one of you a Communist?'
The shocking word lay on the conference like a slow rain on a picnic. General Maguire looked as though he wished he were leading the Charge of the Light Brigade.
But Number One was suave and urbane and practiced with hecklers. 'Hardly,' he said, his voice flat and nasal. 'What do you know about Communists, Mr. Satyrus?'
'Why, they're the other party,' Pan said. 'They're the reason for all the projects that I and a couple of hundred other chimpanzees have been run around the country lately. Los Alamos, Alamagordo, Canaveral, Vandenberg. It seems — or so they keep saying on the radio and the television — that men have split up into two parties, Communist and the Free World Party. Which of you is which?'
'You never heard of Republicans and Democrats?' the Governor asked.
'Oh, that,' Pan Satyrus said.
'He's been in the South too long,' the Governor said. 'He's turned into a one-party man.'
'One-party chimp,' Pan Satyrus corrected him, 'If anything. No, the keepers usually turn off the radio when that sort of thing comes on. Have you ever thought of separating men into two parties, on an evolutionary basis?'
The Great Man said, 'Governor, I'm beginning to think I shouldn't have invited you to this shindig. I think a new political principle is about to be laid down.'
'Share and share alike,' the Governor said. 'How do you separate people into two evolutionary parties, Mr. Satyrus?'
Pan Satyrus swung down from the desk. A fly had somehow gotten into the austere room; Pan caught it with an absent-minded flick of his pink-palmed hand, and crushed it and threw it on the floor. 'Well,' he said, 'as you must know, some people have evoluted much more than others., For instance, look at these people here. Chief Bates has gone very far; in fact, he closely resembles a very young gorilla. His friends in the Navy notice it, they even honor him with the title of Ape, though he's a good ten thousand years from that. And then, on the other hand, take General Maguire. There's a gap of a half a million years there, gentlemen, and then only if you breed all the Maguires to very intelligent women.'
The Governor said, 'I'm beginning to wish you hadn't invited me, sir. This is getting much too personal. I hope I'm not next.'
Pan Satyrus's glowing gaze rested on him a moment.
Then he turned to Dr. Bedoian. 'Remember what we were talking about just outside the door there, doctor?'
'When you call me Aram, I always remember.'
'Flattery,' Pan Satyrus said, 'Don't be frightened, I'm not planning any violence. Men divide themselves, and then divide themselves again, gentlemen. Chimpanzees don't.'
The Governor leaned forward. 'But men capture chimpanzees and make them slaves. And do chimpanzees ever capture men?'
'Who wants them?' Pan asked.
Both the great men had been highly educated at those Eastern schools maintained to remove the embarrassment that inherited riches gives young men. The Number One Great Man said, 'Man is the only animal that dominates his environment, and therefore is the most highly evoluted animal.'
'Stick to that, sir,' Pan Satyrus said. 'Because men's are the only votes you are going to get. Do you ever see a chimpanzee at the polls?'
'I am not always sure,' the Governor said.
But the Great Man was intent on his question, 'You don't agree with that definition of evolution?'
Pan Satyrus swung back to his perch on the corner of the desk. 'Of course not,' he said.. 'This is like making work, and then being proud because you did the work you made necessary. The most highly evoluted animal is the one that has arrived at an ecology completely suitable to his needs — and then has enough sense to stay with it. In the case of the chimpanzee, everything we need is in a tropical closed forest, preferably deciduous. So where do you find chimpanzees?
In closed, deciduous, tropical forests, living a life of ease. Not at the North Pole, shooting polar bears in order to get the fur to wear to keep from freezing to death.'
'You make a good case,' the Governor said.
'Wait a minute,' the Number One interposed. 'What is the point to a chimpanzee's life? What do your people do with all this wonderful adjustment?'
'Not my people. My apes. We are not people. Or we weren't. Now I am, and I deeply regret it. Why, we have what you desire: time for long, slow chats with each other; time for speculation and rumination; perfect digestions; sex, of course; and we stay home and watch our children grow up. Sheer pleasure.'
He stretched his long arms and yawned. Then he hastily explored his coat. There was the cracking noise of his fingernails. Pan Satyrus said to the Great Man, 'You ought to fumigate more often.'
'Subtropics,' the Great Man said, succinctly. 'The natural environment for insects.'
Pan. Satyrus nodded. 'You may think you have a point. But chimpanzees seldom sleep in the same bed twice; so we are not bothered.'
'All right.' The Great Man brought his hand down on the table, and was again an executive. 'This has been a nice talk. Food for thought, when my worries keep me awake at night — which I'm sure never happens to a chimpanzee. But you know why we wanted to see you. And you know why I asked the Governor to be here: so you could be sure that the information we want from you is for the world and not just for my political advancement. How do you make a spaceship go faster than light?'
'You rearrange the controls,' Pan answered.
There was a long sigh from everybody in the room — every man — except Ape Bates and Happy Bronstein, who were still standing at attention with the ease of long practice.
Then there was a silence.
Then there was the bleat of Genera! Maguire. 'Sir, this ape has no intention of telling us. He's disaffected.'
'Three-quarters of a million years,' Pan Satyrus said, 'and then you'd only have a baboon, or maybe a rhesus.'
'General, you can wait outside,' the Great Man said.
General Maguire saluted, about-faced, vanished.
The Great Man said, 'Mr. Satyrus, consider that unsaid. It is ridiculous to suppose that you are an agent or a sympathizer of the Russians.'
'Correct,' Pan Satyrus said, 'or of yours. Or of any men.'
'So let us try and convince you that we are on the side of the angels,' the Great Man said. 'And, Governor, you take your licks when the time comes; I don't think this is going to be a soft sell.'
The governor laughed. 'You've already made a mistake, mentioning angels. Mr. Satyrus was about to ask you if you ever heard of any saintly chimpanzees.'
'Not bad,' Pan said. 'Does that screen come out of that window?'
'I suppose so,' the Great Man said.
'Happy, if you would,' Pan Satyrus said.
Happy Bronstein was a Radioman First. He had a screwdriver about his person; just where, since he was wearing whites, it was hard to say. But it appeared in his hand, and he stepped forward and in a couple of minutes the screen was out.
And so was Pan Satyrus. Off the table and on the windowsill and then gone, into the warm Florida air, flying through it to land in the shaggy date palm outside the window. Happy, still holding the screen, said, 'Look at him going down that trunk like a monkey.' Then he said, 'Sorry, sir,' to the Great Man.
The Great Man said, 'He is a monkey, Sparks.'
'You forget it when you're around him a while,' Happy Bronstein answered.
'Shouldn't we alert security?' the Governor asked.
'He can't escape,' the Great Man said. 'In a country full of people, he stands out. And I don't think he could disguise himself well enough to fool anybody.'
Pan Satyrus was now down in the garden, appearing and disappearing among the lush semi-tropical foliage.
