by John Jakes
Crowd noise, the bustle of a thronged plaza, drifted up from the bottom of the escalator. Caesar stumbled when the stair deposited them on the main level. Armando clutched him to keep him from falling, noting with new dismay the shock and astonishment that filled Caesar’s eyes in response to what he saw before him.
TWO
Though it was only a few minutes past ten in the morning, the plaza was already crowded with human beings, and with apes. Apparently vehicular traffic was barred from the central city. A few moments of scrutiny revealed other, more upsetting distinctions to Caesar.
The groups, human and ape, did not intermingle. The humans, a mixture of whites, black, and orientals, seemed to move at a leisurely pace, chatting with animation, virtually ignoring the chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans shuffling in and out among them. Only here and there did Caesar notice a quick-darting human glance settle on one of the apes, as if the man or woman were watching for some sign of trouble.
Caesar immediately decided that the smiles on the human faces looked forced, as if the apparent casualness of the people hid some inner tension. Why should that be so when the plaza, a place of sparkling miniature parks, shooting fountains, shop windows colorfully lit to highlight the endless displays of consumer goods, appeared so peaceful and prosperous?
He noted glances being cast his way—and a servile smile on Armando’s face as they drifted through the crowd, Armando handing out flyers. Caesar took the cue, offering handbills to some of the humans. They accepted them warily, as if concerned about coming too close. What were they afraid of? He had no clear notion.
A few more minutes of wandering through the crowds sharpened Caesar’s awareness of another distinction. The humans’ clothes, though expensively cut, were austere, generally monochromatic. But the costumes of the apes were variegated. Observation revealed that gorillas wore red, orangutans a rich tan, and chimpanzees like himself were garbed in green. There was also a distinct and consistent style for each sex. The females were clad in long-sleeved, full-length robes; the males in trousers and tight-fitting, high-collared coats. Occasionally an adult ape would stare briefly at Caesar, and—unless he was imagining it—react with a twitch of the nostrils or a blink of the eyes. Caesar tended to stop and gawk back. Armando’s tugs on the leash—“Come!”—occurred more frequently.
Caesar realized he was attracting undue attention with his staring. He tried to keep pace with his master, passing out the handbills while still absorbing as much information about his surroundings as he could.
He sorted out the sights and sounds, rearranged them in another, emerging pattern: the humans, while moving with some apparent purpose, did not seem to be engaged in any kind of physical labor. This was the function of the apes! The realization impacted his mind with stunning force. The moment it flashed through his mind, he saw it validated on every hand.
He noted a large, handsome female orangutan carrying a hamper of clothing. Then, on the far side of the plaza, a group of male gorillas in a line, sweeping the paving blocks with brooms. A pert female chimp with bright eyes gave Caesar an interested glance as she went by, carrying over her arm several women’s dresses wrapped in glistening plastic.
So the humans and the apes did not intermingle, exccpt in an isolated case or two, where an ape seemed to be trailing the heels of a human master or mistress. And the apes served the humans . . .
Those two realizations were enough to jam Caesar’s mind with new, disturbing implications. But the shocking learning process of which Armando had warned him was only beginning.
After another twenty minutes of distributing the handbills, Caesar grew aware of a deception. The docility of the servants was a veneer.
He saw an ape glare at a nearby human on more than one occasion. Then Señor Armando’s route led them near the squad of broom-wielders. Caesar heard an occasional resentful grunt. One or two gorillas seemed to wear sullen looks.
The closer Caesar looked, the more apparent became this subsurface resentment. No wonder the humans shied from physical contact with Caesar’s outstretched hand, or carefully chose their paths through the crowd to avoid bumping into their inferiors.
On some ape faces, Caesar recognized outright fear. It registered most strongly among the females. He watched a soft-eyed girl chimp, a market basket laden with brightly wrapped food packages in each hand, cast a nervous glance toward helmeted police officers patrolling the plaza in pairs. Once Caesar looked for these figures of authority, he was amazed at their number. All were armed with thick truncheons, or gleaming metallic rods whose function he did not understand . . .
Until one of the gorillas flung down his broom and simply stood, snuffing and swinging his massive head from side to side.
Two policemen strode forward. One jabbed his metallic rod against the gorilla’s back. The gorilla stiffened, roared. Obviously he had received some sort of strong shock.
The gorilla glowered at the policemen standing shoulder to shoulder. The rest of the sweepers began to push their brooms faster. Finally, the rebel bent over, snagged his broom from the ground and resumed his work.
The hard-eyed policemen watched the offender a moment longer. Then they walked away. Caesar pulled against the leash in order to see the conclusion of the scene.
Free of his tormentors, the gorilla thrust his broom to the right, the left, scattering the pile of trash he had accumulated. The movements were clumsy, but the rebellion was clear.
The gorilla trudged forward over the litter, an idiotically triumphant grin on his face. He caught up with the line of sweepers, apparently satisfied by his small act of defiance.
Soothing instrumental music provided an aural background to the stunning visual panorama that was fast overloading Caesar’s mind with almost more data than he could sort and understand. He had been marginally aware of the music ever since entering the plaza, but he was jerked to full awareness of it when it ended abruptly.
“Attention! Attention! This is the watch commander. Disperse unauthorized ape gathering at the foot of ramp six!”
Immediately, from all corners of the plaza, pairs of state security policemen began to converge on the run. Through the crowd Caesar glimpsed three chimps and a gorilla, who were doing nothing more sinister than standing at the foot of the ramp, staring mutely at one another. The harshly amplified voice went on.
“Repeat, disperse unauthorized ape gathering at the foot of ramp six. Take the serial number of each offender and notify Ape Control immediately. Their masters are to be cited and fined. Repeat. Their masters are to be cited and fined!”
Instantly the music resumed. The shifting crowds soon hid Caesar’s view of the altercation, but not before he distinctly saw truncheons and metal prods coming up to chest level in the hands of the running policemen.
Behind the indifferent throngs—a few humans bothered to glance around, but most simply moved on—Caesar thought he heard an ape yelp in pain. He couldn’t be sure.
Then, just ahead, he saw a sluggishly moving female orangutan, obviously no longer young. She lowered two shopping baskets to the ground. She placed one hairy hand to her side, as though in pain, searching for a place to rest. A few yards away, at the edge of one of the pocket parks, stood a comfortable sculptured; bench. There was an inscription in black letters across its curving back:
NOT FOR APES.
Staring at the bench, the elderly female wavered. Then she shambled forward. In front of the bench she halted again, staring at the lettering with dull eyes. Finally, with a little cry of pain and another clutch at her side, she turned fully around and lowered herself to the bench.
Her expression suggested to Caesar that she sensed there was something wrong in what she was doing; he was virtually certain she could not have understood the stenciled message.
But the pair of policemen who approached on the double understood it. The younger policeman enforced the warning with two quick whacks of his truncheon.
The female orangutan cringed in pai
n as the officer snapped, “Off, off!” Then, loudly, his truncheon raised for a third blow: “No! Don’t you see the sign?”
The older lawman was grimly amused. “Take it easy, they can’t read.”
“Not yet they can’t.” The other lifted his truncheon higher. “Off. No!”
In obvious pain, the old female stood up. She lifted her shopping baskets as if each contained great weights. Watching her wobble off, Caesar experienced a mingling of intense pity and equally intense anger. Armando automatically tightened his grip on the leash.
Caesar stepped close to the circus owner, risking a whisper: “You told me humans treated the apes like pets!”
Armando’s dark eyes grew sorrowful. “So they did—in the beginning.”
Through clenched teeth Caesar said, “They have turned them into slaves!”
Armando’s grimace of warning urged Caesar not to speak again. He darted a glance past Caesar’s shoulder, fearful they’d been observed. Apparently they had not, because he said in a low voice, “Be quiet and follow me. I’ll show you what happened.”
The circus owner led Caesar around the far side of one of the miniature parks at the extreme end of the plaza. There, facing the broad paved area where three wide avenues converged, twin pedestals rose. One was crowned by the carved, highly sentimentalized figure of a mongrel dog, the other by a similar treatment of an ordinary house cat.
The animals were identified by respective plaques as “Rover” and “Tabby.” The quotation marks suggested to Caesar that these were symbols, rather than particular animals. The inscription read: In Loving Memory 1982.
Caesar was careful not to let too much of his astonishment show on his features. Armando bobbed his head to suggest they had best move on before he explained.
They entered the tiny park. Armando settled on a bench. Observing the stenciled warning, Caesar remained standing. After a glance to assure himself that no one was seated within earshot, Armando said to his ape companion: “They all died within a few months, nine years ago. Every dog and every cat in the world. It was like a plague, leaping from continent to continent before it could be checked—”
Eyes still roving nervously across the park, Armando waited till a young couple had moved out of sight, then went on.
“The disease was caused by a mysterious virus, apparently brought back by an astronaut on one of the space probes. No vaccine or antidote could be found in time to stop the deaths.”
Caesar was unable to hold back a whispered question: “Then—the disease didn’t affect humans?”
“No, for some reason they were immune. And so, it was discovered, were simians. Even the smallest ones. That is how—” he gestured in a vague, rather tired way toward the bustling plaza “—everything you see began. Humans wanted household pets to replace the ones they’d lost. First the rage was marmosets, tarsier monkeys. Then, as people realized how quickly they learned—how easy they were to train—the pets became larger and larger, until—
He didn’t need to finish. What Caesar had already seen told the story’s end.
“It’s monstrous!” he breathed.
Armando could only nod. “But now you understand why I’ve kept you away until I was reasonably certain you could withstand exposure to all this. I doubt I’d have risked bringing you into a city at all if attendance hadn’t fallen off so sharply these past months. Perhaps the novelty of old-fashioned circuses has faded. Three of the six remaining touring troupes disbanded in the last year and a half. I thought the sight of my star performer distributing flyers might increase the trade—”
Caesar hardly heard, his mind grappling again with the enormity of what had befallen his own kind. Abruptly, he felt the yank of the leash as Armando jumped up. “Come, come!”
They hurried toward an exit on the park’s far side, away from a strolling state security policeman who was staring after them, studying Caesar’s unusual wardrobe.
“All right,” Armando said as they re-entered the busy plaza. “Now you know the worst. Let the shock pass if you can, while we get on with the job.” He forced a smile, accosted a man: “Armando’s Old-Time Circus, sir. Now playing—you’ll enjoy it and so will your little ones.” With a smooth maneuver, he took one of Caesar’s flyers and slipped it into the astonished gentleman’s hand before moving on.
Earnestly trying to obey Armando’s suggestion, Caesar found that he could not. With every few steps, he saw apes subjected to unexpected humiliations, indignities . . .
At an outdoor cafe, they passed a table where a group of female humans were enjoying prelunch cocktails. One of the women popped a slim, pale green cigarette from her perspex case. Instantly, a huge gorilla waiter, a tray of empty glasses in one hand, proffered his lighter with the other.
Inhaling, the woman said, “Thank you, Frank,” with empty courtesy. Then she smiled in a bored way, waving the cigarette in the gorilla’s direction. “It’s odd—now that I know cigarettes won’t hurt me, I hardly enjoy them.”
Her friends laughed, a brittle sound, as the lady stubbed out the cigarette in a tray. The gorilla quickly substituted a clean ashtray from an adjoining table.
Armando grinned his warmest grin, slipped a handbill onto the table. A woman remarked: “Well for God’s sake. A circus! I saw one once in Europe, when I was tiny—”
Caesar, meantime, was peering at the gorilla waiter, trying to fathom whether the ashtray substitution was an intuitive or an intelligent reaction. Certainly there was no mistaking the gorilla’s exterior manner. His posture spoke only of servility as he trundled away with the tray of glasses held high.
Passing in and out of various shops along the plaza’s perimeter, they encountered two uniformed ape handlers hustling another gorilla along. Shackles connected the gorilla’s wrists. Separate chains from a wide iron collar were held in the fists of the handlers.
Because the area was crowded, it was momentarily impossible for Armando and Caesar to pass. There was an instant when the evolved and the primitive ape locked glances, instinctively surveyed one another, Caesar desperately trying to understand what his poor chained brother felt.
One of the handlers tugged the collar chain. “No, Aldo. Come!”
At once, Caesar knew what the gorilla felt; Caesar saw him literally cringe, and grow smaller.
Cringing on command? How was it possible? Caesar wondered.
Armando deemed it necessary to pull Caesar’s leash and say, “No.” Caesar did his best to feign a cringe also. It felt humiliating. But as a result, Aldo’s handlers lost interest in the chimpanzee, occupying themselves with getting their huge charge moving again.
A few paces ahead, Caesar noticed a young female chimpanzee entering a book shop. “Jolly’s is always a good place for handbills,” Armando commented, leading the way into the store. “What few readers of books remain in this world are frequently nostalgic types. They find a circus irresistible.”
Caesar found the task of counting off a few handbills eminently resistible, fascinated by what was happening at the counter.
Behind it sat a female clerk, with large spectacles and a sour expression. Standing patiently to one side, but behind her, was a male orangutan. The lady addressed the young female chimpanzee on the other side of the counter.
“Yes, Lisa?”
From her robe the girl chimp, whom Caesar found physically attractive, produced some sort of red ticket with writing on it. The female clerk glanced at it. “A Young Queen Falls. Mrs. Riley has a short shopping card today.”
Lisa the chimp nodded, her expression so fearful, so hesitant, that Caesar wanted to exclaim in anger. But he noted Armando watching him carefully, and did not.
The lady clerk consulted a catalog. Then she indicated a tall bookcase to the orangutan behind her.
The orangutan turned toward the bookcase even as he watched the lady extend all five fingers of her left hand, then three of her right.
The orangutan shuffled to the case. Touching each shelf, he counted five
shelves down from the top, then—mistakenly—two titles from the left. He shuffled back to the counter bearing The Story of Servant’s Lib by one Herbert Semhouse.
“No,” said the clerk.
Stunned and confused, the orangutan halted dead in his tracks.
“No!” the woman repeated angrily. The simian helper cringed.
The woman strode to the shelves, seized the correct book and slapped it on the counter. Still cringing, the orangutan looked utterly miserable.
Lisa picked up the book, turned to go. Her glance met Caesar’s. He thought he detected a flattering indication of interest. He wanted to smile at her, but felt he dare not. Lisa bent her head and moved out of the shop as the clerk wheeled crossly on the circus owner, “Yes?”
“My name is Señor Armando—Mr. Jolly is out of the store?”
“That’s right. What do you want?”
“Mr. Jolly permits me to leave my advertisements on your counter. Also, could you possibly be so kind as to display one in your window? Mr. Jolly is a circus buff, you see, I’m sure he—”
“Mr. Jolly’s on vacation. I’ll put your junk up if I have time.” Turning away, she made it evident she’d be quite a while finding that time.
Armando looked downcast as they walked out of the shop. Caesar searched for the chimpanzee Lisa in the nearby crowds, but failed to find her.
The circus owner led him toward an illuminated sign above a passageway. The sign read Public Facilities.
Another shock awaited Caesar in the passage. Shapes were stenciled on the three doors. The first was a stylized treatment of a man’s figure; the second, a woman’s—both obviously human. On the third door Caesar recognized the outline of a generic ape, its thrusting jaw and sloping shoulders deliberately exaggerated.
Even as he watched, this door opened. A female chimpanzee emerged, smoothing her dress and taking a firmer grip on her bag of groceries. Armando, starting into the men’s, spoke to Caesar.