Before Grant could move or think or even yowl with terror the gorilla shambled to its feet, huge, fierce, leaning on its knuckles, fangs bared. Grant could feel the heat of the animal’s body, smell its breath and its hideous, hairy stench.
He stood there petrified as the gorilla raised a powerful, hairy arm, thick as Grant’s torso, its massive paw nearly brushing his face.
“No!” it said in a rasping voice. Its open hand was bigger than Grant’s head. “You go! Now!”
SHEENA
Grant stood transfixed, too frightened to move, unable to breathe, almost, as the angry gorilla took a shambling step toward him, fangs bared, eyes glaring.
And she talked! “Go!” she repeated. “You go!”
He heard Karlstad making a strange, strangled noise behind him. Turning his head ever so slightly, Grant saw the biophysicist nearly choking with barely suppressed laughter. The gorilla blinked, put down her raised arm.
Karlstad stepped up beside Grant and said lightly, “Now, Sheena, it’s all right. You know me.” He was grinning broadly, barely able to contain his merriment.
The gorilla hunkered down on her knuckles. Grant saw her red-rimmed eyes shift from Karlstad’s face to his own and then back again.
“Ee-ghon,” the gorilla said. Her voice was a raspy, painful whisper. It reminded Grant of Director Wo’s hoarse, strained voice.
“Good girl, Sheena!” Karlstad said brightly, as if speaking to a two-year-old. “You’re right, I’m Egon. And this is Grant,” he added, pointing.
He’s talking to a three-hundred-kilo gorilla, Grant said to himself. And the gorilla’s talking back!
“Grant is a friend,” Karlstad said amiably.
“Grant,” the gorilla whispered.
“That’s right.” Turning slightly toward him, Karlstad said, “Grant, this is Sheena. She works with us.”
It took Grant two hard swallows to find his voice. “H-hello, Sheena.”
Sheena blinked at him, then slowly, solemnly, extended her massive right hand toward Grant.
“Just put your hand on her palm,” Karlstad told him, sotto voce. “Gently.”
His heart thumping wildly, Grant stretched out his right arm and let his fingertips touch Sheena’s leathery palm. His hand looked minuscule in the gorilla’s huge paw; Grant got a vision of her closing her fist and crushing his hand to a bloody pulp. But the gorilla merely let it rest on her palm for a few moments. She stared at Grant, then at his hand. Slowly she bent her head forward slightly and sniffed noisily at Grant’s hand.
Then she said, “Grant,” as if to fix his name in her memory.
She pulled her hand away, and Grant let his arm drop to his side with a gusting sigh of relief.
“We’re going now, Sheena,” Karlstad said, still in the tone that a man would use with a small child.
Sheena thought that over for a few seconds. “Yes,” she said at last. “You go.”
“Say good night to her,” Karlstad told Grant.
“Uh … good night, Sheena.”
“Grant,” the gorilla answered. “Grant.”
Karlstad turned slowly and walked out of the gorilla’s compartment, with Grant so close behind him they might have been Siamese twins. They headed back along the glowing fish tanks toward the hatch where they had entered the aquarium. Grant could hear the gorilla’s heavy breathing and knew the beast was shuffling along behind them, not more than a step or two away. The dolphins seemed to be grinning at them, as if they were enjoying the show.
“This is the tricky part,” Karlstad said softly as they walked slowly away from the gorilla. “Females don’t usually attack, but when they do it’s when your back is to them.”
Grant felt his knees go rubbery.
“Don’t look back!” Karlstad cautioned. “If she decides to rush us there’s not a damned thing we can do about it.”
His voice shaky, Grant heard himself ask, “Has she ever attacked anyone before?”
Karlstad did not answer for several heartbeats. Then: “Not really attack. But she’s so pissing strong she’s broken people’s ribs by accident.”
“What… how is she able to talk?”
“That’s Wo’s brilliant idea. Built a voicebox for her. Injected her brain with neuronal stem cells to see how much he could boost her intelligence.”
“Our intellectual cousins,” Grant remembered.
They had reached the hatch. Karlstad pushed it open and they stepped through. Grant helped to push it closed. He saw Sheena standing on all fours, so big that her shoulders brushed either wall of the narrow corridor. He felt a lot safer once the hatch clicked shut.
“Sheena’s a long way from being an intellectual cousin,” Karlstad said, his voice louder now, firmer, as they started walking briskly back toward their quarters.
“But she talks,” Grant said. “She can obviously think.”
“To a degree. Like a two-year-old, that’s all. There isn’t enough room in her cranium to grow a human-equivalent brain.”
“I see.”
Karlstad laughed grimly. “Wo wanted to open up her skull, enlarge it so there’d be more room for cerebral growth.”
“What happened?”
“Sheena was smart enough to recognize what was going on. As soon as she entered the surgical theater she tore loose and ran away. That’s when she broke ribs. Arms, too.”
“She understood what was going to happen?”
“You bet! She ran back to her own quarters and no one could coax her out. Wo wanted to sedate her and go ahead with the surgery but the medical staff was so banged up that it was impossible.”
“And he didn’t try again?”
“Not yet,” said Karlstad. “But he will. Wily Old Woeful doesn’t give up. Not him.”
The corridor was down to its nighttime lighting, Grant realized. Most of the research station’s personnel were in their quarters or already asleep. No one in sight, except a middle-aged couple strolling hand in hand through the twilight dimness toward them.
“So we have a gorilla roaming around loose back there?” Grant asked.
Karlstad did not reply until the approaching couple passed them. Then, his voice lowered, he answered, “Sheena works as a guard for the aquarium.”
“Why does the aquarium need a guard?”
“It doesn’t. It’s all Wo’s brilliant idea,” Karlstad said, still in a near whisper. “He carted the animal all the way out here when she was an infant, so he’s got to show some practical reason for the expense.”
Grant shook his head in wonder.
“At least there’s one advantage to Sheena’s limited brainpower.”
“What’s that?”
“She can clean out her own cage,” Karlstad said. “And she’s toilet trained.” He laughed. “You should’ve seen the mess she made the first time she squatted on a regular toilet. We had to build a specially reinforced bowl for her.”
“I guess so,” Grant said, not wanting to visualize the scene.
When he got to his own room and slid the door shut, Grant considered sending a message back to Ellis Beech’s office on Earth. Dolphins and gorillas. Our intellectual cousins. Then he thought that the New Morality must know about that already. Wo couldn’t smuggle a gorilla into the station in total secrecy, even a baby gorilla. And dolphins!
Besides, he thought tiredly, what does it all add up to? Why did Dr. Wo bring these animals here? What’s he up to? That’s what I’ve got to find out. That’s my ticket out of here, my ticket back to Marjorie and Farside.
It wasn’t until he was in bed and drifting toward sleep that he realized Karlstad had tricked him. Meeting Sheena must be one of the initiation rites around here, he thought. I wonder how many guys have fainted from sheer fright. Or wet themselves.
Thinking about it, Grant thought he’d acquitted himself pretty well. Not much for Karlstad to tell the others about, he thought. There’s an advantage in being so scared you can’t move, he realized.