THE APE-PROOF JEEP

5 hr 48 min to Birth

Raymond led them to a row of Jeeps behind the Welcome Center, in a little lot not too far from the eastern beach of the island. Flannigan climbed into the front passenger seat of the first one. The men watched her for a moment, appreciating her skirt. Raymond got in the driver seat, and Gene got in the back, with Simon on the other side and Kenny squished in the middle.

Flannigan's cell phone, like all of theirs, was worthless on the island, but she had two other communications devices. The first was an annoyingly bulky satellite phone, which she lugged in a black cubical thick nylon case on a strap under her arm. The sat phone was to contact the NSA Director after the situation with Nemo was clarified and under control. Second, strapped ridiculously on her skirt waist, was a walkie-talkie. It was for the purpose of touching base with Sam, who had an identical model.

"This is pretty spacious for a Jeep," Gene said from the back seat. The vehicle had a fortified frame and windows with faint lines of reinforcing material running through the glass. The edges were hugged by thick rubber flaps.

"These models are customized," Raymond said. He started the engine and they could hear the wheels on the gravel of the lot. "The vehicles are customized to be resistant to flybots and apes."

"Apes?" Simon asked.

"In the early days, apes sometimes scaled the walls of their containment," Raymond explained over the steering wheel, as they pulled out of the driveway. "Apes are not usually violent, but they are affected by the tests we conduct with the flybots. We have killed very few apes in our tests. Usually we test by sending out flies to attack and tranquilize one or more targets. So the apes are in a kind of war with the flybots. They are always looking for new ways to avoid the flybots, fool them or escape from them. The Jeeps are toughened as a precautionary feature against angry apes."

They were now driving westward on the dirt road, between the gorilla areas to the north and to the south. But all that could be seen of these areas were massive hills, steeply sloped and covered with vegetation natural to simian habitats.

Raymond pointed to the walls. "Gorillas kept trying to get over those fences," he said. "They are intelligent. We had difficulty keeping them in their areas at first," Raymond recounted. "We weren't able to create a perimeter that they couldn't get through. We tried all kinds of materials and traps. But the little buggers are clever. Finally we realized that we didn't have to fool them; we could teach them. When they left the perimeter, we gave them a zap. It's dangerous because those gorillas are gigantic, and liable to fight in groups. But eventually they learned not to cross the perimeter, so they don't even try."

"Do they wear collars?" Flannigan asked.

Raymond smiled. "No, we used a more advanced technology to zap them."

"The flybots," Gene said.

"That's right. Once our flybot prototype was working, we'd release them to discipline any gorilla messing around at the fence. We don't even need to worry about it any more. The gorillas have learned. We even see them teaching each other to stay away from the fence."

"Gorillas are quite intelligent," Gene remarked. "Aside from humans, they are the most intelligent animals on Earth. You must have chosen them as your test subjects partly for that reason."

"Yes," Raymond said, "and also because their bodies are so similar to ours."

"Not only their bodies are similar," Gene added archly. "Their minds are, too. The difference between human intelligence and that of other primates is much smaller than you might imagine."

"Then why," Simon challenged, "don't they learn more when we try to teach them? They only learn a few words."

"To be precise, Koko the gorilla understood two thousand words and more than one thousand signs," Gene corrected. "But to answer your question: what holds them back is their lack of vocal chords. Their brains are fine; they're simply missing vocal chords. If they had vocal chords, they would have developed human language and intelligence a long time ago."

"But can't we teach them sign language?"

"Sign language doesn't require speech, but it's based on spoken language," Gene explained. "And it's developed by, taught by, and used with people who also use spoken language. It's based on a whole species with a spoken language. If humans didn't have spoken language, we could have a sign language. But it would be a very simple one, accompanied by maybe a dozen different types of noises."

"Like gorillas," Simon ventured.

"Exactly."

They drove on and thought about it.

"Interesting," Flannigan said.

"We think all of our abilities come from our brains alone," Gene said. "But that's not true. In many ways, our brains are taught by our bodies."

Flannigan caught a twinkle in his eyes as he directed these words at her. At his mention of bodies, she understood a double meaning. She wondered whether he, with a great teacher's mind, could also teach her body something.