by John Jakes
The governor carried his drink toward a tall bookcase on an inner wall of the sitting room. He sipped again, tilted his head back to scan the volumes on the upper shelves.
“My late wife inaugurated an amusing little tradition for naming the various apes I’ve bought and sold for personal use. We’ll let him choose his own.” Breck snapped his fingers. “Come!”
Caesar shambled forward. Standing just behind the man’s left shoulder, he watched as Breck set his drink on a small table, reached up to a pair of slim books bound in rare leather with gold spine-lettering. Each volume bore the title The Meaning of Names. The first was subtitled Male, the second Female.
The shelf the books occupied was just above Breck’s head. He seemed to be blinking at the titles a bit fuzzily, as if the liquor were affecting him. Finally, he pulled both books down for closer scrutiny.
“Female,” Breck muttered, discarding that volume and picking up his drink for another long swallow. The man is afraid, Caesar thought with inward delight. The man is powerful but he is afraid.
Breck set his drink aside again. “Watch,” he said.
He opened the book of male names at random, stabbed a forefinger at a page. Caesar feigned puzzled interest as the governor snapped the book shut, then repeated his demonstration.
Caesar understood perfectly well what he was supposed to do. But he maintained his look of witless concentration while the governor again selected a name at random.
Passing the book into Caesar’s hand, Breck commanded: “Do.”
Macabre amusement overcame Caesar then. Breck’s back was turned momentarily, as he replaced the other volume on the shelf. Caesar hunched his shoulders, shifted slightly so his body screened the book, and his own hands, from MacDonald. The black man was still at the bar.
Silently, Caesar flipped the early pages of the book till he found the one he wanted. As Breck turned around again, the chosen page lay open. Caesar appeared to pick a name in the manner the governor had demonstrated. Breck maneuvered so he could peer down across Caesar’s hairy forearm to the line where the ape’s finger had come to rest.
“ ‘Caesar’,” Breck read. He pushed the chimpanzee’s finger aside, grasped the book to peer at the definition. Caesar took pleasure in the sudden jump of a muscle in Breck’s temple. “ ‘A king—’ ”
Breck’s head lifted. His unblinking eyes met those of the animal, master and slave standing face to face. And, fleetingly, Caesar saw the fear again.
The governor slammed the book shut, jammed it back in place. When he picked up his drink this time, his deeply tanned hand was shaking.
Nerves—or anger? Caesar wondered. It made no difference. He had achieved the effect he wanted—and kept his cover at the same time. Something hateful spoke in the silence within him.
You will see, Mr. Governor. This is only the start of the repayment you’re owed.
An insistent buzzer broke the tension. MacDonald shifted his hand to depress a switch on the intercom.
“Yes?”
A garbled voice spoke briefly, too far away for Caesar to understand the words. MacDonald said, “Mr. Governor, they’re anxious to have you in the Council Chamber as soon as possible.
Breck’s composure seemed restored. Perhaps it was the alcohol, but he moved decisively to the bar and poured one more shot of whiskey, which he took with him as he strode toward the open door of an adjoining bedroom.
“Tell them to hold the meeting until I get there, and that’s a direct order.”
MacDonald relayed the message into the intercom, snapped it off. Breck paused in the doorway for a last glance at his ape.
“And you can take him and put him to work in the Command Post immediately.”
The governor vanished into the bedroom, slamming the door. Was it coincidence, Caesar asked himself, that Breck had not called him by his chosen name?
With the governor gone, MacDonald seemed to relax. He even smiled as he stepped from behind the bar and headed toward the foyer.
“Come,” he said, gesturing. Caesar followed him out of the penthouse and into the elevators that whisked them to ground level.
Moving from the high rise to the bustle of the Civic Center Plaza reminded Caesar that he still did not know the whereabouts of Señor Armando. What had befallen the kindly circus owner in the past two weeks?
Weaving in and out of the crowds of humans and apes crisscrossing the plaza, Caesar speculated on the significance of the words “command post.” They suggested some kind of important operations center; perhaps a key location for maintenance of order in the city. He was pleased at being taken there, because his mind was opening to more and more possibilities for action. In a relatively short time, he had seen more than enough to fill him with a consuming desire to reverse the balance of power that Breck and his kind maintained. Duty in the command post might further strengthen his capability to do just that.
Concentrating on his new sense of purpose, Caesar gradually and unthinkingly abandoned his shuffling, apelike gait. He walked very nearly upright; proudly, almost like a man. For a moment or so, he didn’t connect this fact with the stares of passing apes.
MacDonald walked rapidly to a stairway leading underground at the side of the plaza opposite the governor’s building. Two state security policemen flanked the head of the stairs. Both wore holstered side arms.
All at once a familiar face appeared, coming up the stairs. It was Aldo, carrying a message pouch. The gorilla’s forehead still showed hairless places where wounds had been stitched. Spotting Caesar, the bigger animal halted abruptly on the top step, then stepped aside. Aldo’s expression was one of puzzled respect and awe.
Caesar realized MacDonald was watching the byplay—and that he himself was standing much too straight. Hunching over, he started on down the steps. But MacDonald’s surprised look showed that he knew something very unusual had just happened.
A state security policeman grabbed Armando’s elbow to keep him from falling.
The older man was too tired even to mumble an acknowledgement. He did not know where he was. All corridors, all rooms in this building, which he hadn’t left since entering it voluntarily, had begun to blur together with a frightening sameness.
Armando knew he was being destroyed. Not with physical abuse, not with starvation, but with a much more subtle form of torture. Disorientation . . .
In those windowless chambers to which he was frequently taken without warning, he never knew whether it was day or night. His food—cups of gray, tasteless pudding; small plastic flasks of a brown nutrient drink—arrived via a pneumatic wall tube.
At intervals a matron opened the door of his cubicle and accompanied him down a short hallway to a bathroom. There he was permitted to relieve himself while the matron watched from the open doorway, disinterested. He was also allowed to sprinkle water on his hands and face.
But no showers. No baths. The sense of his own filthiness increased his anxiety, as did his fretful sleep under the lights. Such sleep came to him only when he reached periods of total exhaustion.
Often, that sleep was interrupted by a summons to yet another interrogation. Some were short. Some seemed to last for hours. Several times he had collapsed during the longer sessions. He had wakened for brief intervals in what appeared to be an infirmary, been injected with a hypodermic, drifted off again . . .
Generally, Kolp and Hoskyns handled the questioning together, going over and over the same ground, trying to get Armando to make a mistake. So far he hadn’t. So far he had withstood the assaults of Kolp, Hoskyns, and the other hard-faced investigators who occasionally replaced them.
But now, stumbling to what he presumed was one more such interview, Armando wondered whether resistance might not, by this time, be totally futile. Surely Caesar had been caught or killed.
“In here,” the policeman said, shoving Armando through a door, then following him.
Armando blinked, attempting to focus his eyes. He couldn’t believe the sensation
that came from his slippered feet. Softness. The softness of carpet . . .
The lighting was subdued, the furnishings comfortable, much like the governor’s office where he had first been questioned. Kolp sat at a desk, a pleasant, relaxed expression on his face. Behind him, an open doorway led to a tiny terrace with a waist-high concrete railing.
Armando licked his dry lips, sucking in draughts of the fresh air. He was almost overwhelmed to see the outside world again; lighted towers against the darkness.
Kolp actually stood up, smiled broadly. What was happening?
With a start, Armando realized Hoskyns was also present. He too was smiling. Legs crossed, he relaxed on a divan along the wall.
Kolp took off his spectacles, began to polish them with a tissue. “No more interrogation rooms, Señor Armando. This is my personal office.” To the policeman, he said, “That’ll be all, thanks.”
The officer wheeled and left. Kolp gestured to the chair facing his desk. “Please, Señor. I know you’re exhausted.”
Not quite believing the evidence of his senses, Armando still lost no time reaching the chair. He practically fell into it as Kolp reseated his spectacles on his nose and walked around the desk. He perched on the corner, still smiling.
“I realize we’ve held you an unusually long time, Señor. You’ll understand we were only carrying out our assignment.”
Armando gave a weak nod. He allowed himself to hope that—miraculously—something had happened to change the dreadful pattern of the past days. Kolp’s next remark confirmed it.
“We have some good news for you.”
Armando could only repeat hoarsely, “Good news?”
“Right. You’re to be released. Tonight.”
Armando fought back tears as Kolp went on, “Inspector Hoskyns and I have become convinced that your ape is not the child of the two talking chimpanzees.”
“You’ve found him?” Armando exclaimed.
“I wish that were the case,” Hoskyns said in a pleasant tone, rising and walking over to stand beside Kolp. “But we’re sure he’ll turn up eventually. When he does, we’ll make certain he’s returned to you. We hope you can excuse all that’s happened, Señor Armando. You understand that we have to be thorough—satisfy the higher-ups—”
“Of course,” Armando nodded quickly. “Of course, it’s perfectly understandable. Actually, I’ve been treated very well. It’s just that, at my age, lack of sleep—all the questioning—they have an effect.”
Kolp’s nod was crisp. “Surely. We sympathize. But it was your consistency in telling the same story through a deliberately extended period of questioning that helped convince us.”
“Then—” Armando half rose from the chair. He risked the question. “I’m free to leave here?”
Nodding, Hoskyns picked up a sheet of paper and pen from the desk. “That’s right. Just as soon as you give us your signature on this sworn declaration.”
“What does it say?”
“Only what you’ve been telling us all along,” Kolp answered. “That your circus ape is incapable of human speech, and has never, to your knowledge, uttered a single word.”
A relieved breath hissed out between Armando’s teeth. “Certainly I’ll sign that.”
Hoskyns placed the paper on the desk, handed Armando the pen. The circus owner scrawled his signature on the indicated line.
Kolp stepped away from the desk. So did Hoskyns. “Excellent,” said the latter. “We’ll just check this for veracity, and you can be on your way.”
Sudden apprehension tightened Armando’s belly. “Check it? But I swore to it with my signature.”
“Yes,” Kolp agreed, “but we want to double-check with the Authenticator. Governor Breck’s given us the necessary written permission in order to close out our file.”
“What—” Armando had trouble speaking. The smiles on their faces had begun to look false. “What is the Authenticator?”
“Purely a formality,” Kolp assured him. “Sit right where you are. It won’t take a moment.”
Kolp reached for a switch-laden desktop panel Armando hadn’t noticed before. Kolp threw two of the switches. The various small lamps around the office began to dim. A motor hummed softly overhead.
Armando jerked his head back, saw a section of ceiling slide aside. Kolp threw one more switch over. Two thin beams of violet light speared down from the ceiling aperture, converging diagonally on Armando’s head.
The light frightened him. But there seemed to be no sensation of pain. No sensation at all, in fact, save for a peculiar ringing in his ears.
Armando swallowed. “What does this—Authenticator do?”
“Makes people tell the truth,” Hoskyns answered. “It’s quite painless.”
“For example,” Kolp put in quickly, “you maintained that, to the best of your recollection, you first heard the name Cornelius in this building. Is that true?”
The violet beams made the sudden sweat on Armando’s forehead glisten. He knew how he should answer, but he immediately said the opposite.
“No.”
Then came the reaction—the real fear. He’d spoken against his will, powerless to do otherwise!
He started to rise from the chair. Hoskyns seized his shoulder, pushed him down again. The ringing in Armando’s ears intensified. His heart beat faster, thumping in his chest.
Kolp leaned forward. “There, you see? You had heard the name somewhere else, not just from the governor. You forgot, that’s all. It’s not a damaging point—” He plucked the paper from Hoskyns’ hand. “Now, as to your declaration under oath that the circus ape is totally incapable of human speech—”
Fear pumped adrenalin through Armando, gave him the energy to leap to his feet, kick the chair over backwards, escape from between the converging rays of light with a yell. “I WON’T SUBMIT TO THIS!”
Hoskyns started toward him. “Oh, but you will.”
“I’ve done nothing wrong! You’re treating me like a criminal again—”
“Sit down!” Kolp roared, closing in from the other side.
With another yell, Armando dodged Hoskyns’ lunge. He stumbled to one side of the room as Kolp exclaimed, “For Christ’s sake grab him!” Then he bellowed toward the hall. “Guard!”
Armando fought as Hoskyns seized him, tried to pin his arms. Somehow Armando found strength to ram his elbow into Hoskyns’ middle. The investigator cursed, his grip momentarily loosening. Armando broke free, darted toward the hall door. It flew open. The silhouette of a policeman loomed against the light.
Backtracking, Armando sidestepped another grab by Hoskyns, climbed up on the desk trying to reach the other side. He was wild with fright now, all sense of direction gone.
Kolp seized his legs. Armando kicked free, tumbling off the desk and striking his head on the arm of Kolp’s chair. He slumped on the floor, dizzy.
The policeman rounded one side of the desk, Hoskyns the other. Both grabbed Armando, hauled him to his feet, and started to pummel him. The grunting policeman managed to crook an elbow around Armando’s neck as Kolp joined the struggle.
The policeman’s grip turned Armando’s fear to total panic. Bellowing, he jerked away from the others with one savage effort.
Armando windmilled his arms, fighting for balance. But the force of his forward movement was strong, violent. He felt chilly wind on his cheeks, lost a slipper, realized that what was so cold against the sole of his foot was the terrace flagging . . .
The policeman reached him first, closing a fist on the lapel of Armando’s filthy maroon jacket. Armando clawed at the man’s face, pulled away—and heard the fabric tear.
Off balance again, he ran backwards. The small of his back struck something hard. His momentum carried him over the concrete railing.
The lighted high rises tilted and blurred as he fell straight down toward the pavement of the Civic Center, screaming.
TEN
A day’s duty in the Command Post beneath the Civic Center Pl
aza revealed to Caesar that here indeed was the nerve center of the metro complex.
The huge, brightly illuminated room served as the government’s sensory system. Human beings manned a vast array of computer terminals, message boards, and video monitors that not only kept routine track of conditions in major public areas, but interconnected with state security substations, fire equipment bunkers, hospitals, and similar installations.
The place was constantly noisy with voices and chattering machinery. Alarm bells rang frequently. Quite soon, Caesar understood the full scope of Governor Breck’s ability to maintain order in the city under his charge.
A percentage of the incoming alarms and outgoing responses dealt with situations in which the citizens were obviously served. An attempted robbery resulted in the almost instant deployment of squads of policemen. A flash fire sent crews roaring through the nearest service tunnels aboard silver-and-yellow pumpers. An incident of ape rebellion, or even simple misconduct, produced a barked order for the dispatch of a police team of the appropriate size and strength.
When less urgent, or perhaps confidential, messages required delivery, some of the chimpanzees, orangutans, and gorillas assigned to the Command Post were used for delivery service. Caesar, however, was given a more menial job.
After being fitted with a civilian defense armband—more than half the apes down here wore them, he noted—he was taken by a staff supervisor to a semicircle of computer terminals. There, he was shown how to file stacks of the printout material.
A large file room adjoined the Command Post. The file fronts were color-coded. Red-tabbed printouts went into red wall files, blue into blue, and so on. It was idiot’s work, but Caesar pretended to have a little difficulty learning the basic routine so that later, as he moved slowly through the aisles, feigning perplexity but in reality observing the various work functions, he would not be too closely scrutinized.
MacDonald departed after observing Caesar’s first few minutes of instruction. He promised the staff supervisor that he would return later that night, after he attended a civic banquet with Governor Breck, to check on the progress of the new “volunteer.”