Philip Kerr - Esau

‘...Crazy bitch are you,’ Boyd muttered.

‘Don’t worry, Rebecca. Everything’s okay.’

‘Oh-oh-oh.’

The sound was simian enough, half bark, half chuckle even. It was the second sound that took everyone by surprise. Even Boyd.

‘Keh-keh-keh.’

Cody felt the hair rising on his head and face.

‘Bloody hell,’ whispered Mac.

Jutta was standing up. Warner too.

‘Oh-keh! Oh-keh! Oh-keh!’

‘She’s talking,’ breathed Swift. ‘Rebecca can talk.’

‘Oh-keh! Oh-keh!’

‘Okay,’ repeated a delighted Cody. ‘Okay.’

‘Oh man,’ breathed Jack.

‘Precisely,’ said Swift.

Boyd had left the clamshell, almost unnoticed now in all the excitement, and returned to his lodge. Jack, Jutta, Warner, and the sirdar watched, fascinated, as Swift, Cody, and Jameson spoke to Rebecca, encouraging her to try another word. Mac was hurriedly reloading the video camera with another Hi-8 cassette.

‘Let’s see how you are with some breakfast,’ said Swift, and offered Rebecca a bowl of muesli. ‘Food,’ Swift pronounced clearly. ‘Food.’

Hugging Esau closely, Rebecca clicked her teeth and remained obstinately silent, even when she took the bowl from Swift’s outstretched hand.

‘No one’s ever been able to do more than teach an ape a few voiceless approximations of words,’ said Cody. ‘Of course, there are anatomical restrictions of a large primate’s vocal tract that prevent it from talking. But they can understand words easily enough. Apes seem to have at least a receptive competence for language if not an expressive one.’

Swift recalled the virtual-reality model of fossil Esau’s brain that Joanna Giardino had created back at UCMC in San Francisco, and the small but distinct Broca’s area they found. Paul Broca was chiefly remembered for establishing that destruction of a small area of brain matter not much larger than a silver dollar made a person unable to speak.

‘Food.’ Swift repeated the word several times, using different intonations: surprise, delight, questioning, and tempting. ‘Food.’

But as well as discovering that the expression of ideas through words could be established in this area, Broca had also been a paleoanthropologist of note, being the first to describe Cro-Magnon and Aurignacian, or Paleolithic man. It was Broca who had lent the new science of anthropology its whole critical method.

‘Hoo-hooo-hoooo-hoooo!’

‘She’s certainly got the right vowel sound,’ Jameson said hopefully.

‘But not the diphthong,’ said Cody. ‘Maybe it was just coincidence after all.’

‘Like hell it was,’ said Swift. ‘Come on, Byron. We all know exactly what we heard. Didn’t we, Rebecca?’ Swift put some of the dry muesli into her mouth and, chewing, began to rub her stomach contentedly. ‘Food. You say it. Food.’

Rebecca put a handful of muesli into her own mouth and began to crunch it loudly.

‘Just look at that face,’ said Warner. ‘Do you think if Descartes had seen Rebecca he might have arrived at a different conclusion?’ He glanced uncertainly at Jutta and Mac and added, ‘He said that animals are unable to think. That they are machines without a soul, mind, or consciousness. The animal mind is like a clock made up of wheels and springs.’

‘It’s possible,’ said Cody. ‘But the fact is that if Rebecca were a human — say a feral human — we would probably have a similar difficulty in teaching her to talk. For apes, just as much as us, infancy is the time of maximum social learning. If you haven’t acquired language by the time you’re age nine or ten, then it’s probably too late.’

Swift remembered that back in Berkeley she had said much the same thing to her class. But faced with the real-life situation she felt rather different about it. She anticipated a vicarious satisfaction in proving Cody, and her earlier self, wrong.

‘Give her a chance, will you?’ said Swift. ‘Food, fooo-oood.’

Rebecca turned her head away. She had a bored, slightly sad air about her, as if wishing that she and baby Esau could be elsewhere. Sighing loudly, she scratched herself for a moment and, catching Swift’s eye, took another handful of muesli.

‘Food,’ nodded Swift.

Rebecca started to nod back, almost as if she were agreeing with Swift. Swallowing, she tucked her lower lip behind her front teeth and started to blow.

‘Now what’s she doing?’ said Cody.

‘If you ask me,’ said Jack, ‘she’s trying your diphthong.’

It was true. Rebecca’s blowing noise was starting to sound more like an ‘f’ sound.

‘You’re right,’ Swift said triumphantly. ‘She is.’

‘Ffffff-oooooo...’

‘I can hardly believe my ears,’ said Cody.

‘Food,’ said Swift. ‘That’s it.’

‘Fffff-oooo...’

‘C’mon, you can do it. Foo-oood.’

Rebecca started to nod again.

‘Fooo-ooo-dah! Foooo-oooo-dah!’

Swift clapped her hands excitedly, much to Rebecca’s obvious delight.

‘Good girl,’ said Swift.

‘Incredible,’ admitted Cody.

Swift glanced around anxiously at Mac, whose eye was still pressed close to the viewfinder of his video camera.

‘Mac? Tell me you’re getting this.’

‘Ffff-ooooo-dah.’

‘Every f-f-fuckin’ diphthong,’ he growled. ‘Whatever that might be.’

‘Foo-ooo-dah!’

‘Christ, it’s getting like bloody Oliver Twist in here.’

Swift kept on applauding.

‘Okay, that’s a good girl.’

‘Oh-keh! Oh-keh!’

‘It’s no accident she became a teacher,’ said Jack.

‘How about that?’ breathed Cody. ‘Rebecca has doubled her vocabulary in less than an hour. I just wish we had more time to study her. Maybe we can see how many words she can learn. Is the learning method vocal? Or is it facial? Swift, we have to have more time.’

‘Foo-ooo-dah!’

‘Good girl,’ said Swift. ‘You’re right, Byron. We need more time. Miles?’

Jameson shrugged.

‘Sure. But we can’t hold on to her forever. It wouldn’t be fair.’

‘Maybe we can find out why she’s radioactive, while we’re at it,’ said Swift.

Mac laughed. ‘Great idea. Go ahead and ask her.’

‘I meant—’ Swift frowned, then laughed. She was too excited to dispute with Mac. ‘You know what I meant. I meant that maybe we can find out why Boyd tried to bullshit us about it.’

‘Where is he anyway?’ said Mac.

‘He went back to the lodge,’ said Warner.

‘I’m not surprised,’ said Jutta. ‘You were rather hard on him. Swift.’

‘Foo-ooo-dah! Oh-keh!’

‘It would seem that Rebecca is already demonstrating a readiness to master the basic elements of syntax,’ said Cody.

‘If Boyd can master it, then I’m sure Rebecca can,’ said Swift.

Jack laughed out loud and then hugged his ribs with regret.

‘Don’t. It hurts when I laugh.’

‘I’d still like to know why he lied about this whole radioactive thing.’

‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ Jack said painfully. ‘And I’ve just remembered something. Something that might just explain it.’

HUSTLER. I WAS RIGHT. THE YETI CAN HELP US. I BELIEVE WE ARE GETTING VERY CLOSE NOW. BUT AT THE SAME TIME WE NOW HAVE A SERIOUS PROBLEM HERE. A CONFLICT-OF-INTEREST SITUATION WHICH I ASSUME YOU WOULD WANT RESOLVED IN OUR FAVOUR. I WAS AFRAID SOMETHING LIKE THIS MIGHT OCCUR. FOR THE SAKE OF MY MISSION AND THE NATIONAL SECURITY OF THE UNITED STATES, I HAVE NOW CONCLUDED THAT MY COLLEAGUES HERE IN THE SANCTUARY MAY HAVE BECOME EXPENDABLE. BELIEVE ME, I’VE TRIED TO BE ACCOMMODATING, BUT I CAN ONLY GO SO FAR. NATURALLY I’LL TRY TO LIMIT THE DAMAGE, BUT IT SEEMS CLEAR NOW THAT THEY WILL OPPOSE ME AND THAT I WILL HAVE TO MAKE AN EXAMPLE OF ONE OF THEM. POUR ENCOURAGER LES AUTRES. CASTORP.