Congo - Crichton Michael - Страница 14

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Amy looked at Karen Ross suspiciously.

“Hello, Amy,” Karen Ross said, smiling at the floor. She felt a little foolish behaving this way, but Amy was large enough to frighten her.

Amy stared at Karen Ross for a moment, then walked away, across the trailer to her easel. She had been finger-painting, and now resumed this activity, ignoring them.

“What’s that mean?” Ross said. She distinctly felt she was being snubbed.

“We’ll see,” Elliot said.

After a few moments, Amy ambled back, walking on her knuckles. She went directly to Karen Ross, sniffed her crotch, and examined her minutely. She seemed particularly interested in Ross’s leather purse, which had a shiny brass clasp. Ross said later that “it was just like any cocktail party in Houston. I was being checked out by another woman. I had the feeling that any minute she was going to ask-me where I bought my clothes.”

That was not the outcome, however. Amy reached up and deliberately streaked globs of green finger paint on Ross’s skirt.

“I don’t think this is going too well,” Karen Ross said.

Elliot had watched the progress of this first meeting with more apprehension than he was willing to admit. Introducing new humans to Amy was often difficult, particularly if They were women.

Over the years, Elliot had come to recognize many distinctly “feminine” traits in Amy. She could be coy, she responded to flattery, she was preoccupied with her appearance, loved makeup, and was very fussy about the color of the sweaters she wore in the winter. She preferred men to women, and she was openly jealous of Elliot’s girl friends. He rarely brought them around to meet her, but sometimes in the morning she would sniff him for perfume, and she always commented if he had not changed his clothing overnight.

This situation might have been amusing if not for the fact that Amy made occasional unprovoked attacks on strange women. And an attack by Amy was never amusing.

Amy returned to the easel and signed, No like woman no like Amy no like go away away.

“Come on, Amy, be a good gorilla,” Peter said.

“What did she say?” Ross asked, going to the sink to wash the finger paint from her dress. Peter noticed that she did not squeal and shriek as many visitors did when they received an unfriendly greeting from Amy.

“She said she likes your dress,” he said.

Amy shot him a look, as she always did whenever Elliot mistranslated her. Amy not lie. Peter not lie.

“Be nice, Amy,” he said. “Karen is a nice human per-son.”

Amy grunted, and returned to her work, painting rapidly.

“What happens now?” Karen Ross said.

“Give her time.” He smiled reassuringly. “She needs time to adjust.”

He did not bother to explain that it was much worse with chimpanzees. Chimps threw feces at strangers, and even at workers they knew well; they sometimes attacked to establish dominance. Chimpanzees had a strong need to determine who was in charge. Fortunately, gorillas were much less formal in their dominance hierarchies, and less violent.

At that moment, Amy ripped the paper from the easel and shredded it noisily, flinging the pieces around the room.

“Is this part of the adjustment?” Karen Ross asked. She seemed more amused than frightened.

“Amy, cut it out,” Peter said, allowing his tone to convey irritation. “Amy..

Amy sat in the middle of the floor, surrounded by the paper. She tore it angrily and signed, This woman. This woman. It was classic displacement behavior. Whenever gorillas did not feel comfortable with direct aggression, they did something symbolic. In symbolic terms, she was now tearing Karen Ross apart.

And she was getting worked up, beginning what the Project Amy staff called “sequencing.” Just as human beings first became red-faced, and then tensed their bodies, and then shouted and threw things before they finally resorted to direct physical aggression, so gorillas passed through a stereotyped behavioral sequence on the way to physical aggression. Tearing up paper, or grass, would be followed by lateral crablike movements and grunts. Then she would slap the ground, making as much noise as possible.

And then Amy would charge, if he didn’t interrupt the sequence.

“Amy,” he said sternly. “Karen button woman.”

Amy stopped shredding. In her world, “button” was the acknowledged term for a person of high status.

Amy was extremely sensitive to individual moods and behavior, and she had no difficulty observing the staff and deciding who was superior to whom. But among strangers, Amy as a gorilla was utterly impervious to formal human status cues; the principal indicators-clothing, bearing, and speech-had no meaning to her.

As a young animal, she had inexplicably attacked policemen. After several biting episodes and threatened lawsuits,

they finally learned that Amy found police uniforms with their shiny buttons clown like and ridiculous; she assumed that anyone so foolishly dressed must be of inferior status and safe to attack. After they had taught her the concept of “button,” she treated anyone in uniform with deference.

Amy now stared at “button” Ross with new respect. Surrounded by the torn paper, she seemed suddenly embarrassed, as if she had made a social error. Without being told, she went and stood in the corner, facing the wall.

“What’s that about?” Ross said.

“She knows she’s been bad.”

“You make her stand in the corner, like a child? She didn’t mean any harm.” Before Elliot could warn against it, she went over to Amy. Amy stared steadfastly at the corner.

Ross unshouldered her purse and set it on the floor within Amy’s reach. Nothing happened for a moment. Then Amy took the purse, looked at Karen, then looked at Peter.

Peter said, “She’ll wreck whatever’s inside.”

“That’s all right.”

Amy immediately opened the brass clasp, and dumped the contents on the floor. She began sifting through, signing, Lipstick lipstick, Amy like Amy want lipstick want.

“She wants lipstick.”

Ross bent over and found it for her. Amy removed the cap and smeared a red circle on Karen’s face. She then smiled and grunted happily, and crossed the room to her mirror, which was mounted on the floor. She applied lipstick.

“I think we’re doing better,” Karen Ross said.

Across the room, Amy squatted by the mirror, happily making a mess of her face. She grinned at her smart image, then applied lipstick to her teeth. It seemed a good time to ask her the question. “Amy want take trip?” Peter said.

Amy loved trips, and regarded them as special treats. After an especially good day, Elliot often took her for a ride to a nearby drive-in, where she would have an orange drink, sucking it through the straw and enjoying the commotion she caused among the other people there. Lipstick and an offer of a trip was almost too much pleasure for one morning. She signed, Car trip?

“No, not in the car. A long trip. Many days.”

Leave house?

“Yes, leave house. Many days.”

This made her suspicious. The only times she had left the house for many days had been during hospitalizations for pneumonia and urinary-tract infections; they had not been pleasant trips. She signed, Where go trip?

“To the jungle, Amy.”

There was a long pause. At first he thought she had not understood, but she knew the word for jungle, and she should be able to put it all together. Amy signed thoughtfully to herself, repetitively as she always did when she was mulling things over: Jungle trip trip jungle go trip jungle go. She set aside her lipstick. She stared at the bits of paper on the floor, and then she began to pick them up and put them in the wastebasket.

“What does that mean?” Karen Ross asked.

“That means Amy wants to take a trip,” Peter Elliot said.

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