"We're on unlimited shore leave, Ape," Harry said. "The skipper's not allowed to bring the Cooke in except in guarded shores."
Me, I was pushing forward. I shoved the mike out at the chimp and said, "Is it true you can talk, now, Mem?"
For a minute I thought he wasn't going to answer me. In fact, for a minute I thought he was going to take the mike and make me eat it. Which is about the only thing I haven't done with a mike.
But then he smiled — I guess — and said, "Of course, you don't know any better than to call me Mem. My name is Pan Satyrus, sir. And yours?"
I told him mine. It doesn't hurt you to get your same out on the air as often as you can. I let a beat 20 after it, and then asked him, "How come you can talk?"
He thought that over. "A very good question, Mr. Dunham. If I were to ask it of you, how would you answer it?"
Sixteen years on the air, and you don't get stumped easy. "Cause my whole family has talked, for years. How about yours?"
He gave me that smile again. I am pretty sure it was a smile. "Let us just say that they haven't cared to. Fair enough?" Then he shrugged. I wished he wouldn't; when he moved those arms and shoulders I remembered he didn't even have a chain on him.
The chief named Ape — pretty good name, too — said, "This guy's bothering you, Pan, Happily give him the deep six."
"Oh, no," the monkey said. It was sure a funny thing to be talking to a monkey. He had an accent something like I remember Roosevelt's. But with a little Bronx on top. "He has his living to make. Ask anything you want, Mr. Dunham."
MacMahon, the top G-man — Special Agent in Charge, I guess — yelped, "No security questions. Nothing about the spaceship or the — the Cooke!"
The chimp grinned again. I've seen smaller teeth on a horse, and the winner of the Derby hit me one year, right in the circle of roses. "You gonna keep on talking? I mean, now you started?"
"I know what you mean," he said. "And I'm afraid the answer is yes."
Then I was stopped, me, Bill Dunham. But only for a second, of course. "Tell me — you mind if I call you by your first name — Pan, tell me, do all chimps talk to each other. I mean, is there a chimp language?"
His eyes looked into mine, and for a minute I forgot his teeth and those shoulders. I mean, for a minute, I was like back just getting out of journalism school, all full of good English and ideals. He had awful sad eyes.
"You don't happen to have a piece of chewing gum, do you, Mr. Dunham?" he asked. "I have a foul taste in my mouth."
Iggie shoved a stick of gum into my hand, off camera. That Iggie is sharp. Maybe too sharp for an assistant. I better watch it. The camera moved in for a big-head close-up as the chimp put the gum in his mouth, gave it a few chews and swallowed. Then he said, "Thanks," and the picture came back to a two-shot, him and me.
"What do you think of American women, Pan?"
"Well, they aren't chimpanzees, you know. But I do suppose they're good enough for American men."
The guy who drives our mobile unit, MacLinsky, had been blocking off the AP man, but now the reporter got away from him and came up. All right with me; the people like to see an interview, and we had the only picture.
The newspaper fellow said, "I'm Jerry Leffingwell, AP." He had a cracker accent you could have spread on pancakes. A local stringer. "How was the view from up in the spaceship?"
"Monotonous. I could see all of Florida at once."
MacMahon bawls, "No questions about the spaceship."
I think the chimp laughed. I wasn't sure. He didn't do anything quite like anybody else I had ever interviewed.
When I cut back in it was with what I considered a real sharp question. "How about saying something for us in monkey talk?"
Then I wished I hadn't. The chimp looked at me in a way that made me wish we had some bars between us, and I didn't care if I was in the cage or he was. He waited almost a minute, and then he asked, "Tarsier, tupia, marmoset, rhesus?"
"Well, your own kind."
"I am not a monkey, sir, any more than you are,".
This was getting worse, and us on the air. The two sailors were laughing at me, too, and I wasn't sure that the camera crew had them out of the frame. The older one, the chief, said, "Ask him about them rhesus monkeys, mister." Something in the way he said it told me not to.
Eight then another hot idea came to me. "Do you chimps at Cape Canaveral and White Sands — your home base is White Sands, isn't it? — take any pride in what you're doing for science?"
Again he waited a little before answering. "I can only speak for myself. The answer, I think, is no."
'You don't feel any patriotism in the cold war?"
He looked at me a little more kindly than he had. "You know, when you get over being so eager, Mr. Dunham, you almost talk like a man of education. Why, not all the work we do — that I have done— has been in the interests of war. They have used me— and it is never nice to be used without your consent — in medical research. And the male nurse that watched me was reading an article on the exploding population crisis. Ironical, don't you think?"
Don't let my public know it, but I went to college. Not since then had I had my nose bumped so hard; it was a philosophy professor that did it that time, instead of a chimpanzee. "I guess our idea is, stop the diseases first, and mankind will work out a way to feed them all later."
"Pretty risky," he said.
The AP man crowded back in just when it was getting interesting. "Is there a lady chimp at Canaveral or White Sands you're interested in?"
Mr. Satyrus looked at the cracker. "Did you know, Mr. Leffingwell, that there is the greatest variety of skin pigment in chimpanzees of any mammal not cultivated by man?"
AP said, "Aw, now." A brilliant answer. I could have made it myself.
"So I have to watch out, while in Florida, against love, or you might say passion," Mr. Satyrus said. "Since I am a brown-skinned chimpanzee, supposing I fell in love with a white-skinned one? I'd be liable to arrest."
Leffingwell said, That law doesn't apply to monkeys."
Mr. Satyrus said, "I was not talking of monkeys, sir," and turned back to me. "I never finished answering your question, Mr. Dunham. About the cold war. My contacts have been limited — keepers, scientists, doctors, other chimpanzees, an occasional gorilla. War might be a good thing if its purpose was to abolish the other side, and use their living room and their resources. As a man of the world — which you are — does this ever happen?"
For the first time in years, I forgot I was on the air. I let some time go dead while I chose my own answer, and for that you can have your lapel mike stripped away in broad daylight in Radio City. I said, "Not since the Middle Ages. Nowadays, the winner always quits in time to help the loser build himself back to strength."
"You have answered your own question, I think," Mr. Satyrus said. Then, without warning, he sat down on the dock, and put both his big hands over his head. "The chimpanzee," he said, "if I may quote Ivan Sanderson, and every chimpanzee has read him over at least one shoulder, is found only where there is tall closed forest. In other words, gentlemen, I need shade."
He got up, as far as chimps ever get — his knuckles still on the ground — and shuffled forward. The two sailors trotted along after him. For a moment I thought he was going to try and knock our five-ton mobile unit into the sea, but then he swerved and went alongside it. The sailors had caught up with him by then. The younger one took off his white cap, and put it on Mr. Satyrus* head, and the chimp reached up and patted him on the shoulder.
The sailor staggered a little, but kept going forward.
The plainclothes men led by MacMahon, followed them, at a good, safe distance, and the interview was over.