Planet of the Apes Omnibus 4

by William Arrow

  “We can take along only what we absolutely need! Do you understand? We take nothing that will slow us down or be too heavy for the rafts.”

  The old humanoid woman looked at her with puzzlement in her eyes, so the blond astronaut tried again. “Not room on raft to take everything. Just important things. Food, clothing, weapons. That’s all.”

  Judy held up the carving, which was crudely constructed and about as long as her forearm. “Not useless things like this.”

  She made a gesture as if to throw the carving away, but held on to it; perhaps the old woman would want to bury it somewhere. But the humanoid, misunderstanding Judy’s intent, grabbed the astronaut’s free arm and tears fell from her eyes.

  “Wow!” Judy said to herself, “this seems terribly valuable to her!”

  Now she really looked at the carving for the first time. It was a figure of a man, who had bracelets around his wrists and ankles, a necklace of some sort around his neck, and a scar or mark of some kind on his bare left shoulder.

  Judy handed the carving back to the weeping woman. “All right. Keep it.” Then, to herself, she said: “It must be some kind of idol or god or patron saint—or something!”

  The old woman looked immensely relieved and grateful. As Judy turned away from her, she touched the carved necklace on the figure—two oblong rectangles hanging from a cord around the “god’s” neck…

  Judy finished her inspection, leaving the women with the pantomimed instruction: “Remember, anything too heavy can only slow us down.”

  * * *

  There was a knock on the laboratory door. Zira put down the scientific journal she was reading and went to answer it. The golden-furred council Elder Dr. Zaius stood on the stoop, and Zira quickly gestured for him to enter.

  “Why, Doctor Zaius, what a pleasant surprise!”

  She closed the door behind the leader of the council and offered him a seat in the study section of the behavorial sciences lab. But the orangutan philosopher declined, preferring to pace the floor.

  Zira smiled at the old ape’s prolonged silence. “To what, sir, do we owe the pleasure of your visit?”

  “I’m not here for pleasure, Zira, I’m—”

  “Zira, who was it?” came a call. “Oh, Doctor Zaius! How nice!” Cornelius stood in the door to the inner laboratory, wiping his hands on a towel. “May I get you a glass of wine, doctor? Please sit down. Would a little Ape Valley burgundy be all right?”

  Zaius shook his head. “No, thank you, Cornelius. I’m not here on a social call.”

  Cornelius looked worried until he saw that Zira did not seem anxious.

  “May we ask why you’ve come, then, sir?” she said.

  Zaius looked from one to the other before answering. “I’m here to find out who really stole General Urko’s air vehicle…”

  Cornelius looked startled. “Surely, Doctor Zaius, you don’t think we stole it!”

  “You didn’t let me finish,” Zaius complained mildly. “I also want to tell whomever took it that I am forever in his debt!”

  “But we didn’t steal it,” Zira protested. “We were right in the stands, talking to you just after, and—”

  Zaius put up a hand to stop her remarks. “Oh, I know that, my dear Zira. Perhaps ‘stole’ was the wrong term to use. ‘Appropriated’ might be more accurate.”

  “I don’t understand Doctor Zaius,” Zira said, her nose twitching and her eyes blinking rapidly.

  “It’s quite simple, my child.” Zaius repeated his searching look at both, of them in turn. “I know of your great loyalty to me, and the deep bond of affection between—”

  “That’s very true, doctor,” Zira said.

  The orangutan leader nodded. “Of course it is.” He cleared his throat and started pacing about again, without looking at them. “While it was in Urko’s hands, the flying machine was a formidable weapon…” He paused, rubbed his orange-yellow beard. “It posed a great danger to the continuation of my leadership. Perhaps it is wrong of me to think so, but I feel the necessity—more than ever before—of continuing my rule… my policies of a balance of power, and of peace.” The Elder stopped, looked out a window. “Wresting that air vehicle from Urko was a great service to me—and worthy of a considerable reward…”

  Neither Zira nor Cornelius said anything, but they looked at each other, their expressions a mixture of hope, suspicion, and puzzlement. Zaius cleared his throat again and continued.

  “Indeed, whoever even helped in taking the sky craft away from Urko is deserving of any wish I could grant.”

  He turned around and gave the two chimpanzee scientists a long look.

  Cornelius gulped, flicked a glance at his wife, then spoke. “We appreciate your sentiments, Doctor Zaius, we really do. But I assure you, sir, neither Zira nor I had anything to do with the appropriation of the flying machine—”

  Dr. Zaius quickly snapped out an important question, one that both the two scientists had been afraid he would ask. “Perhaps it was the blue-eyed humanoid?”

  Just as quickly, Cornelius answered, “I—rather doubt it…”

  “Why?” Zaius pinned Cornelius with his eyes.

  Cornelius shrugged. “Oh, I don’t believe humanoids possess the basic intelligence to operate such complex machinery.”

  Zaius nodded slowly. “I would agree… about most humanoids. But this blue-eyed one… he perplexes me.”

  “Yes, Blue-Eyes is different, isn’t he?” Zira asked.

  The orangutan lawgiver shifted his piercing look to Zira. “You seem extremely fond of the beast, Zira.” He smiled, faintly. “Somehow, perhaps too fond…” He let the sentence trail off and the words hang in the air.

  Zira laughed weakly and fluttered her hands. “No, no, Doctor Zaius. It’s just my love for all animals. Ever since I was a child, I’ve loved them. We had pet squirrels and a rabbit named Homer, and my parents got me a pet humanoid who was almost my size and—”

  “Urko believes the blue-eyed beast is guilty of the theft,” Zaius cut in.

  “B-based upon what proof?” Zira stammered.

  Zaius raised his head. “Urko needs no proof! He is convinced that his judgment is infallible.” He lowered his head and added in a glum tone, “Just like most generals!”

  “What is he planning to do?” Cornelius asked politely.

  Zaius sighed. “Mount an attack on the humanoid settlement in the caves where he made his last big catch. It seems he thought he had captured them all, but apparently some escaped into holes at the back of the caves…”

  Zita and Cornelius had difficulty in suppressing a smile, for they knew that the main body of humanoids had long since left their caves and were waiting the arrival of the three astronauts in the forest south of the Forbidden Zone, a hundred miles from their original caves.

  The council leader sighed again, deeply. “A huge army is already being gathered for the campaign. Urko has brought in new equipment from his supplies at Strategic Defense Headquarters to replace the column lost when he fired recently into that volcano.” Zaius raised his head to look gloomily at the chimpanzee couple. “Urko threatens to teach the humanoids a lesson they will never forget!”

  Cornelius took Zira’s hand and held it very tight.

  * * *

  The old woman Judy had tussled with over the carving waded out into the shallow water near the river’s edge with the last basket and put it, on a raft. Another humanoid woman tied it to the stack already fastened in the center of the raft.

  “Is that it?” Bill called out to Jeff, who was walking along the shore.

  Jeff nodded as he waded out to the rafts. “Yup. No one’s left. We’re ready to shove off!”

  Judy called out to the old woman, who was climbing aboard the last of the four rafts. “Keep that child away from the edge!”

  She had to point and make gestures, and the woman took the small child and set her in the midst of the baskets and skin bags. Judy smiled and waved.

  “Let’s get
going!” Bill said. “We can cover a lot of distance before nightfall.”

  The blond astronaut signaled to the other raft “captains,” and the ropes that held the floating structures to the shore were pulled away. The ungainly transports started moving downstream with the current.

  Bill and Jeff had fashioned rudders for each raft, attached loosely to a Y-shaped limb at the back that had been fixed solidly into the tree trunks of which the raft was made. Jeff gestured for the other “captains” to hold on to the rudder as Bill was doing, and the humanoids seemed to catch on quickly.

  The third raft suddenly turned around, however, and was going down the river backwards, until Jeff yelled and gestured, and the “helmsman” held on to the rudder properly. Soon the raft reversed itself so that all four were sailing along smoothly.

  “I wonder what New Valley will be like,” Judy said. By now, the astronauts had begun to think of the humanoids’ future home as the “New Valley.” She looked at Bill and Jeff. “Do you think it will offer the kind of protection the humanoids need?”

  “Cornelius thought it would,” Bill answered her. “It’s certainly remote—and faraway, and since it’s surrounded on three sides by sheer rock walls, that makes it almost impossible to enter—even for us. The fourth side, which is somewhat exposed, is fortunately on the north, so that any armored military force that came all the way around to reach that side would arouse the attention of the valley’s inhabitants by that time.”

  “But couldn’t Urko come down from the north, instead of going around the Forbidden Zone by the southern route, as we’re doing?”

  “It’s impossible to come down from the north. Urko could cross the Forbidden Zone to a point just north of the New Valley, but he couldn’t leave the Zone to reach it: the mountains are almost impenetrable on the western edge of the Zone—at least for wheeled vehicles—and lead all the way north, that same way, up to the near-polar regions!”

  “Watch those rocks coming up!” Jeff said suddenly, interrupting Judy and Bill’s dialogue.

  Jeff then picked up one of the two long, slim poles he had carried aboard the leading raft. Each of the other three rafts had poles too. The humanoids on the following rafts picked up their poles obediently and watched to see what the black, talking human was going to do.

  Jeff held the pole out, and as the current carried the raft close to the rocks that the river bent around, he held off the raft by sticking the pole into the rocks and shoving hard. Once past the obstacle, the three humans watched the other rafts fend safely past.

  Jeff heaved a sigh of relief. “They’re catching on. All they need is the right kind of example.”

  “Do you think we can ever bring them up to, well, to a reasonable level?” Judy asked.

  Jeff shrugged. “We don’t know enough, yet, about why they are the way they are. What do you think, Bill?”

  “I agree, and I think we should appoint someone on each raft, besides the ‘helmsman,’ to stay awake and on guard at all times. Not only for rocks or waterfalls, or for any sort of hostile animal that may be living in these waters, but for gorilla patrols on shore as well.”

  “Or for any settlements we find along the river!” Judy added. “We wouldn’t want to float right into some ape village without warning, in broad daylight!”

  “That’s sensible,” Bill agreed. “But how are we going to convey the ‘guard’ idea to the others?”

  Jeff stood up, hollering to the other rafts to get their attention. He pointed to the slopes all around the river, shading his eyes and striking an exaggerated pose of watchfulness. Then he pointed to the river under them and the water ahead and repeated his watchful attitude. He pointed several times at each raft and quickly repeated his pantomime. Almost at once the humanoids conferred among themselves with much gesturing of handstand a few shoves—and then things seemed sorted out. One member of each raft’s crew climbed on top of the center stack of belongings and took up the watch.

  Jeff sighed. “Good! They caught on.”

  “Captain Bligh to crew,” Bill said. “Get some rest. There’ll be a moon later tonight. Maybe we can extend our day’s travel a bit. I’d like to get as far away from the cave area as possible!”

  Jeff nodded, his brief moment of humor gone as his dark eyes swept the banks and the surrounding hills. “Aye-aye,” he said quietly, and lay down on the round bark of the tree-trunk raft to try to get some sleep.

  * * *

  A very angry General Urko returned from Mukalla Pass to his still-smoking Strategic Defense Headquarters. Immediately, he had his officers assemble all the soldiers in the stronghold. They formed four long lines before him and stood at rigid attention.

  The bulky general paced back and forth in front of his troops, mumbling sometimes to himself, sometimes shouting to his men or to his officers.

  “It was no humanoid, blue-eyed or otherwise, who stole that truck, and carted away my humanoids! It was a renegade gorilla—some traitor to apekind!—who stole that truck. And who stole my sky craft!!”

  Urko stopped, turning toward the ranks of black-furred, black-leather-uniformed gorillas. His bloodshot eyes swept over them viciously.

  “Never have I been so humiliated!” he continued, slamming one leather-gloved fist into the other. “And to think, there I was—on the brink of total power! Total control of Apedom!” The big gorilla then pointed a finger at a nearby group of wary officers. “I want the air machine returned, do you understand? I demand that it be recaptured at once!”

  Colonel Trafuna twitched. “We’re—we’re doing our best, sir—”

  “Your best isn’t good enough, colonel!”

  “But, sir,” Major Surga whined, “you can’t track a flying machine! Where do we start looking?”

  “We have patrols everywhere General Urko,” Colonel Trafuna added.

  “We are trying our best, sir,” another major whimpered.

  “Your best just isn’t good enough! How do you explain allowing the flying machine to be stolen from under your noses in the first place?”

  “We’re narrowing down our list of suspects, sir,” Colonel Trafuna said nervously. Generals on a rampage frightened him, and General Urko on a rampage was especially frightening. I’d rather go into combat, he thought.

  “To me you’re all suspects!” Urko roared. “How do I know it wasn’t one of you who betrayed me?”

  “Sir, why would we do that?” Major Surga asked nervously. “We’re on your side, sir—and the side of, uh, you know, gorillas, and, uh, apes in general, general.”

  Urko ignored him. “This entire mess smacks of an inside job! After all, the existence of the air vehicle was a closely guarded military secret. It was totally unknown to anyone on the outside!”

  Colonel Trafuna cleared his throat. “Uh, sir… sir… Well, someone on the outside must have known about it!”

  Urko growled. “I want an immediate review of all security procedures! And I hereby offer a reward to the patriotic ape who turns in the guilty party!”

  No one said anything.

  He’s tearing us apart! thought Trafuna. If it ISN’T one of us, then this spying on each other will tear us apart, anyway! Trafuna had been one of the battered officers who had heard Zaius talk about Urko not being fit to command. He had resented it then. But now the first cracks in his old convictions were beginning to show. And he himself felt some disloyalty to his general.

  Urko walked to an improvised map table, and gestured for his officers to accompany him. “Now, what about our plan of attack on the humanoids’ caves?”

  Colonel Trafuna spoke up. “The army is ready, sir! All units have been alerted and are prepared to march!”

  Urko slammed his hand down on the fragile table. “Good! What I need is a smashing victory to restore my reputation as a military genius!”

  “We understand, sir,” Major Surga added quickly.

  “We’ll move against the humanoid beasts and end their filthy scourge forever!” Urko said loudly.r />
  “Yes, sir!” the officers chorused.

  “All right,” Urko barked. “Signal the troops to move out according to Plan A!”

  * * *

  It was dark, but the moon had not yet appeared on this second day of their trip. Bill Hudson crept along the riverbank and slid into the cold water with almost no noise. He waded to where Jeff and Judy held the lead raft steady by poles stuck into the river mud. The three humanoid rafts were likewise “anchored” temporarily by means of their poles.

  Putting his lips to Jeff’s ear, he said, “We’ll go on—but silently. The gorillas have a camp just over the hump. On the right, so shove out and get as far to the other side of the river as possible. I’ll go back to the other rafts.”

  Bill swam quietly back to each raft, telling them to watch what Jeff did in the first. Then, on a signal from the black astronaut, the three rafts shoved off like ducklings after a mother duck. Clinging to the last raft, Bill gazed at the faint glow reflecting from the tops of the trees—it had tipped him off, only minutes before—that an encampment lay ahead.

  Quietly and with agonizing slowness, paddling and poling their way noiselessly over to the opposite side of the river, the rafts moved on. As the river curved, they saw the campfire plainly. Five or six gorilla soldiers were standing or sitting around it, and Bill could make out the oblong shapes of at least that many more wrapped in their sleeping bags. Little pyramids of stacked rifles stood close at hand. A raucous burst of laughter rang out as one of the apes took a good-natured swing at a fellow soldier.

  The rafts drifted slowly past the gorilla encampment, and Bill all but held his breath. Even with the laser they might not win, if the well-trained troops were to discover them and open fire with all their armament.

  * * *

  Mungwort lay huddled in his sleeping bag, well away from the others. But he couldn’t sleep: the voices of his fellow soldiers penetrated, even though he pulled the bag up around his ears. His part-chimpanzee blood was revolted by the lack of consideration the gorilla troops showed anyone who wanted to sleep.

  Trommo was retelling the story of his most recent drunken binge for the umpteenth time! That would undoubtedly stimulate Kork into telling his dull little tale about the bloody encounter with a leopard, from which he emerged victorious! Or Dubark would talk about his nights, winning, at the casino gambling tables in Kulak.