by Alex Irvine
31
They put up their tents quickly, before dark, and gathered wood for a fire. The six of them sat together to eat, but it was clear that Foster, Kemp, and Carver considered themselves a group within the group.
From up the canyon, they could hear distant ape noises—the occasional call, and as dark fell a long series of smashing noises.
“Listen to that,” Kemp said.
“Damn, take a look. See that glow?” Carver said, pointing into the darkness. “The apes have fire.”
“They have our guns, too,” Kemp said. “Don’t know about you, but I am not getting any sleep tonight.”
Malcolm heard all this while he sat in front of his tent, studying schematic diagrams of the dam. Dreyfus had helped him find them in a room full of filing cabinets down in the basement of San Francisco City Hall. Nobody had bothered to loot it. He’d looked at them before, but now he was making a real study of the wiring in the pump house, and how it connected to the transmission grid.
He noticed Ellie sitting next to him, but was so deeply engrossed in the schematics that he didn’t hear what she said at first. She nudged him.
“You have to eat,” she repeated.
“In a sec,” Malcolm said.
She waited until he picked up the corner of a page, then said, “That was brave. What you did today.”
Malcolm nodded, registering the compliment and appreciating it, but not wanting to break his concentration on learning the dam schematics.
“You’re so hard on yourself,” she went on. “I know everyone’s depending on you, but—”
He looked up from the drawings.
“I don’t care about any of that,” he said, more sharply than he’d intended. “Any of it. I just care about him. He’s the only reason I’m doing this.”
Alexander sat near the three mechanics, intent on whatever he was drawing in his sketchbook. Whatever happened between human and ape, Malcolm reflected, he would always give Caesar the benefit of the doubt for returning Alexander’s satchel. The boy identified with his art. He needed it. Malcolm wondered if Caesar had understood that, or if the satchel was the item that presented itself as a way to make a good-faith gesture.
“There were things he saw that no kid should ever have to see,” Malcolm said. “There’s no way I’m ever letting us go back to that.”
“You’re not the only one responsible for everyone’s well-being,” she said. He felt her hand brush down the back of his head and come to rest on his nape. He looked away from Alexander, and toward her. It might have been the end of the world, but there were things to be thankful for.
Malcolm leaned into her.
“I don’t mean I’m not doing it for you, too,” Malcolm said, probably way too late.
“I know what you mean,” Ellie said. “You know I’ve been trying to get closer to him. But he…”
“It’s not you. He has a hard time trusting people.”
Ellie nodded, understanding.
“I can’t say I blame him.”
“Let’s join up with the group,” Malcolm said. “Make sure everyone’s on the same page.”
* * *
“You know the scariest thing about them?” Foster was saying. “They don’t need power, lights, heat… nothing. That’s their advantage. That’s what makes them stronger.”
Malcolm privately thought this was bullshit. Humans didn’t need any of those things, either. They wanted them, they benefited from them, but Homo sapiens had existed for a long time before electricity.
As they approached the three men, an ape called through the trees, answered a moment later by another, quite a bit closer. Malcolm had a paranoid moment, wondering if Caesar was allowing humans to fix the dam so he could use the power himself…
“Maybe one of us should stand guard?” Kemp suggested.
“With what?” Foster asked. “They took our guns.”
“If they wanted to kill us, we’d be dead already,” Malcolm said, as he and Ellie joined the group at the fire. He leaned over to see what Alexander was drawing—it was a portrait of Caesar on horseback.
Interesting, Malcolm thought. That’s one charismatic chimpanzee. In the picture, Caesar looked fierce and also noble, posed the way a medieval artist might have staged a painting of a knight on horseback. Caesar as crusading knight, Malcolm thought. Only drawn graphic-novel style. Not manga—that wasn’t Alexander’s thing, really—but more heroic and gritty. Malcolm considered Alexander a pretty talented artist. Too bad he lived in a world where art was a complete luxury.
“Maybe they’re just taking their time,” Carver offered. “They already wiped out most of the planet.”
“Oh, come on.” Ellie rolled her eyes.
“What?”
She looked at Carver like she couldn’t believe she actually had to spell out what she was about to spell out. “You can’t honestly blame the apes.”
“Who the hell else am I gonna blame? It was the Simian Flu. Si-mi-an.”
“The virus was engineered by scientists, in a lab,” Ellie said. “The chimps had no say in the matter—”
Carver snorted. “Spare me the hippie-dippy bullshit, okay? You’re telling me you don’t get sick to your stomach at the sight of them?” Seeing Ellie’s scorn, he narrowed his eyes and took another shot. “Didn’t you have a little girl? How’d she die?”
Ellie’s face went slack from shock and then closed off. Boom, just like she was made of stone. Alexander watched it happen, and looked from her to Malcolm.
“That’s enough, Carver,” Malcolm said.
Apparently it wasn’t, though, because Carver looked him straight in the eye and continued.
“Or your wife, for that matter.”
Malcolm knew he wasn’t going to get the better of Carver in a fight. But he also knew he couldn’t back down in front of everyone. On top of that, he wanted Carver to know he wouldn’t back down. But before he could say anything that would escalate the situation, Foster jumped in.
“Carver, you better shut your mouth before I beat the shit out of you,” he said. “I mean, what the fuck? Talking about people’s kids and wives?”
Carver looked from Foster to Kemp, who shook his head.
“I’m with them, man,” Kemp said. “What’s your problem?”
Malcolm kept glaring at Carver. At this point he was hoping the man would come after him. Now that he knew he had Foster and Kemp on his side.
Carver seemed to know it, too. He turned down the aggression a notch.
“I’m just saying…” He broke off and stood up. “Yeah, okay, all right. I’m the asshole.” Shaking his head, he walked away to the tent he was sharing with the other two. In his wake was an awkward silence.
“Carver doesn’t like the apes too much,” Foster said. It was obvious, but Malcolm appreciated the effort to break the ice.
“Yeah,” Malcolm said. “I got that impression.” He leaned over to Ellie. “You all right?
Ellie nodded. “I’m fine.”
Foster poked at the fire. Everyone paused as the hooting of a pair of apes carried down the canyon.
“Pretty damn spooky, you have to admit,” he said.
“No argument here,” Malcolm said.
Alexander looked up from his drawing.
“I think they’re amazing. I mean, dangerous, yeah, but think about it. Apes who can talk? They escape the city and spend ten years hiding in the mountains? Pretty badass.”
It was as many words as he had spoken in the last two days.
“Don’t say that when Carver’s around,” Kemp said. They all laughed, except Ellie. She was looking at Alexander, and Malcolm wondered if when she saw him she also saw the ghost of what her daughter would have become.
32
A rustling outside of the tent nudged him to consciousness.
Malcolm would never have guessed that he would need to be awakened on a day when he was going to be escorted by armed chimpanzees to work on a dam to bring electricity to San
Francisco. But that’s what had happened.
At the end of the previous evening, Kemp and Foster had argued halfheartedly about whether or not to post guards. When it became clear that neither of them wanted to take the first shift, everyone gave up and went to bed… And, judging from the fact that neither Alexander nor Ellie seemed to be awake, they all must have slept like the dead.
Clean air, Malcolm thought. The air in San Francisco was clean compared to what it had been ten years before, but still not like it was up here.
Alexander had fallen asleep with a comic spread across his chest. Now, starting awake, he looked at something out the tent flap. Still lying down, Malcolm leaned to see out, and found himself peering straight into the wrinkly, bemused face of an orangutan.
Not ten feet away, the creature sat observing them. It was the one Caesar always kept close.
Alexander sat up, and the comic fell to the ground next to his sleeping bag. The orangutan watched it. Alexander saw this, and Malcolm could see him trying to decide what to make of it. Beyond the orangutan there was a cluster of chimpanzees. Malcolm thought he recognized one of them, another of Caesar’s confidantes.
He flipped the flap of the sleeping bag back, and ducked out into the camp, nodding to the apes. There were maybe twenty of them, armed and watchful.
“Morning,” Malcolm said, because why not.
Foster, Kemp, and Carver had exited their tent, and were standing in a tight knot. Carver looked jumpy and ill at ease. No surprise there.
Foster and Kemp didn’t look happy, either. Malcolm thought he understood them. They were the kinds of men who were a little too easily led, not because they were stupid but because they were ever so slightly lazy, and thinking for themselves took too much work. They were both good mechanics, and generally good people, but Carver was a bad influence on them… and, it had to be said, an influence they too easily accepted.
He was thinking all this when he walked over to them.
“Well,” he said, “if everybody’s up, let’s go.”
“Hell, yes,” Carver said. “Get this over with.”
* * *
It took only twenty minutes or so to hike from the campsite directly to the logjam, even with packs full of gear. Malcolm had gathered everything he thought they could possibly need to get the dam working again, from electrical tape right on up to explosives. He hadn’t told Caesar about the explosives. Better to let their use explain itself later, when he could show that they had not endangered the apes, rather than promising that they wouldn’t. Better to ask forgiveness than permission, as the old saying went.
The apes did not go with them across the logjam. They crowded the lower branches of the trees on either side of the slot canyon, and took up stations on the ground where the path snaked back up toward the village. Malcolm led the way to the point where they could drop to the catwalk. He stopped there to help each of the others get braced and make a clean drop. A broken leg would throw a serious monkey wrench—so to speak—into their plan.
First Foster dropped. Then Malcolm lowered their packs to him, one by one. Then Carver, Kemp, Ellie, and Alexander jumped down to the catwalk. None of them bothered to talk, since the waterfall’s thunder was louder than any of their voices. As Alexander dropped, he was looking back at the apes, both nervous and curious.
That right there is why Caesar’s demand was never going to work, Malcolm thought. Once we knew the apes were here, how could he think we wouldn’t come out here to take a look?
It was a philosophical problem for later, he decided, and he made the jump to the catwalk.
* * *
From above, near where Malcolm had dismounted and led them down to the logjam the day before, Caesar and Blue Eyes sat on horseback, and watched. Soon it would be their turn to assume guard duties. For the moment, however, Blue Eyes held his baby brother.
Caesar watched the humans cross the logs, so awkward on their long legs and their arms that hung only to mid-thigh. They tripped and fell much more easily than apes did, especially when they carried heavy loads. Caesar did not laugh often, but at times he wanted to chuckle at humans when they did things like struggle across slippery logs. What stopped him was knowing how chimps felt when humans laughed at them.
Clinging to his older brother’s hair and peering over his shoulder, the youngest member of their troop took in the world, wide-eyed and round-mouthed. He scrambled up and down his brother as if Blue Eyes was a toy like those they’d had in the animal shelter—wood or plastic carved in the shapes of trees, rope ladders and swings, and from the top arc of the swings you could see the rows of steel cages…
Caesar shook off the memory. He looked at his sons. They and Corneila gave him joy. He could ask no more of life than for them to survive.
Rocket and Maurice rode out of the forest, joining them at the lookout over the logjam.
Do you think they can do it? Caesar signed.
Both Rocket and Maurice shrugged.
If they do not do it, what will happen?
Rocket didn’t try to answer this question. Maurice did.
They will go away and leave us alone for a while, he signed. Then either they will return because their leader has decided to fight, or they will die out, or they will return because their leader wants to make peace…
I understand, Caesar signed. There were too many possibilities.
I think they will keep coming back no matter what, Blue Eyes signed.
Caesar and Maurice responded simultaneously.
Why?
Because humans will not be able to stand knowing they do not control us.
“Blue Eyes,” Caesar said. “Take…brother. Play.”
“I am fighter,” Blue Eyes said. “Not child.”
Caesar stared at him. Blue Eyes stared back. Caesar saw something in his son’s expression that he had never seen before, and he realized with a shock that there was now a shadow of Koba cast over Blue Eyes’ face. He did not let Blue Eyes see his emotions, nor Rocket or Maurice. He held his son’s gaze until Blue Eyes swung down from the horse, the tiny baby squeaking in surprise. Blue Eyes flipped the baby over his shoulder and cradled it in one arm, then scooted off into the trees.
He will be a good brother, Caesar thought. And a good son. The only danger was that Blue Eyes would travel too far and too fast down the rebellious path, and then find himself stuck there. It would be up to Caesar to prevent that.
Then Caesar noticed that he had not seen Koba, Grey, or Stone that morning.
Where is Koba? he asked Maurice.
Grey said they were going hunting, Maurice signed. Probably for the best.
Caesar nodded. It might well be for the best, if Koba’s temper was going to get the better of him, and start something with the humans… but Koba’s absence concerned him. Koba would not lie, Caesar thought. At least he never had before. But hunting was a broad word. Many ideas fit inside it.
What quarry, exactly, was Koba hunting?
And where had he gone to find it?
The last of the humans dropped over the edge of the logjam.
Now what? Rocket signaled.
Caesar shifted his weight in the saddle. Now we wait.
33
Koba, Grey, and Stone swung along the underside of the orange bridge. They had left at dawn, not telling Caesar because he would have forbidden what they were planning to do. They stopped and settled themselves against the great steel beams, looking down at the square building under the bridge, with heavy stone walls and small windows. Near it was a giant steel ship, its top like a table with a building and airplanes on it. The ship was damaged and partly sunk.
* * *
The night before, after nearly baring his fangs to Caesar, Koba had gone away to think. Much later, after everyone else but Grey had gone to sleep, Koba had returned to the fire pit, accompanied by Stone.
The wood parts of the guns were gone, ashes and embers. The metal parts lay near the fire, bent and dented by Maurice and Rocket. Ko
ba touched one of them. It was still hot. He used a stick to push it away from the coals and waited patiently for it to cool. He picked it up and looked closely at it. It was a tube of black steel, with a long slot near one end. Another part of it, rectangular and with a spring, had been broken off and was in the coals somewhere.
“Without these, they are nothing,” Koba had said, quietly. Then he had noticed marks on the tube. He turned it toward the dying glow of the fire, but could not read it. Stone, he signed. Read this.
Stone took the metal tube and held it at different angles over the fire pit. He signed the letters and Koba put them together into words:
PROPERTY OF U.S. NAVY.
There is also a picture, Stone signed. Koba put his head close, looking hard at the part of the barrel Stone indicated… Yes. He could see it. Barely.
An anchor, with rope twisting around it. Koba thought. He had seen that sign before. He thought harder, and remembered.
* * *
Now he was looking down at that sign, visible through the streaks of rust on the side of the flat-topped ship.
So. There would be guns here.
He was committing a grave offense against Caesar. Apes together strong… but knowledge was strength. Koba was here for knowledge. He was here to keep humans from killing apes. If Caesar could not see that, then his two eyes did not see as clearly as Koba’s one.
Even so, Caesar would never agree. Neither would many of the other apes. Koba understood this. He was prepared to accept the consequences of it. The one thing he could not do was allow Caesar to make apes forget what humans would do to them, once they had the chance.
If it was up to the humans, apes would be dead. All of them.
Grey and Stone looked over at him. What do you see? Koba signed.
Koba himself saw a fenced place outside the building… he remembered the word. Strong buildings with small windows like that were called forts. Outside the fort, but inside the fence, were trucks, cars, and larger vehicles. He could see humans, but not how many.