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It is Zira, who laughs not unkindly at my efforts; her presence always rouses the girl to anger. Zira is accompanied by Cornelius, who is interested in my efforts and often comes to see the results for himself. Today he has come to see me for another reason. He looks rather excited.
“Would you like to go on a little trip with me, Ulysse?”
“A trip?”
“Quite a long one; almost to the antipodes. Some archeologists have discovered some extremely curious ruins out there, if the reports reaching us are to be believed. An orangutan is directing the excavations and he can scarcely be relied upon to interpret the vestiges correctly. There’s something strange about them that fascinates me and that may afford decisive material for my research. The Academy is sending me out there on an official mission and I think your presence would be most useful.”
I do not see how I can help him, but I welcome this opportunity to see further aspects of Soror. He takes me to his office to give me more details.
I am delighted by this diversion, which is an excuse for not completing my rounds; for there is one more prisoner for me to see—Professor Antelle. He is still in the same state, which makes his release impossible. Thanks to me, however, he is now on his own, isolated in a fairly comfortable cell. It is a painful duty for me to visit him. He replies to none of my earnest requests and still behaves like a perfect animal.
CHAPTER TWENTY - EIGHT
We set off a week later. Zira came with us, but she was to return after a few days to look after the institute in Cornelius’ absence. The latter intended staying much longer on the site of the excavations, if these proved to be as interesting as he expected.
A special plane had been put at our disposal, a jet machine rather like our first models of this type of aircraft, but very comfortable and equipped with a small soundproof compartment in which we could talk easily. It was here we were sitting, Zira and I, shortly after our departure. I was looking forward to the journey. By now I was completely accustomed to the simian world. I had been neither surprised nor frightened at seeing this big aircraft being piloted by an ape. My only thought was to enjoy the view and the spectacular sight of Betelgeuse rising. We had climbed to a height of about thirty thousand feet. The air was remarkably pure, and the giant star could be seen on the horizon like our own sun observed through a telescope. Zira was enchanted by it.
“Are there such beautiful dawns as this on Earth?” she asked. “Is your sun as lovely as ours?”
I told her it was neither as big nor as red, but it sufficed us. On the other hand, our nocturnal heavenly body was bigger and shed a more intense pale light than Soror’s. We felt as happy as school children on a holiday, and I laughed and joked with her as with a very close friend. When Cornelius came and joined us after a moment I almost resented his intrusion on our tete-a-tete. He was pensive. For some time, moreover, he had seemed rather nervous. He worked prodigiously on his own research, which absorbed him to the point of occasionally causing him to be totally absent-minded. He still kept the subject of this research a secret, and I believe Zira knew as little about it as I did. I only knew it concerned the origin of ape and that the learned chimpanzee tended more and more to reject the classical theories. This morning, for the first time, he revealed certain aspects of it to me, and it did not take me long to understand why my existence as a civilized man was so important to him. He began by reverting to a subject we had discussed together a thousand times.
“You did say, didn’t you, Ulysse, that on your Earth the apes are utter animals? That man has risen to a degree of civilization equal to our own and which, in certain respects, even . . . ? Don’t be frightened of making me angry; the scientific spirit ignores all self-esteem.”
“Which, in many respects, even surpasses it—yes, that’s undeniable. One of the best proofs is that I am here. It seems to me you have only reached the stage . . .”
“I know, I know,” he broke in wearily. “We’ve discussed all that. We are now penetrating the secrets you discovered centuries ago. . . . And it’s not only your statements that disturb me,” he went on, nervously pacing up and down the little cabin. “For some time I’ve been harassed by a feeling—a feeling supported by certain concrete indications— that the key to these secrets, even here on our planet, has been held by other brains in the distant past.”
I might have replied that this impression of rediscovery had also affected certain minds on Earth. Perhaps it even prevailed universally and possibly served as the basis for our belief in God. But I was careful not to interrupt him.
He was following a train of thought that was still confused, which he expressed in an extremely reticent manner.
“Other brains,” he repeated pensively, “that maybe were not ...”
He broke off abruptly. He looked miserable, as though tortured by the perception of a truth his mind was unwilling to admit.
“You did say, didn’t you, that your apes possess a highly developed sense of mimicry?”
“They mimic us in everything we do, I mean in every act that does not demand a rational process of thought. So much so that with us the verb ape is synonymous with imitate.”
“Zira,” Cornelius murmured, as though depressed, “is it not this sense of aping that characterizes us as well?”
Without giving Zira time to protest, he went on excitedly, “It begins in childhood. All our education is based on imitation.”
“It’s the orangutans . . .”
“That’s it.
They are of tremendous importance, since it is they who mold our youth through their books. They force every young monkey to repeat all the errors of his ancestors. That explains the slowness of our progress. For the last two thousand years we have remained similar to ourselves.”
This slow development among the apes deserves a few comments. I had been struck by it while reading their history, noticing in it some important differences from the soaring flight of the human mind. True, we also have known a period of semi-stagnation. We, too, have had our orangutans, our falsified education and ridiculous curricula, and this period lasted a long time.
Not so long, however, as in the apes’ case, and above all not at the same stage of evolution. The dark ages that the chimpanzee deplored had lasted about ten thousand years. During this period no notable progress had been achieved except, perhaps, during the last half century. But what I found extremely curious was that their earliest legends, their earliest chronicles, their earliest memories bore witness to a civilization that was already well advanced and in fact was more or less similar to that of the present day. These documents, ten thousand years old, afforded proof of general skills and achievements comparable to the skills and achievements of today; and, before them, there was a total blank: no tradition either oral or written, not a single clue. In essence, it seemed as though the simian civilization had made a miraculous appearance out of the blue, ten thousand years before and had since been preserved more or less without modification. The ordinary ape had grown accustomed to finding this quite natural, never imagining a different state of mental development, but a perceptive brain like Cornelius’ sensed an enigma there and was tormented by it.
“There are apes capable of original creation,” Zira protested.
“Certainly,” Cornelius agreed. “That’s true, especially in recent years. In the long run, mind is able to embody itself in gesture. It has to, in fact; that’s the natural course of evolution. . . . But what I’m passionately seeking, Zira, what I’m trying to find out, is how it all began. ... At present it strikes me as not impossible that it was through simple imitation at the beginning of our era.”
“Imitation of what, of whom?”
