“Hear me,” Zaius said, and the gorillas quieted their guttural commands. “What is the count?”
A gorilla officer quickly made a tally and trotted up to give the Elder the total. Urko glared at the officer for being so quick to obey the orangutan leader, and the gorilla looked sheepish.
Zaius once again held up his hand. “Hear me, citizens of Ape City.” He turned toward the side of the square where a sign said HUMANOID PET STORE and where several apes waited eagerly, chains and leashes in their hands. “Twenty percent of the new captives will go to ‘Pet Detail.’” A number of shopkeepers started happily counting out their share.
“Fifteen percent will be assigned to ‘Animal Labor Detail,’” Zaius proclaimed.
Urko ground his teeth and there came a deep rumble in his massive chest. He watched with glum, dull anger as the fanners began to count out their share.
“Another twenty percent of the humanoids will go to the ‘Animal Replacement Preserve,’” Zaius commanded.
“Well, at least there will be some saved,” Zira sighed. “We need to preserve the species, Cornelius,” she said earnestly.
“I know, dear. If Urko was in charge, they would be on the ‘Endangered Species List’ tomorrow and extinct next week!”
Dr. Zaius looked over at the general as he made his next pronouncement. “The remainder will go to the army for their war games.”
At once, Urko let loose a growl. He stalked up the steps toward Zaius, his face livid, his nostrils flared with hate.
“I protest!” he snarled. “That is far too large a percentage to give away to others! We caught them! We gorillas endangered our lives to reap this harvest of animals! We deserve the largest percentage—if not all!”
Zaius was unflinching before the verbal attack of the giant looming over him. “Protest all you want, Urko. But my word is law!”
Urko’s throaty growl caused many a head to turn. Bill stared with fascination as the apes confronted each other. The general’s meaty fist waved beneath the nose of the fragile and elderly Dr. Zaius.
“Today your word is law, Doctor Zaius… But tomorrow? Who knows about tomorrow? Tomorrow,” he emphasized with heavy sarcasm, “it might just be we gorillas who are giving the orders—not taking them!”
Zira gasped and Dr. Zaius narrowed his eyes.
The gorilla commander turned on his heel and stalked off, his feet ringing heavy on the stone steps. As he reached the bottom, he struck a heavy blow to an empty wagon cage, then knocked several humanoids out of his way as he strode toward his jeep. His driver scrambled to climb into it and get it started before the angry general struck him. The jeep roared off, scattering startled civilians and disappearing up a street toward Gorilla Headquarters.
Dr. Zaius stood where he had been, his slitted eyes pondering the disappearing ape commander. A hint of steel glinted in his irises, carefully hidden, but frightening to those who happened to catch it. When the gorilla leader had disappeared, he turned to face the gorilla officers still in the square.
“All right, don’t just stand there like humanoids, you hairy lumps! Parcel out the animals.” Zaius then pointed at Cornelius and Zira. “Take your six equally’ from the various details, but not from the percentage assigned to the army.”
“Yes, Doctor Zaius,” Cornelius said quickly.
“Thank you, Doctor Zaius,” Zira added with a happy smile.
Zaius grunted and turned away.
“Come on, Blue-Eyes,” Zira said, reaching for him. “That’s a good boy! Come with Zira.”
* * *
The sign on the door said HUMANOID BEHAVIORAL STUDIES LABORATORY. The building the door was set in was a large one, with many rooms, cells, storage rooms, and equipment-filled experimental labs. A few gorilla guards were assigned to the lab, all of them surly and resentful about the duty, for they thought their rightful place was out with the Gorilla Army, not guarding and feeding a bunch of animals.
But the laboratory was Cornelius and Zira’s favorite place, even better than their small but nice home. It was here that their interest lay, and they resented any situation that took them away from it.
A day or so after the army’s return, Cornelius crossed the grassy stretch from the last of the Ape City houses to the grounds of the laboratory, a bottle of Dr. Zaius’s favorite fruit drink in his hand. He entered the lab, ignoring the gorilla guards lounging inside as they ignored him. He went directly into the main lab, where great round cages stood on stone risers, and saw Dr. Zaius standing with Zira before the cage in which they had put the blue-eyed humanoid. As a smartness award, they’d given him a T-shirt and trousers.
Zaius was looking doubtful, but Zira was talking to him excitedly. “I tell you it’s true! Blue-Eyes has turned out to be a truly extraordinary specimen!”
The orangutan leader looked again at the Earthman, who stared back, still watching without speaking, but less startled now. The astronaut sensed danger and felt that some measure of safety might lie in imitating the mute humanoids, which the apes all treated, as if they were beneath notice.
Zira tugged at Dr. Zaius’s sleeve and said earnestly, “His pattern-response tests, his mathematical comprehension, his manual dexterity are simply remarkable.” She looked at Bill Hudson and added, in a quieter and somewhat puzzled tone, “It’s almost as if he understood… as if he was… intelligent… even patronizing me, during all the tests.”
“Now, Zira,” Cornelius said carefully, eyeing Dr. Zaius as he spoke, “aren’t you getting just a little bit carried away?”
Zira threw him a quick, fierce look. “Not at all, Cornelius. I’ve been working with humanoids for years. I know what I saw.”
Zaius cleared his throat and stroked his chin whiskers thoughtfully. His eyes slid sideways to look at Zira. “You make the beast seem almost as smart as we apes, Zira…”
Zira returned his look with startled eyes. “Oh, Doctor Zaius, I didn’t mean to imply that—”
Zaius laughed kindly and spoke to Zira in a patronizing voice. “Well, then, my dear Zira, why don’t you have the beast demonstrate his ‘brilliance’ to us?”
All too familiar with Zaius’s patronizing tone, the one he used to humiliate and control those beneath him—as though they didn’t have the sense to come in out of the rain—she nodded in agreement. “It will be my pleasure, Doctor Zaius…”
As Zaius chuckled indulgently, Zira walked to a closed wooden cabinet and opened its carved doors to take out a flat box made of painted wood. In the top of the box was a series of round, square, and triangular holes, the borders of which were painted different colors. She picked up another plain box containing a number of colored pegs that had ends that were round, square or triangular. Then she took both to Bill’s cage, where he squatted, watching everything with intense curiosity.
Zira handed the box with the holes through the steel bars to Bill, who took it automatically. Then she dumped the pegs onto the cell floor next to him.
“Okay, Blue-Eyes, show these doubting simians how smart you are!” she said, looking triumphantly at Dr. Zaius, who was watching with shrewd, slitted eyes.
The blond astronaut smiled, looked at each of the apes beyond the bars, and reached for a peg. Quickly, without a single mistake, and without hesitation, Bill fitted each colored peg into the correct hole.
The apes all watched his hands in amazement, not noticing the wry smile that tugged at his mouth.
Bill plunged the last peg into the last hole and gazed up, smiling broadly. The whole thing was amusing to him—almost a practical joke.
As he started to speak, Cornelius blurted out loudly, “Amazing!” He looked up from the board and smiled happily at his wife.
But she was looking at the orangutan Elder.
Dr. Zaius spoke slowly, and with weight. “Very impressive.”
Zira waved her hand airily. “Oh, that’s nothing! You should see his mathematical aptitude.”
She was beginning to give a lecture on the methods used
to test humanoids and on the astounding abilities of Blue-Eyes, when Dr. Zaius stopped her with a raised hand.
“I’d like to stay and watch, Zira,” he said, “but I have an important meeting in the Council of Elders, for which I am already a bit late.”
The chimpanzee scientist fluttered her hands to stop him. “But, Doctor Zaius, I promise you will be amazed.”
Zaius continued his shambling walk toward the door. “I’m certain I will be, Zira, but duty calls. My first responsibility is to all Apedom as a whole. Good evening.”
Zira and Cornelius looked after him with saddened faces.
“I wish he could have stayed,” Zira sighed plaintively.
Cornelius put his arm around her, patting her back protectively. “If Blue-Eyes is so smart, I think you should schedule a probing operation on his brain centers.”
Bill’s head came up with a snap. He kicked the box of pegs violently as he rose. The box struck the bars, scattering the pieces in every direction. Zira and Cornelius looked at him with surprise, watching him grip the steel bars with whitened knuckles.
They were not prepared, however, for what, happened next.
“You’re crazy!” Bill shouted. “Operate on my brain?”
Bill’s ability to speak so shocked the two simians that they fell back in fear and shock, their expressions incredulous and stunned.
Cornelius stammered and his eyes bulged in shock. “It—it—it s-spoke! Z-Zira, the h-humanoid—spoke!”
She stood with a hand over her mouth, slightly bent as if she had just received a blow in the stomach. Her eyes were wide and staring. She had had the shock of her life and her agile brain was searching for a rational explanation. But she was disoriented, and could not have been more surprised if a stone had said “Good morning!” to her.
Bill struck at the cage bars with the heel of his hand. “Yes, I spoke, you hairy nincompoops! I spoke because I can speak!”
Zira’s eyes blinked rapidly, and now her initial shock was being overcome by her scientific curiosity. In a hushed voice she said, to herself, “A talking… a talking humanoid…”
Bill stood tall, taller than the simians, and he rattled the steel bars of his cage angrily. All of the amusement he had felt earlier was gone, all the surprise had evaporated. Now he was angry.
“A talking human, you goons! A human whose world has been turned upside down, but a talking, reasoning human being, nevertheless!”
Cornelius was still frozen, flabbergasted. He stared in dumb shock, his gaze going from the caged Bill to Zira, who was slowly moving toward the prisoner with hesitant little steps.
“But how…?” Cornelius mumbled. “Who…? Uh…” His voice trailed off and his chin trembled.
Unseen by any of them, a gorilla guard was standing just beyond an inner door. He had been about to enter, hearing the clatter of the pegs when Bill had scattered them, but when Bill’s deep voice had thundered out he had stopped to listen and to peer cautiously around the door. This was just what his commander had warned him to watch out for. His ears were now tuned with careful attention.
“My name is Bill Hudson,” the light-haired astronaut said. “I’m an astronaut from another planet in the Solar System. A planet called Earth.”
* * *
Dr. Zaius stood before the Council of Elders, reading from a paper his staff had prepared on the rising cost of raising food. He looked up with irritation when he heard a disturbance at the carved chamber door, annoyance darkening his features. He saw the council guard open the ornate portal and gesture to him.
The orangutan leader grumpily put down his papers and went over to the door. “Yes, what is it now?” he asked petulantly.
The Elders could not hear what the chamber guard said to Zaius, but they saw him bring a sentry into the doorway and saw the gorilla speak softly to their leader.
Dr. Zaius nodded, slapped the sentry on his dark leather shoulder. “Sentry, in behalf of the council I wish to thank you and express our deepest gratitude to you. You may tell your commanding officer that you are to be rewarded!”
The orangutan Elder then turned to the assembled council and quickly related what the gorilla guard had revealed to him. “The humanoid they call Blue-Eyes, the very one I saw this evening doing simple tricks—” He paused dramatically and the Elders leaned forward expectantly. The manner of Dr. Zaius proclaimed an important announcement and they were listening intently. “The humanoid can speak!”
Several of the Elders expressed shock, and two of them shouted out together: “No, that cannot be!”
Zaius put his hand on the shoulder of the gorilla sentry. “This warrior says it is true.”
Some of the Elders still shook their head and several started to speak among themselves. “It’s a trick of some sort!” one said.
“Utter nonsense!” said another.
And another: “Fantasy, sheer fantasy! Like two-headed calves and machines that fly in the sky! Utter rubbish!”
Dr. Zaius put up his hand and caught the attention of the Elders. He turned again to the sentry. “Your distinguished act of reporting what you overheard is an example of simian patriotism at its highest.” He smiled and patted the shoulder of the burly guard. “Now you may go.”
As the guard walked toward the door, Zaius called after him, “Once again, our thanks, and you may return to your post.”
Zaius retained a serene and untroubled expression as the guard left and the door was closed behind him. His elaborate thanks to the gorilla was part of his personal policy of diplomacy. Verbal awards were easy, effective, and served many purposes. The reward he had given was to be made by the gorilla guard’s commander, and would come from their allotment.
But as soon as the door closed, Zaius turned to the council, his face purpling with rage and concern. “If what the sentry reports is true, we must act at once!”
The elders nodded, their faces harsh with responsibility. They were all orangutans, historically the leader class, and knew the awesome task they faced. Several tugged nervously at the yellow-orange beards that flowed down over their light-colored garments.
Zaius leaned on the long, wooden council table, his solemn voice heavy with anxiety. “We of this chamber are the only simians who know the real danger the humanoids represent!”
The expressions of the council members changed, and shadows of fear crossed their faces.
He raised a cautionary finger. “Humanoids once lorded over all other animals,” he intoned seriously. “Including us apes.” He paused to look about, letting the words sink in. “But humanoid greed, humanoid folly”—his voice deepened with righteous anger—“humanoid lust for power caused him to destroy his civilization in a cataclysmic war.”
Zaius ceased, overcome by emotion. He turned to look at the large stone statue carved in the likeness of the original simian lawgiver, a direct ancestor of Zaius himself. The impressive and noble statue overlooked the Council Chamber, and Zaius studied the patrician brow for a long moment. Then his voice continued, with a haunting quality of fear tingeing it.
“And from humanoid dust our great ape society emerged. But it is also written that if humanoids were to regain the intelligence of language, they would once again become master of this planet and would once again destroy it!” He turned again toward the council, his features agitated. “And so, if it is true that this Blue-Eyed humanoid can speak, he and all humanoids must be destroyed immediately!”
Several of the Elders immediately shouted out their response.
“Hear, hear!”
“Yes!”
“No other way!”
But Zaius saw that several were still undecided. He stepped toward Zao, one of the most respected of the council members. Others turned to listen.
“And you, noble Zao, what do you think?”
The elderly orangutan stroked his long beard reflectively. “We should not act hastily,” he said.
“But we must act swiftly!” another member cried out.
“Swiftness of action does not indicate its rightness,” Zao advised, giving the member a sidewise look.
“But the historical facts are—” the member insisted, and started to enumerate them.
Zao put up a restraining hand. “I know them as well as you.” He paused and glanced up at his friend Zaius, who was waiting for his opinion. “This Blue-Eyes might be a mutant—a single fluke—who, if destroyed singly, might nip the whole thing in the bud.”
Zaius shook his head. “I fear this might not be the case. Where there is smoke there is fire. If there is one talking humanoid, there will be others. If we wait too long to act, we might be unable to root them all out.”
Zao shook his head. “I don’t know… This has far-reaching implications. To destroy the work force upon which much of our economy is built—that is a most serious step.”
“I know how serious it is, noble Zao. I have thought long and often upon this very decision, long before I knew of a single talking animal. I considered every side of the action. To remove the ‘Pet Detail’ will not matter much at all. The fad will pass anyway, in all probability. To eliminate any experimental animals is of no importance, since without the race of humanoids around we would have no reason to study them.”
Zaius stopped, studying several faces, gauging their possible response. “The elimination of cannon fodder for Urko and his bloodthirsty warriors is, however, an important factor…”
“Why?” asked Zuka, one of the Elders who had hesitated to vote for the immediate destruction of the humanoids. “They merely use them as moving targets, much as chips in a game of cards.”
Zaius stroked his beard. “Yes, but what if Urko is deprived of his toys?” He scanned the faces before him once again. “What might he then wish to play with as his mobile targets?” He saw some faces change. “He is already on the brink of rebellion…”
Two of the elders protested. “No, you are mistaken. Urko is loyal!”
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