwood groves that dot the flat piney woods of Florida. Then he went swinging up into the trees, and, after a while, he came back with a handful of thin vine stems.

Happy and Ape started plaiting shoelaces for themselves. Their experienced hands were very fast at it.

Pan Satyrus went swinging away again. He came back munching a cabbage-heart, from a palm tree.

Ape had finished his shoelaces, was making a belt.

"I dunno much about chimps' faces, Pan, but you look happy."

Pan nodded, rocking on his knuckles, his feet free of the ground. "This isn't tropical," he said. "It's just semi-tropical. And it isn't really forest, just little patches of it. But for the first time in my life, I feel like a real ape, instead of some sort of men's toy."

Happy was stretched out, his back to a tree. "Like they gave you a ship all your own, Ape. No officers, no Department of the Navy to tell you what to do."

"I'm a torpedoman, not a quartermaster," Ape said. "But I guess, at that, I could run a ship. If I had one. But I ain't never going to."

"No, you're not," Happy said, "We're going to be a couple of seamen seconds if and when they catch us. We're AWOL, if not deserters, by now."

A branch of live oak was lying on the ground. It had fallen from the tree against which Happy rested, but it hadn't rotted yet; and it was more than six inches thick. Pan Satyrus reached over and snapped it in two. "You came with me because you were in fear of your lives if you didn't."

"We're carrying out our duty," Happy said. "Now that I think it over. The skipper of the Cooke told us to stick with you. No naval officer since has cancelled the duty. We don't know who those guys back there in that tank farm are."

Rooshians," Ape said. "We thought they was Rooshians. They never showed us no I.D., and if they had, we'da thought it was phoney. Rooshians."

"We're enlisted men," Happy said. "We ain't supposed to have brains, huh?" He stuck out his tongue and goggled his eyes.

Pan Satyrus made the noise that most people, eventually, decided was his laugh. "We can last here for years," he said. "There are all kinds of delicious things in these woods. And we can move south, slowly, until we are in the Everglades."

"They'll turn out every cop in the country," Ape said. "They'll pull out the God-damned Marines, and comb the boondocks till they find us."

"The man doesn't live who could find a chimpanzee in a semi-tropical forest," Fan said. "Why, I can shin up the first palmetto, and hide in the fronds."

"Not man," Happy said. "Men. Thousands, tens of thousands of them. Enough to cut down all your palm trees. And how about us? We're men, not chimps. Even Ape is a man, though he doesn't look like it."

Ape Bates looked at them, and said, "T'anks, pal."

"Maybe you'd better go to a road and give yourselves up," Pan said. "Turn yourselves over to the naval authorities — is that right? — and nothing much will happen to you."

Chief Bates looked at Happy; Happy looked back at the chief, who said, "Where was you born. Pan?"

"The Primate House, Bronx Zoo. That's in New York."

"I know," Ape said. "You ain't never been on your own in your life. It can freeze in this Florida; there's wild dogs and pigs and I dunno what all. We better stick with you."

"Oh, but this is my natural habitat."

"Sure," Happy said. "Sure. Anyway, we haven't any choice. Skipper said to stick with you."

"Let's march," Ape said. "Let's put some more boondocking behind us. Them Feds is likely to call out the dogs on us."

So they slugged their way across the flat country, stumbling into sink holes so covered with green scum that they looked like meadows; disturbing swarms of mosquitoes that took their quick, blistering revenge; once Pan, carelessly, got too near a clump of Spanish bayonet, and a thorn broke off in the palm of his hand. None of them had a knife or even a needle to dig the thorn out; the black, pink-palmed hand swelled rapidly.

There was plenty of water, and Pan Satyrus collected endless quantities of green nuts, ripe and unripe fruits, raw cabbage-hearts. But none of them, not even Pan, was really used to such a diet; the two sailors progressed to the music of their rumbling stomachs, and Pan Satyrus became strangely subdued.

"Them Marines do this all the time," Ape said. He was sitting under a palmetto, holding his ample paunch in his hands. His face was half again its usual size from mosquito bites.

"If I'd wanted to be a marine, I would have joined them," Happy said.

Pan Satyrus said, "If this were Equatorial Africa.. "

"It ain't," Ape said.

"If we'd only brought Dr. Bedoian with us."

"What good would that do?" Happy asked. "Without that little black bag, a doc is just another guy in the woods. Only, we need a doctor, complete with black bag."

Somewhere Pan Satyrus had picked up a large, round fruit. He turned it in his unswollen hand. "I wonder if this is good to eat."

"Nothing's good to eat that isn't right off the fire," Happy said.

"Wit' a blonde waitress to bring it to you, an' a bottle of beer to wash it down," Ape said.

Happy groaned.

"We're ruined by civilization," Pan Satyrus said. "Believe it or not, the soles of my feet are sore. I've never had to walk very far in my life."

"I suppose at home, in Africa, you'd swing from tree to tree," Happy said.

'To a limited extent," Pan told him. Then he shook his massive head. "At least, so I've read. I don't really know. I am just a second-rate man, not an ape at all. In all my seven and a half years, this is my first afternoon without a keeper."

He looked at them. "Not that I mean to disparage you gentlemen. But you've never had instructions in caring for chimpanzees."

"I never really rated Ape," Chief Bates said. "The guys just called me that."

"So we're licked," Happy said. "Night's coming on, we don't even have matches to make a smudge. And we couldn't if we wanted to, on account of the Feds'll have helicopter patrols out, looking for us. So what?"

"There's a highway about a half a mile over that way," Pan said. "I saw it from the tree this grew on." He looked at the fruit again, turned it in his long fingers, and threw it away. I'll lead the way, gentle-men."

Happy said, "I'm sorry, Pan."

"Not your fault."

"Yeah," Ape said, "hut you got us outa that brig. And then we been nothing but a drag on you."

"No, no. My feet hurt, and I'm not used to this food. I'll climb a tree and pick a way for us."

"Hold on, Pan," Happy said. "Sure, you got a thorn in your hand. But you could live for years on the stuff that's made us sick. You could keep warm with some, say, palm leaves over you. So why are you turning yourself in?"

"I don't really like it out here in the hammocks," Pan said.

"Don't feed me that!" Happy said, sharply.

"I'm a second grade chimp, a third grade man," Pan said, slowly. "I began to think of being alone, and I didn't like it. I couldn't stand it."

Ape said, "On accounta you retrogressed, or devoluted or whatever?"

"Yes."

"You got the education, over other guys' shoulders, but you got it," Happy said. "How do chimpanzees live? Alone?"

"They travel in small groups, two to four males, about twice as many females and whatever children they have."

"So you haven't changed," Happy said. "You're still a chimp. All you need is a dame, a lady chimp. You stay here, Pan, and Ape and me'll go knock off a zoo, steal you a wife."

"No," Pan said. "You're in enough trouble now,".

"And that's it, of course." Happy's face was sadly triumphant. "You're sorry cause you led us off the duty. We were told to guard you, and we haven't."

Pan nodded, unhappily. He made crutches of his front arms, and swung on them, thinking. "Yes. I mean, we've been talking. Any time Ape wants to, he can draw two-thirds pay and no work. You could get half pay, with more than twenty years in the Navy. But you don't, and so the Navy means something to you, and I have maybe spoiled that for you both."

"We ain't babies. You ain't our papa." Ape's voice was a low growl. "You're only seven and a half years old. I'm fifty-two."

"You like the Navy."

"What the hell?" Ape shrugged his heavy shoulders. "Outside the service, there's nobody to talk to. They don't know, outside guys don't."

"Your friends are in the Navy."

Ape looked at Happy, who had his black shoes and white socks off, and was examining his swollen feet. "What's this Pan talkin' about?"

"That he's human, That he needs friends," Happy said. "But the way he told it, so do chimps."

"I never had a friend," Pan said. "Just keepers, and doctors, and people who wanted to use me for experiments."

Happy sighed and started to put his socks on. "If that's the way it is, Pan, that is the way it has to be. It's the truth, Ape, and I can't make it out here in these boondocks."

"And I can't make it without friends," Pan said.

He let himself down off his knuckles and sat, his short powerful legs crossed under him. He began grooming himself with his fingers. "I'll tell them I kidnapped you. Like King Kong, on the late late show, a sailor under each arm."

"You're a kick, Pan," Happy said, and finished putting his shoes on; and they headed for the highway, Pan occasionally skinning up a tree to take a sight.

Night was closing in when they hit the road; the concrete was hot to Pan's feet, and he walked in the deep ditch, squishing the grassy mud with his toes. The lights of a town glowed ahead of them.

"We don't got penny one of dough," Ape said. "Them Feds took it all away."

"I had forgotten about money," Pan said. "I've never been bothered with it in my life."

Happy said, "Neither has Ape, two days after pay-call."

Ape laughed. His Class A uniform was not the shining thing it had been that morning; but somehow he still looked neat; muddy and rumpled, but neat.

"Wait a minute," Pan said. "I've found something."

The something was a long, thin chain, broken off something rusty and filthy.

Pan bent a link open with his powerful fingers, wrapped the chain around his waist and pinched it together again. "Now I'm a trained ape," he said. "Can't you take me in a bar and make some money out of me?"

Happy peered down into the ditch. There was a little daylight left, but the headlights of the traffic shone on him intermittently. He began to laugh. "Man," he said. He stopped and corrected himself. Tan, Listen. There's an alarm out for us. A chief, a radioman and a chimpanzee. Maybe I could rip one stripe off and look like a radioman second, but outside of that, how are we going to disguise ourselves?"

"You're wrong, Happy," Ape said. "Pan's right Who's going to look for us, makin' a show in a saloon? Pan, anybody asks me, you're one of these here rhesus monkeys."

"You got them on your brain. Ape," Happy said.

Ape said, "Thirty-five years in the Navy, I made every port, shipped with every kind of guys, sailed all the waters. An' then, at my age, I hear there's something I haven't seen. You think it wouldn't be on my mind?"

"You're crazy, both of you," Happy said. "But let's go".

Pan said, "The big lie. I have read about the big He. We are now going to perpetrate one."

"The shoulders you musta looked over," Ape said.