Then he reappeared, and shinnied up the palm and swung back into the room. His feet were grasping a number of vegetal objects. 'Put title screen back in, Happy,' he said. 'The insects are bad, at these latitudes.'
He sat down on the floor, sorted his loot. 'Bananas,' he said. 'Not the sweet ones, but those nice little red ones that do so well here in Florida. Carob pods. I love them. You have a nice garden, sir. I could support a family of five out of it.'
The Great Man said, 'There are some lath houses and so on in back that grow real vegetables. Carrots and cabbage and tomatoes and so on.'
'Nature's bounty, not man's, contents me,' Pan Satyrus said. 'Carob pod, anyone?'
'No thanks.'
'When hungry, eat,' Pan said. 'When tired, sleep. And let man dominate his environment.'
The Governor said, 'When I am cornered in an argument, I get unbearably hungry. Most thin men do. You look to me like a thin chimpanzee, Pan Satyrus. Right, doctor?'
Dr. Bedoian answered. 'Tall and thin for his species, sir.'
'Pressure getting bad, Mr. Satyrus?' the Governor asked. 'Did you find yourself weakening?'
Pan Satyrus pulled a carob pod through his teeth, spat the skin towards a wastebasket. It missed. He chewed the seeds thoroughly and swallowed. 'I hadn't heard any arguments yet. Ill propose a question. Why should I help one group of men to get a weapon that will kill another group of men and thus start a war that might sweep over the tropics?'
'The closed, deciduous forest of the tropics,' the Governor put in.
'Right.' A red banana skin landed on the other side of the wastebasket.
The Governor turned to the Great Man. 'Check to you.'
The Great Man said, 'We sincerely believe that what you call Our Side — and we call the Free World — is right, and will triumph in the end because it is right. We believe the other side is led by men who rob other men — very many other men — of their freedom in order to gratify a neurotic, even a psychotic, craze for power.'
'You forget one thing,' Pan said.
'What's that?'
'Seven-and-a-half year old chimpanzees can't vote.'
'That's flippant,' the Great Man said. 'All right. I will try again. If we had the power to make an object go faster than light — which power you seem to have — we would build what we call an anti-missile missile which would render us invulnerable to rocket attack. And then peace would come to the world, including the closed, deciduous forests of the tropics.'
Pan Satyrus explored a tooth with one of his long fingers. It happened to be a finger on his left foot 'You say this is what you would do. But you are an elected officer, in power for a limited time. Suppose your successor decided to make a missile instead of an anti-missile missile?'
The Great Man laughed. 'My successor, nine chances out of ten, will be either a man I nominate, or the Governor here. Nine chances out of ten, a man can't get better odds than that.'
'I am not a man, I am a chimpanzee. And I don't think I'll tell you. I don't think you — nothing personal — are highly enough evoluted to have a secret like this.'
'Who is?' the Governor asked.
'Species who know enough not to use such information. Species who know enough to live naturally, without trying to dominate an environment they shouldn't have migrated to in the first place.'
'Back to Africa,' the Great Man said.
'Don't sound so sour, sir. I'll go this far with you: I have no intention of dealing with the Russians, either.'
'That is not enough.'
'It's a good deal,' Pan Satyrus said. 'After all, the Russians didn't put my mother into the cage in which I was born. They didn't take me out of that cage and strap me to space sleds and pressure chambers and rocket capsules.'
'They would have if one of their expeditions had trapped your mother, instead of one of ours.'
'Oh, they are men, all right,' Pan Satyrus said. Then he yawned, spreading his thick gums wide, exposing his huge teeth. 'Doctor, I'm getting tired.'
The Great Man said, 'I haven't had anybody say that in front of me since I took the oath for this high and noble office.' He laughed. 'May I ask one more question, Mr. Satyrus?'
Pan Satyrus was combing his coat with his fingernails again. He nodded, gravely and judicially. 'If I may ask you and your friend one.'
'You seem very fond of reading. Are there any libraries in your closed canopy, deciduous, tropical, African jungle?'
Pat Satyrus said, 'There's hope for you. ' Then he thought, and absent-mindedly his fingernails clicked again as they found another guest in his fur. 'I suppose there are no libraries. But, you know, fond as I've been of reading, I think it's because I've always been a captive. What is there to look at in a Primate House, or a biological laboratory, except a book, over some attendant's shoulder? When you've admired the exploits of the rhesus monkeys, they begin to bore you.'
'Dr. Bedoian, get Pan Satyrus the life and writings of Thoreau,' the Governor said. 'He's under the same delusion, that the simple life is best.'
Dr. Bedoian said, 'Yes, sir. I suppose it's my shoulder he's read over most.'
The Great Man looked closely at the doctor. But all he said was, 'What was your question, Pan?'
Pan Satyrus sat up straight, resting his palms on the floor, all four of them. 'You and the Governor,' he asked, 'do you value the high offices you hold?'
Both men nodded, cautiously.
'I mean, you regard them as high offices?'
Again they nodded, in beautiful unison, though they were of rival political parties.
'You deem them more important than the fortune your father, sir, and your grandfather, Governor, accumulated?' Pan stood up. 'Which would you give up first? Office or fortune?'
Neither man moved this time. Their expressions were so similar that it seemed that the gap created by Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson had finally closed.
People do not leave the presence of great men until they are dismissed.
Chimpanzees do.
CHAPTER SEVEN
He had tested this vaccine on 10,000 monkeys, 160 chimpanzees, and 243 humans. The volunteers were mostly inmates of Federal penitentiaries.
Once again they were rolling north. But this time there was a different air to the procession. A security man rode with them, and there was little doubt that the driver was an officer, too; in his light tropical worsteds it was impossible to hide a gun. Happy Bronstein was in the front car, Ape Bates in the rear one, and only Dr. Bedoian, of his friends, remained with Pan Satyrus.
As before, a car went ahead of them and another car behind them, but now the first car used its siren, and they didn't stop for anything.
'Am I under arrest?' Pan Satyrus asked.
The man beside the driver said, 'You are not to talk.'
'But I have to. I retrogressed — or devoluted — and I have a compulsion to talk. Like a human being.'
The security man reached into his coat. 'This is a revolver, a.38. This other gun has a narcotic in it, a powerful one. I am under orders to shoot you with the narcotic, and if that does not stop you, I am allowed to use a lead bullet. Do not talk.'
