MICHAEL CRICHTON

He felt like crying.Peter good human person.Blinking his eyes he signed, Peter tickle Amy. She jumped into his arms.Later, he questioned her in more detail. But it was a painstakingly slowprocess, chiefly because of Amy’s difficulty in handling concepts of time.Amy distinguished past, present, and future—she remembered previousevents, and anticipated future promises—but the Project Amy staff had neversucceeded in teaching her exact differentiations. She did not, for example,distinguish yesterday from the day before. Whether this reflected a failing inteaching methods or an innate feature of Amy’s conceptual world was an openquestion. (There was evidence for a conceptual difference. Amy was particularlyperplexed by spatial metaphors for time, such as “that’s behind us” or “that’scoming up.” Her trainers conceived of the past as behind them and the futureahead. But Amy’s behavior seemed to indicate that she conceived of the past asin front of her—because she could see it—and the future behind her— because itwas still invisible. Whenever she was impatient for the promised arrival of afriend, she repeatedly looked over her shoulder, even if she was facing the door.)In any case, the time problem was a difficulty in talking to her now, and Elliotphrased his questions carefully. He asked, “Amy, what happened at night? Withthe gorillas?”She gave him the look she always gave him when she thought a question wasobvious. Amy sleep night.“And the other gorillas?” Gorillas sleep night.“All the gorillas?” She disdained to answer.“Amy,” he said, “gorillas come to our camp at night.” Come this place?“Yes, this place. Gorillas come at night.”She thought that over. No. Munro said, “What did she say?”Elliot said, “She said ‘No.’ Yes, Amy, they come.”She was silent a moment, and then she signed, Things come.191