. . . creative soup . . .

Plato
An excerpt from The Human Apes, by Dale Carlson

Todd stopped abruptly, for a moment not daring to turn around and face what was impossible to accept as a reality. To have come upon a new species of hominoid, an ape more manlike than anything yet discovered either alive or in fossil excavations, was bewildering enough. But that the ape's brain should have developed sufficiently for speech, and more than that--if what the ape had said was true--that he should be able to pick up the ingredients of an alien language in less than half an hour, all this was theoretically impossible. For a few seconds, Todd continued to remain immobile. He wondered if the dense mists that enshrouded the clearing had clouded his faculties. He stared at the eerie forest world before him and tried to cope with what he had just seen and heard.

The word "Impossible!" escaped his lips and echoed through the forest as a last rational protest.

"Not at all impossible." The voice came again across the unearthly gray haze of the clearing." As you are alive and real, so am I. Turn and look again, so that you will believe. You have been watched for many weeks. It was thought that you were capable of believing. That is why I have been sent."

Todd turned slowly. Whether from the cold, clammy fog or from his premonition of the unutterable possibilities this creature presented, Todd felt a sudden, harrowing chill.

"Sent?" he whispered, hearing the sound of his own voice as if he were in a trance." Who sent you? Who has been watching me? Who...what are you?"

Plato laughed. Laughed! Not hooted, roared, screeched, or panted. Laughed, as only humans laughed.

"I was sent by the others."

"Others like you?" Todd remembered the ghostly vision he had seen on the mountain a few days before.

"Most of them," answered Plato.

"Was my seeing you the other day an accident?" Todd asked.

"We never betray ourselves accidentally. We wanted to ". prepare you.

Todd moved forward to examine Plato more closely, but Plato raised a hand." Not yet. Be patient for a while. You have seen enough to know that physically I combine features of man and ape. As to what I am, that you shall learn in time. For the moment, in your vocabulary, I suppose the best description is simply--a human ape."

Todd obeyed Plato's gesture and stood still. Of the thousand questions pushing excitedly through his mind, suddenly one above all seemed most important, most relevant.

"Plato, why me?"

Plato nodded, as if approving Todd's choice of all the possible questions he might have asked.

"You have been heard talking to your friends, your father. I t is rare among humans to find one sympathetic to our ideas."

"You have come to our camp at Kabara?"

"At night. We listen to your conversations, partly out of curiosity about your work, partly to make certain of your movements and plans so we may ensure our own safety, and partly because now and then, among such expeditions, we find someone--like you--whom we think may be sympathetic to our views."

"And when you find someone, what then?" asked Todd, scrutinizing as well as he could, through the heavy fog, the strange creature near the mouth of the cave. It was difficult to make out more than he had already seen: a muscular human shape; darkish skin on the hairless hands and on the face that was nearly human but with larger, more prominent" teeth, especially the canines; and the whole, except for the face and hands, covered with the gleaming, black coat of the gorilla.

"Be patient, my friend. I'll find you again," Plato answered softly." In the meantime, speak of me only to the girl and boy. Say nothing to your fathers." And then he was gone, gone as if he had never been there, melting into the forest fog until only the fog and the silence were left.

Todd stood alone in the clearing, hearing only the sound of the cicadas and the rising wind in the gnarled, mossy trees. The fingers of fog that reached through the trees seemed about to enclose his body, as the vision of the unknown had just enclosed his mind.

Needing to escape from both, Todd fled the clearing. He could not face the others yet. He had to have time to think. So, despite the rain that had again begun to fall, he searched for the spoor of Group D, preferring to spend the night with apes rather than human beings.

He found the trail beyond the cave, the spoor he had become adept at following: a heel print in the soft earth, like that of a man but wider; vines stripped of leaves; small holes where the apes had dug for roots; food remnants of wild celery, senecio leaves, bits of bark, thistles.

It was late afternoon, nearly evening, before Todd spotted the group. They had completed their second major forage of the day and were resting before they built their nests for the night. When Todd found them, the gorillas were sitting in a hunched position, few of them making any effort to seek shelter from the rain. They looked miserable, with the water dripping off their brow ridges and their long hair a sodden mass. One silverback sat with a female and her infant under the canopy of a tree, deriving some protection from the leafy branches above. Quietly, Todd climbed to a vantage point on a low branch nearby. He was so close to the group that he did not need his binoculars. The funguslike odor of lichen and moldy moss on the tree bark filled his nostrils, but the branch was wide and comfortable and he was protected from the rain.

To keep his mind from dwelling on what had happened at the clearing, he began to take notes, mapping the trail he had just followed, describing as minutely as possible the physical characteristics of each member of Group D. He drew several sketches of the gorillas, realizing again how different each face was, how different the expression in each pair of eyes. There were personality differences as well, each ape varying from the norm as humans do. For instance, normally an infant remained with its mother for about three years, at which point the female generally gave birth to another infant and let the older juvenile fend for itself. Yet Todd had watched one female in Group D, who, though she had a new infant, which she held closely in her right arm, threw her left arm affectionately around her four-year-old juvenile to cuddle it close. One night, the juvenile had even crawled into the nest with his mother and her infant. Todd drew that female now, with her sagging breasts and her kindly, tolerant eyes. Almost human.

And yet as human as the apes seemed sometimes, Todd was aware that something basic was lacking. For all the expression in their eyes, for all the grunts and hoots and roars, they lacked the kind of communication that imparts knowledge of the past and future, so important to the development of the brain. Among the apes, all but the most basic knowledge faded quickly.

Todd adjusted his position slightly on the branch. He watched the giant silverback sitting next to the female. It was the same gigantic male who had challenged Todd earlier that day. Though he was the dominant member of the group and could easily, with a threatening glare or a push, have sent the female and her young out from under the shelter, he not only tolerated their presence but, when the young juvenile sauntered over to him and pestered him, wrestled gently with the juvenile, roughhousing and pushing him about in play. Only when the juvenile really made a nuisance of himself by climbing all over the silverback did the male, after ignoring this for a few minutes, finally give the youngster a meaningful glance. The glance alone was enough to send the young ape scrambling off. Todd smiled. It had been a rare sight, to see a silverback playing so long with a juvenile. For the most part, Todd knew, free-living gorillas seemed to lose most of their playfulness by the time they were six years old. He made a note of the occurrence in his book.

It was early evening now. The rain had suddenly stopped. Slowly, the huge silverback rose to his feet and began to build his nest on the ground with branches he had broken off from nearby trees and from stalks of vegetation. Following his signal, the rest of the group began constructing their own nests, most on the ground, some in the low forks of trees. The whole process took about five minutes, and then all was silent. Todd waited a few more minutes before descending quietly from his tree to spread his sleeping roll on the ground. He realized he had eaten nothing since the morning and, reaching into his knapsack, pulled out a can of sardines and some crackers. While he ate, the clouds began to scatter and the sky to clear. He stood to stretch his cramped legs and looked toward the east. Before him, emerging from the clouds, were three of the eight Virunga Volcanoes: the jagged peak of Mount Sabinio, Mount Muhavura, and the flat-topped peak of Mount Visoke. Mount Gahinga was hidden. Nor could he see Mount Nyamuragira or its neighbor Mount Nyiragongo, both of which were active volcanoes.

Mountains, gorillas, nests--why was he thinking about everything but the most important occurrence of the day? Here he was, fully human, sleeping among eleven animals, fully gorilla, and he had come face to face that afternoon with a creature that was neither one nor the other, but that in some unspecified way, Todd suspected, was superior to both. From what ancestor had Plato and his group descended? How far back had they diverged from the branch of primates that had evolved into man--or the branch that had evolved into ape? What genes had given Plato the hands and face and shape of a human and what genes the coat and heavier musculature of an ape? As for Plato's linguistic ability--but the implications were too staggering for Todd to contemplate.

What disturbed him most, however, was not so much the scientific explanation for Plato. This he could no doubt learn--would, if all Plato had said was correct. His real worry, and yet at the same time the source of an excitement deep within him, was an undefined premonition that had begun to develop from the moment Plato had spoken to him.

Whoever, whatever Plato and his fellow creatures were, they seemed to feel Todd's fate was linked with them. Todd had always thought his future most probably included a professorship in anthropology, possibly some contribution to the research in the study of man, his origins, the significance of his behavior patterns. Now he wondered whether what had happened in the clearing had changed it all. He had a feeling that it had, but why he did not know.

In the morning, when the sun shone clear and the gorillas had left their nests to begin their morning forage, Todd made his way back along the trail. He came to the clearing. The sun's rays penetrated through the overhanging leaves. The cicadas chirred, and the sunbirds warbled. But the clearing was empty. He passed the mouth of the lava cave, paused for a moment in the center of the open space, and, on impulse, lifted a hand in greeting as if something inside him prompted such an affirmation of yesterday's encounter. Then he moved on through the forest, down Mount Mikeno's slope, across the rocky ravine, and through the trees toward the shallow valley. On the opposite ridge he spotted the two tents where Diana, Johnny, and Koro had camped for the night.

"Well, if it isn't our human gorilla," Johnny called out in welcome, using a greeting he had often used before.

Only this time, Todd didn't smile.

"What is it?" Diana asked softly, with a perception she often displayed." Something's happened, hasn't it, Todd?"

How do I explain, thought Todd. How in the world do I explain?

"Have you got some coffee?" he asked.

Even Johnny seemed to sense something then. He came to throw a large, affectionate arm around Todd's shoulders, not unlike Todd suddenly thought in humor, the gesture of a good-natured ape, and sat Todd down on a fallen log near the tents.

"Here's coffee," said Koro, extending an enameled metal mug in Todd's direction.

"Now," said Diana, sitting next to Todd." Talk."

Todd slipped off the straps of his knapsack, let it fall to the ground, and took the cup of coffee from Koro. Fearing their disbelief, Todd delayed in speaking about Plato. He took refuge, as he often did, in talking about evolution.

"You know how often the three of us have argued about the evolutionary possibilities for humans," Todd began." Paleo anthropology has proved that prehumans, the Australopithecus for instance, existed over four million years ago; that more than a million years ago the first people of our own genus, Homo erectus, walked the earth. After them came early Homo sapiens, three-hundred thousand years ago, their brain capacity within modern range. And one hundred thousand years ago, Neanderthal, Cro-Magnon, and us."

It was a litany, Diana and Johnny knew, Todd used when he was disturbed. They listened patiently to the facts they all knew, letting Todd talk to comfort himself.

"You two have always maintained," Todd went on," that we've made great progress from the Australopithecus, who used stones for defense, to the Homo erectus, who led a communal life and knew the use of fire, to the Cro-Magnon, who drew animal paintings on the walls of caves twenty-five thousand years ago. And then with the beginning of recorded history among the Sumerians about five thousand years ago, through all ancient civilizations, medieval times, and into the present technological century, you both maintain we've made even further progress."

"But we have," protested Diana, picking up the thread of their continuing debate." We've been over and over the problems human beings face. All everybody talks about is war, overpopulation, pollution, and using up our natural resources; and if that isn't depressing enough, they talk about the earth's being encompassed by an expanding sun in five billion years. But why doesn't anybody talk about the problems we've already worked out, in medicine, in physics, in space technology? In time, we'll solve even more problems."

Diana flushed heatedly and went on with her argument." Compare us to the dinosaurs, for instance. They occupied. the earth for over one hundred million years and changed nothing. Two-thirds of the animals who ever inhabited the earth are now extinct, having changed nothing. I mean, the thing that separates man from all other animals is his ability not just to adapt to his environment, but to change it, to dominate it. We were practically apes only two million years ago, Todd. Give us time!"

"Why can't you believe that, given time, we can solve our problems?" said Johnny.

Todd shook his head." Because we may not have the time. That's the whole point. The very technology we've created that makes progress and civilization possible is exactly what threatens us with extinction. And the fault isn't in technology itself. It's in our inability to use it properly. The very thing that made us men instead of apes, what you call the ability to change our environment, what you praise as our capacity to dominate everything about us, is exactly what will destroy us in the end. Our own heritage, the aggressive instinct inherited from the kind of animals we once were, is exactly what's going to do us in."
Todd brooded over his coffee cup, which Koro refilled from the pot over the fire.

"You say that all the time," commented Johnny, stretching out comfortably in a patch of soft, low brush." But I, for one, like being human, no matter what problems we face."

"What is the answer, Todd?" asked Diana." We can't control what we are. Not yet, at least."

Todd looked quietly at his two closest friends, hesitating a moment before he answered Diana's question.

"To shed it all, to go back, until we find a different way forward."

The other two were silent for a moment.

"What have you seen?" Diana whispered gently.

"Gorillas," said Johnny, interrupting the awkward pause so that Todd wouldn't have to answer if he didn't want to. He laughed to break the spell that had come over Todd, and seemed to be moving over Diana." My guess is that Todd's been spending too much time with the gorillas, Diana. I think he's beginning to feel we'd all be better off returning to the wild.

"Sorry," said Todd." I didn't mean to carryon like that, but I've seen something I'm not even sure I believe myself, and it's shaken me up a bit." He checked to make certain Koro was busy taking down the tents and was out of earshot, before he began to describe his encounter with Plato in the clearing.

"Hallucination," said Johnny immediately." It's impossible."

"Maybe," said Todd." But I'm going back to find out. It's only about half an hour from here. Want to come?"

"Yes," said Diana, leaving Johnny no choice but to agree.