Planet of the Apes 01 - Man the Fugitive

by George Alec Effinger

  In the stall, one calf was lying, the other was already just trying to stand—two baby bull calves, twins! Zantes and Jillia were half-crying, half-giggling in relieved amazement. Remus stared with wide-eyed wonder. Polar and Galen exchanged pleased looks as Virdon, exhausted, stood and wiped his hands on a piece of the homespun material that Zantes handed to him.

  Slowly, everyone turned to look at Anto, who had stopped tolling his bell. The ape youth still looked down at it, not yet venturing a look toward the stall. “Come on, Anto,” said Burke in a friendly manner, “take a look. It’s all yours.”

  Anto stood cautiously, his body obviously weary from the long days of sustained grief. He staggered slowly toward the stall.

  As the others backed away, for this was Anto’s big moment, he pushed through them. Polar, Zantes, Jillia, and Remus were indescribably happy for him. The bull calves meant the start of his own, independent life, something that, through the whim of fate, had been denied to him for too long a time. Anto looked at the twin bull calves, and he blinked in disbelief. Then, as ecstatic delight swept over him, he cried.

  “He looks like he found a sweepstakes ticket stuck in the bottom of a sugar bowl,” said Burke happily. “Well, go on, Anto, cash it in. It’s a winner.”

  The elder son of Polar fell on his knees near his calves, holding first one small head then the other, crying, laughing, moaning with the greatest single pleasure of his entire life . . .

  Burke turned to Virdon, taking advantage of this moment of relative solitude amongst the scene of confusion. “When you said that it was twice as bad,” he began. Then he just shook his head. “You’re a genius, Virdon. I’ll never knock a farm boy, again. Twins! I hear that it’s all in the wrist.”

  Virdon laughed; it was so much easier for all of them now. He shuddered to think what would have happened if he had worked as hard, and the calves had been heifers. Virdon’s life, surely, would have been forfeit, and probably Burke’s as well, and Galen’s, and the matter would have simply been one of chromosome matching many months before . . . “They’re both bulls,” said Virdon, suppressing a shudder. “I think the bell ringing may have had something to do with it.”

  Outside the barn, independent of the jubilation within, the four gorilla horsemen came stomping and shouting into the area of the farmyard at a gallop, shaking the very ground with the thunder of their arrival.

  Jillia ran to the door of the barn and peered out. As her family and friends looked up, frozen momentarily at the sound of pounding hooves and the snorting of horses, Jillia turned from the door. There was only fear on her face.

  “Police,” said Jillia, her voice constricted with anxiety. “All kinds of police.”

  Polar thought quickly. There was not much time. “Hide,” he said to Burke and Virdon. “Hurry, back there.” He turned to his family. “Come outside, quickly.” Anto hesitated, the intense emotions of the previous moments still dulling his thoughts. “Anto,” said Polar urgently, “come.”

  Polar, Remus, Zantes, and Jillia headed out of the barn door, into the farmyard, while Galen, hobbling, was helped by Burke and Virdon into a back, hay-filled area of the barn.

  Polar and his family, all except Anto, now walked with the best expressions and whispered conversations of surprise that they could muster. They met the mounted gorillas in the farmyard.

  Barga, the chief of the rural mounted Patrol gorillas, took charge of the situation. After all, until Urko’s arrival, this had been a local affair. Even now, Urko’s reasons had remained secret. Barga shrugged. “Polar!” he commanded in a louder voice than necessary: he wanted to impress Urko.

  Lupuk, the Patrol rider, pointed at the head of the household. “That is Polar,” he said. Barga gave his soldier a brief look of scorn; of course the ape was Polar; who else could be the patriarch of this farm family?

  Urko and his junior officer sat stiffly a few yards back on their horses with supreme authority, while the regional gorillas put on their display of toughness.

  Zantes spoke first, though Polar had been summoned. “Why do you come riding through here?” she asked, in the tones of the eternally put-upon female, a role that ill-suited her, but which her quickness of mind told her was correct in this situation. “Enough racket to shake the turnips from the ground!”

  “Shut up, female!” shouted Barga.

  The now-familiar creak of the barn door interrupted the bewildering confrontation for a moment. The family and the mounted gorillas turned their attention to the barn. Anto emerged and joined Polar and the family.

  Barga sighed inaudibly. He knew that, in front of so august a personage as General Urko, the important thing was to conclude the affair with efficency and dispatch. “You,” said Barga, pointing unwaveringly at Polar, “you are hiding escaped bonded humans, Polar!”

  “No! That’s a lie,” said Polar, not raising his voice. “He was through here before.” Polar pointed to Lupuk.

  Barga saw that the circumstance could quickly get out of hand. If Lupuk were correct, and there was no definite proof that he was, then Polar would act precisely the way he was acting. If Lupuk were incorrect, then there were no escaped humans, and Polar would behave the same way. “Silence!” shouted Barga. That single word was a great method for restoring order, but not for restoring reason.

  Lupuk spoke up again, diffidently this time. He pointed to the shower by the side of the barn. “He was standing there, under that . . . thing.”

  Slowly Barga turned his attention to the contraption that the rider indicated. Urko and his officer deigned to look that way, also. Polar and family worried: the shower was definitely an unapelike device. It clearly seemed to prove the presence of humans.

  Anto stared at the shower thoughtfully, realizing that the Patrol rider must have spied on them when Burke or Virdon would have been clearly visible. He knew that if Lupuk’s word were believed, then Polar and his family were in grave danger.

  Lupuk reinforced his statement. He pointed again toward the shower, this time urging his horse toward the shower stall. “One of them was standing under there,” he said, “in a kind of rain.”

  At this point, at this most tense of crises, Anto cracked the brittle atmosphere with a doubled-up laugh! His laughter not only caught the mounted gorillas by surprise, but his own family as well. There was a moment when the family didn’t really understand Anto’s unleashed feelings of amusement—was it a delayed reaction to the birth of the bull calves?

  Barga frowned. Nothing like this had been covered in his training period in the central ape city. No one had ever hinted that his command would include humiliation in front of the commander-in-chief. “What’s so funny, farmer?” he asked. “You won’t laugh when Polar is hanging from the end of a rope.”

  Anto tried to explain, but his laughter was so intense and so unrelenting that he couldn’t explain for a moment. “It was me!” he said at last, gasping for breath. “He saw me!”

  And Anto laughed again. He walked to a large tub of freshly stone-ground flour near the wall of the small granary. “We are a poor family,” he said, indicating the other members of Polar’s tribe. He looked calmly from Barga to Lupuk, and then to Urko himself, whom Anto did not recognize. “Would you deny us what little fun we can make for ourselves?”

  Anto reached into the tub of flour for the large wooden scoop buried in deep. He started dousing himself with the flour, covering his shaggy ape body and upper torso, then even his head with the flour. Loads of it puffed over him, making him almost white.

  Then Anto put the scoop back in the tub and walked into the very center of the farmyard. “See?” he asked. “See? I make the family laugh. I’m white, like a human, see?”

  Polar and his family laughed, obliging their son’s plan and, even, with genuine amusement at the ridiculous sight.

  Anto strutted in front of the frowning, uniformed gorillas, oblivious to the danger he was putting himself in. “Then I walk around,” he said. “Like a straight-necked goose . . .
like a human, see?”

  Anto started his parade, his neck and back straight like he had seen humans walk. It was uncomfortable. But even the mounted gorillas started to laugh.

  Anto was encouraged by his performance and by the reaction it was getting. It brought the natural comedian in him, a quality that had been long submerged by the rigors of his farm existence. “I think I’ll have some meat,” he said, mimicking the speech of a human being. “I’ll cook it good! Ha, ha, ha!”

  As the gorillas laughed at this imitation, along with Polar and his family, Anto sought to nail down the one last piece of evidence. He walked slowly to the shower, while the laughter of the gorillas and his family echoed in the otherwise still afternoon. “See,” he said, “this is what he saw. My dressing room, where I take the makeup off . . .”

  Anto hurried into the shower, realizing that if he failed here, the whole episode would have gone for nothing. He was a little chagrined to realize that he wasn’t sure how to work the shower. He saw the cord, and pulled it. With a gasp of surprise, he stood beneath a sudden shower of cold water, drenched. He was, as Lupuk had reported, standing under a kind of “stream”.

  Everyone in the farmyard had stopped laughing, except the lowest ranked Patrol gorilla, who continued his foolish giggling until his officer shouted at him. “Fool!” cried Barga.

  The Patrol gorilla stopped immediately, embarrassment and anxiety evident in his expression. The two Patrol gorillas began to ride off as they saw the now normal but soaking wet Anto step from the shower. But Urko was always the thorough policeman. He turned to his own junior officer.

  “Search the barn!” he ordered. “Eyes that deceive once . . . can deceive twice.” The General directed a scathing glance at the horrified Lupuk.

  The junior officer jumped from his horse and strode officially by the Polar family into the barn. Anto, wiping his face with one of the rough towels, looked worriedly at Polar. The father only shrugged.

  Urko, always a menacing figure in his uniform and on his obviously valuable thoroughbred horse, rode around the meek Polar family in a circle, waiting. He watched the ape family in a superior, threatening way. “A clown, eh?” he said to Anto with a sneer. “We’ll see.”

  Just as the sound of two “maaaaas” from the young calves came from the barn, all eyes turned to the door. There was a tense, expectant hush. The junior officer emerged from the barn, shaking his head. “No humans here, sir,” he announced. “Two brand new calves, though. They would have been eaten if there were humans around.” The subordinate remounted his horse.

  Urko rode up to Barga and spoke in low tones to the officer of the rural Patrol. Both gorillas eyes were on Lupuk, and it was evident to everyone what the subject of their conversation was. “Demote that Patrolman,” said Urko gruffly. “He has made fools of authority.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Barga, glad at least that General Urko had let him off without any punishment.

  Urko and his officer rode off at a high gallop, turning onto the narrow rode that ran by Polar’s farm. This time, they took the lead, followed by the Patrol riders. As the huge, pounding sound of the hoofbeats died away, Barga was heard cursing the stupidity of his subordinate, Lupuk.

  The Polar family gave a collective sigh of relief when the gorilla force departed. Meanwhile, Burke, Virdon, and Galen appeared from the barn to join them, the clinging stray straws revealing where they had hidden.

  Anto walked toward Virdon, his head hung in shame for his earlier actions, he said, “Virdon, I . . . I’m sorry for how I acted to you in there. I just couldn’t . . . I just couldn’t believe.” There was a painful pause. “Thank you,” he said at last. “Thank you very much.”

  Virdon waved Anto’s apology away. “I watched through a knothole, Anto,” he said, smiling. “And if I hadn’t seen it for myself, I wouldn’t have believed that, either.” Virdon clapped the young ape on a shoulder. “I’d say we’re about even,” he said.

  Remus, the precocious youngster, walked boldly up to Virdon. Anto continued speaking. “Will you show me,” he asked, “you know, what I must do, in case some day . . . when you are not around.”

  Remus laughed. He had watched the entire operation, and he considered himself an expert. “Just ask me, Anto. I know. I memorized the entire thing.”

  Anto and Virdon glanced down at the young Remus. Neither of them had been aware at the time of Remus’ place in the crisis. Soon, both Anto and Virdon broke out into big, astonished smiles. Remus walked about proudly.

  Many days later, a quite spry Galen, accompanied by Virdon and Burke, was bidding goodbye to the Polar family. Burke carried a sack which had been given him by Zantes.

  “I put some bread in there,” she said. “With that solid gold milk on it.”

  It was an awkward moment for all of them, as farewells so often are. Burke, Virdon, and Galen had had certainly enough practice in the last few months. How Burke would have liked to find some nice place to settle, and how Virdon would like to find some nice place that offered a clue to returning to his own time and his own family. And Galen? Galen just wanted to learn, and this alone made him an enemy of the ape society.

  Jillia turned to Galen. “Be careful of the leg,” she said solicitously. “I don’t want you coming back here and . . . laying around . . . for me to wait on.”

  Galen smiled. “Oh?” he said. Jillia couldn’t meet his look. She lowered her eyes, but a small smile played on her lips, too.

  Virdon, Burke, and Polar stood aside, while Virdon checked his pocket compass. “Polar,” said Burke, looking at the blisters that had grown on his hands, “you’ve been an interesting host. Interesting, that’s the word. Better than the most expensive Florida health resort. Worked off those spare pounds and inches.”

  “Not many of those to start with,” said Virdon dryly.

  “Where will you go?” asked Polar, knowing that the humans’ words were not supposed to be understood, at least not by him.

  Virdon looked at the compass. “We don’t really know,” he said. “West. That used to be a good direction. We’ll try it again.” He put the compass in his pocket.

  Anto joined the small group, his left hand stuck out in imitation of the gesture that humans performed at moments like these. Virdon did not correct Anto; whether the ape offered the left hand or the right, the meaning was clear. Virdon grasped it warmly. Then Anto shook hands with Burke and Galen. “Thank you, Virdon,” said Anto. “I will never forget you.”

  Virdon gave Anto a friendly smile. “I’m not going to forget you right away either, Anto,” he said.

  Virdon put a hand on Anto’s shoulder, pleased that the ape didn’t shrink from this contact any longer. Then, over the peaceful though somewhat sad scene, came the sound of two “maaaaaas”, distantly, from the barn.

  “I’ve named my bulls,” announced Anto. “One is named Virdon, the other Burke.”

  Burke cleared his throat, the prelude to a mock-serious revelation. Virdon laughed and waited to hear what his fellow astronaut would say. “Just one thing,” said Burke. “Be careful of that bull named Burke around the females. Those heifers won’t get a moment’s rest.”

  Virdon, Galen, Anto, and Polar laughed. Burke tried to keep a straight face, but he, too, joined in the laughter.

  “Goodbye,” said Virdon solemnly, “goodbye.”

  Burke and Galen added their goodbyes now, and the three fugitives walked away from the front of the small farmhouse where they had first come for help so many days before.

  On one of the fields behind the house, early the next day, the first bright spears of sunlight picked out the turning blades of the windmill’s wheel. Polar and Remus stood watching it, wondering how far away the two humans and their chimpanzee companion had traveled since the evening before.

  Polar and Remus were pleased by the sight of the strange device that was making the wind work for them. As their attention turned from the windmill to the house, where Zantes had finished cooking breakfast, they heard
the familiar pounding of horses’ hooves on the hard-packed dirt road.

  Lupuk, the Patrol gorilla, rode up to them and stopped. The uniformed ape did not exchange any words of greeting with Polar and his younger son; indeed, the Patrol rider glared down with his superiority restored from the beating it had taken the day before. Polar, too, offered no words of pleasantry; he had won out over this emblem of their oppression by the gorilla forces. Lupuk looked up at the odd structure that towered over them.

  “What’s this?” he asked, in a voice that threatened nothing specific.

  “A windmill,” said Polar.

  “Where did it come from?” asked the Patrol gorilla.

  Remus looked smug. “I built it,” he said.

  The Patrol rider gave the youngster a disbelieving look. Polar noticed. “He’s very bright,” said the ape farmer.

  The rider took another look at the thing and snorted. “Humph! If you were bright, old farmer,” he said, “you’d keep him at work in the fields, not building these . . . these toys to play in the wind.”

  With this admonition, feeling even more superior, the Patrol rider spurred his horse and hurried off.

  Polar waited until Lupuk had gone. Then he pointed to the low-lying field that had been drained to feed the ditch the windmill was pumping from. “Next spring,” said Polar thoughtfully, “we’ll plant that new field the humans made for us. It will be good, rich earth, as they said.”

  “And we’ll plant the best seeds . . . like Virdon said huh?” said Remus.

  “Yes,” said Polar slowly. “We’ll try it. The best seeds this time.”

  For a few moments more, the two apes stood staring over their tiny domain. The windmill would remind them forever of the bizarre experience they had with those strange humans. As Polar and Remus began walking toward the farmhouse. Polar realized that the corn was not the only “best seeds” to be planted. Already a different kind of seed had been cultivated. It had sprouted, and grown, and flowered within their minds and hearts. Virdon, Burke, and Galen had done their work well.