"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."