"A New York court is going to make you a legal human being," Mr. MacMahon said.
"This guy has taken his lumps," Ape said, looking at Mr. MacMahon.
"I have indeed, Chief," MacMahon replied.
Pan Satyrus put his knuckles on the road and swung his short, powerful body back and forth, apparently thinking. "A legal human being," he said. "How nice."
"Yes, sir."
"And how old will this legal human being be?"
Mr. MacMahon backed away. But he couldn't go very far; they were ringed in by the spotlights and the security men and the technicians that ran the lights. "None of this is my idea," he said. "I never practiced law, but I don't see how any judge can change your age, Mr. Satyrus."
"A legal human being seven and a half years old, then? An infant? Happy, isn't there compulsory education in New York?"
"There is in Brooklyn, Pan. That's how I got to read and write."
"So I'm to sit in a classroom with little brats and listen to some woman tell how to make paper dolls? I have seen Ding Dong School on television, Mr. MacMahon."
Perhaps the Federal man had, too; at any rate something made his voice crack like an adolescent's. "Maybe they'll give you an examination and a high school diploma, sir… I really don't know,".
Pan Satyrus sat on his heels and slowly groomed his chest with his fingernails. He turned to his friends. "That redhead used the most awful perfume. I don't think I'll ever get it off me, " He turned back. "Mr. MacMahon, there was something I was going to sign?"
Flush-faced, Mr. MacMahon lowered his head and looked at the roadway. "A contract with the broadcasting company, sir. Television."
Pan Satyrus scratched at his head vigorously. "Like you, Mr. MacMahon, I have never practiced law."
"1 studied it."
"Ah, so. Then, will you please tell me — how can a seven and a half year old legal human being sign a valid contract?"
"This he didn't get from TV," Happy said.
Over his shoulder, Pan said, "A law student from Fordham. He was my mother's night attendant for a while. More of a watchman than a keeper, really, he just sat in front of the cage studying all night"
Mr. MacMahon said, "Well, your guardian—"
“Go on.”
“A friend of yours. Bill Dunham." The words came out in a rush.
Pan Satyrus turned his back on Mr. MacMahon and faced Happy and Ape. "Do I have a friend named Bill Dunham?"
"I know the name," Happy said. "Wait a minute. That was the monk — sorry, the guy — who interviewed you on the pier this morning."
"No friend," Pan said.
"Oh. I see," MacMahon said. Then suddenly his face relaxed, he was for a moment almost soft looking. "Listen, I'm a guy under orders. Bring Pan Satyrus to New York — or else."
"Or else you stop eating?" Pan asked.
Mr. MacMahon said nothing.
"It's getting chilly," Pan went on. "Chimpanzees catch cold very easily, though not so easily as other primates. When you tried to starve me, it was to find out how to drive a spaceship at superluminous speeds. Doesn't the government care about that any more?"
Mr. MacMahon didn't say anything.
Surprisingly, it was Ape who came up with the right answer. "How much this TV outfit gonna pay Pan?"
"Ten thousand a week,".
Ape shoved his chief's cap straight on his head. "It figgers. Nobody can do nothing to a guy makes ten grand a week."
"And what do I do for it?" Pan suddenly thundered. "Catch peanuts thrown by a little blonde darling? Pretend to fall in love with an actress with an inflated mammary system? Or be the lovable father of a family of little chimps, played by stump-tailed macaques?"
"I see you have watched television," Mr. MacMahon said.
"If they give you anything to do," Happy said, "you don't want to do, act stupid."
One fist on the road, Pan swivelled around to face him. "Do you want me to do this, Happy? Your?
"Chimp, I'd like to once be able to say I had a friend who made ten grand a week. Only, I guess, being able to say I had one who turned down ten grand a week, that's okay, too. The point is, Pan, what else? We're on this road, and no place to go, no way to get out. And they're gonna put up a bronze plate, in the Primate House where you and these rhesuses were kids together."
Ape said, "My old mother — she said she was my aunt, on account of she was never married, but I know better — she used to tell me what curiosity done to a cat, Happy."
Pan said, "A little moment of silence by the cage where I was born — alone except for my two friends — a pause to recall happy, baby memories — ah, yes."
"You've got the voice for television," Mr. MacMahon said, briskly. "Let's go."
CHAPTER TWELVE
They make a great deal of noise. especially when provoked by other monkeys.
Nelsons Encyclopedia, 1943
This is Bill Dunham, my friends, and in a minute I'm going to have to turn the microphone over to my friend and colleague, Iggie Napoli— you there, Iggie? — and become a participant in these great stirring events.
I'm sorry we didn't get a better picture of the parade from City Hall to here at the Court House, but I've never seen so much ticker tape and waste-paper in my life. You know, that's a fact, they call it a ticker-tape parade, but the people in the offices here in downtown Manhattan don't just drop ticker tape — they empty their wastebaskets, and until you've been conked by an old typewriter ribbon dropped from thirty stories, you don't know what TV coverage is, friends.
At least since the ballpoint pen, we don't get bombarded with nearly as many empty ink bottles as we used to.
Now we're approaching the court, and I can see Judge Manton out on the white marble steps to greet us. Our other camera will show you that, there it is, and now back to us and Pan Satyrus here on the seat beside me. How does it feel to be about to become a legal human being?
Well, if you don't feel like talking, Pan, how about a smile for the camera? No. I guess this is a pretty solemn moment, for old Pan. That's his name, you know, he does not like to be called Mem, skipper of the Mem-sahib.
This is Iggie Napoli, good people, on the steps of the Court House, and the man you see in between us and the approaching motorcade is Judge Paul Manton, who is going to grant Pan Satyrus his legal humanship.
We were cut off from inside the limousine, but that was to be expected, the engineers tell me that working down in these man-made canyons of steel and concrete — ferro-concrete they say in England — the video waves get mighty tricky. Audio, too, I guess, because it sounded like the voice of Bill Dunham, my old friend and colleague, faded out on us. And that's a voice we've all grown to know and love in the many, many years Bill Dunham has been coming to us over the air waves. I don't know how long Bill has been talking to the American people, but I wouldn't be surprised if he'd carried his microphone to Grant at Richmond."
Standing in front of me is Judge Paul Manton, of the sovereign state of New York, the man who is going to grant old Mem his legal humanity. That right, Judge? I got the right language there?
"I think just plain citizenship would cover it, Mr. Napoli. The mayor has already made Mem an honorary citizen of New York, but this is the legal process that confirms it. Of course, you understand, his age makes it advisable that—"
Excuse me, Judge. The limousine is here, and Patrolman Hugh Callahan, oldest active patrolman on the New York Police Force, New York's finest, is about to open the door.
That is Master Chief Bates of the U.S. Navy getting out and smiling — and looking into our camera. And that is Radioman First Class Michael Bronstein right behind him. Now comes old Mem, the pilot of the Mem-sahib.
Radio Control here in Network City. Our remote unit at the Court House seems to be cut off, and while they get back on the air, let me fill you in on a little of the background of this great ape who is about to become a great American. Great ape is right, for Mem is a chimpanzee who…
CHAPTER THI
RTEEN
Even the dumbest chimpanzee could tell the difference between "real money" and counterfeit coinage.
The Illustrated Library of the Natural Sciences,
American Museum of Natural History, 195S
"You shouldn't a done it, Pan," Ape said. "That Network Company ain't gonna love you. First you knock out their top spieler, and then you tear the lid off their camera outfit. It ain't nice."
"I don't like being called Mem," Pan said simply. He set down the judge he was carrying, and asked, "Can you walk now, Mr. Justice?"
"Yes. I think so. I. this is contempt of court, sir."
"Just call me Pan. Oh, Dr. Bedoian." The doctor hurried forward. "Yes, Pan?" "See if the judge needs your services." "No, no, I'm quite all right," the judge said. "These are my chambers here. The actual ceremony is going to take place in the courtroom, of course, but I thought we could get the preliminaries over with. If you'll just have a seat, Mr. Pan."
"It's Mr. Satyrus. But just call me Pan, and I'll sit on this filing case here."
The judge sidled into his ample, high-backed swivel chair, a replica of the one out on his bench.
"Age, seven and a half; that makes your birthdate, yes. Name of parents?"
"My mother was Caged Pan Satyrus, my father was Wild Pan Satyrus."
The judge looked at him. "Now, really."
Pan Satyrus reached down and plucked one of the brass pulls off the filing case, and tossed it in a corner.
I'd hardly know you, Pan," Dr. Bedoian said, "You used to be so gentle."
"I got — what is it, Happy?"
Happy said, "He got kicked around too long and too hard. I mean — he used to have kind of a low opinion of people—"
"A contempt," Pan said. "I used to have contempt for people. Not for you three, and not for a few keepers and attendants I had. But I find I'm developing a real hatred—"
"Gentlemen, please," Judge Manton said.
"Do not call me a gentleman! I'm a chimpanzee."
"Chimpanzee and gentlemen, there's a large crowd waiting in my courtroom. A large and distinguished crowd. Now, Mr. Satyrus, the purpose of this proceeding is to make you a legal human being. Because of your tender age, Mr. William Dunham is your guardian. And where is he, by the way?"
"We left him in the limousine," Pan Satyrus said. "He was broadcasting a lot of nonsense about me, and then it got to be patronizing nonsense, and I pushed my fingers into his solar plexus, and he went to sleep. Right, doctor?"
"He's not seriously injured, judge," Dr. Bedoian said.
"But he has to be here," the judge said. "He has to sign the papers making him your guardian."
"I don't want a guardian," Pan said.
"But you're only seven and a half."
"Make me twenty-one," Pan said. "You're a judge; if you can make me a legal human being, make me legally of age, too."
"I can see you have never studied law. There is absolutely no precedent for that!"
"And there is for making a chimpanzee into a legal human?"
"If I were, under duress, to declare you twenty-one — please lay down that filing case — the appellate court would overrule me at once."
"In the meantime, I would be drawing ten thousand a week," Pan said. "And then, if the decision went against me, they couldn't sue to recover it, because a seven-year-old person is not responsible."
"You have studied law," Judge Manton said.
"Let me state it more briefly than a lawyer would: make out the right papers, sign and seal them, and you get to go out in your robes and pose before the television cameras. With me and with a very pretty — I guess — actress. Don't do what I tell you, and you get throttled and perhaps killed by an irresponsible chimpanzee who has not yet reached his eighth year. Simple?"
"This is worse than what La Guardia did to Tammany," the judge said. But he picked up a pen and began writing. From time to time he grunted. When he was finished, he said, "My clerk has to put the seal on these."
"All right," Pan said. "Ring for him."
The judge pressed a button. The clerk came in, a middle-aged wardheeler, and went out again and brought his seal in, and pressed the papers between the leaves of the seal. The doctor and Happy witnessed the papers, and they were handed over to Pan Satyrus.
He shuffled them around a while after reading them, but he was wearing no pockets. He handed them to Ape to keep for him.
"Welcome to the human race," Ape said.
Pan gave him what might have been a smile.
"Fair enough, Judge," he said. "Go out and get on your bench, and I'm sure your clerk here will show us where we enter,".
The judge went out. "Want a tranquilizer, Pan?" Dr. Bedoian asked.
"You're very thoughtful, Aram," Pan said. "We missed you down in Florida. Later on, I'll tell you about my career as a gigolo. I made over ten dollars."
"And now you're going to make ten thousand every week. Why?"
Pan twitched a luminous eye from Ape to Happy and then he winked at Dr. Bedoian. "I have retrogressed," he said.
"Devoluted."
Pan shrugged.
The clerk was holding a door for them. They went through it, and were in the courtroom, alongside the bench. A tense, whispering voice came at them: "This is Iggie Napoli, good people, and there in your screen is the great Pan Satyrus, as he likes to be called, about to join us in the human race! A great moment for him, I don't know whether it's greater than when he flew around the world, but maybe I'll get a chance to ask him.
"The two naval men behind him are his great good friends Chief Bates and Radioman Bronstein, and the civilian is his personal physician, Dr. Aram Bedoian, and see, they are lining up in front of the judge's bench, and the judge — I'll let you hear him."
"Pan Satyrus, raise your right hand. Do you solemnly swear allegiance to the United States of America? And to no other country?
"Then I pronounce you a citizen."
"There, folks, it's all over, and the judge is leaving the bench, so court's dismissed, and there is Jane Beth, who got the nod from the Network this morning to be the leading lady in Pan Satyrus' television show and she's introducing herself."
"Pan, darling, I'm Jane Beth."
"I have seen you on television.
"Oh, you darling for saying that. I'm going to play your owner in a darling new show that the Network has prepared for us, 'Beauty and the Beast'."
"That's darling, Miss Beth, and may I ask you a question?"
"Yes, dear, anything, anything at all."
"Do women have fur under their dresses, or are they all bare like their faces?"
"Oh-I-well-"
"No hair at all on their bodies?"
"This is Iggie Napoli and I'm turning you over now to Bill Dunham, whose show this is. I've just been filling in. Take it, Bill."
"Bill Dunham coming at you, friends. I'll fill in. Judge Manton's coming back into the courtroom without his robe and—'Somebody stop that ape, he's pulling my dress off!'—a little interference there, friends, we have to expect it on these remote broadcasts, but we'll get straightened out. Judge, you wanta hold up this paper for a closeup of you and—"
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Chimpanzees. have much greater manipulative skill than dogs.
Animal Behaviour John Paul Scott, 1957
The walks in the Bronx Zoo — the New York Zoological Park, to be formal — are wide enough to take a car, or even a truck. On ordinary days pickups go slowly among the strolling visitors, emptying trash cans, carrying food to the animal houses, servicing small maintenance jobs.
But this was no ordinary day. Now a procession of civic limousines rolled along towards the Primate House, each one flying a tiny American flag on one front fender, a flag of the great City of New York on the other.
In the second car, flanked by Ape and Dr. Bedoian, Pan Satyrus rode, staring moodily at the back of Happy Bronstein's neck.
As they had left the court, the driver had held himself stiff, hi
s elbows squared. Even a man could read apprehension in his shoulders; Pan could smell it in his sweat.
But Pan Satyrus had reached forward and patted the chauffeur's shoulder with delicate caution. "Don't be afraid," he said. "Happy, next to you, can tell you; I won't hurt you."
"Yeah, that's right."
"Yes, sir."
"No," Pan said. "You mean that thing with the girl back there, that actress? She wanted to show off. She was showing off. She was being so sweet and patronizing to me I nearly vomited half-digested bananas in her face. So I helped her. Now she was shown off past all her shining dreams: the first actress to appear before a television camera in nothing but her stockings. That is all she had on under her dress."
"I had to stay with the car," the driver said.
"Too bad, my friend. I don't suppose they'll be re-running that shot on the Late Late Show. But don't be afraid of me. Haven't you ever wanted to tear a girl's dress off?"
"Sure."
"What men want to do, chimpanzees do."
The driver relaxed, and they had made the rest of the trip in silence. Crowds had lined the street all the way; but Pan had contented himself with an occasional wave of his long hand. Several women had thrown kisses at him, and one of them had slipped through the lines of guarding policemen and clung to the open car window. But the cops had removed her with her dress intact.
It was not until they had come into the guarded ways of the Zoo that anyone spoke again, and then it was Dr. Bedoian. "You've changed, Pan. I don't think being famous has done it, but something has."
"You have taken care of a great many chimps, Aram."
"I liked you better than any patient I ever had."
Pan Satyrus started. "That hurt, a little," he said, and then he looked down at his hands, neatly folded between his legs, crossed tailor-fashion. He looked out the window. "When I was very, very little, there was a vet who used to take me out to play under those trees," he said. "When the park was closed."
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