“Our zoo ’s got 110 acres, 400 species and more than 7,000 animals.” He liked numbers, and was generous with them.
“What’s an acre?” his dad asked him. Do they still teach children useful information like that in school?
Gordon grinned at him. “Come on Dad, you know what an acre is!” Their annual membership card fast-tracked them in.
“Do you know how an acre came to be the size it is?” Zack asked Gordon.
“No, but I bet I will before I’m very much older.”
“It was the amount of ground a yoke of oxen could plough in one day.” Zack told him.
“Dad, do you know how an acre came to be the size it is?” Gordon asked.
“4,840 square yards” his dad said. When he had gone to school, they taught you useful things like that AND made you learn them. Learn it properly when you’re that age and you never forget it. Kids nowadays, it’s all computers and calculators. Ask them to give you change out of a pound when something costs 97p and they have to punch it into a bloody calculator. Don’t get me started ...
“No, Dad, why is it 4,840 square yards?”
His dad paused. “I don’t know. It’s an odd number really, now you mention it. They never taught us that in school.”
“It was the amount of ground a yoke of oxen could plough in one day,” Gordon informed him.
His dad was amazed. “How on Earth do you know that?”
“It was on The History Channel.”
His mum arched an eyebrow. “That’s very interesting, Darling,” she said.
They followed the path left, past the elephants of the Asian forest, and walked over the bridge that gave visitors a great view of onagers, dromedaries and brow-antlered deer. Gordon loved all animals, but his current fascinations were big cats and primates. He was in awe of the big cats because they were such powerful predators. He was drawn to the primates because they are our closest relatives: so like us, and yet so different.
The tigers were restless. Maybe they too were filled with the joys of spring. They prowled in full view, shoulder muscles rippling. Gordon watched one swing its massive head from side to side, staring with baleful eyes at the prey beyond its reach. A little boy standing next to Gordon turned to his father. “Hasn’t that tiger got a big face, Dad? Is it as big as yours?”
With incredible speed and amazing grace, the huge cat flowed suddenly into the air. Before those watching had had time to gasp, its massive paw flicked out at full stretch and took a passing sparrow out of the air. A second later it landed without a sound, pinning its tiny prey to the ground. The feeble fluttering between its claws ceased almost as it began. The great cat sniffed it briefly before moving away, leaving the broken bird dead on the ground.
“Wow!” Gordon breathed out. What an awesome moment.
“That’s something you don’t see every day,” Victor Bennett commented, as they turned away.
“Perhaps it’s just as well, dear,” said his wife, whose heart had gone out to the sparrow.
“Where next?” his dad asked.
“Chimpanzees,” Gordon said. It was a disappointment that his zoo, wonderful though it was, did not have any gorillas. However, it did have plans for a spectacular new bio-dome. In a few years, visitors would be able to see gorillas in their natural habitat for the first time in the UK. Gordon was really looking forward to that!
“I remember being taken to London Zoo by my parents when I was about your age,” Victor said. His memory had been jogged by that tiger moment to recall a special moment of his own. “They had a big silverback called Guy. He was the only gorilla there. They found a female for him after about 25 years, but they think he’d been on his own for too long. They never bred.”
Twenty-five years in solitary confinement.
“That day, we went into the gorilla house. There he sat by the big glass screen between him and us. What a sight he was, with a massive head and huge shoulders. He must have weighed about 500 lbs. There was a railing to stop people going right up to the glass and banging on it, I suppose. It wasn’t busy. This little girl went under the railing and right up to the glass.”
Zack was nowhere to be seen, and appeared to have his eyes closed. Gordon could feel his pain.
“She put her hand against the glass. This incredible giant of a creature swung that great head round and looked at her with deep, black eyes.”
Gordon heard something then he hadn’t heard before. Zack was crying.
“Then he slowly lifted his right arm and pressed his hand against the glass, just where her hand was. And there they were for a few seconds, the human child and the lonely gorilla, getting as close as they could to holding hands.”
There was a catch in his dad’s voice. Gordon looked up to see a tear rolling down his face. His mum put her arm round his dad’s waist and gave him a squeeze. “That must have been a wonderful moment,” she said.
His dad found a tissue and wiped his eyes. “It was,” he said. “I’ve never forgotten it.”
“You were there, weren’t you Zack?” Gordon whispered, and got no reply.
Sometimes, words aren’t enough.
NOTES
HIS LOCAL ZOO; EXTINCTION OF SPECIES – AN INTERESTING QUESTION; ACRE; ONAGERS; HIS CURRENT FASCINATIONS WERE BIG CATS AND PRIMATES; BALEFUL; PLANS FOR A NEW BIO-DOME.
Chapter 23
So Near And Yet So Far
Gordon’s Zoo had one of the largest and most successful groups of zoo chimpanzees in the world. Gordon never tired of watching them. “Here we are,” said his dad, almost back to his normal cheerful self, “our nearest living relatives.”
“So near and yet so far,” Zack said. He was back, and at his usual place by Gordon’s side. “So near and yet so far, Dad,” Gordon commented cheerfully.
His dad shot him a quizzical look. “How do you mean?”
“It said on The Discovery Channel that human DNA and chimp DNA are 98.4% identical,” Gordon replied.
“That’s right it did.” His mum agreed. “I watched that programme with you. How do you always remember these numbers Gordon?”
“They’re interesting,” he said. He only had a vague idea of what DNA was, but he knew 98.4 was very close to 100. “‘So near’ because chimpanzees are so like us, and very clever.”
His dad nodded. “They use tools, and they work together when they’re hunting.”
Edith shuddered. She’d seen a programme where the chimps had caught a monkey and torn it apart without killing it first. There is a dark side to behaviour like that, much like the terrible cruelty humans are capable of. She much preferred the gentle, peaceful, vegetarian gorillas. We aren’t so closely related to them, only about 95%, the programme had said. In Edith’s opinion, something went wrong on the way to chimps and us.
“‘Survival of the fittest’ isn’t the best idea Nature ever came up with, is it?” she said. “Survival of the nicest would have been … nicer.”
“Predators and prey,” Gordon’s dad said. “’twas ever thus.”
“And yet ‘so far’,” Gordon said, “because look at the difference in the level of achievement between us and chimps. It’s huge!”
“That’s a very good point.” Victor agreed. He was enjoying this day out more than he’d expected to. It had brought back an important memory. “Only 1.6% different and we’re the ones landing on the moon while they’re the ones still swinging through the trees.”
“What differences could there be in just 1.6% of our genes,” Zack asked Gordon, “that made it possible for human beings to take such a great leap forward?”
Gordon was watching an alpha male stick a finger up his nose and transfer the pickings to his prominently round mouth. “I don’t know” he confessed.
“We’ll talk about it when we’re by ourselves,” Zack promised.
Gordon grabbed a parent in each hand. “I love this zoo.” He announced. “When I grow up I am going to help save the planet for every species, not just us.”
“That’s nice dear.” His mother said. She wouldn’t put it past him.
NOTES
QUIZZICAL; DNA; GUY; POUNDS AND KILOS; THE ANSWER TO AN INTERESTING QUESTION.
Chapter 24
We Have To Save Them
“Let me tell you a true story,” Zack said, a night or two later, “about one particular chimpanzee.” Gordon settled down contentedly. Zack’s stories were always interesting. “She was called Washoe, and she was the first non-human to learn to communicate using sign language. She was brought up by humans who treated her like a human child. They gave her love and companionship and helped her to learn. But instead of speaking to her, they communicated through sign language.”
“Why didn’t they speak to her?” Gordon asked.
“The lower part of a chimp’s face sticks out. The tongue, teeth, lips and palate don’t interact in the same way ours do. That’s a key difference.”
Gordon nodded slowly.
“But they can make signs and lots of different body gestures that they use to communicate in the wild. So to test her intelligence and memory they taught her signs, just as they would have taught a human child who had been born deaf.”
“How many was she able to learn?” Gordon asked.
“Around 350, over a five-year period.”
“350 is a lot”, Gordon said. “Did she remember them, or did she learn them and then forget them again?”
“She learned them just like we learn words. She had to use a sign herself without anyone prompting her, and use it appropriately for fourteen consecutive days, before they counted it as one she definitely knew.”
“WOW!” Gordon said.
“You might think learning 350 different signs is clever,” Zack went on, “but what she did with them was amazing.”
“What did she do?” Gordon wanted to know.
“She started putting them together to make words of her own.”
“Like what?”
“She learned a lot of signs for basic things: like bird,” Zack flapped with his two hands like bird wings, “and water.” He rippled one hand, like the surface of water ruffled by wind or disturbed by something. “And then one morning they decided to teach her a new sign for one particular bird: a duck.”
“She DIDN’T, did she?”
“She did. They showed her the picture of a duck, and before they could show her the sign they’d thought of, she signed ripple-flap: water-bird.
“How clever is that?” Gordon breathed. “That’s fantastic!”
“The more signs she learned, the more she combined them to make words of her own. When she saw her humans using a thermos she signed metal-cup-drink.
“Brilliant,” Gordon agreed, “I’ll bet there are people who aren’t that clever.”
“That’s it, isn’t it,” Zack said enthusiastically. “She wasn’t just learning the signs parrot fashion. She used them to think. She was clever.” He beamed. “And that’s not all. The humans working with Washoe found out that she didn’t just think. She had feelings as well.”
“How did they know for sure?” Gordon wanted to know.
“One of the people who looked after Washoe became pregnant. Washoe saw her tummy growing bigger and was interested. “She knew the sign for baby, and understood there was a baby growing in the lady’s tummy.” Zack was suddenly sombre. “Then the lady had a miscarriage and was away from Washoe for quite a long time.”
“What’s a miscarriage?” Gordon wanted to know.
“It’s when something goes wrong, and the mother isn’t able to keep her baby inside her long enough for it to survive on its own.”
“Oh.” Gordon already knew that life had very sad moments as well as very happy ones.
“When she came back, Washoe gave her the cold shoulder. It was how she showed people she was cross with them for going off and leaving her.”
“What did the lady do?”
“She decided to tell Washoe the truth. So she signed: ‘My baby died’.”
Gordon shivered. “That must have been hard,” he whispered.
“Washoe stared at her face, and then at her flat tummy. Then she looked up again into the lady’s eyes, and very carefully signed ‘cry’, while drawing her finger gently down the lady’s cheek, following the path a human tear makes.”
Gordon felt his own eyes fill with tears.
“Chimpanzees don’t shed tears,” Zack told him. “The lady said that one gesture taught her more about Washoe than all her made-up words and long sentences.”
Gordon remembered Guy the gorilla reaching out to the little girl on the other side of the glass. “We have to save them, Zack,” Gordon thought fiercely. “We have to save them from us. Why don’t more people understand that?”
“That’s a very good question,” Zack said. “Time to sleep – school tomorrow.”
NOTES
WASHOE; COLD SHOULDERS
Chapter 25
R.I.P.
Tom wasn’t at school the following morning. Their teacher, Mrs McCarthy, sat them all down and said that she had some very sad news to tell them.
Tom’s daddy had been killed in Afghanistan.
Chapter 26
Reversing The Polarities
Zack found himself standing on the observation platform of an enormous spaceship. Eye-level screens showed views of the ship’s exterior. It bore an uncanny resemblance to the starship Enterprise. They were in stationary orbit above an awesome, rotating Earth.
Looking round the bridge he saw that the interior had been modelled accordingly. Gordon was sitting in the Captain’s chair, looking smart in the uniform of a Star Fleet Captain. Zack looked down and found himself dressed in the blue uniform of the ship’s science officer. The way Gordon was grinning at him made him realise that for the duration of this mission, he was to have pointy ears.
“Well, Mr Zack,” said Captain Bennett, “what do you think of the Starship Velociraptor?”
Mr Zack clasped his hands behind his back and raised an eyebrow. “It looks remarkably like the Enterprise, Captain.”
Gordon’s grin grew broader. “Indeed it does. However, I have carried out key modifications to the ship’s engines.”
Zack raised the other eyebrow. “As Science Officer, I should familiarise myself with any changes to the basic design.”
“You’ll find all the specifications in the ship’s computers,” said Gordon. “Basically, it occurred to me that reversing the polarities in the anti-matter chamber would increase the rate at which the dilithium crystals released energy inside the hyperdrive.”
Zack had watched enough Star Trek episodes with Gordon to know that there were very few problems with a starship’s engines that couldn’t be cured by reversing the polarities in the anti-matter chamber and replacing the dilithium crystals.
“Assuming my calculations are correct,” Captain Bennett continued, “the ship is now capable of warp ten in measurable spacetime, and approximately 100 times that through a wormhole.”
“A human expression occurs to me,” Mr Zack said gravely.
“Which is?” the Captain inquired.
“’The proof of the pudding ...’”
“Indeed,” replied the Captain. “Mr Nicholas, load the wormhole-detection software into the navigational hard-drive, and set the coordinates for The Oort Cloud.” Captain Gordon E. Bennett appeared to have the self-confidence normally associated with years of successful command.
“Aye Aye, Captain.” Flight Lieutenant Nicholas gazed at the screen in front of him and pressed several buttons in rapid succession. “Course locked in.”
“May I know the purpose of the mission?” Mr Zack enquired, with iron self-control.
“Of course, Mr Zack: it is to boldly go where no man …”
“I am familiar with the generic purpose of starship missions,” Mr Zack interrupted, “but I am intrigued by your coordinates. Why The Oort Cloud?”
“Top secret orders from Starfleet Command,” Captai
n Bennett replied mysteriously.
Mr Zack bowed his head. “As you wish, Captain.”
Captain Bennett raised his right hand and pointed his finger at the giant screen. Trillions of stars and billions of galaxies stretched fourteen billion light years right to the apparently expanding edge of the universe. “Engage!”
Mr Nicholas pressed the appropriate button and the huge ship got smoothly underway. Up here there was no atmosphere to contend with. The ship’s internal stabilizers ensured there was little sense of movement on the flight deck. Instruments confirmed that the ship went from 0-60 mph in 1 second, from 60-600 mph in another second, and from 600-6,000 mph in a further second.
By the time they were 7 seconds into their journey, the ship was travelling at 60,000,000 mph and the image of Planet Earth was rapidly receding in the rear-view monitors. “The final frontier,” Captain Bennett said.
“May I remind you, Captain,” said Mr Zack, “that ‘Space is very aptly named’. Even at this colossal speed, it would still take us 93.4 minutes to get as far as our own sun.
“I am aware of that, Mr Zack. Mr Nicholas, prepare for the transition to hyperspace.”
“Aye Aye, Captain.” Mr Nicholas flicked two switches and turned the central knob on a dial close to his right elbow, “Transition prepared. Wormhole-detection equipment locked in.”
“You might want to strap yourself in, Mr Zack,” Captain Bennett suggested.
Zack settled himself into a seat. He found to his surprise that its belt was indeed capable of securing him. Technicoloured balls of light began flashing at increasing speed across a large screen.
“On my signal, Mr Nicholas. Let’s find out what this baby can do.”
Mr Nicholas sat with his finger poised above the big red button. The Captain raised his right arm and brought it down with a flourish worthy of Daniel Barenboim conducting the opening of Beethoven’s Fifth. Velociraptor leapt into the parallel dimension beyond light speed.
“Warp factor 2 … 3 ... 4 ...” Mr Nicholas intoned. The hum of the ship’s engines increased in pitch and volume. “Warp factor 7… 8 … 9 ... AARRGGHH!”
The ship had suddenly taken on a trajectory of its own. The manoeuvre combined the twists and turns of an Xtreme rollercoaster with the swirl of water going down a massive plughole. All three passengers experienced alternating extremes of pressure. One moment it was forcing them through their seats, and the next it was trying to hurl them across the flight deck.