“It smells like it’s been years since you’ve had a bath,” Jeff said with a laugh. “I’ve been meaning to speak to you about that for some time now.”
“Hey, you don’t smell like a rose yourself, friend,” Bill shot back.
Jeff and Bill sat dawn on the bank and pulled their boots off, then stood up and removed their T-shirts, stepping out of their leggings, their bodies shining with sweat in the dappled sunlight. Looking at the water for a minute, one after the other they slid slowly into the pool, until their feet touched bottom.
“What about Nova?” Bill asked.
“What about her?” Jeff asked, looking up at Bill. “Her people seemed to spend enough time in that river back in their valley. So I wouldn’t think she’d be afraid of water.”
“Her people,” Bill reminded his, partner, “spent a lot of time in that river fishing. But I doubt if she’s ever had a real bath.”
“You’ve got a point there. Well, she’s a woman, so once you get her used to the idea, she’ll probably dig it. There’s only one way you’re gonna find out.”
Jeff swam out into the center of the pool, where he lay back on his back, floating, and waving his hands slowly under the surface to keep his head up.
Bill turned back and saw that Nova was about twenty feet away, gathering twigs and small branches for a fire. He called out to her, and when she looked up he motioned for her to come down to the pool. She stood still, nevertheless, looking at him but apparently not understanding his gestures. Bill watched her for a moment, then shrugged his shoulders and dipped down into the cool water of the pool. Swimming slowly across the pool to the main body of the stream, he stroked along until the rapid shallowing of the bottom into a bed of small, rounded stones stopped his arm movements and halted his forward progress. Then he swam back to the pool.
For several minutes, Bill and Jeff swam and splashed at each other in the deepest part of the pool. Then, suddenly, Bill noticed Nova standing at the water’s edge, watching them intently, an expression of puzzlement on her face. When she noticed Bill looking at her, she turned and again began gathering dead wood for a fire. Bill shouted to her again, giving her a big smile to show that the water was good, that he and Jeff were enjoying themselves, and that she should join them.
“Come on, honey! The water’s great!” he called.
He ducked underwater a couple of times, and finally stood up in the waist-deep water, shaking the wetness from his face, grinning, and beckoning to her.
“Om-flu! Mol-wah-bree!” Nova shook her head and took a step back from the edge of the pool.
“You’re simply going to have to teach her to speak something we can understand,” Jeff remarked with a laugh.
“Yeah. And soon!”
“She’s probably scared because it’s too deep. She’s probably never been in over her knees before. You’ll have to throw her in!”
“No,” Bill answered with a shake of his head. “She’ll come in by herself. Watch.”
Again the blond astronaut gestured to Nova that she should join them in the water, and this time she came forward slowly, finally sitting down on the bank and dangling her dirt-stained feet in the water, a big smile breaking over her face as the coolness refreshed them.
“Zee-maha,” she laughed, beginning to splash her feet back and forth.
“Now grab her ankles and pull her in!” Jeff laughed, shoving Bill toward the bank.
“Nope! She’ll make it by herself. I’ll bet anything you care to name on it.”
“You haven’t got anything to bet, buddy!” Jeff said, turning and swimming away to the other end of the pool.
After splashing her feet for several minutes, Nova stood up again and pointed at the water, asking, “Muf-wa? Muf-no-do-wa?”
Bill was at a loss to interpret the sounds, and her expression meant nothing to him, but Jeff grinned, looking first at her, then at his partner.
“I think all she wants to know, is whether it’s too deep for her,” the smiling black man said.
Nova was standing on the bank, hesitation plain on her face. Bill shook his head no, pointing to her, then to himself, and placing his hands edgewise across his chest. Then he bent his knees, sinking down in the water to that point, and pointed to her. Afterward; he stood up again and pointed to himself.
Nova stared at him for a moment, then smiled as the idea penetrated.
Slowly she pulled the worn and very dirty skins that were her only dress over her head. She lay down on the bank next, and slowly slid over the grassy bank on her stomach, feeling for the bottom with her hands.
“That’s it, Nova! Come on in, you’ll love it!” Bill encouraged her, moving over beside her.
Turning her face to the pool, Nova’s face had the delighted expression of a child with a new toy at her discovery of the pleasure of water.
“I think I’m going to try to teach her to swim,” Bill told Jeff.
“Why?”
“I don’t know. But why not?”
Swimming was an art Bill had learned at a very young age from a girl lifeguard he remembered who was as beautiful as Nova. He had been about seven at the time, and the lifeguard was an incredibly ancient nineteen or twenty years old. But that hadn’t mattered: for the first time in his life he had been in love. Although he didn’t realize it, he had much the same feeling now, as he looked at Nova splashing happily in the water.
Picking the easiest form of swimming stroke he knew, he began to demonstrate it—the dog paddle, combined with a frog kick. She watched him with an almost comical concentration on her face. Then she tried it. When Bill thought she had the arm movement down pat, he floated onto his stomach, pointing back at his leg kicks to make sure she understood the reason for the motion; then he made a few strokes up the pool, and back down, showing her how to move both her legs and arms at the same time.
After a minute or two of watching him, during which time Bill had the impression she was going to burst into laughter at any moment, Nova bent forward until the water was up to her chin, but with her feet still planted on the sandy bottom, and began to mimic his waterwheeling hand movements. Bill stopped swimming back and forth, smiled his encouragement, and moved over beside her. With his arm under her waist, he lifted her into a horizontal position and began to float her across the pool while she kept up her arm movements, her head held high out of the water.
“That’s it. You’re getting it,” he said.
He then floated her through a turn, and back near the bank; where he set her upon her feet again. Nova laughed like a child, pleased with herself and with Bill.
Levering himself upward with his arms, he climbed out of the pool and walked over to where he had dropped his pack. From Judy’s makeup kit he took a bar of soap and unwrapped it, carefully saving the paper wrapper. Then he slid back into the water and began to lather his body with the rectangular white bar—which, luckily, had been specially designed to produce suds in hard water such as is usually found out in the country, or even in saltwater should the astronauts crash near the ocean.
“Boy, that feels good!” Bill yelled, splashing water up under his arms after soaping himself down.
Nova stopped the swimming motions she had been making and, standing up again the chest-deep water, waded over to where the blond astronaut stood. “Bok-wa?” she asked.
Seeing the curiosity on her face, Bill handed her the bar of soap.
She felt it, almost losing it as it slipped between her hands, then smelled it, screwing her face up in distaste at the odd odor. Then, before Bill could stop her, she took a small bite from the edge of the bar. Spitting it out quickly, she wiped the back of her hand across her lips. Ignoring Bill as he finished soaping his body, she went back to her practice of the dog paddle.
Chuckling loudly, both at Nova’s reaction to the soap and his own pleasure in having a bath, Bill threw the bar of soap to Jeff.
“Here,” he called, “do something to improve the environment!”
He cli
mbed up onto the bank and sat down to watch Jeff and Nova while the warm breeze dried his skin.
Jeff quickly began to lather himself, and Nova still shook her head in confusion, obviously mystified, by the enjoyment her two friends were getting from such unpleasant-smelling and -tasting stuff as that white bar. Once he was well lathered, the suds contrasting sharply with his handsome chocolate-brown skin, Jeff whistled and threw the bar of soap to Bill.
“Here!” he shouted. “Your girlfriend could use a bit of this, too.”
Bill looked at the cavegirl for a minute. She was playing in the water. At length making up his mind, he slipped back into the water and, taking Nova’s hand, led her across the pool to the main part of the stream, to where the water was barely only up to her waist. Dipping the bar of soap into the water, he gently began to rub it over her back and shoulders.
When Nova realized what Bill was doing to her, she tried to fight her way free of him. But he held her tightly, shaking his head and frowning when she gazed up at him with the sad look of a child being punished on her face.
“Okay, Nova, I’m not hurting you,” Bill comforted her. “Just relax, and you’ll learn to love it. Believe me!”
As if sensing the meaning in his voice, she stood quite still while he began to lather her arms with the bar of soap.
Jeff sat on the bank now, laughing at the two in the stream.
“Take the bar, Nova,” Bill said, handing it to her carefully. “Don’t lose it!” he warned, showing her how to hold it in a firm grip. “You rub it over your body now. I’m going to go and get your dress, and we’ll wash it next.”
As he climbed up onto the bank to gather Nova’s skins, a thought occurred to him. “You know,” he said, looking down at his partner, “one of us should probably be checking to make sure the humanoids are setting up the camp right.”
“Well, I’ve had my swim, so I’ll get dressed and go over to see that they’ve set up some defenses, just in case…”
He slipped into his red T-shirt and white leggings and strode off through the forest, where shouting and laughing sounds indicated that the humanoids were busy building their camp.
Nova had soaped her whole body by the time Bill waded out to her with the animal-skin dress. Together they washed it thoroughly, and because the breeze was warm Nova put it on immediately as they left the water.
Bill slipped into his oyster-colored T-shirt and white leggings, while Nova stood waiting. Glancing over at her, he saw her smile—and perhaps something more, something more meaningful—in her eyes. He walked up to her, took her hand, and kissed her cheek. Then, on impulse, he swept the cavegirl up into his arms and carried her back to the camp.
He was certain, now, that he wanted her one day to be his wife. Someday they and their children would build a stronger, revitalized human race that would fight for mastery with the present rulers of the Planet of the Apes…
* * *
Following the joint Urko/Zaius expedition, things quieted down considerably in Ape City, and especially in the laboratory of Cornelius and Zira.
Zira missed Bill almost like a mother would miss her child. Cornelius liked Bill, too, and he was sure that, given a little time together to get to know him, he would also have liked Jeff, the dark-skinned astronaut. But the two chimpanzees had thrown themselves into their work after the astronauts’ escape—both to keep busy and not worry that they might have been seen with the humans, and to get as much work done as possible before Dr. Zaius’s again turned his attention their way. Both knew how close the elderly orangutan leader was to ordering their work stopped permanently.
One afternoon, nearly a month after the return of the Forbidden Zone expedition, Zira was sitting in the laboratory, at her sorting table, trying to make sense out of a large box of pottery fragments she had picked up at the sight of Cornelius’s latest dig. Her concentration was totally disrupted when Cornelius burst through the door.
“Zira,” he shouted, “I’ve found what we’ve been looking for! At last I have the proof we’ve needed!”
“What on earth are you talking about?” Zira asked, swinging around on her stool to face her husband.
“This!” he said, holding out a sloppily wrapped package. “The most dangerous thing on the Planet of the Apes!”
“Something you found at the dig?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t know we were playing twenty questions,” Zira said, a little sarcastically, “but my next question will be: How can something two thousand years old or more be the most dangerous thing on the planet? Unless it’s some sort of weapon…”
“No, not a weapon,” Cornelius answered. “At least, not a physical weapon. But it’s a weapon which could blast minds from here to the Senate Building and back!”
All at once, Cornelius brushed aside Zira’s neat little piles of fragments on the table. Setting the package down on the table, he began to unwrap it slowly and carefully, as if whatever was inside was very fragile—as, indeed, it was!
“It’s a book!” Zira exclaimed when Cornelius had the last of the wrapping off.
“It surely is,” Cornelius chuckled. He was careful not to tear any of the flaky, dry pages as he turned the book around and opened it for Zira. “And not just any book. It’s an illustrated book!” Though badly worn, the letters A DAY AT THE ZOO were clearly visible among the faded colors on the cover.
“A book written by humanoids!” Zira burst out, something close to awe in her voice. “A book written before the dawn of ape civilization!”
“A book,” Cornelius stated triumphantly, “which directly contradicts our Book of Laws. There were intelligent creatures on Earth before us apes, and the humanoids are the descendants of those creatures!”
“Are you sure it’s proof?” Zira asked, with some doubt. “After all, it could have been written by very early apes! Or maybe by a lost ape civilization, before the dawn of our recorded history.”
“No, this book was never written by apes. Look!”
Dramatically, Cornelius opened the book to the first page—to a picture of humans at a zoo watching caged monkeys.
“Why, the apes are locked up and the humanoids are free!” Zira exclaimed. “Just like Blue-Eyes said.”
“Proof, after all these years, that we were right!”
“But I’m afraid it’s proof we can’t use now, Cornelius, my love,” Zira said sadly.
“What? Why not?”
“Because if General Urko saw this book, he would have exactly the proof he needs to order all humanoids destroyed.”
“But,” Cornelius said desperately, “it could prove that all our theories about humanoids preceding us on Earth are correct. It could prove that they aren’t simply dumb beasts.”
“And in proving that, we would be killing them!” Zira put her hand gently on her husband’s arm.
“But, if Doctor Zaius—”
“Doctor Zaius,” Zira interrupted Cornelius with a frown, “would be the first to order the roundup and execution of the humanoids, if he saw this book. At his age, he cannot admit that everything he has believed in and everything he has taught is wrong. He’ll destroy the humanoids before he’ll destroy himself.”
“Yes,” Cornelius admitted mournfully, “I guess you’re right.”
“I know I’m right. Now, we have to figure out what to do with this book.”
“I suppose we should destroy it.”
“No, We can’t do that,” Zira said, alarmed, gathering the precious book to her breast protectively.
“Perhaps I should just take it back to the dig and bury it again—as if I had never found it.”
“No.” Zira shook her head. “Someone, perhaps even Urko’s men, might dig it up again. You know how they’ve been investigating everything we do.”
“Then we must destroy it!” Cornelius insisted.
“No!” Zira said, almost violently. “It is too valuable, both to us and to the humanoids. Someday, perhaps, the world will be ready for the
facts in this book.”
“But we can’t wait for someday!” Cornelius insisted. “If we can’t reveal the book now, we must get rid of it. As long as the book is here in the laboratory, we’re in danger. Just because it’s been nearly two months since Urko’s soldiers searched here the last time, looking for Blue-Eyes, doesn’t mean the general won’t come back. And this time he may really tear the place apart!”
“But Doctor Zaius ordered Urko to stop harassing us.”
“And he did stop. But you can be sure that if Urko gets an urge to do it again, he’ll be able to get a warrant from his friends on the Supreme Council that will override Zaius’s orders without any trouble.”
“Well,” Zira asked, “what can we do with it, then? I don’t want it destroyed.”
“Find someplace safe for it. Somewhere General Urko not only wouldn’t—but couldn’t—look.”
“But where?”
Cornelius shook his head, looking down at the so valuable, and so dangerous, book. “I don’t know. For the time being, I’ll lock it in the safe. And throw this in the trash.”
He picked up the paper he’d wrapped the book in, gave it to his wife, and turned away to open the safe.
“What is this?” Zira asked, puzzled.
“What is what?”
“This paper you told me to throw away? And where did you get it?”
Cornelius stopped trying to open the safe and looked back at his wife, who was staring intently at the wrapping paper.
“It’s the paper I used to wrap the book in,” he said. “I got it at the dig, too. It was part of the junk that was hiding the book. Why?”
“It has some kind of strange drawing on it!” Zira’s fingers were tracing the faint lines on the paper.
“Really?” Cornelius asked, stepping back over to the table and looking down at the paper, which Zira had spread out on the spot that Cornelius had cleared of pottery. “I was so excited at finding the humanoid book, I didn’t even look at the paper.”
“It looks like some kind of plans for something,” Zira said, carefully straightening wrinkles in the heavy, but old and brittle, sheet.
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