Death of the Planet of the Apes

by Andrew E. C. Gaska

  He was, however, suspicious.

  “You ordered the sentinels to attack me,” he said.

  “You were seeing things that weren’t there,” the boy insisted. “Then you yelled at me. I got scared when you talked to me the way you did.” Messias pouted. “I am sorry.”

  “Alright,” Taylor conceded. If he had been sick, that would explain nearly everything that happened since he was separated from—

  “Nova,” Taylor declared. “Messias, I have to find her. If you can help me…” The astronaut trailed off. Disappointment clouded the hybrid boy’s face.

  “You don’t want me to leave,” Taylor realized. “Why?” he asked. “What are you not telling me?” His tone was even, his voice low. His words were those of a man who would take no more.

  “Taylor,” Messias took him by the hand, “Nova is dead.”

  * * *

  The desert had been kind to them. Milling about within the starbird’s beak, Dr. Milo calculated the luck that had gotten him this far. The odds were astonishing.

  Nearly every part they had transferred from the second ship had been a success—even the replacement chronometer worked just fine. Its “Earth Time” date was stuck at 3955 instead of the 3979 of the previous model, but other than that, the piece appeared to be in working order. Indeed, the restoration project had made great progress on all fronts.

  A nearly complete runway stretched in front of the craft, and the engineers had even conceived a plan to start her engines. Utilizing Milo’s own proven design for a waterwheel to generate kinetic energy, they set about building a theoretical electrical generator. Only one thing remained—the command codes.

  Milo lamented the destruction of the starbird’s waterlogged manuals when he’d first discovered her underwater. As it turned out, that particular manual contained the Liberty 1’s command sequence—an activation of a specific set of levers, knobs, and buttons in the correct order. He had hoped the replacement manual from the other spacecraft would reveal the sequence, but it appeared as if the codes were specific to each vessel. There were hundreds of thousands of possible combinations.

  Working with the natural chalk and slate Seraph had prepared for him before she left, Milo set about cataloging each one.

  * * *

  “Suppose they turn out to be our superiors?” Zaius said. He, Ursus, and Sabian met privately in Ape City’s municipal research complex. These three apes were where the true power resided.

  “Their territory is no larger than ours, Dr. Zaius,” Ursus countered. “We shall not be outnumbered.”

  “I was not referring to numbers, General.” Though the gorilla’s point was fallacious, on this point Zaius trod lightly. “My supposition concerned their intelligence.”

  Ursus looked stunned. “Then your supposition is blasphemous, Doctor.”

  Sabian interjected. “The Lawgiver has written in The Sacred Scrolls that God created apes—in his own image—to be masters of the earth.”

  “We are indeed his chosen,” Zaius affirmed. He actually believed that much. The problem was that apes had not been the earth’s first masters. They had inherited it. Damages and all.

  Ursus puffed up his chest.

  “Do you doubt what the minister has said?” he demanded. Zaius knew that Minister Sabian was well aware of the truth—of the origin of the apes, and of man. Ursus knew some of it—more than he should. The problem with Sabian was that he clung to the scripture without understanding its meaning, following its dogma without heeding the true nature of its warnings.

  This had often caused clashes between Sabian and Zao—clashes that resulted in a deadlock regarding what was and was not acceptable ape behavior. It was one of the reasons that Zaius had received both positions, scientific and spiritual, upon his ascendancy to the High Council. There needed to be progress of some kind.

  Zaius addressed the gorilla directly, lest Sabian think he questioned the patriarch’s religious prowess.

  “What I doubt,” he began, “is your interpretation of God’s intention.” One hand behind his back, the doctor began to pace the room. “Has he ordained that we should make war?”

  The general bristled. “Has he ordained that we should die of starvation?” Ursus didn’t like having his beliefs questioned, and was losing his temper. The High Patriarch wasn’t far behind him.

  “Has he ordained that we should make peace with the human race?” the reverend minister spat.

  “The humans—” Zaius waved them off. “They’re animals.” Sabian found the answer satisfactory.

  Ursus wasn’t so sure.

  “And these,” the general baited, “here in the Forbidden Zone?”

  “They are the unknown, General,” Zaius replied. He was certain he should have driven this point home already. Leafing through the apocryphal Book of Simian Prophecy, Sabian tsked him.

  “A godly ape is not afraid of the unknown.”

  “I am not afraid. I am merely…” Zaius chose the word carefully. “…circumspect.”

  Then he caught Ursus’s eyes. They were divining pools. The orangutan saw what the gorilla was thinking. He knew why the general had taunted him into joining this damned crusade. Otherwise, with Zaius in Ape City to counter him, Sabian would never be able to do what they needed him to do.

  “Still,” Ursus said, playing his hand, “not too circumspect to prevent you from riding with me on the great day, eh, Doctor?”

  Zaius was indeed circumspect, but that wasn’t all. He had positioned his players on the board to help keep Ape City intact while he was away. No, there was more to consider here. Much more.

  “As a scientist,” he said, “I am also curious.”

  CHAPTER 19

  PHANTASMS AND REFLECTIONS

  Groom Lake, Nevada

  Area 51

  1967

  Probe Seven’s black box told the whole story. As the command capsule had skipped across the atmosphere, a circuit had blown. Tossed around the cockpit, all three astronauts had lost consciousness from the g-forces and trauma. An electrical fire had started behind one of the panels. Smoke had flooded the compartment.

  While Virdon’s helmet had been on, Rowark’s and Taylor’s had not. Rowark had woken up with the fire in progress and activated the emergency landing program. His own helmet damaged by the accident, he secured Taylor’s helmet and buckled in both of his teammates before he passed out from the noxious fumes.

  Braking thrusters then ignited and chutes deployed.

  Unable to secure his own oxygen supply, Rowark had succumbed to smoke inhalation before they had splashed down in the Pacific—well before Alan Virdon regained consciousness. The admiral’s recovery teams had reached them quickly, but it had made no difference.

  Eddie Rowark was dead.

  * * *

  Taylor was late for his flight home.

  Every day, an unmarked airliner carried workers who lived off-base to and from Groom Lake. His head wound bandaged, the accident only a week behind him, Taylor was heading home to his wife and new daughter. From there he would fly to Colorado Springs and the USAF Academy Cemetery for Rowark’s funeral. His death had hit all the astronauts, but it had crushed Taylor.

  If I hadn’t gotten him involved…

  Her passengers boarded, the nondescript plane prepared to close her doors. If Taylor missed this flight to Vegas, he’d miss his connecting civilian flight as well. Yet he wasn’t rushing to the runway. In fact, he was nowhere near it.

  He walked the halls of the officers’ barracks with duffle bag slung over shoulder—his good one, of course. Finally, he found the private quarters he was looking for, and he knocked.

  The door swung wide.

  “George,” Stewart said. “You’re going to miss—”

  Taylor swept her up in his arms and kissed her hard. His duffle dropped to the floor. Stewart stumbled backward, pulling Taylor into her quarters with her. They were already half undressed before the door slammed shut.

  * * *


  Taylor couldn’t believe it.

  “She died before you got here,” Messias said. “You carried her with you.”

  He didn’t remember any of it. If the radiation sickness was as bad as Messias said, most likely he had been delirious for days.

  Is that why I’ve been reliving the past?

  The glass elevator had taken them to the tallest spire and deposited them in the atrium at its crest. Up there the clouds were as a lazy sea mist that hugged the buildings below. Only the very tops of the skyscrapers pierced that veil and reached for the sky. It reminded Taylor of the ruins of Manhattan, jutting out of the sand in the Forbidden Zone.

  Like giant tombstones.

  The sands here were clouds, though, the towers made of polished glass. They shone orange in the early evening light. Steel beams crosshatched the atrium’s outer walls, massive triangular glass plates nestled between them. Each sheet of glass diffused a slightly different spectrum of light, making the entire room appear to be covered in stained glass at sunset. The effect should have been awe-inspiring.

  Taylor didn’t even notice.

  Here, Nova’s body lay waiting. The coffin was a glass tube, not unlike the hibernation chambers they used on Liberty 1. It rested on a khaki marble slab etched with veins of cobalt. Within the container, Nova lay in a bed of flowers, and orchids and lilies were strewn across her body.

  “I’ll give you some time,” Messias suggested. The boy turned away from Taylor to watch the sun set over his city. Tentatively, Taylor approached the glass sarcophagus.

  Nova’s raven hair draped over the pillow on which she rested. Color still found purchase in her tan skin. Her eyes were closed, her lashes caressing her soft face, and her lips were parted ever so slightly, as if begging for one last kiss. But this was no fairy tale. No kiss would wake her.

  There would be no “happily ever after.”

  Taylor found the latch and slid open the transparent lid. Light purple orchids fell to the floor. He leaned close and caressed her face. While she might look warm and alive, she was terribly cold. She had been dressed in white, the style obscured by the flowers that covered her body. Her arms lay across her chest.

  “Nova,” he whispered.

  Why don’t we settle down and form a colony? he had told her at the oasis. And all the kids will learn to talk. But her unborn child died with her. There would be no colony. He slammed his salty eyes shut and gulped back tears.

  Then he looked up and away. Light from the setting sun cascaded into the atrium, splintering into a dazzling array and glinting off the open casket. Light refracted across its transparent lid. Clearing his eyes, Taylor examined it.

  There was a diagonal crack in the glass.

  Something familiar…

  Taylor looked at the flowers. He reached down to brush some of them away when something caught his eye. A splash of blue and yellow in a sea of white. Over her right breast was an embroidered patch. Four stars sat at the cardinal coordinates while two rings orbited the center of a deep blue field. Embossed in yellow across the middle were four letters.

  It was the ANSA mission patch.

  Taylor swept more flowers away. Nova had been dressed like an astronaut, in an ANSA uniform. Above the patch was a name tag.

  STEWART

  Taylor stepped back. Stewart had died on board Liberty 1, when a crack appeared in her glass hibernation tube. He remembered his conversation with Landon.

  “I was thinking of Stewart,” Landon had said. “What do you suppose happened?”

  “Messias…” Taylor was cautious. “How did Nova die?”

  “Air leak,” he had told the other astronaut. “She died in her sleep.”

  “Air leak,” the boy parroted his thoughts. “She died in her sleep.”

  “It’s a little late for a wake.” Taylor spoke this last part aloud, perfectly matching the boy. “She’s been dead nearly a year.” Then he stiffened, and turned.

  “Except that was Stewart, Messias,” he said, “not Nova.”

  “But you thou—” Messias stopped. “You said Stewart was her last name.”

  Taylor crossed his arms. “Are you reading my mind?”

  A restless pause, man and boy coiled tight.

  Then—chaos. The alarm klaxon sounded.

  “The city is under siege!” the boy cried out.

  “Messias!” Taylor roared, but his companion leapt into the elevator.

  “We’ve got to get to the Main Hall!” The lift departed. Taylor turned toward “Nova’s” coffin again. It had sealed itself, the glass polarizing to hide the woman within.

  After a moment, a second elevator arrived, empty. Furious, Taylor took after Messias.

  * * *

  You come from the northern lab, the brain offered. You must have met my pet. Did you two play nice?

  The room reminded Mungwortt of Ape City’s own amphitheater. Cast in concrete, its concentric semicircles terminated at the substantial glass tank situated on the far wall—focusing all attention on the thing inside it. Without understanding how, the half-breed knew this one was known as Be-Six. Twice as massive as his fellow brains—so large that his gray matter pressed against the glass wall of his tank—the inheritor emitted a sickly green irradiance, the only illumination in the room. Split across the tank, a diagonal fracture caught the glow, resulting in tiny stars.

  “It tried to eat me,” Mungwortt replied. “You should have fed it bigger portions.”

  After a moment without any reaction, Mungwortt’s head was flooded with… laughter? As its contents pulsed and squirmed, the tank shook and the fluid sloshed.

  It’s been a long time since I had occasion to laugh, Be-Six observed. Very good.

  Unnerved by the soundless communications, Mungwortt knew they had to get out fast. At Zao’s suggestion, he peered through the gloom and looked around for the nearest exits.

  “Gah!” he cried out.

  There was someone sitting next to Mungwortt, gaunt and grotesque. Tufts of coarse wire sprouted from his temples and cheeks. His leathery flesh was bloated, his left eye socket bare. Clothed in scraps of a rust-colored robe, his cold flesh sparkled with a hard sheen in the dim light—and he had friends. There were figures sitting in each of the rings. They sat in silence—just as the apes would at the amphitheater.

  Except these people were human.

  They were misshapen.

  And they were all dead.

  Centuries of water and mineral deposits seeping through the ceiling had caused the corpses to decay, deform, and eventually fossilize. Every few rows or so were dominated by stalactites or stalagmites, some stretching to meet in the middle and create fanciful columns that ran from floor to ceiling, smooth and calcified. Dozens of petrified bodies sagged in their seats, a mute audience for the mental rumblings of an enormous mass of gray matter.

  This is my audience. If thoughts could frown, that’s what Be-Six was doing. You’re Mendez’s idea of irony. Centuries ago I was much more than an Overseer. My kind were to be the inheritors of the planet. We controlled war machines. We had armies of man-ape drones at our command. We were gods. The brain seemed to sigh. Now, we are used to run the city’s power and water. To amplify the Fellowship’s own abilities. To run biogenic experiments in the labs of my former enemies.

  “Enemies?” Mungwortt asked. Anything to keep the brain distracted while he looked for a way out.

  Yes, the Makers. Cybernetic humans. Scientists like those who made me—they made the machines here. Somehow Mungwortt knew that Be-Six was happy to have someone with whom he could communicate. But radiation twisted their minds. They experimented on one another. Tried to kill my kind. We beat them, he continued, long ago, before we were indentured to the Fellowship. When the Mendez dynasty sought to make use of me, I was locked in this basement theater with only the dead to pay me tribute.

  “Maybe,” Mungwortt sputtered, slowly circling, “maybe the fellows just didn’t want you to get lonely.” Finally, he located the way out
. There was a door marked exit, some distance from the way they came in. Unwilling to go back, he realized they only had one course of action.

  Mendez does it to mock me. His beliefs supplant all other gods—myself included. The brain paused. You are a strange one, Be-Six observed. Curious that you would speak to me, instead of transmitting your thoughts. Did he send you to evaluate my faith?

  Be-Six shifted, squeaking across the inside of the glass tank.

  “When I was young and got angry,” Mungwortt said as he inched his way through the maze of corpses, “my mother always told me to use my words.”

  There was another silence.

  You are indeed unlike any of the other mutants. Be-Six chuckled again. Regardless, I know why you are here. Tell His Holiness that patience is a virtue. The experiment proceeds.

  “His Holiness,” Mungwortt muttered. “Got it.”

  The subject is strong-willed, but the heterogen will prevail.

  Zao spoke up, prodding Mungwortt to action.

  “Okay,” he told the brain. “I’ll let him know.” He weaved his way through the craggy bodies and toward the exit. Unfortunately, his path took him closer to Be-Six.

  Hold! the brain roared mentally. You are not of the Fellowship.

  Lights strobed in Mungwortt’s head. You’re an… ape! His head buzzed painfully. A gorilla and chimpanzee hybridization. Not like the heterogen. Not one of mine. Naturally born.

  “Wait. The babies in the jars—” Mungwortt was confused. “They’re yours?”

  Yes, I made them. Them and my pet.

  “Why would you do that?” Mungwortt was horrified. “They’re not normal. They look like they hurt.”

  The Fellowship of the Holy Fallout tasked me with creating something that can kill your kind.

  “Who are they? Why do they want to kill apes?” Mungwortt struggled with the concept. “What did we do?”

  You were with my compatriots, Be-Six observed. The Inheritors in hiding. He sifted through Mungwortt’s memories. They were going to send you to me. You escaped them when I diverted the city’s power for my experiments. Mungwortt felt dizzy, muddled. Yet you came here anyway. I would have thought you had some ulterior motive. I see now that your diminutive IQ doesn’t allow for that.