And then, last summer, Bruce, one of the four mountain gorillas they had, picked up the stub of a burning cigar a visitor had dropped near him and began puffing away at it, managing to blow five perfect smoke rings in the shape of the Olympic symbol every time he exhaled. Someone had taken pictures of him and sent them to a TV station, which had promptly dispatched a camera crew to the zoo. Bruce put Primate Park on the 6 o'clock news and, from that day on, in the public consciousness too. People flocked to the zoo just to see him. And they were still coming, most of them with cigars, cigarettes and pipes to toss to the gorilla, whose sole activities were now confined to chain-smoking and coughing. They'd had to move him to a separate area because his habit made him stink so much the other gorillas refused to go near him.
Jenny found it inhumane and cruel to do that to an animal, but when she'd complained to the brothers, they'd simply shown her the balance sheets. She was now looking for another job.
When she got to the control room she found the guard staring out of the thick shatterproof window.
'You the vet?' he asked when he saw Jenny, his voice brimming with incredulity.
Jenny was petite and youthful in appearance, which led to some people usually horny men and old ladies mistaking her for a teenager. She was the only thirty-six-year-old she knew who still had to carry ID to get served in a bar.
'Yeah, I'm the vet,' she replied tetchily. She was already in a bad mood because of the election results. Ronald Reagan, a one-time B-movie actor, had won the White House last night. It was hardly unexpected, given Carter's catastrophic handling of the Iranian hostage crisis and the economy, among other things, but she had hoped the American people wouldn't be suckered into voting for Ronnie.
'Where is it?' she asked him.
'There.' He pointed through the window.
They were one floor up, overlooking the gently sloping wide grass verge which separated the zoo's buildings from the vast man-made jungle where the monkeys lived. It was dark outside, but daylight was just beginning to break through, so she could make out a black mound in the grass, like someone had doused the ground with petrol in the shape of a large capital T and set it alight. She couldn't be sure what it was.
'How'd it get through?'
'Power on the fence musta been off. Happens more times than you'd imagine,' the guard said, looking down at her.
The jungle was surrounded by a high electric fence which gave off a mild shock when touched enough to stun any monkey who'd want to clamber up and over it.
'Let's go down and take a look,' she said.
They stopped off at the first aid room down the corridor so Jenny could pick up the medical kit and a tranquillizer gun, which she loaded with a dart. It was the biggest gun they had, the Remington RJ 5, usually used to subdue lions and tigers.
'Are we goin' outside? The guard sounded worried.
'That's what I meant by taking a look. Why? Is there a problem?' She looked up at him like he really wasn't impressing her. They locked stares. She turned on the contempt.
He took the bait. 'No problem,' he said in a bassier, more authoritative tone and smiled in a way he must have thought was reassuring but in fact came over as nervous and near rictal.
'Good.' She handed him the tranq gun. 'You know how to use this, right?'
6 'Sure do,' he said.
'If it wakes up, shoot it anywhere but the head. You got that?' The guard nodded, smile still in exactly the same place.
He was starting to make her nervous. 'And, if the power's really down on that fence, we could have company. Some monkeys may come to see what we're doing. Most of them are harmless, but watch out for the baboons. They bite.
Worse than any pitbull. Their teeth'll cut clean through to the bone.'
She could tell from his eyes that fear was now doing fast laps in his head, but he was still smiling that damn smile. It was as if the lower half of his face was paralysed.
He noticed her staring at his mouth. He ran his tongue quickly under his lips. The speed had dehydrated him so much that the inside of his lips had stuck to his gums.
'So what do we do if we're . . . outnumbered?'
'Run.'
'Run?'
'Run.'
'Right.'
They went downstairs to the tunnel entrance, Jenny grinning wickedly behind the dumbass security guard as he timidly took each step like he was negotiating a steep rocky hill on his way to his own execution.
'I'll open the door; you go out first,' she said. 'Approach slowly.'
She handed him the tranquillizer gun and then unlocked and opened the door. He slipped off the safety catch and stepped outside.
They heard the cries of the monkeys snarls, growls, whoops and roars, guttural and fierce; territories and young ones being protected - all underpinned by the snap and crack of branches being jumped from and to, the dense timpani of leaves and bushes being crashed through. And then there was the smell of the place: the animals, acrid and heady; ammonia; fresh manure and wet hay mixed in with the jungle's humid earthiness, its blossomings and decay, things ripening, things growing, things going back into the soil.
Larry approached on tiptoe, coming in from the side as instructed. The vet shone a torch on the ape, which lay some twenty feet away, still not moving. As he got closer he saw that the beast's fur had a slight metallic green tinge to it, as if there were sequins strewn across its body.
He heard it make a sound. He stopped and listened more closely, because it had only been the faintest of noises, something that could quite easily have come from elsewhere.
Then he heard it again. It was faint and painful breathing, a low moan, barely audible over the sing-song of the dawn birds now coming from the nearby trees.
'I think it's alive,' he whispered to the vet. 'Sounds hurt.
Bring the light in closer.'
He stood where he was with the tranquillizer gun pointed at the prostrate animal's side, his finger on the trigger. The vet approached. The animal's moaning got a little louder as the light on it grew brighter. It didn't sound like breathing now, pained or otherwise. It was more of a whining drone, which reminded Larry of the time he'd once trapped a hornet under a whisky glass. The thing had attacked the glass with everything it had, trying to get out, flying at it, butting it, stinging it, getting angrier and angrier with every failed attempt until it had died of exhaustion.
The vet came in closer. Larry didn't move. His hands were getting wet holding the gun.
'What - the - HELL? the vet shouted.
The ape woke up. It raised its head off the ground.