Arthur Clarke: An Ape About the House

Granny thought it a perfectly horrible idea; but then, she could remember the days when there were human servants.

“If you imagine,” she snorted, “that I’ll share the house with a monkey, you’re very much mistaken.”

“Don’t be so old-fashioned,” I answered. “Anyway, Dorcas isn’t a monkey.”

“Then what is she—it?”

I flipped through the pages of the Biological Engineering Corporation’s guide. “Listen to this, Gran,” I said. “ ‘The Super-chimp (Registered Trade-mark) Pan Sapiens is an intelligent anthropoid, derived by selective breeding and genetic modification from basic chimpanzee stock—’ ”

“Just what I said! A monkey!”

“—and with a large-enough vocabulary to understand simple orders. It can be trained to perform all types of domestic work or routine manual labour and is docile, affectionate, housebroken, and particularly good with children— ”

“Children! Would you trust Johnnie and Susan with a—a gorilla?”

I put the handbook down with a sigh.

“You’ve got a point there. Dorcas is expensive, and if I find the little monsters knocking her about—”

At this moment, fortunately, the door buzzer sounded. “Sign, please,” said the delivery man. I signed, and Dorcas entered our lives.

“Hello, Dorcas,” I said. “I hope you’ll be happy here.”

Her big, mournful eyes peered out at me from beneath their heavy ridges. I’d met much uglier humans, though she was rather an odd shape, being only about four feet tall and very nearly as wide. In her neat, plain uniform she looked just like a maid from one of those early twentieth-century movies; her feet, however, were bare and covered an astonishing amount of floor space.

“Morning, Ma’am,” she answered, in slurred but perfectly intelligible accents.

“She can speak!” squawked Granny.

“Of course,” I answered. “She can pronounce over fifty words, and can understand two hundred. She’ll learn more as she grows used to us, but for the moment we must stick to the vocabulary on pages forty-two and forty-three of the handbook.” I passed the instruction manual over to Granny; for once, she couldn’t find even a single word to express her feelings.

Dorcas settled down very quickly. Her basic training—Class A Domestic, plus Nursery Duties—had been excellent, and by the end of the first month there were very few jobs around the house that she couldn’t do, from laying the table to changing the children’s clothes. At first she had an annoying habit of picking up things with her feet; it seemed as natural to her as using her hands, and it took a long time to break her of it. One of Granny’s cigarette butts finally did the trick.

She was good-natured, conscientious, and didn’t answer back. Of course, she was not terribly bright, and some jobs had to be explained to her at great length before she got the point. It took several weeks before I discovered her limitations and allowed for them; at first it was quite hard to remember that she was not exactly human, and that it was no good engaging her in the sort of conversations we women occupy ourselves with when we get together. Or not many of them; she did have an interest in clothes, and was fascinated by colours. If I’d let her dress the way she wanted, she’d have looked like a refugee from Mardi Gras.

The children, I was relieved to find, adored her. I know what people say about Johnnie and Sue, and admit that it contains some truth. It’s so hard to bring up children when their father’s away most of the time, and to make matters worse, Granny spoils them when I’m not looking. So indeed does Eric, whenever his ship’s on Earth, and I’m left to cope with the resulting tantrums. Never marry a spaceman if you can possibly avoid it; the pay may be good, but the glamour soon wears off.

By the time Eric got back from the Venus run, with three weeks’ accumulated leave, our new maid had settled down as one of the family. Eric took her in his stride; after all, he’d met much odder creatures on the planets. He grumbled about the expense, of course, but I pointed out that now that so much of the housework was taken off my hands, we’d be able to spend more time together and do some of the visiting that had proved impossible in the past. I looked forward to having a little social life again, now that Dorcas could take care of the children.

For there was plenty of social Me at Port Goddard, even though we were stuck in the middle of the Pacific. (Ever since what happened to Miami, of course, all major launching sites have been a long, long way from civilization.) There was a constant flow of distinguished visitors and travellers from all parts of the Earth—not to mention remoter points.

Every community has its arbiter of fashion and culture, its grande dame who is resented yet copied by all her unsuccessful rivals. At Port Goddard it was Christine Swanson; her husband was Commodore of the Space Service, and she never let us forget it. Whenever a liner touched down, she would invite all the officers on Base to a reception at her stylishly antique nineteenth-century mansion. It was advisable to go, unless you had a very good excuse, even though that meant looking at Christine’s paintings. She fancied herself as an artist, and the walls were hung with multicoloured daubs. Thinking of polite remarks to make about them was one of the major hazards of Christine’s parties; another was her metre-long cigarette holder.

There was a new batch of paintings since Eric had been away: Christine had entered her “square” period. “You see, my dears,” she explained to us, “the old-fashioned oblong pictures are terribly dated—they just don’t go with the Space Age. There’s no such thing as up or down, horizontal or vertical out there , so no really modern picture should have one side longer than another. And ideally, it should look exactly the same whichever way you hang it—I’m working on that right now.”

“That seems very logical,” said Eric tactfully. (After all, the Commodore was his boss.) But when our hostess was out of earshot, he added, “I don’t know if Christine’s pictures are hung the right way up, but I’m sure they’re hung the wrong side to the wall.”

I agreed; before I got married I spent several years at an art school and considered I knew something about the subject. Given as much cheek as Christine, I could have made quite a hit with my own canvases, which were now gathering dust in the garage.

“You know, Eric,” I said a little cattily, “I could teach Dorcas to paint better than this.”

He laughed and answered, “It might be fun to try it some day, if Christine gets out of hand.” Then I forgot all about the matter—until a month later, when Eric was back in space.

The exact cause of the fight isn’t important; it arose over a community development scheme on which Christine and I took opposing viewpoints. She won, as usual, and I left the meeting breathing fire and brimstone. When I got home, the first thing I saw was Dorcas, looking at the coloured pictures in one of the weeklies—and I remembered Eric’s words.

I put down my handbag, took off my hat, and said firmly: “Dorcas—come out to the garage.”

It took some time to dig out my oils and easel from under the pile of discarded toys, old Christmas decorations, skin-diving gear, empty packing cases, and broken tools (it seemed that Eric never had time to tidy up before he shot off into space again). There were several unfinished canvases buried among the debris, which would do for a start. I set up a landscape which had got as far as one skinny tree, and said: “Now Dorcas—I’m going to teach you to paint.”