Pan Satyrus sat down on the floor and began grooming himself. "I'm hungry."
"Too bad," Armstrong said. He began to grin, slightly.
Dr. Bedoian pushed forward. "If you are thinking what I think you are thinking, forget it. I have been handling chimpanzees — and other primates — quite a while. There comes a point where that sort of thing only makes them more rebellious. To the point of suicide."
The man with the mustache said, "Young man, just which side are you on, anyway?"
"Oh, I'm loyal enough. But Pan Satyrus is my patient. And I don't believe anyone else here is a primate expert."
"And you are?"
"Mr. Armstrong, if I'm not, the government wasted several years of salary on me. Believe me, there comes a time in a chimpanzee's life when he rebels. And Pan Satyrus here is mighty close to it."
"Then you advise — extinction."
The croaking bellow of Chief Bates filled the room. "That's murder."
The admiral said, coldly, "As you were, Chief. The disposal of an animal — government property — is hardly murder."
The old chief stood his ground. 'Pan ain't an animal."
Happy Bronstein took his cue from the chief. "I wasn't brought up to be a sea lawyer, but I'd sure hate to shoot a chimpanzee who talked. You'd be in the brig for years, while the lawyers tried to decide was it murder or not. Pan, here, is a person."
Pan Satyrus pulled himself to his full four feet six. "I am not," he said.
Silence fell across the star chamber.
CHAPTER EIGHT
No qualified person thinks that man is descended from any existing anthropoid ape.
Flying up to New York, I was not easy in my mind. That Iggie Napoli, my assistant, was too smart. So now he had my mobile unit and my mike, and if any kind of story broke in Florida while I was away, he would go on the air. And who could fail to remember a man named Ignatz Napoli? I had spent more than ten years teaching them to remember Bill Dunham, but Iggie could do it in two interviews, if they were good ones.
So here I went, back to the front office to report, and not at all happy.
My story on the chimponaut was a beat, all right, an old-fashioned scoop, but I hadn't dominated the interview — Pan Satyrus had. And in this business, you limp once, and somebody bites both legs off and sends you a bunch of roses because they're so sorry you're not feeling well.
I took a cab at the airport. I wasn't in any mood to ride with the schnooks in the regular bus. New York, when we came out of the tunnel, looked just the same, everybody hurrying, everybody wrapped up in himself. The elevator starter at the network building remembered me, and I began to feel a little better.
Those guys are the first ones to get the word when the sling has been rigged.
"Take Mr. Dunham right up," he told the operator, and my spirits went up without mechanical help. Thirty-second, Mr. Dunham?"
"Thirty-second," I said, and slipped him a five, He said he was glad to see me back.
No sling today.
Yep. Little pretty-thighs on the reception table had a big row of teeth ready for me and a look down her cleavage. You can always tell how high you are in the network by how deep you can see. She must practice all night; I don't know when she sleeps, though I know with whom, usually…
And whooo-whoppie — here I am, with two vice presidents and an exec, and the bottle coming out, and welcome home to our Billy-boy, safe back from the wars.
No sling today. Slings tomorrow, or the day after, but none today.
Riker, the exec, was running the conference. "Bill, I suppose you know why we hauled you back here," he said.
Whatever he made out of my smile, he could keep. I hoisted my drink and let the ice clink against my teeth.
"That chimp — what did you call him, a chimponaut — of yours is the biggest thing since Jackie Gleason."
"Fat prospects, huh?" Very bad, but a standard move of mine. When they laugh at your bad jokes, you can ask for a raise. When they laugh at the good ones, it's not so sure, though I think those guys never do anything by accident…
They laughed at that one, so I knew that I was really high.
"Drink up, Billy-boy," Riker said.
I drank up, Out in the field I drink Scotch, but that close to Madison Avenue you are not a real fellow unless you drink bourbon-and-branch. I can re member when, it was scotch-on-the-rocks, but to ask for that now would date you. Never get dated, my friend; dates are for tombstones.
"Boys," I asked, "what can I do for you?"
Well, it seemed I couldn't do anything. They had just called me back to New York to find out if I liked Florida. But there's an end to that sort of thing; and finally Riker gives the nod to McLemore, and McLemore gives the nod to Hirts, and Hirts gives me the word, "Billy, you ever think of quitting the news end?"
"Nope." They were getting no change from me.
"You ever dream of being a producer?"
"Nope."
Of a dramatic show," McLemore asks, beginning to pass it up the line again. "Casting beautiful young dolls, kicking actors, bossing writers?"
"Nope. I am an old newsman; guess I'll die one."
"An executive producer," Riker says. "With a director under you, and an assistant producer."
"Listen, Rike, if I woke up in the same bed, or even in the same town three mornings in a row I wouldn't know where I was. I've been at it, newspaper, radio and TV since interviewing Dolley Madison was the hot thing to do."
"We all have to settle down," Riker said, who settled down when he was about eleven and his father left him three million bucks. "You've been an asset to this network, Bill. It's time you reaped some of the good things of life."
No sling was in sight, but it sounded like one was rigged. And yet, there was the bottle, there was the elevator starter, there was Little Miss Lowneck on the reception desk. I said, "Rike, what's the pitch? Let's quit horsing around. You know me: I'm an organization man. What does the organization want?"
"That's right, Bill," Riker said. "Leave us not fight City Hall, eh? It's this ape, Bill, this chimpanzee. Pan Satyrus. The chimponaut."
"What about him?"
Now we had all forgotten the bottle, and what good friends we were, and how we all love the network, our jobs and the U.S.A. Now we were working.
"An hour show," Riker said. "One of our best sponsors: North-South Family Group Insurance. Practically any budget we care to name. But, the chimp has to star. Period. Paragraph."
"So buy the chimp."
They all three looked at me like I had spat on their family Bibles. Which was fine; I had a reputation as a professional roughneck to maintain.
"Billy-boy," Hirts said.
"Always joking," McLemore contributed.
But Riker, the exec, was a boss. "You don't buy personalities," he said. "And he is the greatest personality in months. Since John Glenn, or Carolyn Kennedy."
"We could tell on the air you two hit it off," Hirts said. "You were talking like you'd known each other all your lives."
"He's only seven and a half," I said.
"He's born show business," McLemore said.
"He is what our sponsor wants," Riker finished the cycle.
So now I had the word; and in this business, when you get it, you listen. "In the words of the poet," I said, "I am only talking out loud. But A — he is government property. B — he is damned emotional. C— there were security men around him like he was the Russian ambassador. That ape knows something, and the government isn't going to let him out to tell it."
Riker nodded at McLemore and McLemore nodded at Hirts, and Hirts said, "You can handle it, Bill."
"There's a spot for me at NBC, and one at CBS," I said. "And Mutual or ABC, they know me of old."