Chapter 1

"Just one more day and I'm off this tub," I mumbled under my breath as I sloshed another bucket of water across the floor and squeegeed the monkey shit toward the drain. It was the worst and smelliest job on the ship and it was all mine because I was the low man on the pole.

I'd been assigned to see to the live cargo in the hold being shipped to some research lab in Virginia. There were several cages with monkeys in them and one with a chimp. It was my job to feed them according to instructions printed on a tag attached to each cage. I didn't mind feeding them but cleaning monkey shit off the cages and the floor wasn't my idea of a good time.

This was the first time I'd ever signed on as a hand on a freighter and I'd already decided it would be my last. I only did it to get passage back to the U.S. from Luanda, Angola. How I got to Luanda is another story. Anyhow, we were scheduled to make port the next morning. I'd pack my gear, draw my pay and decide what to do next when my feet were on dry land again.

After I got the floor cleaned, I read the tag on the chimp's cage to remind myself what she was supposed to get for food. As I bent down to read the tag, she reached her hand through the bars and touched my face with her finger. I was startled and pulled back. She sat there looking at me with her soft brown, intelligent-looking eyes. She wasn't behaving like she meant any harm so I bent down to look at the tag again. This time she brushed her finger along the back of my hand. I got the impression she was petting me.

I smiled at her and I'll be damned if she didn't smile back. At least, I think it was a smile. I don't know beans about primatology so, for all I know, she could have been thinking 'I'll rip out your fucking throat if I get the chance.' But I didn't think so. I really thought she was trying to be friendly.

Hoping I didn't draw back a hand minus a finger, I tentatively reached through the bars to stroke her hand like she had mine. She closed her hand around mine and lifted it, holding it against the side of her face, her eyes locked firmly onto mine like she was trying to read my thoughts.

"Well, aren't you a sweetheart," I said, gently stroking her head and shoulder.

She reached through the bars again, this time to take the tag with the feeding instructions in her fingers and hold it up for me to see, clearly associating the tag with food. I looked at it again and read that she was to get a sweet potato, an apple and a banana for her supper. "Hey, you're pretty smart for an ape." I said. I went to the supply cabinet and picked out the best I could find and put them in a metal dish. When I slid her meal through the slot in the bottom of her cage, she smiled again. I suspected I was reading a lot more into her actions than were really there. I think it's called anthropomorphizing.

Even so, I was enchanted. I had no idea chimps could be so personable. As I watched her eat her supper, I was struck by how meticulous she was in her eating habits. She took small bites. When she got to the banana, she bit off the stem and peeled it carefully like a human would and laid the peel on the metal plate and pushed it toward the slot. I wondered that she hadn't displayed this behavior until now. Always before when I came in to clean up and feed the animals, she just sat in the back corner of her cage and stared at me. She wouldn't even eat until I left the room. Why was she suddenly so friendly? Had she finally gotten used to me and figured out I wouldn't harm her, or what? I concluded it was probably because I was the one who gave her food.

I noticed there was a thick plastic sleeve with what looked like a shipping manifest attached to the side of the cage. When I read it I discovered she wasn't a chimp after all but a bonobo, estimated age about seven or eight years old. I wasn't sure what the difference was; I'd have to look it up on line. The manifest said she was going to a place called Adamson's Laboratories, HIV Research. That gave me pause. Anything with 'HIV' on it is going to get your attention and I didn't like what I was thinking. My bet was that she'd be infected with the AIDS virus and studied as the associated diseases developed and progressed; a grim future, for sure.

I put my hand through the bars again and stroked her head. "Damn, girl, I'm afraid you've got a hard road ahead of you. I'm sure sorry about that. I wish there was something I could do to help."

She couldn't have understood the words but I think she picked up on the sentiment because she made a little whining sound and held my hand against her face again.

I finished up feeding the monkeys and headed for the door. Before I was across the room, she made a kind of 'whoop' sound causing me to turn and look at her. With her index finger, she pointed directly at me, then rattled the cage door and pointed at herself. I guess I must have looked perplexed because she did it again. In fact, she did it four times in exactly the same order: pointing at me, rattling her cage door and pointing at herself. As I closed the bulkhead door behind me, I heard her making the whining sounds again.

I couldn't get her off my mind for the rest of my shift. I felt pretty sure she was telling me something and that it was important to her but I didn't speak simian and apparently I stunk at charades.

When my shift ended, I went to the Chief Mate and asked it I could use the computer in the ship's library. He gave his permission and I sat down to look up 'bonobo'. It seems they're a lot like chimps but not the same. Apparently bonobos and chimps split about two million years ago from a common ancestor. Bonobos are slightly smaller, they're shaped a little differently and have some distinctive behaviors, one of which is a bent for sexual promiscuity. 'More power to them, ' I thought. They also have a completely different social structure aimed at peaceful coexistence instead of a fixed hierarchical structure based on male domination. Other than that, I didn't learn much of value.

At midnight I was still lying in my bunk wide awake, thinking about what was likely to happen to her. I got up to walk around the ship hoping I could tire myself out. It wasn't working so I dropped down to the galley and poured myself a cup of coffee in a to-go cup, making it about half cream and sugar to cut the caffeine. I decided that as long as I was up, I might as well check to see how the object of my worry was doing.

There was a soft yellow light in the hold when I stepped through the bulkhead. I could see she was curled up on a ragged old blanket on her side with her back to me. As I approached the cage, she turned her head and looked at me, then rolled over into a sitting position next to the cage door and reached out toward me. I held her hand and looked at her as I sipped my coffee.

She let go and reached for the coffee cup. "Whoa, girl! I don't think you'd like this stuff." Then I thought, 'Well, maybe she would. It's half cream and sugar and it certainly isn't hot enough to burn her.'

I held it out toward her and she gingerly took the cup from my hand and lifted it to her lips, taking little sips. She loved it. After a few sips, she handed it back to me.

It's true I hadn't read all that much but from what I recalled, this wasn't typical behavior for an ape. Certainly untrained ones shouldn't be able to communicate this well with humans. I didn't know where she came from but I was pretty darned sure that, wild or domesticated, she wasn't your average lab specimen.

I pulled a crate up next to her cage and took a seat. "I sure wish you could talk, girl, because I think there's something you want to tell me." She reached through the bars and touched her fingertip to my lips, then touched it to her ear. Then she did it in reverse; her lips to my ear. The message couldn't have been any clearer if she'd written it in block letters. My heart rate picked up as the realization dawned on me that she understood me perfectly.

'My god!' I thought. 'I think we've got some kind of genius ape here!'

I offered her the cup again and she took a few more sips, then handed it back. I was no genius myself but I was pretty well educated and I could recognize sophisticated thought and behavior when I saw it.

She patted me on my shoulder. When she was sure she had my attention, she repeated the same routine I saw earlier that afternoon. She pointed at me, rattled her cage door and pointed at herself. The message was clear now. When she saw in my eyes that I understood her, she moved to the side of the cage where the plastic sleeve with the manifest was attached and pointed to it. I could see then that that part of her cage was made of heavy screening instead of bars. She couldn't get to the sleeve. I walked around and looked at it again and saw a small flat key resting on the bottom. To emphasize the message, she poked at the screen again.