The mountain apes might:
"'...be half intelligent.'" (p. 608)
They might have colonized so many islands by crossing the sea on logs. Or maybe the islands were previously a continent or there were land bridges.
Elfavy objects to the apes being killed because they might be intelligent - not "half intelligent," as before. Raven thinks that any intelligence would be:
"'On a very low plane...'" (p. 609)
- that would not bother him but, in any case, they can be dealt with without being killed.
"Ape" means anthropoid and:
"'...fairly bright though without tools or a true speech.'" (p. 612)
Elfavy suggests that the apes might be cunning enough to evade guard robots and to use rudimentary tools but they have not been investigated as they should have been. They are a convenient explanation for something that the Gwydiona suppress.
Tolteca and Raven are used to non-human intelligences and also to:
"'...animals on the verge of intelligence...'" (p. 613)
The Gwydiona mountain apes will turn out to belong in neither of these categories.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
There's also Anderson's "The Serpent in Eden," where on the world named Cleopatra the question to be answered was whether or not similarly apelike creatures were intelligent.
Ad astra! Sean
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