Peter Dickinson: The Poison Oracle

The spindle of this teetotum was the lift-shaft. If you were a woman or a eunuch you entered at ground-level a lift whose doors opened only into the women’s quarters. If you were a man you used the lift that backed on to this, and could reach any other section of the palace. If you were a white rhino, you used the big bleak service lift, which had doors at either end and so could reach any part of the palace—but the arrival of the current rhino had strained the machinery and it was still waiting repair. There was also a stairway running beside the lifts, but as the architects had lacked the ingenuity to prevent this from passing through the women’s quarters it was barred by locked doors at several points. The zoo occupied a third of the top floor of the palace, so when the men’s lift was out of order Morris could only reach his work from his living-quarters, two floors below, by being blindfolded and led stumbling up several flights by scimitar-toting eunuchs. Luckily this lift was going through a good patch.

The visitor to the zoo came out of the lift into a lobby, on the far side of which were the double doors of the zoo itself. Beyond these a very short passage finished in the inspection gallery, which ran at right-angles to it across the entire width of the palace. This was a straight, tiled passage, as wide as a small lane. Against the wall that held the doors stood cases of zoological specimens, none of any interest whatever, and a few stuffed animals. On the other side the wall was pocked by the regular pattern of the rectangular inspection windows and the knobby excrescences of the fixed cameras. The visitor could watch the animals, unseen by them, through the polarised glass; here he would be standing about eight feet above the floor of the cages. Alternatively he could walk round to where a parallel gallery ran in front of the cages, at their own level. Down there he could be inspected as well as inspect, for the inner wall was the wire-mesh front of the cages; the outer wall was all glass, enabling animals and visitor alike to gaze, if they chose, eighty miles eastward across the glaring sands. At dawn the rising sun shone horizontal into the cages, but within an hour it was hidden by the final brim of the palace roof.

These two galleries were joined at either end by transverse passages, set far enough in from the outer walls to leave space for store-rooms at the southern end, and at the northern one for Morris’s office and surgery. Morris, whom we left reversing along the upper gallery, felt his way round the corner into this northern passage, stopped, muttered under his breath, turned and walked down a short flight of steps into his office. He was still muttering as he reloaded the spring-gun with a fresh dart containing a chimp-size dose of anaesthetic and clicked it into the rack beside the spare gun. He shut the doors of the gun-cupboard, turned right outside his office and walked round into the lower gallery. Going this way he came at once to the front of the chimpanzee glade.

Before Morris’s arrival, eighteen months ago, the zoo had had the highest mortality rate of any in the world; monotonously the smuggled orangs had died, and the target gorilla was only one of a sad series. Typically, the Sultan was not interested in owning small, manageable animals; so there had always been empty cages. The glade had been constructed by amalgamating five of these, with the dens behind them, leaving the concrete tree-trunks to support the roof. Some of the metal branches were supposed to extrude oranges at the touch of a button, but few of these worked; occasionally Morris had crept in, like Santa Claus, in the dead of night and tied bunches of bananas to the lower branches, but the chimpanzees took this phenomenon for granted and were no more interested than when he dumped their fruit on the floor through the usual chute—part of the plan was that they shouldn’t connect humans with food.

Now as he came round the corner he saw that the scene had hardly changed. Sparrow was still inert on the floor; Rowse had succeeded in dislodging Cecil and was now carefully grooming him to show that there was no ill-will; and Dinah was still separated from the rest of the group, but had picked the dart up and was edging her way innocently round the cage with the clear intention of prodding it into Murdoch. But when Morris clicked his fingers for her attention she came rushing to the door, with the dart poised to jab at him. He hoped that this was her experimental urge showing itself, and not malice.

He backed off, extended his right hand palm up and flapped his fingers towards himself several times. He regarded manual sign language as unscientific, but for day-to-day living with a chimpanzee a quick way of saying “Give me that” is essential.

Dinah took hold of the door with both feet and one hand and rattled it hard. Morris made the give-me sign again. Dinah stopped shaking the door and hung considering. She obviously wanted to be let out of the cage, but realised that the dart held better bargaining power than that; she might even guess he was going to let her out anyway, so giving him the dart for nothing would be a waste. At any rate she smacked her huge lips together several times, returned the give-me sign, then stuck the fingers of one hand in her mouth: “Food.”

With a sigh Morris knelt by the door, unslung his satchel and spilt the coloured chips of plastic into its lid. Dinah panted with pleasure and squatted down inside the bars to join the game. Morris sorted deftly through the pile, chose the counters he needed and poked them through the door to form a line just in front of her.

large blue triangle: first conditional

white square: Dinah

yellow circle with hole: give

yellow square: thing with no name

blue square: (to) Morris

small blue triangle: second conditional

blue square: Morris

yellow circle with hole: give

green/blue striped square: banana

white square: (to) Dinah

Dinah peered at the symbols as though she were much more short-sighted than in fact she was, sniffing along the line of them in a rhythmic quick-time. She laid the dart down on the yellow square to confirm its identity, but kept a firm hold on it while she did so. (Morris had never cheated her in her life, and could hardly imagine circumstances in which he might be forced to do so, but the possibility seemed to remain vivid in her mind.) She chattered thoughtfully to herself for a few seconds, then made the give-me sign and gestured towards the satchel. Eagerly she picked out the blue/white striped square that meant grapes, then hunted fastidiously until she found the little black triangle they used for the connective conjunction. She added them right at the end of the line and studied her revised message; clearly she realised there was something wrong with it, but it took her some time to discover what, twelve symbols being near the limit of sentence-length she could cope with. At last she moved the second white square to the end of the sentence.

Immediately Morris snatched up a red circle, larger than most of the others, and slapped it down on the floor.

red circle: negative

He was shocked. A banana and grapes! Her victory over Sparrow had given her inflated ideas.

She lurched away from the door and chattered up and down the wire mesh. The other chimpanzees eyed her sidelong, like xenophobic villagers watching one of their girls flirting with a passing hiker. On her second return to the door she sulkily removed the green/blue square and the black triangle. Morris considered a moment: to give in would be a depraving act, but it would stem from the Sultan’s trigger-finger, an organ beyond anyone’s control; and anyway the Sultan was paying for the grapes, at around three pounds a bunch. He found a green circle and replied.