“Chimpanzees are different,” said Morris.
“I’m glad to hear it. Murdoch’s baby looks quite bright.”
“They usually do.”
“What shall we call him? I am so out of touch.”
“Berlin?” suggested Morris.
“He must be getting on. Isn’t there a psychologist with a name like a Dutchman?”
“Eysenck? He isn’t Oxford. I suppose you could endow a chair for him, but . . .”
“The camera, man!” snapped the Sultan.
Morris pressed the starter button of the fixed camera which covered about two-thirds of the grove, then checked how much film there was left to run; when he looked again through the window he saw that Murdoch’s baby, in one of its forays, had strayed within Dinah’s reach and she had grabbed it. Now she had it face down across her thigh and was beginning to peer and finger among the hairs along its spine. Through the glass they could not hear its little whimpers, but Murdoch’s scream was clear enough as she rose from her torpor and rushed over at Dinah, who with equal speed, still holding the baby, flung herself up the wire mesh and leaped for one of the central trees. Murdoch followed her route and, having both arms free, had almost caught up when Dinah swung to the next tree, dangled for an instant from one of the metal branches, and simply dropped. She fell heavily on Sparrow’s back, let the baby fall and clutched to steady herself at Sparrow’s neck.
Certainly Sparrow was in a nervous state. He shot across the floor just as if he were starting a male chimpanzee’s charging display, but with Dinah still clinging to his back like a rucksack with one strap broken. Murdoch snatched up her baby and rushed with it to the furthest end of the cage, where she stood for a while chattering angrily at the group, until she settled to possessive grooming of the much-groomed infant. Meanwhile Dinah had let go of Sparrow, who, having reached the end of the cage and tried in vain to wrench a metal branch from a concrete tree, came charging straight back at her, swinging his right arm as if he were twirling a club.
By all jungle rights she ought to have cowered out of his way, probably presenting her rump to him. But as the main relationship in her life had been with Morris her experience of male domination had been, to say the least, mild. Besides she always had a tricky temper when you removed from her a toy with which she had not finished playing, and no doubt that was how she thought of Murdoch’s baby; so she stood her ground and hooted back at Sparrow. Morris hardly noticed the glass of the window slide up.
Sparrow halted in the middle of his charge and began to bounce up and down, chattering back. Now both arms were swinging, and Dinah was losing confidence. Suddenly, close at Morris’s ear, there came a sharp whoof, and in the same instant Sparrow made a three-foot leap, straight in the air. When he landed he stood stock still, peering with horror at the shiny dart that now protruded from his right thigh; a wary hand came down and plucked it out. He inspected it with glazing curiosity for several seconds before he crumpled to the floor.
Dinah, still snickering with fury, came forward and pissed on the fallen body, a reaction of a sort that Morris had never seen from her before—nor did he remember reading about it in any of the literature. Rowse, whose lethargy had been partly alleviated by the drama, came slowly over and grunted warningly at Dinah, who this time had the sense to retreat. Rowse pinched Sparrow experimentally three or four times, then returned to the group with the express purpose of dislodging old Cecil from his place against a tree and thus establishing himself as leader of the group. The window slid shut. Morris stopped the camera and turned to the Sultan, who was standing with the squat spring-gun cradled on his arm, waiting smugly for applause. Behind him his enormous black bodyguard, Dyal, grinned with simple pleasure. And behind him the stuffed gorilla they used for target practice grinned too, with simulated fury.
Morris’s fury was real.
“Christ!” he said.
“You must mean ‘Allah!’” said the Sultan.
“I mean,” said Morris slowly, “how the hell do you expect Dinah to integrate naturally with the group if every time there’s any kind of confrontation her opponent collapses at her feet? This experiment is your idea, not mine, so for God’s sake get it into your head that the whole point of putting her down there at all is to let her begin to find her place in the social hierarchy. You want her to mate and have a baby. How’s that going to happen if every time a male looks at her he suddenly falls flat on his face?”
“It was a good shot, don’t you think?” said the Sultan. “He was bouncing up and down, but I got him just in that big vein that runs down inside the thigh. In fact it was a perfectly beautiful shot. He went out like a light, didn’t he?”
“It was a complete fluke,” said Morris.
“Oh, come, these guns aren’t as inaccurate as all that.”
“What’s more, it was high-grade hooliganism. You’re a bloody trigger-happy . . .”
His anger tailed away in the knowledge that it would be an error actually to call the Sultan a wog to his face. His Pacific Majesty got a kick out of a relationship in which Morris was the only man in all Q’Kut who could speak to him without subservience, but he also possessed a generous ration of his race’s cunning for avenging an insult.
“I really must protect my investment,” said the Sultan. “After all, I am paying Dinah ten thousand dollars a month.”
“You are paying me!”
“Of course, of course, my dear fellow. I do apologise. I’m a bloody trigger-happy wog. Hello! What gives?”
From the doors of the zoo a wheezy flute tootled. Dyal made a clucking noise in his throat and strode off down the inspection gallery. The Sultan handed Morris the empty spring-gun, picked up the old one which he used for practice, swung round and fired from the hip at the stuffed gorilla. Instantly the dart (also an old, expended one) was there, glistening in the middle of the bare, heroic chest. The Sultan reloaded and fired again. By the time Dyal returned the gorilla was wearing a precisely spaced row of darts from his windpipe to his midriff, like buttons on a fancy waistcoat. Dyal whispered a few words. The Sultan nodded. Dyal waved to the jet-black eunuch who had appeared by the doors, then strode away to the gorilla to retrieve the darts.
The eunuch beckoned to someone out of sight. After a brief pause a white-robed Arab crawled round the corner on hands and knees. He paused, raised his splendidly bearded head and looked down the vista to where his master stood. Doggedly he lowered his head and crawled forward. Long practice had made him expert in the knack of not kneeling on his beard.
By Morris’s side the spring-gun whoofed. He turned and saw that Dyal was now decorating the gorilla’s chest with a neat row of medals, while the Sultan watched critically. Their backs were towards the crawling man.
“For God’s sake!” whispered Morris.
The Sultan turned and looked unimpressed at the new arrival.
“Can’t you let him off?” whispered Morris. “My nerves won’t stand it! He’ll have a heart attack before he gets here!”
“What will you bet?”
“For Christ’s sake! OK, for Allah’s sake!”
“We’ll make a believer of you yet,” said the Sultan. All the same he called in ultra-gracious tones to let the man know that he was, this once, permitted to approach his sovereign with the gait of a fellow human. The man rose, bowed deeply and came impassively forward. Looking at him Morris was conscious that he had somehow managed to lose yet another minor engagement with his employer. Akuli bin Zair, major domo of the Palace and effectively Prime Minister of Q’Kut, was not exactly an enemy of Morris’s, but he was not the man to appreciate any departure from ancient custom. Although they had never had any conversation apart from the stateliest compliments in classical Arabic, Morris knew bin Zair to be a bigoted opponent of any kind of Westernisation, especially when it took the form of research into the linguistic abilities of unclean beasts. He would certainly not have come to the zoo unless he had important and urgent business to transact, and Morris wanted no part of that. It was clearly time to withdraw.