born right in a cage in the Zoo? Whatya mean, no bronze plaque?'
'Yep,' Mac said. 'Yep, I got it. Thanks for the tip, Bill. I didn't know what zoo he was born in.'
I hung up the phone. Riker was looking at me with a strange expression.
'Rike, unwind. I don't want a job in Network. I like it out in the field.'
'But you'll produce the show. Or host it, anyway?'
'For a start. This is a very friendly chimp, Rike. He takes to people. We'll find him a producer and a host he likes. Maybe pretty girls.'
'I didn't know he was a New Yorker. I didn't know he was born in the Bronx Zoo,' Hirts said.
'Neither did I. I forgot to ask him. What's it to me? My show is national.'
CHAPTER NINE
Every attempt to re-mould his biological heritage 'runs off' an otherwise clever and ductile animal of this species 'like water off a duck's back.'
The gates clanged when they were shut, but the locks turned noiselessly, because they were well oiled.
The security men had taken away their shoelaces, and Ape Bates's belt. There had been nothing to take away from Pan Satyrus, of course, because he had not worn clothes since he got out of the space suit.
Then they were alone, two sailors and a chimpanzee in three detention cells. 'How about the doc?' Happy asked. 'You don't think they're doing something to him?'
'Questioning him,' Ape said. 'I figure they figure hell break sooner than you or me. Or Pan here.'
'Break about what?' Pan asked.
'We're an international conspiracy,' Happy said. 'You shouldn't have landed so the Cooke could pick you up. She's top security secret. What they call an experimental prototype.'
You sound like a yeoman,' Ape said.
Pan was swinging gently from the bars of his cell, from side to side and then from top to bottom. 'This isn't bad,' he said. 'I'm used to cages.'
'We're not,' Happy said.
Ape grunted. 'Stow it, Happy. I don't know about you, but I bet I spent more time in the brig than Pan is old. What's it, seven and a half years? Yeah, I could give you lessons on being in a cage. Difference is, I never learned to like it.'
Pan came to rest on the shelf-cot. 'So you think we are here because I learned too much about the Cooke? But I didn't see anything but the deck and your dining room.'
'Chiefs' mess,' Ape corrected.
'You see? I know nothing about ships. That was the first one I was on. I couldn't compare it with any other, or describe it, really. You think if I tell them that, they'll let us out?'
'How do you make a spaceship go faster'n light?' Happy asked. 'That's what they want to know.'
'But man isn't ready to know that,' Pan said. 'He'd use it in war.'
'Yeah,' Ape said. 'So we're in the brig. And likely to stay there.'
Pan Satyrus swung from side to side of his cell, rising with each swing till he was at the top. Hanging from one hand, he experimentally pulled a bit of mortar from the crack where the bars met the ceiling, and put it in his mouth. Then he spat it out again and swung back down to the cot. 'I'm hungry.'
'You shouldn't a told them that,' Ape said. 'They don't feed you till you talk.'
'And he won't talk,' Happy said.
'He shouldn't talk,' Ape said. 'War's no good.'
'You're talking like an ape. Starving's no good, either.'
'Many a chimpanzee has died sooner than surrender his dignity,' Pan said. Then he caught hold of the bars and swung a while, in silence. Then he went back to his cot, groomed himself, and folded his hands over his face.
Two of the men who seemed to be flunkies around the place came in, dressed in the oil company overalls that passed for uniforms there. They stood with drawn guns just inside the cellblock door, and stood guard while another man brought in food, first for Ape and then for Happy. Then he went out again.
Ape said, 'How about Pan here?'
'No chow,' one of the guards said.
Ape snorted, and took a piece of bread off his tray. 'Here, Pan.'
'Hold it, sailor,' one of the guards said, and brought the muzzle of his gun up.
'You guys aren't human!' Happy exclaimed.
'Yes they are,' Pan said. 'Precisely.'
Ape said, 'I ain't hungry. You can take this slum away.'
'Mine, too,' Happy said.
One of the guards whistled and the flunky came back and took the trays out. Again the metal clanged, and they were alone.
'Now we know,' Happy said.
'I guess we had better leave here,' Pan said.
The sailors looked at him.
'Human beings specialize too much,' Pan said. 'It seems there are jail builders and cage builders. At least, no respectable zoo would think of putting a chimpanzee in a cage like this.'
He reached out and bent one of the bars up out of its floor socket. Then he bent another one. 'I should hate to see what a gorilla would do to a place like this,' he said. 'What do they take me for, a marmoset?' He bent another bar.
When he had a big enough hole to crawl through, he tied two of the bars into a knot. 'The Mark of Zorro,' he said. 'I read it in a comic book.'
'Not over Doc Bedoian's shoulder?' Happy said.
Pan was outside his cell by then. 'Hardly,' he said. He laughed; at least it sounded as though he did. 'Silly,' he said. 'I have retrogressed or devoluted or whatever it is.' He reached out and plucked the lock off Happy's cell door. 'I should have done this in the first place. But I like exercise, it makes me feel good,'.
He plucked Ape's lock away, too, and loped towards the single, barred window, putting most of his weight on his knuckles.
As he pulled each bar out of the window he passed it to Ape. 'No use making any more fuss than we have to,' he said. 'There. Give me your hand, Happy.' Clinging to the outside frame of the window with one hand, he reached down and pulled Happy up, let him climb out by himself. Then he pulled Ape up, jumped out himself, and gave the whole window cell to the chief.
Ape landed on the ground with a grunt. They were towards the back of the fake tank farm, near the woven- wire fence. Pan looked the fence over and grunted in imitation of Ape. 'No problem there.'
'Watch it,' Happy said. 'It might be electric.' He looked around, then pointed at a live oak. 'This place is so G.I. neat, well have to chaw a limb off that No sticks or anything around.'
'No sweat,' Pan said. He clambered up the tree, snapped a substantial branch off, climbed down with it in one hand. 'Here, old boy.'
Cautiously Happy leaned the limb against the woven wire. When there were no sparks, he said, 'Go ahead.'
Pan reached out and pulled the fence down to the ground and they walked out over it.
The two sailors stumbled as they went, their black shoes wabbling on their feet. Pan Satyrus led them into the first clump of hammock, the hardwood groves that dot the flat piney woods of Florida. Then he went swinging up into the trees, and, after a while, he came back with a handful of thin vine stems.
Happy and Ape started plaiting shoelaces for themselves. Their experienced hands were very fast at it.
