by Maurice
Caesar was coming to understand the cruelty of humans, cruelty he had only had a small taste of before. He was starting to think differently about them.
And he was trying to understand us. Remember, this was before the Change. To Caesar, even the smartest of us were dumb animals. If the shelter hadn’t been such a bad place—if the humans there had been kind instead of cruel—he might never have come to accept he had any kinship with us. What happened the next day, when we were allowed in to the common area, did not help.
Dodge was not the only one to take an immediate dislike to Caesar. Rocket did as well. As soon as Caesar appeared, Rocket began threatening him. Caesar didn’t understand what was happening. He held out his hand, as humans do when they greet one another. I understood the gesture; Rocket did not. He tore Caesar’s shirt off him, and then gave him a beating worse than I had ever seen him give any other chimp before.
That was Caesar’s harder lesson. Humans didn’t think of him as human. Apes didn’t think of him as an ape.
That night I spoke to Caesar for the first time, using the hand language I learned in the circus. I asked him how badly he was hurt.
He was surprised, of course. We spoke a bit. I warned him that humans didn’t like smart apes. That was the same night the humans came and took Lucky from his cage. Caesar asked where they were taking him.
Away, I told him. I didn’t know where. But others had been taken.
But Caesar knew where Lucky was going. Caesar could read the yellow tag on the cage. It said Gen-Sys. Caesar remembered that was where Will worked, where his mother died, and he was born. And now Lucky was going there. The human leader of the shelter said that three more were going there, too.
We talked about all of this later. Me signing to Caesar was the first good thing that had happened to your father since arriving at the shelter, but it wasn’t nearly enough. Maybe he didn’t belong in the human world or the ape world, but he thought at least he belonged with Will. Why wouldn’t he? Will had treated him like his own child, with care and respect. Caesar now saw that no other human and no ape would ever treat him like that. He longed to go home.
When Will came the next time, he thought he would. But Will told him he couldn’t come yet. He told Caesar that everything would be all right.
But Caesar didn’t believe him this time. He began to understand things as they really were. And he began to get angry. He rubbed away the circle on his wall, the reminder of his home with Will.
I could see the change, watching him from my cage. Something in his face, the way he moved. He seemed to have found purpose. And he had. Soon after, everything was different.
Caesar Becomes Caesar
As an observer myself, I understood at least part of what Caesar did the next day. But while I looked on mostly from boredom and curiosity, Caesar was looking for specific things.
How the females groomed Rocket. The way Rocket flinched when he passed Buck’s cage.
He studied the room itself, the glass where the sun came through, high above. He did this all day, avoiding all of us as much as he could. Then, like the rest of us, he returned to his cage.
Dodge came to our cages in the night. He wasn’t supposed to do that. Other humans came with him, and he wanted to show them that he was dominant. Dominant over apes, but also over the human males accompanying him. He sparked our cages. He taunted us. Caesar stayed calm. He beckoned to one of the human males, who stepped too close. Caesar seized him through the bars. Unknown to the humans, he took a tool—a small knife—he had seen the human put in his pocket.
Caesar released the man. Dodge and his friends left.
Then your father did something none of the rest of us could have ever imagined doing. I don’t mean using the tool to unlock his cage. I had considered that very thing, many times. But for what reason? Where would I go, what would I do? I might escape from the shelter, but then what? If caught, I would be punished. It didn’t seem worth the effort.
When I saw Caesar leave his cage, I assumed he would flee the shelter, too.
Instead, he freed Buck.
As I said before, Buck was angry. He was very, very strong. He might have killed Caesar or hurt him badly.
Instead, he recognized what Caesar had done for him. For the first time in years, he was free of his cage, able to move about the big room, stretch his limbs to their fullest, climb the tree that wasn’t a tree. He was not truly free, but he had more liberty than he had had the day before.
And Caesar had given it to him.
And that was how Caesar changed everything. Everything that came after springs from the moment he let Buck out of his cage.
Before that, one chimpanzee might cooperate with another. They might form an alliance against a greater threat. Gorillas might do the same with other gorillas. Even orangutans might work together, at least the females and very young males.
But Caesar, a chimpanzee, had formed an alliance with a gorilla!
Rocket’s Tale
(Rocket does not write. He signed this story and I wrote it down.)
Food falls on my face while I sleep. I am mad, confused. I see my cage is open at night, when it should not be. I go to see why. Caesar is waiting, hiding, and I do not see him. He hits me with the can, knocks me down.
I think I will beat him, make him submit.
Then I see Buck is out of his cage.
Until then, I do not think Buck is an ape. He is just some kind of animal. I think if he ever gets out, he will kill me.
Instead, Buck warns me. Like a chimpanzee. I still do not understand completely, but I know something is different. I know this ape with clothes and this Big Ape are together. I know I am no longer the dominant male. But Buck is not, either, even though he is bigger and stronger than four chimpanzees.
It is Caesar. He is the leader. It is to Caesar I submit.
He accepts my submission. He does not beat me or chase me as I did him. My submission to him is something new. I just do not know it yet.
The next day, Will came for Caesar. This was the thing Caesar had wished for, dreamed about. To go home. And I thought he would go. He told me that he almost did. But it was like my own thought about escaping the shelter. What would he do, live out his life as a pet? His illusion that he was somehow human was over, gone like a morning mist when the sun is hot and high. Will loved him. He knew that. But Will had a leash in his hand.
For Caesar it was much more than that. He had become a leader. He had a people now, and a purpose.
And his purpose was to free his people.
So he stayed.
Buck understood first. Understood that Caesar could have been free of his cage but chose to stay. For us. He began to hoot, and then the chimpanzees joined him, then the rest. It was the first time we all called out together. We had no words, but there was meaning. For the first time, we all shared something.
Caesar understood that. It strengthened him. It let him know he had made the right choice.
Normally when a male chimp dominated another, the loser lost status. His wives went to the dominant male. He might fight to reclaim his place one day, but until then he was a lesser ape. But within a day of his submission, Caesar made an alliance with Rocket as he had with Buck. He let Rocket pass out cookies to us all, to show he still had status. He made Rocket his second and won not just his submission but his allegiance, his loyalty.
I saw all of this, but I didn’t understand. When I asked Caesar about it the next day, he picked up a stick I’d just had in my mouth. He held it between his hands.
Apes alone, weak, he signed, and broke the stick. Then he broke it several more times and bundled the sticks together.
Then he tried to break it again and couldn’t.
Apes together, strong.
I felt as if I had swallowed something strange. It was an odd thought, but not as odd as it would have been the day before.
But even as he said that, the other chimps were already quarreling below. They had forgotte
n their brief solidarity the day before.
Apes are stupid, I told Caesar. I knew what he was trying to do now, and I knew it would never work. Humans weren’t stronger or fiercer than apes, but they were smarter. Caesar was different, but he was the only one. The rest of us were simple, and I thought we would remain so. What could be done about something so basic?
But Caesar knew.
Caesar’s human grandfather had been stupid. He forgot things. He became panicked for no reason. He saw things that weren’t there. Will said he was sick, that he was working on medicine for him.
One night, looking through his window, Caesar saw Will take something from the small house behind the big one. He put it in Charles’s arm and told him it would make him better.
And it did. His grandfather stopped forgetting things. He became smarter.
That night in the shelter, Caesar left his cage. He went to the red buttons on the wall and pushed them like the humans did. He climbed to the top of the shelter, opened the windows, and left.
He went back to Will’s house, the place where had grown up. He went to the little house in the yard, to the box that kept things cold. In it he saw silver cylinders. They were bigger than he remembered, but they had the same markings. They still said Gen-Sys, the place where Caesar’s mother had died. Where Lucky had been taken.
Caesar made the connection, you see. The medicine had made his grandfather better. Will worked at the place where the medicine was made. Caesar’s mother had been at Gen-Sys, and Caesar was smarter than the other apes.
He took the medicine from Will’s house and brought it to the shelter. He cut open the cans, and a fog came out. We all breathed it in.
The next morning, we all had green eyes, like Caesar. And we all were-more.
You were born as you are, Cornelius. But we were Changed. Our thoughts grew quicker and sharper. Things we didn’t understand at all suddenly became obvious. It was like going from infant to adult all in one turn of the sun. It was like having the light brighten in our skulls. Our eyes saw the same things we had always seen. Everything in the shelter was the same, but it all looked different now.
Because we weren’t the same, and never would be again.
Dodge was the first human to find that out. When that first day of awakening came to its evening, we were called back into the cages, as we were every day. And we went.
All but Caesar. He stood defiant. He waited for Dodge to come for him.
And Dodge did. He came with the stinging stick, and when Caesar would not be dominated, he attacked our leader with it. He struck Caesar again and again, but finally your father seized the human’s arm. Furious, Dodge said these words, which I have never forgotten:
“Take your stinking paw off of me, you damn dirty ape.”
And then Caesar spoke. “No!”
Before the Change, I had learned many human words. I understood them by their sounds, and I could sign them with my hands. Many apes could do this. Most who had been around humans learned the meanings of some words, even if they weren’t trained to.
But up until that day, that very heartbeat, no ape had ever spoken a human word aloud.
Even in our new state-maybe especially because we had been Changed-we were all astonished. More than astonished, many were frightened. To hear a human word, the language of our masters, our subjugators-torn from the throat of an ape-it seemed impossible. It seemed almost wrong.
The humans were even more terrified. They had a right to be, although at the time I felt nothing but satisfaction at their fear.
Caesar struck Dodge down. After that, all was mayhem. There was so much noise, so much motion. Fear, triumph, elation, fury all churned in the shelter that night. Some of the chimps caught Rodney, one of the human workers, and would have torn him apart if Caesar hadn’t stopped them. But he did stop them; he was our leader. We were no longer chimpanzee or gorilla or orangutan. We were apes.
And we were Caesar’s. And so Rodney did not die, because Caesar said he should not.
But Dodge was not so lucky. He came out of his daze and attacked Caesar once more with the sparking stick. Caesar sprayed him with the hose, and somehow that killed him. I learned later that what made the rod sting was called electricity. From our talks I know that as much as he hated Dodge, Caesar never intended to kill him, or any human. Even then, he did not wish them harm.
Yet now a human was dead. Caesar had been imprisoned for merely wounding one. What would befall us when they discovered a human had died by our hands?
Caesar had no intention of finding out. He saw that Cornelia, your mother, had been removed, taken to Gen-Sys. How many apes might also be there? And he knew of the apes in the zoo. These, too, must be liberated.
And that is how Caesar came to lead us out from the shelter and into the City.
How Caesar Led Us Out
We went out the same way Caesar had—through the windows at the top of the shelter. After that it was only earth beneath our feet and hands. For some, it was the first time. For most, it was a thing remembered but nearly forgotten. For all of us, except Caesar, it was our first time without boundaries in years. Fierce joy filled us all, and now no one doubted Caesar. On that day, there was not one of us who would not have given everything we had for him. Many of us did. But that was later.
From a hilltop we saw the human city, its lights and houses far taller than trees. There Caesar divided us into two groups. One, led by Buck, was to go to the zoo. The rest of us went to Gen-Sys, where Lucky and Cornelia and so many others had been taken.
We have lost so many since then, in all of our wars. Those of us who remember the liberation have dwindled. But Hila was there, at the zoo, when Buck arrived.
Hila’s Tale
(Hila was with us when we escaped the City. He signed this story to me.)
I was born in the zoo. It was all I had ever known. I remember wondering what they were doing, the humans. Why they looked at us. Why they made gestures of fear and anger with their mouths. I tried to keep out of sight, but there wasn’t much cover. I was young, maybe only three or four, but it’s all so clear in my memory. The elders sensed something was coming before Buck and the other apes arrived; there were strange scents on the wind, and a few cries that did not belong. And then suddenly, the humans began to scream and run. And then a gorilla knocked down the fence.
My mother snatched me up, at first to protect me from the gorilla. But there were chimps, too, lots of them. Everywhere. Encouraging us to go with them. It all seemed to happen at once. My mother ran with them, and I was clinging to her. And then it wasn’t just chimps, but also orangutans and more gorillas. We burst out of the zoo, but in the confusion, my mother dropped me. I was kicked and knocked about, screaming in fear. But then a strong hand took me up. To my terror I saw that it was the gorilla who smashed the fence. But then he gently placed me on his back and took the lead, drawing us all after him toward the Orange Bridge and the forest beyond.
At that time I knew nothing of our destination, nor who had saved me. I later learned it was Buck.
While Buck did his part, we invaded Gen-Sys. There, Caesar and I saw the place where apes were tortured to make medicine for humans. But now that very same medicine had Changed the apes.
These apes were not like those at the zoo. They were wounded, scarred inside and out, hurt so deeply that some of them never recovered.
This is where we met Koba, and where Koba joined us. Like us, he had breathed in the medicine and was Changed. He quickly saw that Caesar was our leader. He later told me that when he first saw Caesar, he felt something, like the thing that pulls you back to the ground when you jump. He wanted to help whoever this chimp was to break everything in sight-all of the tools that had harmed him, all the humans who wielded those things.
But more, he wanted to kill a specific man. The man who directed all the pain. A man called Jacobs.
Koba tried to find Jacobs, but he could not. And so, instead, he yielded to his other instinct.
He joined us, and together we made our way through the City.
Caesar had instructed Buck that once the zoo apes were free, they should go toward the Orange Bridge, which could be seen from any high place. We met with Buck and his apes long before we reached the bridge, however.
But the humans weren’t just going to let us go. We surprised them, outwitted them at first. But humans were used to being smart. Humans had been making things to kill for a very long time. Caesar’s plan was to cross the bridge and get into the woods before the humans could recover from their surprise.
On the bridge we found hundreds of cars, but the humans in them did not attack us. They cowered as we ran through them and over them. We could have killed many, but it was Caesar’s wish that we should not, so we didn’t.
We made it about halfway across the bridge, and then Caesar stopped us. Fog obscured the distance, but Caesar saw a long yellow car-a bus-blocking the way. Your father didn’t like the looks of it. Behind us, we heard men on horses coming. We didn’t have much time before they caught up to us.
Since that day we have fought many battles against humans with guns. We have fought battles using guns ourselves.
But this was the first.
The Battle of the Orange Bridge
Caesar knew nothing of war at that time. He had never been in one. None of us had. But Caesar saw every obstacle as a problem to be solved. If there were humans ahead, waiting for us, that was a problem that needed solving. We would not do so by charging blindly at the bus, which was clearly what the humans wanted us to do.