Escape From The Planet Of The Apes

by Jerry Pournelle

  “That’s how to turn it off, too,” Cornelius said. “But I do want to watch this Doctor Hasslein.”

  “We all do,” Lewis said. He stood at the cage door. “Well. Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

  “Eh?” Cornelius said.

  “Come in, come in,” Zira insisted. “We don’t mean to be impolite—but after all, it’s your zoo. We don’t really think of this cage as our home, Lewis. I’m sorry . . .”

  “Very natural, of course,” Lewis said. He took a seat without being asked; he was tired, and they’d probably never get around to that.

  “Have a seat,” Cornelius said. Lewis grinned at him and they both laughed.

  “They were just marvelous,” Stephanie said again. “Weren’t they, Lew?”

  “Sure, darling.” Dixon’s voice took on a worried edge. “Fabulous. But there was a moment there when . . .”

  “Yes,” Zira said.

  “Now, let’s not think about our difficulties,” Cornelius said. “I’ve just learned about coffee, and I want some. I watched Stevie make it, and I think I know how.” He went to the stove and began rattling the percolator.

  “He knows,” Zira said. “You’re not helping, Cornelius. He knows.”

  “My dear,” Cornelius said. “Are you sure we should go into this now?”

  “Quite sure,” Zira said. “But only to these humans. To—to our physicians. In confidence. This is in confidence, Dr. Dixon?”

  “Yes,” Lewis said. He was fairly positive of it; no one would bug the hospital section of the zoo, certainly not without Haskins being aware of it, and Haskins had said nothing. “In confidence.”

  “Why can’t you be honest with everyone?” Stevie asked. “With the Commission?”

  Cornelius sighed deeply. “I wish we could. I truly do. But—I’m afraid to talk even to you.”

  “But we will,” Zira said. “Sit down, Stevie. Cornelius, stop messing with that pot and come join us. We have to talk to them while we’ve got the chance.”

  “I suppose.” Cornelius came over to the group—two chimpanzees on one couch, facing two humans on another. All four wore white laboratory coats now. Lewis had thought it a good joke on the zoo procedure. Haskins would be scandalized.

  “But—why not with the Commission?” Stevie asked again.

  “Because,” Zira said, “truth can often harm the innocent. And I have a very special reason for wanting to survive. At least for a little while. This does have to be secret, Doctors.”

  “Go ahead,” Lewis said.

  “No. You tell them, Cornelius.”

  “We did know Colonel Taylor,” Cornelius began. "It is true that the first time we saw the ship, it was empty, but we had seen the crew before that. We came to love Colonel Taylor very much.”

  “But,” Stevie protested, “what possible harm could come from telling the Commission that? Why—”

  “Shh,” Lewis said. He gently put a finger over her lips. "Please go on, Professor Cornelius.”

  “Our feelings, our regard for Colonel Taylor was unusual,” Cornelius said. “In our time, apes do not—did not—love human beings. They hunted them for sport, as you might hunt animals. They did not always kill them quickly, either.”

  “Good Lord!” Lewis exclaimed. “Chimpanzees too?”

  Zira nodded. “We don’t hunt, but we used humans, alive and dead, for experimental animals. Anatomical studies. Medical reactions, drug tests, anything of that sort. Dissection to train medical students.”

  “Ugh.” Stevie swallowed hard. “That’s—that’s horrible.”

  “Yes,” Lewis nodded. “But we do the same with animals right now. As a scientist I can understand, if humans in their time are only dumb animals, unable to speak or reason . . .”

  “We thought they were all that way,” Zira said, “until we met Colonel Taylor. He was the first talking human we’d ever known.”

  “I think,” Lewis said slowly, “I think perhaps you were right not to tell them you’d known him. What happened to Taylor, anyway?”

  “That was the other reason we didn’t tell about him,” Cornelius said.”

  “Yes,” Zira added. “They would have asked what happened to him, whether he’s still alive.”

  “And he’s dead,” Lewis said with finality. He paused a moment and took in a deep breath. “I knew him, you know. Not well, but I worked with him once—you know he’s dead, then? Know for sure?”

  “Yes,” Cornelius answered. “After we achieved orbit, we could see Earth below. From the ship. And we looked down and saw the earth destroyed.”

  Stevie gasped. Then she looked up at Zira. “You’re full of surprises, aren’t you? Just what do you mean, the earth destroyed?”

  “Just that,” Zira replied. “There was a glare and an explosion.”

  “And Colonel Taylor was down there?” asked Lewis.

  “Yes,” Cornelius replied. “He—he wasn’t able to come with us in the rocket.”

  “But what did you mean, the world destroyed?” Stephanie insisted.

  Cornelius sighed. “Just that. The gorillas wanted possession of a weapon. Something left from the old days. Milo thought that it would destroy the earth if it were used. Evidently someone used it.”

  “The whole earth,” Lewis said. He didn’t even hear himself speaking.

  “Yes,” Cornelius answered. “The whole earth. And now, I think you understand why we were less than frank with your commissioners.”

  “I still don’t like it,” Zira said. “I don’t like lies and deceit. But what can we do?”

  Lewis shrugged. “It’s time for Dr. Hasslein.” He went over to turn on the television.

  “And now the Big News presents Dr. Victor Hasslein,” the announcer said. “Dr. Hasslein is the chief science advisor to the president, and insiders know him to be perhaps the most influential scientist in the nation.

  “As our Big News viewers know by now, the whole nation is excited about talking chimpanzees. These two apes impressed this reporter, as I am sure they impressed everyone in the room. They answered questions, made jokes, and quite literally spoke and thought as well as any human. Dr. Hasslein, was that your impression?”

  The camera panned from pictures of Zira and Cornelius over to Hasslein’s thin features and steel-rimmed glasses. The contrast was startling. “Yes. Although certain members of the Commission seem to harbor residual doubts, I think there is absolutely no question here. These chimpanzees are intelligent by any definition we could rationally put forward.”

  “And what do you think about that, Dr. Hasslein?” The interviewer leaned forward and gave his famous look of intelligent concern, a look familiar to millions of six o’clock news viewers. “What does this make you feel?”

  “Frightened,” Hasslein said firmly.

  “Why is that?”

  Hasslein shrugged. “Anything that completely upsets what we thought were known scientific facts is a bit frightening,” Hasslein said smoothly. He smiled as if to show it really wasn’t important.

  “Would you say that this shows a potential for intelligence in other apes?”

  Hasslein shrugged again. “I would think no,” he said. “We have, after all, rather thoroughly studied apes, and I think we have established the limits of their intelligence. Apes have been raised in human households, as children might be raised. In one experiment, you may recall, a chimpanzee and a human child of similar ages were raised by the child’s parents together as sisters, with absolutely no differences in treatment. Yet, after a few years, the chimpanzee could not speak and had fallen very far behind her human counterpart. No, I think these apes are from a genetically different strain. Quite different.”

  “I see.” The interviewer smiled again to show the audience who was the star of the show. “Now, Dr. Hasslein, when you asked the male ape, uh, Cornelius, where he came from, he replied ‘From your future.’ Do you believe that?”

  “Absolutely. It’s the only possible explanation,” Hasslein answe
red. He leaned forward to peer intently into the camera, and to the apes watching him on the screen he seemed almost to come into the room.

  “He—frightens me,” Zira said.

  “Well he might,” Lewis told her. “But you’ve got to get along with him. Oh, the entire Commission could probably overrule him, if we wanted to badly enough; but the president listens to Hasslein. Don’t blame the president, you understand. Hasslein’s brilliant, and he has a talent for explaining complicated subjects to educated laymen. Just remember, you’ve got to get along with him.”

  “Shh,” Stevie said. She put her hand on his lips and grinned. She had been waiting to do that for a while—since Lewis had shushed her.

  “I’m afraid, Dr. Hasslein,” the interviewer was saying, “that I don’t find it at all obvious what the ape meant. How could they be from our future? Is time travel actually possible?”

  Hasslein smiled thinly. “Walter, there will be nothing simple about this explanation. I do not myself actually understand time, although I have written papers about its nature, mathematical papers. Men will probably never understand time. Only God can do that. But perhaps I can give an illustration, of something I call infinite regression—”

  The interviewer winced, but Hasslein smiled. “It is not that difficult, Walter,” he said. “Remember the Morton’s Salt Box? On it there is a little girl carrying a box of Morton’s salt. On her box there is a little girl, also carrying a box of Morton’s salt. And so forth, until, of course, the engraver became tired and did not bother to make the actual detailed picture within a picture within a picture . . .”

  “I suppose,” the interviewer said. He looked sharply at Hasslein, and the look said quite a lot. It said, “Whoever told me this guy knew what he was talking about?”

  “The same was true of the old Quaker Oats boxes,” Hasslein said. “On those boxes was a man holding a box of Quaker Oats, and so forth. Now, let us see this in a different direction. Let us imagine a landscape painting. In order for it to be realistic, the painter would have to place himself in the painting, would he not? Otherwise something would be missing?”

  “Why—yes.”

  Hasslein smiled. “Excellent. But of course, now, in order for it to be realistic, the painting within the painting would itself have to contain a picture of the artist painting a picture of the artist painting a picture of the landscape. And, in fact, I that is not quite realistic either, is it? One would have to regress again. And again, and again—”

  “It would never be accurate,” the interviewer exclaimed.

  “Perhaps not,” Hasslein said. “But in order to understand time, you would have to be like the artist who had done an infinite series of such paintings until he had actually succeeded in portraying the scene realistically.”

  “That’s enough to drive you mad,” the interviewer said.

  Hasslein shrugged. “Perhaps. But let us imagine, then, that we have this capability. That we have made the, ah, infinite regression, and we are both the observers and the observed. And now let us look at time.”

  “What would we see?” Walter asked.

  “We might well see it as an infinity of parallel events, but not always parallel. Science fiction writers once called this, ah, ‘fan-shaped’ time; from ‘now’ there stretches forward a large number of alternative pathways. Some come back to the same path. Others lead very far away indeed. And thus, the choices made here determine different futures. In one of these futures, you will leave this building at eight-fifteen, precisely in time to be killed by an automobile which left the parking garage at eight-twelve.”

  “I think I do not care for that future,” Walter said nervously. He laughed.

  “Yes, but in another, you may leave here at eight-sixteen, and be perfectly safe,” Hasslein said. “Or the automobile does not leave the parking garage until eight-twenty because the driver received a telephone call. Yet, and this is the important point, each of those futures may be as real as any other.”

  “But we wouldn’t experience more than one of those futures, would we, Dr. Hasslein?” the interviewer asked. He was now thoroughly confused.

  “Certainly not,” Hasslein said. “Yet, each one would be real to the mythical observer who has achieved infinite regression. Now, I do not find it at all hard to believe that these apes have arrived here from one of the possible futures of this planet. To them, that future was very real. But, and I want to stress this, it need not be real to us. We can, perhaps, change that future. And indeed, I think it important that we do.”

  “Well come back to Dr. Victor Hasslein as the Big News continues following station identification,” Walter said. “Now an important message.”

  “I wish Milo had been here to explain that,” Zira said. She looked sadly around the cage.

  “I am Chiquita Banana, and I’ve come to say, Bananas must be ripened in—”

  Cornelius flung himself at the set and turned off the sound.

  “That’s all we needed,” Zira said.

  “Inappropriate,” Lewis agreed. “I suppose I should have expected it.”

  Cornelius took a bunch of grapes from the table and passed them around. “Have some, dear,” he said. He gave Zira most of them. They ate in silence until the commercials were over, and Cornelius turned the sound back on.

  “The Big News continues. This reporter will confess that he was impressed by the Ape-onauts, and I certainly applaud the president’s decision to transfer them from the Los Angeles Zoo to a hotel. They are no danger to us, and from what I’ve seen, they will be our friends.

  “In other late breaking stories, criminals struck at a Los Angeles Savings and Loan for the third . . .”

  Lewis switched off the set. “Congratulations,” he told them.

  Zira and Cornelius smiled happily. “We won’t be sorry to leave,” Cornelius said. He looked around the cage, and at the place where Milo died. “We won’t be sorry at all.”

  TEN

  Lewis Dixon found the next week unbelievably hectic. First, there was the escorted ride to the Beverly Hills Hotel. The Navy had locked the chimpanzees into a zoo. Now that they were released, Admiral Taylor had been determined to make amends.

  He had persuaded a wealthy retired admiral friend to come for the chimpanzees in a chauffered Mercedes. The City of Los Angeles had provided a motorcycle escort. Navy Intelligence provided a bodyguard. And the general public had provided the crowds.

  Not only was attendance at the Los Angeles Zoo twice the previous record crowd on the day the chimpanzees were to move, but the whole Griffith Park road system was crowded with sightseers. Los Feliz Boulevard was nearly impassable, so that the motorcade finally had to go out the back way, past Forest Lawn of Hollywood Hills, down Ventura Boulevard and up over Laurel Canyon. These streets were normal enough until the motorcade passed—then people fell in behind, until Dixon and his charges were leading a parade five miles long, and had created the worst clear weather traffic jam in Los Angeles history.

  It was as bad at the hotel. Of course the apes weren’t used to automobiles in the first place, or escalators, or elevators, or automatically opening doors. All these things confused them. So did doormen with their elaborate uniforms and their deferential attitude.

  At the registration desk the clerk had asked the apes for their permanent address.

  Cornelius shrugged. So did Dixon. Finally Stevie had said, “If you have to write something, put down the Los Angeles Zoo.”

  The registration clerk had looked down his aristocratic nose and said calmly, “Madam, the Beverly Hills does not have guests who reside in a zoo.” What he wrote was anybody’s guess, but the clerk was the only one there who didn’t think it funny.

  The apes had one of the best suites in the hotel. And that, Lewis thought, was going to be a problem. Sure it was authorized, but it cost more than Dixon’s entire department budget. If Lewis could have thought of a way to transfer any of that money to his research, he would have insisted on the apes taking a
less expensive place; but there wasn’t any way to do it. There was money to put the apes into the best suite of the Beverly Hills, but none for a new electron microscope.

  One of these days, the Navy was going to decide not to pay for that suite. And then who would be responsible? Lewis wondered. At least it wasn’t a problem now.

  There was also the question of the mail and gifts. Hundreds of thousands of letters poured in, and literally thousands of packages. Most of the packages contained toys, balls, art work, decorative jewelry; but they had to be inspected, because some of the people out there had sick minds. Not only were there bombs, but other ugly and disgusting things.

  All that mail had to be sorted, and answered, and the people doing that had to be paid. For a while the University of California had undertaken the task, justifying it as a special experimental project; but Lewis didn’t think that would last. He sighed. Well, the apes could afford their own help, of course. They could command their own fees for speaking engagements, and Lewis had arranged a few, along with some appearances on TV programs. The fees went into the UC budget system in a special category, the money reserved for the chimpanzees.

  “Is that fair?” Stevie had asked.

  Lewis shrugged. He hadn’t known how to answer her a week ago when she asked, and, he thought, I still don’t know. Can chimps legally own money? Would the courts uphold any rights at all? Certainly the university can be trusted to hold onto some of the money for them, and give it to them when they need it. I guess that’ll have to do until we find out what legal status these apes have. It hadn’t satisfied Stevie and it didn’t satisfy him, but it was all the answer Lewis Dixon had.

  Lewis had observed the chimpanzees closely as they moved into the hotel. They were obviously unused to technology. The flush toilet had startled Cornelius, and Lewis made a note to inquire what kind of sanitary facilities the apes were used to. The refrigerator had been an even bigger surprise. Cornelius explained that apes packed ice in straw for the winter, much as humans had done when the Americas were first settled. It had been amusing to watch Cornelius play with the refrigerator; he liked to open the door quickly to see if he could fool the light that came on.