"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.
CHAPTER SEVEN
He had tested this vaccine on 10,000 monkeys, 160 chimpanzees, and 243 humans. The volunteers were mostly inmates of Federal penitentiaries.
Once again they were rolling north. But this time there was a different air to the procession. A security man rode with them, and there was little doubt that the driver was an officer, too; in his light tropical worsteds it was impossible to hide a gun. Happy Bronstein was in the front car, Ape Bates in the rear one, and only Dr. Bedoian, of his friends, remained with Pan Satyrus.
As before, a car went ahead of them and another car behind them, but now the first car used its siren, and they didn't stop for anything.
"Am I under arrest?" Pan Satyrus asked.
The man beside the driver said, "You are not to talk."
"But I have to. I retrogressed — or devoluted — and I have a compulsion to talk. Like a human being."
The security man reached into his coat. "This is a revolver, a.38. This other gun has a narcotic in it, a powerful one. I am under orders to shoot you with the narcotic, and if that does not stop you, I am allowed to use a lead bullet. Do not talk."
"Wait a minute," Dr. Bedoian said. "This is my patient".
"Is he sick?"
"No."
"Then he is not your patient. And do not talk."
Pan Satyrus reached out and took the doctor's hand, gently, in his own big one. He clung to it as though he were frightened, but how could he be, a big chimpanzee who had flown faster than light?
The cars rolled on, the siren moaning monotonously.
Eventually the little motorcade left the main highway, and followed a paved road off into non-coastal Florida, a land of sandhills and swamps and small, muggy lakes, cattle and poor farms and the rich mucklands of the commercial tomato men.
Pan Satyrus looked out at the green and red globes on the plants, and said, "I am getting hungry."
The security man glowered.
Dr. Bedoian said, "He requires several meals a day."
"That's right," Pan said. "Because I'm a vegetarian. Even the legumes Jack the concentration of energy of the animal proteins."
The security man looked frustrated. "You're not supposed to talk," he said.
Dr. Bedoian said, "Pan, you have read the strangest things."
"I have been tended by some very strange people. Night watchmen in the Primate House, or in an animal laboratory, are very often studying to be something else. Better, you men would say. And then, when I've been ill, I've been nursed by medical students."
"Please stop talking," the security man said.
"Not until I am fed," Pan Satyrus answered. "Talking takes my mind off my stomach."
"Well be — where we're going — in half an hour."
Then I shall talk for half an hour."
The security man said, "Oh, all right. What can I do about it?"
"Shoot a capsule into me," Pan Satyrus said. "Queer. Yesterday I was in a capsule, today a capsule may be in me. Dr. Bedoian, your language lacks definition."
"I am a doctor, not a linguist. And call me Aram. It makes me feel comforted in a world that is about to go bleak and grim. Couldn't you have picked some other time to be subversive?"
Pan Satyrus said, "You have handled chimpanzees before. At a certain age don't they all become difficult, no, impossible to handle? No, not impossible; positively perverse. Maybe I'm reaching that age."
"Oh, lay off," Dr. Bedoian said.
"Alone in a friendless world. Do you think I could join the FBI?"
Both the men in the front seat chuckled. "You have to have a law degree," the driver said, over his shoulder.
"You had to go to law school to be a chauffeur to an ape?" Pan Satyrus asked.
"Sometimes I do other things," the driver said.
"We're not supposed to talk, or let them talk," his companion said.
"I could always get a job in a filling station," the driver said.
Dr. Bedoian sighed. "There's something about you, Pan. You make friends easier than anyone I ever met."
"Everybody loves chimpanzees," Pan Satyrus said, "Chimpanzees, however, do not love everyone. That's the trouble with the human world. Everybody goes around trying to make everybody else love him. When a chimpanzee comes along, people are refreshed."
The senior man in the front seat spoke up. "By God, you're right. When I pinch anybody, nine times out of ten he'd never get convicted if he didn't talk. But he wants to make me like him. He has to tell me why he did it, so I'll forgive him. So I'll like him. And he can't tell why he did it without saying he did it, so I nail him. What's wrong with people?"
"Not completely evoluted," Pan Satyrus said. "There's a theory called teleology, which maintains that evolution has a purpose, and when the ideal being is created, evolution will cease. The chimpanzee? I don't know too much about teleology, as the keeper who had the book got bored and never looked at it after the first night, and then only for a few minutes."