The Poison Oracle Read Free Page A

give
    green/blue striped square:  banana
    white square:  (to) Dinah

    Dinah peered at the symbols as though she were much more short-sighted than in fact she was, sniffing along the line of them in a rhythmic quick-time. She laid the dart down on the yellow square to confirm its identity, but kept a firm hold on it while she did so. (Morris had never cheated her in her life, and could hardly imagine circumstances in which he might be forced to do so, but the possibility seemed to remain vivid in her mind.) She chattered thoughtfully to herself for a few seconds, then made the give-me sign and gestured towards the satchel. Eagerly she picked out the blue/white striped square that meant grapes, then hunted fastidiously until she found the little black triangle they used for the connective conjunction. She added them right at the end of the line and studied her revised message; clearly she realised there was something wrong with it, but it took her some time to discover what, twelve symbols being near the limit of sentence-length she could cope with. At last she moved the second white square to the end of the sentence.
    Immediately Morris snatched up a red circle, larger than most of the others, and slapped it down on the floor.

    red circle: negative

    He was shocked. A banana and grapes! Her victory over Sparrow had given her inflated ideas.
    She lurched away from the door and chattered up and down the wire mesh. The other chimpanzees eyed her sidelong, like xenophobic villagers watching one of their girls flirting with a passing hiker. On her second return to the door she sulkily removed the green/blue square and the black triangle. Morris considered a moment: to give in would be a depraving act, but it would stem from the Sultan’s trigger-finger, an organ beyond anyone’s control; and anyway the Sultan was paying for the grapes, at around three pounds a bunch. He found a green circle and replied.

    green circle: positive

    He fished back through the bars all the counters except the second, third and fourth of his original sentence; obediently Dinah passed him the dart. As soon as the door was open she snatched at his hand and smacking her lips tried to drag him along the corridor. The other chimps, stirred by her food-noises, came ambling over; Morris only freed himself just in time to prevent the crowd of them bundling out into the corridor. Rowse picked up the yellow circle with the hole in it and bit it in two, but after a couple of chews spat out the gnawed fragments and handed the other half to Cecil to try. Morris retrieved the other two symbols and closed his satchel.
    As soon as he was on his feet Dinah made a leap for his shoulders. He hitched his arm contentedly under her buttocks, adjusted himself to her weight and walked on down the corridor; by going the long way round he could cast an eye over the rest of the zoo, and also avoid passing the Sultan and bin Zair. The polar bear was swimming, huge in its tiny pool; he paused and watched it with vague guilt; but for him it would have died months ago, and though he did not believe that its soul would have gone to roam the dazzling ice-floes east-north-east of the Pearly Gates, he did feel that it would be better for such a creature not to exist than to be cramped in this mean, expensive prison. Only the Sultan would then have imported another polar bear. He was proud of owning the one that held the world record for nearness to the goddam equator.
    Dinah still had the memory of grapes on her mind’s tongue, so Morris walked on when she hooted in his ear to remind him. There were several things that combined to console him for the complex indignities of Q’Kut—the ten thousand dollars a month, the Sultan’s erratic friendship, the excitingly strange and wonderful language of the marshmen, the absence of serious personal relationships and responsibilities—but Dinah was more important than any of these things. He was glad that the gradual process of