Peter Dickinson - The Poison Oracle

green circle: positive

He fished back through the bars all the counters except the second, third and fourth of his original sentence; obediently Dinah passed him the dart. As soon as the door was open she snatched at his hand and smacking her lips tried to drag him along the corridor. The other chimps, stirred by her food-noises, came ambling over; Morris only freed himself just in time to prevent the crowd of them bundling out into the corridor. Rowse picked up the yellow circle with the hole in it and bit it in two, but after a couple of chews spat out the gnawed fragments and handed the other half to Cecil to try. Morris retrieved the other two symbols and closed his satchel.

As soon as he was on his feet Dinah made a leap for his shoulders. He hitched his arm contentedly under her buttocks, adjusted himself to her weight and walked on down the corridor; by going the long way round he could cast an eye over the rest of the zoo, and also avoid passing the Sultan and bin Zair. The polar bear was swimming, huge in its tiny pool; he paused and watched it with vague guilt; but for him it would have died months ago, and though he did not believe that its soul would have gone to roam the dazzling ice-floes east-north-east of the Pearly Gates, he did feel that it would be better for such a creature not to exist than to be cramped in this mean, expensive prison. Only the Sultan would then have imported another polar bear. He was proud of owning the one that held the world record for nearness to the goddam equator.

Dinah still had the memory of grapes on her mind’s tongue, so Morris walked on when she hooted in his ear to remind him. There were several things that combined to console him for the complex indignities of Q’Kut—the ten thousand dollars a month, the Sultan’s erratic friendship, the excitingly strange and wonderful language of the marshmen, the absence of serious personal relationships and responsibilities—but Dinah was more important than any of these things. He was glad that the gradual process of integration into the society of the new chimps didn’t seem to be spoiling her relationship with him.

As he waited for the lift that would take him two floors down to his own living quarters he realised that it would have been a bitter blow if she had preferred Sparrow’s company.

2

Dinah ate her grapes with slow, concentrating enjoyment, perched up in her nest and peering at each one like a jeweller inspecting an emerald for flaws. Prince Hadiq, accompanied by the usual weedy Somali slave carrying the Batman comics, arrived for his English lesson before she had finished. He looked at her for some seconds while he fought with words.

“I am . . . want . . . the grapes . . . above,” he muttered.

“I would like some grapes too, please,” corrected Morris. He tried to sound patient, but his residual bad temper over the shooting of Sparrow came clearly through.

The Prince pouted. His fine but childish features became set as he started on the construction of another sentence. Morris found the process agonising to watch. He could never achieve imaginative sympathy with anyone, even a clever child like this, who could not pick up a language in a few weeks, so he swung away and looked through the window as though he was interested in the unappealing view.

There was only one hill in that part of Q’Kut, not counting dunes. The palace stood on its summit, ninety feet above the dead levels where the marshes seemed to bounce and heave in the glaring noonday heat. In the foreground the new concrete of the airstrip blazed like a white-hot ingot, painful to look at despite the double layer of tinted glass. But everything else that Morris could see was coloured the same sulky khaki and wavered before his eyes as the heated air rose in different columns above reed-bed and mud-bank and water-course and lagoon. Q’Kut was one of those places where you expected to see further by night than by day; when the heat-haze condensed into dew Morris could usually make out the black line of the hill ranges, ninety miles away on the borders of the tiny sultanate, but now he couldn’t even see the nearest stand of giant pig-reed three miles beyond the air-strip.

“You are give me better honour unless I tell my father will make you flodge,” said the prince all in one squeaky breath.

“Flogged,” corrected Morris automatically. But he had seen the child’s reflection in the tinted glass, and the misery of pride made inadequate. Morris hated that sort of thing, hated being exposed to it. And the prince would never have allowed him to see it direct. Really, it wasn’t a bad shot at a very complex conditional sentence—passion finds its own expression. Morris turned with a sigh, put the palms of his hands together, lowered his head respectfully and spoke in formal Arabic.

“Serene rivulet of the fountain of power and wisdom, it is many years since thy father honoured me with the undeserved gift of his friendship. No man knows the heart of another, but I have learnt some of thy father’s ways. If thou wast to go to him complaining of my insolence, he would not satisfy thee, but he would invent some subtle manner whereby thy complaint could be used to diminish both thee and me. Is it not written ‘Ask not of the King that which the King cannot give, for thereby is his glory the less.’? Therefore let us come to an agreement. When we speak in Arabic we will conduct ourselves in the manner of Arabs, among whom thou art a prince, and so shall I treat thee. But when in obedience to thy father’s command we speak English, we will conduct ourselves in the manner of the English, from whom Allah has withheld the comprehension of honour.”

“Their mothers are she-asses.”

“In many cases thy observation is just. But when thy father speaks with me in English he condescends to answer bray with bray.”

“Why may the ape feast on grapes when they are denied to a prince?”

Morris picked up the satchel.

“Dinah will get you some grapes if you ask her,” he said slowly in English.

“Yes, yes,” said the prince, suddenly thrilled. He was both jealous of and fascinated by Dinah. Morris sorted the necessary symbols on to the coffee-table.

“What they mean?” said the prince.

“What do they mean?”

“What do they mean?”

“Good. You can say the words as we put them down.”

white crescent: please

white square: Dinah

yellow circle with hole: give

blue/white square: grapes

black square: (to) person other than Morris or Dinah

“The prince must say please to the ape?”

“Well . . .” said Morris, then shrugged. It was a nice point. Neither Dinah nor the symbol language was covered by the new agreement.

“OK, OK,” said the prince charmingly. Morris clicked his fingers for Dinah’s attention and she climbed carefully down from her nest on top of the wardrobe, dangling from her left paw the forlorn skeleton of her bunch of grapes. The Prince arranged the symbols in a very precise line.

The coffee-table was just the right height for Dinah to read from when she was on all fours, and she did so with her usual quick sniffing sound, as though she somehow smelt the meaning. The message puzzled her. She read it three times, then with a dubious gesture offered the grape-skeleton to the prince, who backed away as if it were something the Koran declared unclean. Morris sorted through the satchel again and made a second message.

yellow square: thing with no name

red circle with hole: negative verb

blue/white square: grapes

Dinah sniffed at the symbols, laid the grape-skeleton down on the yellow square and sniffed at the symbols again. She chattered a little to herself as she re-read the first message, then moved resolutely towards the kitchen door, where she stopped and glanced at Morris over her shoulder. He made a “Go” gesture to her.