“That’s all right,” Archier said. “I shall be twenty-one on my next birthday. And I’ve been Admiral of Ten-Fleet for more than three years.”
2
Pout’s cage had no visible bars. Bars might have been an improvement. Then at least he would have been able to see the limits of his prison.
To the casual eye he lived in a bare but pleasant room, at liberty to leave by either of two doors or to approach the people or robots who occasionally passed through. In reality he was confined to one small corner of this room. In the floor there was a hole for his wastes. A slot in the wall flapped open at intervals and delivered edible monotonous substances. A faucet squirted water in measured amounts whenever he pressed a lever. Sometimes he would play, with the water, watching it swirl round the concavity in the floor and disappear down the waste hole.
And there were bars: invisible ghost bars of pain—jagged, flashing pain that sent him mewling and cringing into the join of the walls if he tried to leave his corner. He knew that they were actual bars, because there were gaps in between them. In the past, by trial and error, he had managed to find a gap and put his arm through almost to the shoulder.
Pout could see that other people weren’t constrained in this way. Other people didn’t look like him, either. They didn’t have his big cup-shaped ears, or his simian-like features (with the elongated lips that, though he wasn’t aware of it, had given him his name), or his over-long arms. Also, they had many satisfactions that were denied him. They smiled and looked pleased often. On this score Pout’s imagination was a dim, smouldering ember. His response to anything outside his experience was hatred and resentment, but he was not introspective enough to know that these feelings drew their heat from envy.
There was one person more familiar to him than any other, and this was Torth Nascimento, curator of the museum where Pout lived. One day, as Pout was squatting over the excrement hole, Nascimento entered in the company of a stranger. The latter, a tall man with straw-coloured hair and mild blue eyes, paused. He inspected the scene without the least concern for Pout’s privacy.
“Is this another of your chimeras, Torth?”
“Yes,” Nascimento drawled. “That’s Pout.”
“He’s an odd-looking customer,” the newcomer remarked as Pout finished his business. “What’s he made of?”
“Just about every primate there is. Mostly, though, he’s gibbon, baboon and human.”
“Can he talk?”
“Oh yes. Intellectually he’s very nearly human. Unfortunately his morals are execrable… so much so that we have to keep him locked up.” He pointed to a light in the ceiling. It was a warning that a pain projector was in operation. “The robot file clerks took care of him in his infancy. They even taught him how to look into the files, so in a queer sort of way he’s had an education.”
“Your file clerks? Are they the only company he’s ever had?”
“Oh come, Lopo, don’t be so disapproving,” Nascimento said, glancing at the expression on his guest’s face. “There’s nothing actually illegal in making chimeras.”
“Not if you have a licence for it.”
“I’m sure I’d get one if the question came up. This is a museum, remember.” Nascimento paused thoughtfully. “You know, I’m not surprised the chimeric approach was abandoned in Diadem. Inter-species gene manipulation isn’t as simple as it sounds. So difficult to hit on a good mix… just look at Pout here if you want a case in point. Compounded entirely of the primate family, the best nature has to offer, yet a perfectly horrid creature. Now you’ve brought my attention to him I must remember to have him destroyed. He’s not even interesting enough to be an exhibit.”
The other man bristled. “What’s this I hear? You propose to destroy a bona-fide second-class citizen of the Empire?”
“Is he? Yes, I suppose he is. All right, don’t get excited.” Nascimento ushered him out of the room—really an enlarged section of passageway—where Pout lived. The two were silent until they reached Nascimento’s office, where the curator shooed away a couple of robots who were playing chess.
Lopo de Cogo sat down. Nascimento set a tiny glass of purple liqueur before him. “I don’t know why you object to my making chimeras, Lopo. I thought you sympathised with the Whole-Earth-Biota party?”
“Please, Torth, that was in our student days,” Lopo said uneasily. “All right, we’ll forget about chimeras. I’m afraid I’ve something more serious to talk about. Is it true you’ve been giving artificial intelligence to non-mammals? That is illegal, whichever way you look at it.”
“I’m not sure I agree. You seem to be forgetting my museum has a special charter covering all the sciences.”
De Cogo bit his lip. If taxed about his behaviour Nascimento invariably referred to some ancient warrant granted by a ruler of the planet in days past and never revoked. He never, however, had been able to produce this warrant.
Hitherto de Cogo’s old friendship with the eccentric curator had overridden both his duty as an official inspector and his personal feelings. But it was becoming plain to him that Nascimento’s ethics (and perhaps his mind) had reached a point of non-recovery.
Also, the fellow was clearly a bungler. His remarks on the difficulty of gene-mixing were the cry of an amateur barely literate in the field. In Diadem chimerics was an advanced art. Chimeras had outnumbered pure humans there in the Empire’s heyday. Cell fusion had begun to replace sex as a method of reproduction.
That had been the Whole-Earth-Biota concept: that the dividing lines between species would disappear and the entire mammalian class of old Earth would merge into a single society. But the Biotist philosophy, as it was called, had foundered. It alarmed many pure humans to see the genes of Homo sapiens melting away into a common pool, and radical gene mixing eventually became unfashionable. It was mainly used now for cosmetic purposes. People in Diadem would take their zygotes to a chimericists to give an unborn child a trace of some particular animal. A touch of tiger, for instance, added a personal magnetism that was instantly recognisable.
Although Diadem was overwhelmingly populated by animals, de Cogo doubted if the Biotists would ever be able seriously to revive their cause. There were too many advantages in giving animals artificial intelligence instead, altering their genes only to adjust them for size, or occasionally in place of surgery, to give them speech organs. Humans remained the master race. Animal intelligence, previously unpredictable, no longer depended on a successful gene mix—even humans were given adplants sometimes to bring their intelligence up to scratch.
On one thing, however, both the old Biotists and the modern Diademians were agreed. Neither human genes nor artificial intelligence should be conferred upon non-mammals. “Whole-Earth-Biota” was really a euphemism for “Whole-Earth-Mammalia.”
De Cogo had to press the point. “Please give me a direct answer, Torth.”
Nascimento shrugged.
“Please, you must tell me, Torth. You know how the law regards this. A mammal has emotional sensitivity—it can be civilised. But an intelligent reptile, or raptor—it has no feelings! It’s forever savage and a danger to others!” Officially such creatures could never be regarded as sentient, no matter what their intellectual capacity.
Nascimento giggled. “I’ve got to admit an intelligent snake remains a most uncivil sort of being, not really a person at all. But when you run a museum you feel the need to be comprehensive—you follow me?”