Escape from the Planet of the Apes - Pournelle Jerry - Страница 4

“Sounds good.” Jardin lifted the phone by the chart table. “Bridge? My compliments to the Skipper, and please take this ship into Long Beach Navy Station, standard cruising speed.” He turned back to his aide. “You found the experts yet?”

“Sir, there are a couple of animal psychologists on the UCLA staff. There’s some Army grant or other funding their work, so they’ve got clearances. They’ll start in on the apes tomorrow morning.”

“Good.” Jardin stood. “Let’s go see those apes, anyway. Has anybody fed them? There ought to be steaks aboard this ship—would they want them raw or cooked?”

“Sir, I’m told that chimpanzees are pretty much vegetarians.”

“Oh. Well, we can’t let them starve.”

“No, sir. I’ve got a sack full of oranges. One of the pilots had a supply. I thought I’d take those below.”

“Good thinking.” They walked through the ship and down two levels to the wardroom. A Marine sentry stood outside the door.

“You have them alone in there, Corporal?” Admiral Jardin demanded.

“No, sir. The surgeon’s inside with them, sir. But—”

“But what, Corporal?”

“You better look for yourself, Admiral. Them apes ain’t normal, sir. Not like any apes I ever saw.” He opened the wardroom door.

Surgeon Lt. Commander Gordon Ashmead, USNR, stood in one corner of the wardroom staring at the chimpanzees. The three apes were seated at the wardroom table. On the floor between them was a large valise.

Three full pressure suits lay stretched out on the Wardroom floor. Coveralls were hung across chairs. As the admiral entered, two of the chimps stood, exactly as a junior officer might stand when an admiral enters; the third chimpanzee struggled to close a zippered housecoat.

“Excuse me,” Admiral Jardin said. “I didn’t mean—good Lord. What am I saying?” He looked at the apes, then at Ashmead. “Good afternoon, Lieutenant Commander,” Jardin said. “I see you’ve undressed them.”

“No, sir. They took off the suits themselves.”

“Uh?” Jardin frowned. There was nothing easy about getting out of a full pressure suit. They fit like gloves, and had dozens of snaps and laces that had to be loosened. “With no help?”

“They helped each other, sir.”

“And now they’re pretending to dress,” Jardin’s aide said.

“Pretending hell,” Admiral Jardin snapped. “They are dressing. Doctor, where did they get those clothes?”

“They brought them with them, sir. In that valise.”

“Now just a bloody minute,” Jardin protested. “You’re telling me that three chimpanzees got out of a space capsule carrying a suitcase. They brought that suitcase down here, took off their pressure suits, and out of their suitcase they took clothes that fit. Then they put on the clothes.”

“Yes, sir,” Ashmead said emphatically. “That is precisely what I am telling you, Admiral.”

“I see.” Jardin looked at the three chimps. They had all resumed their seats at the wardroom table. “Do you think they understand what we’re saying, Doctor?”

Ashmead shrugged. “I doubt it, sir. They are very well trained, and chimps are the most intelligent of the animals. Except, perhaps, for dolphins. But all attempts to teach them languages have failed. They can learn signals but not syntax.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Well, sir, a dog, for instance, can understand commands. The command is a signal. When he hears it, he does something. But you can’t tell the dog to go around the block and up the stairs, then execute the command. You could train him to do it that way, of course, but you couldn’t tell him to do it. He wouldn’t understand. That would take language.”

“They sure look like they’re listening to us,” Admiral Jardin said. He turned to his aide. “Greg, give them their oranges. Maybe they’re hungry.”

“Yes, sir.” Hartley laid the bag on the wardroom table. One of the chimpanzees took it and carefully lifted out each orange. Another reached into the valise and took out a small pocket knife.

“Here now! Wait a second,” the Marine shouted. He advanced toward the chimpanzee.

“Hold it,” Dr. Ashmead said. “It’s all right, Corporal. The knife’s very short and not sharp at all. It’s the second tool they’ve employed—they used a small pick to untie a knot in one of their suit laces.”

“Um.” Admiral Jardin nodded to the Marine. “It’s all right if the Lt. Commander says it is, son. Look, you go out and arrange for an MP van to meet us at the docks, uh? We’ll want to take these critters to the zoo.”

The chimpanzee carefully peeled the first orange and passed it to another ape. She began peeling a second.

“That’s an interesting behavior pattern too, Admiral,” Ashmead said. “Usually apes won’t share. Occasionally a male will offer something to a female, and of course the big alpha males demand and get whatever they want from the smaller males, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a female offering a male a peeled orange.”

“She’s giving the next one away, too. Very nice manners, eh Greg?”

“Yes, sir,” Jardin’s aide said automatically. He couldn’t care less about the manners of a chimpanzee. He wanted to get back to San Diego where a blonde go-go dancer was waiting. She wouldn’t wait long. She didn’t have nice manners at all, but she had other compensations.

“Now what’s she doing?” Jardin asked. The chimpanzee had eaten the third orange, and was beginning to peel more for the others. She kept the peelings in a neat pile. “Greg, shove that wastebasket over there and see what she does, will you?”

“Yes, sir.” The chimp pushed the peelings off into the basket. One fell to the deck and she carefully leaned over to pick it up and drop it in with the rest.

“They sure are well trained, Admiral,” Dr. Ashmead said. “I’d almost think they were somebody’s house pets.”

One of the chimpanzees snorted loudly.

Admiral Jardin frowned. “Well, it’s not my problem. For all I care they could stay in the Long Beach Station Hospital—only haven’t I heard you can’t toilet train an ape? Is that right, Doctor?”

“I don’t think anybody has yet,” Ashmead answered. “Bit out of my line, though.”

“I suppose the nurses wouldn’t care for apes in their hospital,” the Admiral said.

“No, sir.”

Jardin looked at the chimpanzees and shook his head. He’d had sailors with worse manners—there were sailors on this ship with worse manners, he told himself. “Well, they’ll be happier in the zoo, anyway. They’ll even have company. I’m told there’s a gorilla in the next cage.”

The female chimpanzee slammed the pocket knife to the wardroom table.

Admiral Jardin laughed. “You’d almost think she understood me and doesn’t like gorillas, wouldn’t you?”

FOUR

It was dark at the Los Angeles Zoo. Jim Haskins whistled as he made his final rounds of the hospital section. There’d been a lot of excitement earlier, but it was all quiet now, and things were almost normal. He still resented the two Marines with guns outside the hospital section, and the other Marines and their officers camped in trailers not far away, but they weren’t interfering with Jim’s routine now, and he’d finally caught up on his chores. It was time to go home.

First, though, he looked in on his fox cub. Somehow the poor thing had gotten loose and ended up in the run with the Dingo’s, and those Aussie wild dogs had made a mess of her. Luckily there had been a keeper near enough to rescue her. The fox looked all right now. She had taken sedation nicely, and the IV was dripping properly. Jim nodded in satisfaction. He wasn’t quite a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine yet; he had another year of night school to go. But all the vets agreed that Jim Haskins had a touch about him that was worth more than book learning.

There was a deer in the next cage, with ultraviolet lights to keep it warm. Jim didn’t think it was going to make it. Pneumonia was always bad with animals, and the deer family hardly ever recovered from it. Too bad, really, but at least it wasn’t one of the rare species. The gorilla was in the next cage, and it seemed to be asleep. That was a bad one, thought Jim. His official name was Bobo, but somebody had dubbed him “Monstro” and that stuck. He had been all right until his mate died, then he’d taken to brooding, and he was getting meaner all the time. Jim hoped the curator would trade Monstro to another zoo, someplace that needed a gorilla. It would be nice if they had an unattached female Monstro could woo, but the chances were pretty slim at his age.