by John Jakes
“Wait.” His eyes tried to express his sorrow and shame at what Caesar had seen thus far.
As the female chimpanzee clutched her groceries and hurriedly left the passageway, Caesar’s reaction did indeed show on his almost human face. He didn’t care. Let them see his anger over the humiliation of creatures just like himself. Let them!
THREE
When Armando emerged from the washroom reserved for human males, he read Caesar’s expression instantly. First making certain they were again unobserved, he stepped close and whispered: “Please. I know what this must be doing to you, but it was inevitable that you find out at some point in your life. And we have more work to do before we catch the chopper back to the valley. For my sake, Caesar, as well as the sake of your own sanity, do not see too much. And what you do see, try to ignore.”
Responding to the appeal of the kindest human being he’d ever known, Caesar said, “All right. I’ll try.” And he consciously attempted to order his feelings as they resumed their circuit of the shops around the plaza.
He realized the wisdom of Armando’s caution. He had no desire to sample the brutalizing shocks of the metallic rods carried by the ubiquitous policemen. Nor did he want to bring down trouble on Armando.
As they emerged from a music shop, Caesar’s spirits lifted. He glimpsed the young female chimp, Lisa, in the crowd. Still carrying the volume from the book shop, she was entering an establishment identified as Mr. Phyllis—Coiffures.
Armando started to go into the next shop, a health food bar. Caesar’s lingering gaze caught his attention. For the first time all morning, Armando’s laughter was genuine—like old times.
“Well! I’m delighted to see you haven’t lost all your instinctual traits. All right, we’ll stop there next. But remember, just look! She’d probably scream and run away if you asked for a date.”
The lines of strain momentarily erased from his face, Armando proceeded to the shop of Mr. Phyllis, who turned out to be a willowy, nervous young man. He invited Armando to leave his flyers “just anywhere,” bustling from cubicle to cubicle, clucking and fussing over his customers. All human; all female.
Armando began to hand flyers into the booths, using his standard patter. Caesar searched for Lisa, noting in the process that the operators working on the customers were female chimpanzees.
At last Caesar spotted the girl chimp. She was standing near the last booth. He heard a raspy female voice say: “All right, Lisa. The book. Then home.” A ringed hand extended from behind the partition in a peremptory way.
Lisa carefully placed the book into the hand of her mistress; turned up the aisle to leave. She saw Caesar. She hesitated, her eyes registering surprise and what Caesar took to be pleasure. He could barely keep himself from making some sign to her. Armando tugged gently on the leash.
At the same time, the harridan face of Mrs. Riley popped into sight from behind the partition. “Lisa, did you hear me? I said home!”
At once the girl chimp started forward. She passed Caesar with another lingering glance.
Armando insisted on proceeding down the line of booths, offering a handbill to each lady. Some took them. Others waved the offering away disdainfully. Mrs. Riley was one of the latter. Peering into her booth, Caesar saw a female chimpanzee working on Mrs. Riley’s orange-tinted coiffure with a hand drier.
Armando shrugged philosophically at the rebuff, about to start back up the aisle when he, as well as Caesar, was caught by a sudden change in the chimp attendant’s expression.
It became simple, almost comically so. The attendant bent forward, began to pick and search through Mrs. Riley’s hair. When the chimp found something, Mrs. Riley dropped her book and shrieked.
“Oh, dear, what’s happening?” cried Mr. Phyllis, fluttering toward the commotion.
Mrs. Riley looked too stunned to cry out again. From her fingers, the chimpanzee attendant was daintily eating whatever it was she had found on her customer’s head.
Amused, Caesar mentally filed another fact about the society into which he’d been precipitated today. Despite an immaculate facade, the humans were not as clean as they looked.
Mr. Phyllis’s face was a study in pink, petulant rage: “No, Zelda—no!” And once again, Caesar saw that horrible reaction: terror in the eyes, cringing, cowering. Mr. Phyllis stamped his foot and pointed. “You nasty little beast—home!”
Mr. Phyllis snatched the drier from the offender’s hand. As the chimp left through a rear door, Mr. Phyllis tried to placate Mrs. Riley: “I’m so terribly sorry! I’ll have someone come right along to finish you.”
“You’d better, or I’ll take my business to a shop where those stupid beasts are properly conditioned!”
Mrs. Riley’s tone was so ugly that it completely erased pleasant memories of Lisa from Caesar’s mind. He was plunged back into his earlier mood of stunned rage. The mood returned when he and Armando encountered Mrs. Riley again an hour later.
She was seated with a gentleman ten years her junior at a corner table of a restaurant. Her coiffure now complete, Mrs. Riley drained her demitasse and clutched the young man’s hand.
“Thursday, then?” Caesar overheard. “The same place?”
“Yes, I’ll try to make it,” the young man said casually. Mrs. Riley looked unhappy as both rose to leave.
The young man snapped his fingers. “Hang on, I forgot the busboy’s tip.”
“Let me get it,” Mrs. Riley said, adding with a touch of sarcasm, “After all, Charles, why should we vary the pattern?”
From her purse she took a small package. She handed it to the young man. Distributing handbills two tables away, Caesar tried to identify the brightly printed box but could not.
He put down a flyer, moved to the next table. Two obviously prosperous black men sat talking, oblivious to the white-jacketed captain preparing crepes suzette on his cart. Beside the captain stood a young chimp busboy, studiously watching the human hands manipulate the chafing dish.
“—real future’s in hydroponic farming,” one of the men was saying. “I was telling my son last night—”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Harry, why steer him into something like that? The big money’s in synthetic alloys—”
Caesar laid a handbill between them. The first man picked it up, gave it one look, tossed it aside as his friend argued. “If you’re selling to the government. But look what’s happened to the space program. Cut to the bone.”
“It’ll come back.”
“Oh? That’s what you said about the supersonic transport, Harry.”
Caesar paused at an empty table, pretending to examine his remaining handbills. Mrs. Riley’s friend signaled the busboy, who hurried to him. The young man tipped the package. Six or seven small, wrinkled things dropped into his palm. Caesar craned to see. Raisins!
Smiling condescendingly, the young man tipped his hand, spilling the raisins into the busboy’s outstretched fingers. With an almost witless look of joy, the chimp immediately carried all the raisins to his mouth and ate them in a gulp. Looking amused, the young man strolled back to his feminine companion. Caesar was disgusted by the mindless pleasure on the busboy’s face.
The young chimpanzee turned back toward his captain just as the latter, chafing dish in his left hand, used his right to apply a lighted match. With a whoosh and a leap of flame, the alcohol in the dish caught fire—and the chimp let out a cry of fright. He dashed for the street, crashing past Mrs. Filey and her friend, before the enraged captain roared the familiar command, “No!”
Silence in the restaurant. The two black men looked annoyed. Mrs. Riley was fuming, brushing off the sleeve of her jostled companion. But Caesar could see only the busboy.
He had stopped short, hearing the captain’s command. Slowly, he turned around. Caesar was sickened by the abject fear in the chimp’s eyes.
The captain pointed to the floor beside his foot. “Here.”
Trembling, the chimp took two steps, stopped again.
“Damn you, I s
aid here!” the captain exploded. But the busboy would come no closer, alternately eyeing the flaming chafing dish, now back on its stand, and the captain’s infuriated face.
“I apologize, gentlemen,” the captain said to the annoyed customers. “All our waiters and busboys are supposed to be thoroughly conditioned to fire when we buy them.”
“Well, Ape Management screwed up on that one,” said one of the men.
Caesar again went rigid with anger. What was this conditioning?
Whatever it might be, it was evidently responsible for the cringing of the chimp busboy. The burning crepes suzette cast eerie reflections in his huge, still-fearful eyes.
A forceful tug of the leash drew Caesar out of the restaurant. Armando realized his ape companion was nearing the breaking point.
An hour later, Caesar and the circus owner were distributing the last of their handbills in a smaller but no less imposing plaza which they had reached via a boulevard from the larger one. They stood near an illuminated information board, Caesar listlessly watching the crowds and fretting at the inescapable piped music from hidden loudspeakers.
Perhaps Armando also regretted his decision to enter the city. He no longer gave a little talk with each handbill, merely thrust it out.
Caesar understood that the various gleaming high rise buildings fronting the smaller plaza must all be connected with the government. The illuminated panel at the top of the information board identified the complex as Civic Center, but he was too exhausted and miserable to devote any interest to the long list of bureaus, agencies and departments listed below.
The angle of the sun slanting through adjoining streets indicated that the afternoon was almost gone. Caesar was grateful. He wanted nothing more than to be aboard the helicopter, on his way back to the familiar environment of the circus. He wanted to leave the shock of today’s discoveries behind, even though he knew they would remain in his memory forever.
Dully, he proffered a handbill to a woman who refused it. But he had already let go of the paper. It fluttered to the pavement. He didn’t bother to pick it up.
Suddenly there was a vocal commotion across the plaza, outside a glass-fronted first floor office whose glowing sign read: Nationwide Ape Employment, Inc., Civic Center Branch.
Shielding his eyes against the sun’s glare, Caesar saw a number of human males, some wearing uniforms resembling the restaurant captain’s, marching around in a circle in front of the hiring agency.
Caesar plucked Armando’s sleeve, let his eyes indicate his curiosity.
“Ah, just another labor protest,” Armando shrugged. “They happen all the time.”
Caesar could just make out some of the legends on the signs carried by the pickets.
UNFAIR TO WAITERS! SLAVES ARE SCABS! HIRE MEN—NOT ANIMALS!
The commotion grew louder as the pickets noticed the approach of a chained ape whom Caesar recognized. The two handlers still held the chains that restrained the gorilla Aldo.
Caesar’s pull on the leash told Armando he wanted to go forward, to see. The circus owner scowled, then sighed reluctantly and accompanied his chimpanzee.
The waiters’ voices grew more and more angry as Caesar and Armando crossed the plaza. With a squawk, the amplified music was interrupted by one of those strident announcements: “Attention! The labor demonstration in the Civic Center Plaza will be terminated in five minutes. Repeat, the labor demonstration in the Civic Center Plaza will be terminated in five minutes. Failure to comply with this government order can result in a one-year suspension of your right to bargain collectively.”
The waiters jeered and crowded around Aldo and his handlers. The two men were vainly trying to get the gorilla into the building. As they approached, Caesar heard one of the handlers shout, “Damn it, quit pushing! We’re not taking him to the hiring agency. We’re just trying to reach an upstairs office.”
“Oh yeah?” one of the waiters challenged. “What’s his job?”
“Staff messenger for the governor. So get the hell away.”
“He’s not a very good messenger if you gotta keep him chained up!” another waiter yelled.
“We just had a little trouble today. Aldo’s edgy. And you’re not making things any easier by—for Christ’s sake get off my foot!” The handler shoved the nearest waiter. He stumbled back, propped up by his companions, who instantly surged forward again. Caesar saw a punch thrown. The first handler dodged, suddenly raised both fists in panic as he realized he’d have to fight. Finally discovering some tangible target for their anger, the yelling waiters grabbed both handlers and started kicking. and punching.
Surrounded by the noisy mob, Aldo the gorilla let out a bellow of panic. Through breaks in the melee, Caesar saw Aldo’s hands close on his own collar chains, which the handlers had released in order to defend themselves. Terrified, the powerful gorilla began to flail the lethal chains like whips.
A waiter caught one across the forehead, and shrieked as blood poured down over his eyebrows. The wrath of the pickets instantly shifted to the animal. Armando jerked Caesar’s leash, whispered: “Let’s get away. What’s the point of torturing yourself by watch—?”
He didn’t finish, because Caesar startled him by taking two angry steps forward—and pulling the leash completely out of his hand.
Armando’s brows flew upward in genuine alarm as he dashed to recapture his end of the leash. Caesar’s eyes were fixed almost hypnotically on the struggle; a struggle whose focal point had become the big, chain-flailing gorilla.
Whistles shrilled. Pairs of state security policemen came running from other sections of the plaza. Two more popped from the main doors of the building housing the hiring agency.
Six strong, the police kicked and elbowed through the press of waiters. They began beating Aldo with their truncheons, jabbing him with their prods. In a moment the gorilla was shielding his head with his arms. Caesar’s teeth ground together as the gorilla fell, bludgeoned to the pavement.
Another man ran out of the building, a young, trim black in a conservative but expensive-looking suit. He pushed waiters and policemen aside with equal unconcern.
“Stop it!” he shouted.
A policeman’s raised truncheon was torn from his fingers by the man, who finally made himself heard.
“All of you stop it—right now!”
The policeman whose truncheon had been seized checked a punch he’d been aiming at the black’s vested stomach. He recognized the man. “Mr. MacDonald!”
At the sound of the name, the other policemen ceased beating Aldo, who was now slumped on the ground, whimpering.
The policeman started an explanation. “Sir, we were just trying to—”
“I saw what you were doing,” snapped MacDonald, his brown eyes furious. “The people in the hiring agency rang upstairs and said there was trouble. It’s bad enough, trying to cave in that gorilla’s head, without adding the stupidity of doing it right under Breck’s terrace.” His glance of recrimination included the two handlers.
“Aldo’s assigned to the messenger staff,” one of the handlers panted. “We were sent to bring him in when he didn’t show up at the Sanitation Bureau with a delivery. We found him wandering in Plaza North. He’s been balky lately—”
“I wonder whose fault that is,” MacDonald said. “Sedate him and get him out of here, fast. Sometimes you people make me wonder which are the animals and which are the human beings.” And, pivoting, he stalked back to the building.
Disgusted, one policeman asked another, “Who the hell was that?”
“Take it easy. MacDonald’s the governor’s number one assistant.”
“What’s the matter, he loves apes?”
Seeing that the young black had vanished inside, the policeman allowed himself a smirk. “Doesn’t it figure?”
Caesar barely heard; his gaze was fixed on the shimmering smoked glass doors through which MacDonald had disappeared. In all the agony of the long day, the governor’s assistant had displaye
d the first and only sign of genuine compassion that Caesar had seen. But the crowd around the fallen gorilla—the waiters, and especially the policemen—didn’t share MacDonald’s outlook. Even the handlers looked irritated, one of them producing a hypodermic needle from his pocket. The handler bent down, brutally jabbed the needle into Aldo’s side.
Abruptly the gorilla came to life, sitting up with a shriek and flailing his chains. He whipped them right and left as the policemen jumped back, on the defensive. The waiters shouted encouragement. “Beat his hairy brains out!” “Show ’im who the hell’s boss!”
The helmeted officers needed no further prodding. Truncheons began to rise and fall, thumping Aldo’s shoulders and skull with crunching sounds. Caesar started to tremble. Just a little at first, then more violently, in response to the repeated blows rained on the gorilla.
Aldo was already feeling the effects of the injection. He swayed sluggishly as he sat on the ground, groping, trying to find the tormentors who dodged in and out, hitting harder, harder . . .
Caesar heard Aldo moan; saw blood over the gorilla’s eyes. And all the horrors of the day found release in one long, agonized cry:
“You—lousy—human—bastards!”
FOUR
Aldo the gorilla pitched over on his side, blood from his head smearing the pavement. No one noticed. The waiters, the half-dozen policemen, the handlers, a scattering of ordinary citizens drawn to the scene, had all turned in the direction of the outcry. Caesar confronted a wall of eyes—some merely curious, most hostile.
The policeman who had recognized the governor’s assistant stormed forward. “Who said that?”
Armando’s face glistened with sweat as he replied, “I did.”
The policeman looked dubious. He and his colleague approached Caesar, studied him with stony-faced thoroughness. Caesar fought to subdue his own trembling; to appear docile, witless. He knew it was a matter of survival now, because the expressions of the officers said that they weren’t buying Armando’s explanation.
Neither was the murmuring crowd. Here and there, Caesar saw a hand pointing in his direction.