Apeshit

  And so he had dragged his nukka to the Hill of Bones, stopping at the bottom to roll her on her belly, raise a rock over her head, and smash it into her skull. He’d thrown her on top of the pile. The flies rose off the bodies but quickly landed again, covering them in shimmering blackness. He’d howled at her: Go away, then. You aren’t my mother.

  But he’d buried her dress. Away from the silverback, away from the ronnok. Alone, in death.

  That was the smell of this place.

  Sirena hissed, “What are you doing? Aren’t you coming?”

  Orion followed Sirena down the tunnel.

  She grunted, and he heard wood shift. “Help me.”

  He reached forward until his fingernails touched wood, which shifted as Sirena tugged on it. He found the edges of it—it was a full railroad tie, and he was surprised Sirena could move it at all—and pulled it away. The smell that came up made his arms go weak, and the tie tipped forward, thumping heavily against another heavy piece of wood.

  “Orion!” Sirena gasped. “You almost hit me.”

  “Sorry.” He picked up the tie again and leaned it back toward him. It stuck against the roof for a moment, but he tugged on it, and it fell toward him. He dragged it to the opposite wall and left it there. The foul smell continued to rise up. He took a deep breath of it. Another. Another.

  “Does that make it smell better?” she asked incredulously.

  “He’s dead down there, isn’t he? You left him for dead, like you did me. That’s why you want to get out of here.”

  “You want to find out, start walking. He’s to the right.” Her voice came from behind and above him, as though she had climbed back into the crevice.

  Orion moved two more railroad ties, one to the left and one to the right. The orang had been right: the tunnel was narrow, but not as tight as the hole through the rockfall. Ironically, he had to stand like a man (albeit with his head sunk down onto his shoulders as far as it would go) in order to fit into the right-hand tunnel, edging downward sideways with one hand searching the walls ahead of him and bracing his chest and buttocks against the rock. A rumbling sound came from the tunnel, but it was so quiet that he wasn’t sure whether he was hearing it or feeling it through the stone. After what might have been a few hundred feet or a mile of tightly-spiraled, downward tunnel, that he could see light, a kind of red mist that floated near the ceiling and cast shadows from his hand when he held it in front of him.

  As he walked, the red mist filled more of the tunnel until his head was in it; it might have been smoke for all that he could smell with his deadened nostrils. The mist blinded him, but there was nothing to do but push forward until his knuckles knocked into wood. He grabbed for the board before it could fall and was lucky enough to catch the edge of it.

  He edged closer. The end of the tunnel was a little wider, and he was able to squat under the mist, peering out the crack in the board.

  In front of him was a kind of chapel, only without benches. A large cave had been carved out of the rock, and rows and rows of mixed apes sat under a deep cloud of red mist and waited. The apes had been dead a long time; he could see the white of bone under their hanging flesh.

  They all faced one side of the room, where a pedestal had been placed to lift something red above the heads of the apes. It was too small, and surrounded by too much red mist, and his eyes smarted too much, for him to make out what it was, but it seemed to be waving at him. His ears rang, and he could almost hear voices.

  His nukka chattered on in grunts and sign language about hot tea. Sirena told him to be quiet, or Merrill would find her and kill her. His own voice, telling her that he would protect her, no matter what anyone thought of it. Sirena saying—she had never admitted it, in life—that she wanted a lover, a human kind of lover, someone who would love her and her alone. He told her he loved her, would always love her. She answered that she belonged to Merrill now, and that she could not speak to him again. It was what she should have said, instead of faking her own death rather than tell the truth.

  In the ringing of his ears, she screeched at him. I thought you’d understand, that of anyone, you’d understand. To be able to take a lover before you’d killed a hundred hathscha. To live without such murder on your hands. To be able to live and breathe and love without the weight of the ronnok at your throat. Freedom.

  The ringing changed. The power to never have to obey the humans again, or the apes. The power to live freely. The power to become one who is served, rather than one who serves.

  The board fell from his fingers, but the apes didn’t notice. He took another step forward. Another. The mist surrounded him, soothed him. Freedom.

  3. The Red Monkey

  After she climbed from the sump water, Mi Tao stroked the top of Absalom’s head. His breath whistled in and out of his mouth in tiny, quick gasps. She breathed onto him, and his chest fluttered, then returned to panting. The smell coming from the tunnel was less, even though its floor was only inches from the level of the water in the sump. Shit and garbage curled in dried lumps on the floor, which shook slightly underfoot.

  She brought him to her lips and kissed him, then tucked him into the top of her vest again. She walked forward through the dark, the tunnel narrowing around her, until she reached a blank wall. She stopped to sign a spell, and it surrounded her and Absalom. The red mist would do nothing to them for a long while, although the sooner they were out of it, the better. Luckily the hathscha would be walking tunnels that would take him nowhere near it.

  She said another spell, and light shimmered underfoot. She walked toward the rock wall, and it slumped before her, rolling off the sides of the spell, solidifying in drips. When she was through, she released the spell and was bathed in the red glow of the mist. The tunnels rumbled so loudly that her ears ached almost immediately.

  Some of the red mist poured out of the hole and up the tunnel, but not too much. She crouched low under the mist and looked from left to right. The tunnel sloped downward to the right, so she turned that direction, the red mist filling the tunnel until she could see nothing. But the dreadful rumbling that filled the tunnel suddenly became louder, and she reached out until she found the opening in the tunnel wall, the one that led downward into the pit.

  She had never been this far before. She’d never dared. She paused a moment in honor of the hathscha, who must have drawn the guards upwards to him, for there were none to be heard in the tunnel now. Then she slid over the edge of the opening and dangled down to what must be there: the handholds for going downward into the pit.

  She climbed down until she was past the mist and could see the pit fully. It stretched downward for another thousand feet, and she swayed. The bottom of the tunnel was filled with a red haze of stone chips as the machine at the bottom ground downward imperceptibly but inexorably. Pipes led down to the machine, or perhaps led upward. The great machine itself was colored red with dust and so loud that she couldn’t hear it any more, only feel it. She stuffed some of her hair into her ears, and more of it into Absalom’s, then continued to descend slowly from handhold to handhold.

  The hathscha under General Maxim had built it, engineers who had fled service at mines to the East. Far better than anything a human could have made. Had General Maxim known what he would find when he started digging here? Probably he had believed nothing of the legends, only in the silver.

  The handholds ran out before she reached the machine; she could easily take the fall, but she couldn’t see how she could get back up again. She would have to find a different way. She watched the machine for a time, then dangled off the last spike and dropped.

  At the top of the machine was a door that opened by means of a metal wheel. She sealed it behind her as tightly as she could, then pulled the hair out of her ears with relief. She waited until her ears stopped ringing, then pressed her head against the bare metal of the next door. She heard nothing, and loosened the door.

  As soon as she had opened the door a crack, Absalom slippe
d through. She waited a few moments, and then his tiny head reappeared as he chittered at her.

  The other side of the door held no threats she could see, but contrasted with the bare metal of her entrance: red velvet carpet covered the floor and the bottom halves of the walls, and golden wallpaper the rest of the way up and across the ceiling. Crystals connected with gold wire shivered under gas lights turned so low as to be nothing but a shimmer—but after the tunnels, a shimmer was all Mi Tao needed. Red velvet chairs and couches filled the narrow lounge, with a gold-colored runner down the middle, leading to the next dogged door.

  The machine shuddered, and glass clinked from a small cabinet along the wall, behind a short table. Behind the first two cabinet doors were decanters of liquor in a divided tray, each bottled separated from the next by a velvet box. One of the bottles had broken, and the bits of glass— dry but still aromatic— jostled against each other. It was only then that she noticed the room did not smell of death.

  Behind the third door was a safe. Her hairs stood on end, and she hissed between her teeth. Absalom ran up to look, but she held him back with her hand. The door of the safe was loose on its hinges and groaned when she opened it.

  The top shelf of the safe held a stack of stiff envelopes full of paper, and she was sure that if she opened them, she would find all kinds of treasures from the human world; humans were fond of putting their treasures to paper, as though to write a thing down was to give one power over it.

  But she was more interested in the gold collar in the larger, bottom part of the safe. It was made of fine, small links that her nail couldn’t scratch, and was sized to leash a marmoset. She took the collar out and wrapped it around one wrist.

  The machine shuddered, and the door of the safe moaned as it swung on its hinges. She pushed it closed, but it was locked open. She heard another moan, this time from the other end of the room: the other door was opening. She backed behind one of the chairs, but not soon enough.

  General Regis screeched, “You!”

  “General. If that’s your name.” She moved to the center of the carpets to give herself more room for her spells and raised her arms to sign. He was close enough to smell, and that meant he was close enough to attack. She signed the spell even as he leapt at her, and the rustle and glint of magic rushed at him.

  It should have pushed him back, but instead burst like a bubble. He landed on her and went straight for her throat. She pulled her feet up under her, braced them on his chest, and shoved, whipping his head back before his teeth could close, but she still felt the hair on her neck rip away. The chimp’s face was ugly with scars, and he wore a red-coated uniform, like a member of royalty rather than a military general.

  They circled each other around a short table. He swung at her, she dodged back.

  “You’re no whore,” he spat. “You’re here to steal the Red Monkey for the ronnok. But why now? Did Sirena tell you?”

  She dodged another of his grabs. She was big for a female orang, but his arms were still longer. “I’m sure she didn’t mean to. But she can’t resist her little hints. She talks almost as much as a male with a whore.”

  He bared his teeth at her.

  “She didn’t tell me you could resist magic, though,” she said.

  His hand reached across his chest for a moment, and she saw that his breast pocket bulged. A protection charm of some kind that would likely protect him from physical as well as magical harm. She backed away from the table toward the cabinet, and he followed her, hoping to back her in the corner, rip out her throat, and piss on her corpse, no doubt. But over the cabinet was a crystal chandelier, and it shivered with more than just the shuddering of the machine as Absalom hid in it.

  “A particular talent of mine,” he said. They could both smell the lies on each others’ fur; it was just a matter of finding out how much was a lie. He swiped at her, and she stumbled over one of the chair legs, and he caught her vest, which was as well built as a second skin. He pulled her closer as she dug her nails into the chair, her arms stretching wide.

  He yanked her away from the chair and she went flying toward him. She clawed the pocket open, and whatever had been in his pocket went flying, even as he clutched her close to bite: “Now, Absalom, now!”

  General Regis shook his head and stepped backward. She didn’t know whether the poison would be strong enough…or weak enough. She supposed she owed the gorilla a chance to satisfy his idiot dreams of somehow becoming the equal of the humans by bringing General Regis to “justice.” As the chimp stumbled and went down, she grabbed one of the full bottles of liquor from the cabinet, and hit him across the back of his head. He slumped forward over his legs, then leaned to the side, drooling blood onto his carpet.

  Mi Tao raised her arms, and Absalom jumped into them. “You precious thing,” she cooed at him, scratching him delicately. After a few seconds, he jumped down to the floor, an pointed excitedly at something small and red lay smashed into the carpet. When she examined it, it was a tiny red paw no bigger than Absalom’s.

  4. The Price of Freedom

  Metal pinged off the wallpaper, and Mi Tao dropped to her belly beside the table. A shadow lingered on the other side of the far door.

  “He called you a whore,” the shadow called.

  Absalom crawled up on her shoulder, and another dart pinged, this time against glass. No telling where it had bounced off to.

  “You’re here to steal it, aren’t you?” The shadow moved, shifting her weight. “Trust me. You don’t want it. You don’t know what it does to you. If you want to keep the power, you have to keep killing. Otherwise they turn on you.”

  Mi Tao stroked Absalom on the head to keep him calm, but he jerked away from her hand and ran under a chair. She sent him a silent wish for good fortune, then started to crawl toward the opposite chair, trying to get closer to the door. A needle buried itself in the carpet just past her side.

  “The digging,” the shadow continued, as though she hadn’t just tried to kill her, “he keeps digging because he’s greedy. I left Orion in the chapel with it. He’s dead already. He attacked me. He deserved it. He’s just a stupid hathscha.”

  Suddenly the assassin scrabbled away from the door, screeching in fear. “Don’t hurt me! Don’t hurt me! Save Orion! We have to save Orion! I can lead you to him.”

  Absalom trotted back to Mi Tao across the carpet, looking smug. “I think you scared her, love.” He ran under her hair, chittering contentedly. To the assassin, she called, “Lead the way, traitor.”

  “I’m not a traitor!”

  “And I’m not a whore.” Mi Tao bent over and picked up the red paw from where it had fallen; she tucked it into her vest and ducked through the other door, half-expecting to be poisoned or hit over the head as she came through. But the chimp only led her out of the ship and over a series of pipes that carried cold water to the machine and hot water away.

  “It’s magic, the way this machine works,” she said, jumping across pipes.

  Mi Tao hissed as her feet hit the hot pipe. “No. Just engineering. General Maxim’s apes did this, you know, before Regis came here and killed him and ruined everything.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “You knew.”

  They reached the top of the pit, then crept along the hallway until they reached an arched doorway. Inside, hundreds of apes swayed back and forth as they watched something small and red on a pedestal on the other side of the room.

  “There,” Sirena said, pointing into the crowd. “He’s there.” Mi Tao couldn’t see him. Suddenly, the chimp shoved her into the room and screeched. The great dead apes turned, and Sirena backed away from the room. Mi Tao signed a curse, and flung the power at the chimp, who screeched and ran for all she was worth.

  At least that was done. She signed a spell of protection, and light flashed under her feet in a dappled pattern, like shifting sunlight through branches. The dead ones pushed toward her, their eyes covered with a red film that dripped like te
ars and crusted on their faces and fur, but the spell turned them away, and Absalom hid inside her vest, shivering. He had never trusted her talents, preferring to rely on quickness and sharp needles. Sparks rose from the rock where her spell touched it, and the apes’ fur smoked where they tried to touch her.

  She pushed forward. She was a quarter of the way through the apes. Halfway. Three quarters. The spell began to dim beneath her as ape after ape threw himself at her, trying to wrestle her to the ground. Her years of training would come to nothing: she might be able to reach the Red Monkey, but she could not return with it.

  She could destroy it—it was only a statuette, after all, and could be broken—or she could make a life sacrifice and take on its power for a time. But as the assassin had said, it was a kind of power that continuously needed to be fed, and she wished to leave the burden and wisdom of using it with the new, united ronnok, the convocation of female elders who would bring the mixed races and overthrow the humans. It had been her nukka’s dream, and it kept her power focused when she should have been broken and shivering with exhaustion.

  She reached the Red Monkey. She couldn’t think. The only other living thing inside this horrible chamber was Absalom. To destroy the idol was to damn her people to slavery. To sacrifice Absalom was unthinkable.

  She reached up and grabbed the idol with her long arms, pulled it down, and flung it on the floor. It smashed with the sound of any piece of stoneware hurled in anger. One moment it had embodied power over death; the next, it was shards of red on the floor. Within a breath, the mist disappeared.

  The apes collapsed. She had failed. She had worked for years to obtain this power for the ronnok, and then she had destroyed it over a stupid monkey. She scratched Absalom on the head, kissed him, and promised him fresh fruit. They would travel to Spanish Mexico and disappear in the jungle. They would be gone for months before the ronnok knew what she had done.