“Anyway, as I was saying, some of these monkeys share cages . . .” Norman continues as Kierk and the others move about the room. In the far cage-cleaning room, through the door, Kierk can see powerful hoses operated by undergraduates foolish enough to sign up for research credits spray animal feces, fur, drool stains, pus, and food remnants from empty cages into a wide drain in the floor. In their cages the proto-humans squat around him, alien in their familiarity and the uncanny valley of their dark beady eyes, their imploring hands held palm out for food in a manner that is disturbingly human. They stare out at Kierk like things before language, guttural expressions begging for meanings, all of them lined up with ebony eyes turned toward him. He imagines them in their natural state as dark rustling shapes in the forest of home, in a play of chiaroscuro and canopy, with their mischievous haired limbs turning over logs and leaves and rot and excrement, all dug through with black nails, the echoing screech of excitement, defending, offering, proffering, the curved kowtow of submission, the occasional portentous spark of altruism, the small fingers stripping a dirty avocado of its broad peel, and in the twilight of the jungle floor a small creature is looking with its black eyes at him, hunching its back, what is that in its arms?—recognition—it is cradling a baby rhesus that has been dead for days . . .

Jessica nudges Kierk, who has been looking lost into the dark of a cage. She enters a single gloved finger slowly through the mesh. On seeing Jessica’s finger the macaque, which had been curled up in the back, lopes curiously up to the front, then turns to face the opposite direction and presses its back up against the mesh, its fur now sticking through the grating in tufts. Jessica scratches the small patch of exposed skin, and Kierk follows suit. Their smiles show in their eyes above their face masks, scratching away to happy grunting. Then the macaque whips around viciously, banging the cage, causing Kierk and Jessica to jump back and Jessica to quiet a shriek behind her face mask. With the same immediacy the monkey resumes its previous position, waiting to be scratched. Kierk shakes his head at it and turns to a pair of the smaller bonnet macaques that glare at Kierk with red eyes from their shared cage. One erects himself in his cage above the other, his little sex hanging in the air. He looks Kierk straight in the eye and begins to piss in a long stream as Kierk jumps back, avoiding it. The other macaque in the cage, servile and slinking, hunkers down in front of the pissing one and in a quick motion takes the stream and the organ itself in its mouth. With his thick glove Kierk taps Alex on the back to get his attention.