Chapter One

I am Beep, monkey.

I live in the world of monkeys near saltwater on the sunset side of the vast beyond. We have relations and ancestors all the way across to the sunrise side, so the old uncles say, impassable mountains in between. One of the mountains supposedly smokes, even spits fire! Legends, prophecy: somemonkey crossed over those fearsome peaks in some unexplained way to here, separating monkeydom. But, you see, a monkey one day will come along whose accidental courage will reunite us, even save the world and not only find him a mate—quest enough, we all agree. Anyway, it’s all the stuff of long discussion while mutually grooming in deep shade these hot afternoons, well fed: how could it be, that monkeys got where we are? Babies believe the legends, the old uncles believe the prophecy, but I’m a grownup now, or nearly, and on to grownup things.

I like this river we live near partly because the goers don’t come here much, except to look at the birds, our beautiful and distant cousins. I think the goers study them to perfect their own flight, which is messy, loud, and marks the sky with criss-crossing plumes. It’s the goers that make the world need saving, the old uncles say, more and more of them all the time, more and more imposing. I have noticed this even in my mere short life.

But some you-mens seem okay. Many are pleasing to look at, with fabulous black cushions of hair, or golden hair long as orchid tendrils, others with tresses red as sunsets. Once on the beach a large male caused a sensation among us—he was nearly hairy as a howler, once the peel was removed. And many you-mens are pleasant, unthreatening, a certain burbling of spirit. Some you-mens even call forth food from the land: these we call growers and consider cousins, if cautiously. But many again, the goers, we call them, are pure terror: loud, careless, unaware of the lives their sudden movements end. My old cousin Pooop got his name for his aim as the worst of them walked under us oblivious. But Pooop is dead. He climbed in their terrible black vines, lightning vines, we call them, lightning that burned that monkey so badly he smoked on the goer-stone below, that hard black stuff the goers use to make their go-ways, hot as sun.