by John Jakes
Instantly he faced front. He willed his hand to stop tapping the program on his knee. Guarded, secure, powerful, he was still victim of a nameless, gnawing fear.
From the bottom of the stairs within the pyramidal structure, Caesar stared up at a rectangle of blinding afternoon sky. The auctioneer’s gavel thwacked three times.
“Sold—to Mr. and Mrs. Van Thal!”
Shackles jingled in the shadows. A handler had fetched Caesar from the individual holding cage where he had found the clothing in which he was to be sold. The handler draped the irons over his own shoulder and adjusted Caesar’s high, tight-fitting collar.
Outside, the auctioneer began again. “Now, ladies and gentlemen, lot eight. Perhaps the finest offering of the afternoon.”
Uneasy in the constricting trousers and jacket, Caesar nevertheless responded to the handler’s gentle push of command. He climbed the stairs, stepped out into the daylight.
He was momentarily blinded. But his nose identified the scent of many humans close by, and his ears picked up the sudden murmur of approval that ran through the amphitheatre.
Resplendent in his rich green uniform, Caesar knew his bearing had won him the instant admiration of the people gradually coming into focus. The handler walking a pace behind, the legally required shackles over his shoulder instead of fastened between Caesar’s ankles further strengthening the favorable impression.
Caesar lifted his head, allowing himself just the smallest display of haughtiness. Then, obediently, he trotted forward in response to the handler’s touch.
He waited at the steps at the rear of the dais, vitally interested in the humans gathered to purchase ape flesh. Halfway up in the center section he spied the lady with the orange hairdo, the one he and Armando had encountered on their first day in the city. Beside her sat the attractive female chimp—what was her name, Lisa. She was watching him closely.
Hands in repose at his sides, Caesar confronted the rows of humans and the scattering of ape servants. He noticed that his arrival on the dais had caused many of the spectators to edge forward on their seats; particularly a man who sat by himself in the first row center. Further back in the same roped-off section, Caesar recognized the black man he had seen at the Civic Center.
But it was the tanned, handsome, yet cold-featured man seated alone who held Caesar’s attention. The man glanced sharply at his program, then back to the dais. To occupy such a special place, the man was obviously someone of authority. And he seemed to be regarding Caesar with more than a little interest.
“Lot eight is a male chimpanzee,” the auctioneer announced, “in early prime and perfect physical condition. Under observation, he appeared so familiar with humans, so obedient, docile, and intelligent, that the conditioning he required was minimal. In fact, according to the information provided by Ape Management, conditioning was carried out in record time. Additional conditioning can, of course, be provided on request.”
At this, the gaze of the man in the front row riveted on Caesar—who was grateful for a sudden disturbance behind him.
Chains rattled; a man swore. Caesar turned. The handler who had been mounting the dais steps had slipped, fallen to his knees and dropped the shackles. As the man rose and dusted off his trousers, Caesar took two steps to the head of the stairs, picked up the shackles and handed them back with just the hint of a bow. The handler looked astonished, then grinned. Another admiring murmur rippled around the arena.
As Caesar faced front again, he realized that he’d made another of those almost automatic but foolish revelations of extraordinary ability. The crowd was busily commenting on his little bow. Like the handler, many people smiled. But not the tanned man sitting alone. He continued to regard Caesar with unnerving concentration.
Caesar blinked several times, blubbered his lips and slipped into a more normal ape posture. He shuffled sideways on the dais, quickly but subtly losing stature. He hoped he had not dissembled too late.
“As you just saw, ladies and gentlemen,” the auctioneer said, “a truly superb specimen, adaptable to almost any duties. What am I bid? Shall we begin with eight hundred dollars?”
At once, a man high on Caesar’s left called out, “Eight-fifty.”
“Nine,” came the response from a woman on the opposite side.
The first bidder promptly offered nine-fifty. A third jumped in with a bid of one thousand. The auctioneer looked pleased; this required no effort at all. The bidders kept clamoring, and within seconds, the price escalated to eighteen hundred. That figure seemed to slow the pace.
Caesar searched the tiers for the source of the bid that continued to stand. To his dismay, he saw that the bidder was a sour-looking, wizened old man in a glittering chrome wheelchair.
The auctioneer lifted his gavel. “Going to the gentleman in the wheelchair. And a very wise choice, even at a premium price, if I may say so. Going once, going twice, going—” Abruptly he stopped, diverted by a flurry of activity in the roped-off area. The hard-eyed man in the front row had turned, lifted his program to shield his mouth, and was speaking to the young black, who jumped to his feet and raised his hand.
“Two thousand!”
An exclamation ran through the crowd. From across the curve of the amphitheatre, the old gentleman in the wheelchair directed a furious stare at the black man. The auctioneer gnawed his lip a moment. “Two thousand bid by Mr. MacDonald—”
The old man’s hand went up, his voice querulous. “Twenty-one hun—”
“—for his excellency, Governor Breck?” The auctioneer barely broke the phrases, refusing to be diverted by the start of the other bid. In response to the question, MacDonald nodded once, and sat down.
The auctioneer turned to look with clear meaning at the old man, who hunched down in his chair, sullen. Caesar had heard his purchaser’s name before.
Down came the gavel. “Going—going—gone! Sold to Mr. MacDonald for two thousand dollars.”
For the first time, the tanned man smiled, his gaze still resting on Caesar. The smile was in no way cordial; it was self-congratulatory. Apparently no one dared bid against the city’s governor.
The handler signaled Caesar to leave the dais. Obeying, he was careful to shuffle and maintain his cover. The handler swung into step behind him, saying: “Damn if you didn’t make it right to the top. I knew somebody rich’d buy you. But the governor himself—that’s a plum. You deserve it, though.” He gave Caesar’s head a condescending pat. That touch was hateful. The whole process was hateful. As the handler preceded him back to the pyramid, Caesar kept seeing Governor Breck’s face. Was the governor merely buying a superior slave? Or had Caesar made too dangerous a revelation by picking up the shackles and bowing? Why couldn’t he learn to hold back?
Plunging down the steps into the cool shadows of the building, he was again at war with himself, angry, yet frightened—because the unsettling image of Governor Breck’s suspicious stare refused to leave his mind.
Caesar was kept in the holding cage at the ape mart until the following morning. Then he was loaded into the rear of a van whose gleaming side panels bore the great seal of the city, complete with upraised torch and Latin motto. He was the sole occupant of the locked cargo compartment—another sign of the prestige and power of the man who had bought him.
The van sped toward the city’s perimeter along busy highways. The highways fed into a vast, multilevel vehicle park at the city limits. Handlers were waiting with a light wire cage into which Caesar dutifully marched and, ten minutes later, he was on duty in Governor Jason Breck’s living quarters, atop the same building at Civic Center that housed his operations suite on a lower floor.
Jason Breck had risen late, with a headache and a sour stomach from last evening’s dinner party. Clad in an expensive dressing gown of rare natural wool dyed deep blue, he was busy at the small period desk in his penthouse sitting room.
As the last assistant but one departed through the foyer, Breck belched softly and glanced at MacDona
ld.
“I think I need a drink. And I know I don’t need a luncheon with a lot of windbag oratory. Where am I scheduled this noon?”
“The honors presentation by the Aesthetics Board.”
“Cancel me out and get me a drink.”
Breck rubbed his forehead and turned his chair as MacDonald bent to murmur into an intercom. MacDonald uttered smooth, convenient lies about the governor suffering an illness. No, nothing serious, but he sent his regrets . . .
Brooding, Breck stared through tented fingers at the high rise towers outside. The room was flooded by noon light mercifully softened by ceiling-to-floor windows of smoked, bulletproof plastiglas. A soft chime range twice. Breck swiveled around.
MacDonald walked to the foyer, admitting two handlers and the robust, green-uniformed chimpanzee Breck had ordered the black man to buy for him yesterday. The handlers presented a paper. MacDonald signed and they left. MacDonald said to the ape: “Come.”
Dutifully, the chimp shambled after him to the bar.
Hardly looks like the same animal, Breck thought, staring at the chimpanzee with a half-lidded gaze. For a moment yesterday, the chimp had appeared almost human. That had triggered suspicion in the governor’s mind, and prompted his sudden instruction for MacDonald to enter the bidding. Now the chimp was plucking nervously at the front of his uniform jacket, a rather foolish, bemused expression in his luminous eyes.
“I still need that drink,” Breck said. “See whether he can mix it.”
MacDonald walked behind the bar, set a decanter of whiskey, a siphon of soda and two glasses on the polished top. To Caesar he said, “Watch.”
The chimp studied MacDonald’s hands as the man poured whiskey into one glass, then squirted in soda, filling the glass about three quarters to the top. MacDonald pointed at the second glass.
“Do.”
With only the slightest hesitation, the chimp closed his fingers around the decanter, tilted it, poured the whiskey. Breck slouched in his chair, continuing to watch through tented fingers. The ape set down the decanter and glanced quickly at the governor.
Breck kept staring, his eyes hooded. A peculiar tension filled him, banishing the dull throb in his temples, the sour taste at the back of his throat. The ape knew he was being closely scrutinized. His hand shook noticeably as he lifted the siphon, pressed down on the top control . . .
Soda began to foam over the lip of the glass, puddle the top of the bar. “No!” MacDonald exclaimed, cuffing the chimpanzee lightly on the hand.
In his alarm, the animal nearly dropped the siphon. Only MacDonald’s deft grab rescued it. “Clean it up.” MacDonald indicated the overflow. “Clean, clean!”
Clumsily, bumping the whiskey decanter and the siphon, the chimpanzee began to mop up the spilled liquid. Slowly, Breck’s tension drained away.
He stood up, smiling as he emerged from behind his desk. “It seems he’s not so bright after all.”
“No—but then—” MacDonald grabbed for the siphon, which nearly went over as the chimp mopped with wider, clumsier motions “—isn’t it true that brightness has never been encouraged among slaves?”
“Stop being so damn touchy, MacDonald!” Breck stabbed his hands into the pockets of his dressing gown, stalking to the windows. “We’ve all been slaves at one time or another. I can trace my family back to Breckland, in Suffolk, England. We were the slaves then. To the lord of the manor,” He glanced at Caesar, who was still witlessly mopping the bar with the sopping towel. The ape’s posture and expression registered confusion. “They’re animals,” the governor went on. “What they need is a firm hand. Rub his nose in it so he gets the idea permanently.”
MacDonald was just turning from a small refrigerator, a tray of ice cubes in one hand. For a moment he stared hard at his superior. Breck rankled at the hostility—real or fancied. Then MacDonald smiled politely. “What? And risk having him develop a taste for scotch?”
Breck laughed, as another staff man let himself into the foyer. The man carried a leather-covered binder.
MacDonald emptied the ice tray into an exquisitely engraved silver bucket. He tonged two cubes into the glass he had filled as an example for the ape, handed the drink across to the governor. Then he took the sopping towel from the ape’s fingers and disposed of it below the bar.
As MacDonald again picked up the tongs and began to demonstrate to the animal how cubes were properly dropped into a glass, Breck took a long, soothing swallow and permitted himself a touch of whimsy. “What you suggest might not be a bad idea. Up to a point, alcohol has a tranquilizing effect.” Less amused, he shook his head. “But I imagine their tolerance for whiskey—like their temper threshold—is dangerously low.”
The newly arrived assistant said, “If you feel the ape’s unsatisfactory, Mr. Governor, we can always send him back and insist on a full week’s reconditioning.”
“That’s not necessary,” said MacDonald, fast.
“Indeed it isn’t,” Breck agreed, sipping more of the whiskey. It seemed to be quieting the nervous turmoil of his stomach. “But not because of your soft-hearted reasons.”
The other assistant, looking vaguely annoyed because his attempt to win points had failed, abruptly found himself the subject of the governor’s attention: “That’s always everyone’s first thought—recondition them!” Breck swept his arm out in a broad gesture, spilling some of his drink on the thick carpet.
“Mr. Governor, I only meant—” Sputtering, the flustered assistant turned red. MacDonald handed the silver tongs to the chimpanzee. Clumsily, the ape tried to grasp and lift an ice cube from the bucket. Breck continued.
“If we were to send every lousy ape that muffed an assignment or disobeyed an order back to reconditioning, Ape Management would become impossibly overcrowded!”
A sharp clack whirled Breck around. The ice cube had dropped from the ape’s tongs and hit the bar. It skittered off and struck the carpet as the animal stared at the governor again, transfixed with terror—or something else.
Breck slammed his drink on the desk. He reached the ape with two long strides, smacked him in the side of the head. “Clean!” he shouted, pointing at the cube melting on the rug.
The ape cringed, bent over, retrieved the ice and juggled it a moment. Finding no ready receptacle except one, he dropped the cube back in the ice bucket.
MacDonald uttered a small sigh. He retrieved the cube, carpet fibers still clinging to it, and threw it away in the sink under the bar. The ape immediately took another cube from the bucket and tried to hand it to the black. Sadly, MacDonald shook his head. “No.” Gently, he loosened the ape’s fingers, took the cube and disposed of it in the sink.
Having suffered a tactical defeat in front of another staff man, the second assistant tried to recover a little ground. “Mr. Governor, when I mentioned reconditioning, all I meant was, it’s the only thing that seems to have any effect on the rebellious ones—”
“It certainly does have an effect,” MacDonald nodded. “It makes them worse.”
“There, you’re wrong,” Breck countered. “Some of them couldn’t be worse. I’ve been having a comprehensive list compiled—”
All at once he stopped, the nearly empty glass close to his lips. He’d inadvertently revealed a bit of information that was as yet ultraconfidential. Annoyed, he glared at the younger assistant.
“Exactly what was it you wanted, Mr. Pine?”
“Your meeting with the Defense Council’s scheduled for one, sir.” The assistant held out the thick, heavily tabbed binder. “I brought your reference book, and the briefing summary—”
“Well, you go down to the conference room and tell them I’ll be fifteen or twenty minutes late and that you’ve read the briefing material, and be prepared to answer their questions.”
He grabbed the assistant’s shoulders and fairly shot him toward the foyer. As he did so, he was aware of losing his temper—an indulgence he seldom allowed himself. What was making him so edgy?
Or was the animal playing some kind of game with him?
Breck rubbed his eyes. Christ, he thought, I’m tired.
Dropping the ice cube had been a near giveaway, Caesar realized. But he had been so stunned by the possibilities inherent in Breck’s exclamation about reconditioning that he had completely lost control.
Ever since that moment, he’d been doing his best to rebuild his protective guise, trembling on signal, and appearing less than capable of quick understanding. The effort was doubly difficult because of Breck’s continued presence in the sitting room.
Caesar knew that the governor was an enemy. He couldn’t grasp all the reasons for this, but he guessed that beneath Breck’s bluster there lay a basic fear of the potential for ape rebellion. That fear had surfaced in Breck’s loud remark—which had given Caesar a weapon whose effectiveness he intended to explore . . .
MacDonald remarked: “You’ve begun meeting with the Defense Council, Mr. Governor?” Although polite, the question was a challenge; almost an accusation implying lack of confidence.
Breck nodded. “Mr. Pine’s been handling the details. The nonconfidential ones. Backgrounding, computer studies. As for the rest—never mind, I’ll tell you about it later.”
But MacDonald wouldn’t be put off. “Has this anything to do with the list you mentioned while Pine was here?”
Breck’s frown showed his annoyance. “It has. But I repeat—it’s not your worry. I’ll give you the full details at the proper time.”
A little more conciliatory then, he waved an admonitory finger in Caesar’s direction. “Meantime, I believe we ought to set a good example on this staff. We’ll recondition the ape ourselves. By making sure he does his assigned jobs. And properly.” Breck reached for the whiskey decanter, poured. This time, he added no soda. After a long sip, he said, “He doesn’t have a name yet. I suppose we should give him one—”