by Greg Keyes
Phillips hesitated for a moment.
“You know why,” he said.
“I want to hear it from you.”
“We needed to contain the situation,” Philips finally said. “Our first priority was to keep secret the fact that Gen Sys created the virus. At that point we had no way of knowing how bad it was going to turn out to be. The hope was that by the time anyone found out, if they ever found out, we would have worked out a cure. And for that we needed apes infected with the virus.”
“Why?”
“Because it doesn’t kill them. We need to know why.”
“Why not infect another captive ape?”
“It’s not that simple,” Phillips said. “In humans, the virus mutates. Apes can’t get it from us. And we don’t have access to any of the original serum.”
“So you’ve really been trying to catch apes.”
“And keep the particulars… insulated. My people haven’t been allowed contact with anyone outside. At least not until you put them at their liberty.”
“You found them, I understand. Why didn’t you follow through?”
“Everyone was paying too much attention to us. There were protesters outside our perimeter. We shut down, hoping things would go quiet.”
“Can you still do it?”
The change that came over Phillips’s face at that moment was subtle, but Dreyfus saw it. The man was just realizing that this conversation wasn’t about what he had thought it was.
“I’m sure we can,” he said. “With a little help.”
Dreyfus thought about that for a moment.
“What else would you need to make this work?”
“Enough men to actually encircle the beasts—that would be nice,” Phillips said. He was beginning to radiate confidence.
“That’s going to be tough, given that every able body on the force, in the Guard, and in the reserves is already on task somewhere.” Dreyfus sat back. “Still, if I sell it right, I think I can get the governor to commit more National Guard. But I need to know you won’t screw it up this time. That you’ll get it done.”
“I’ll get it done,” Phillips replied. “But I want something in return.”
“I’ll bet you do,” Dreyfus said. He leaned forward again. “I want you to understand something. I don’t like you, Phillips. I would love to see you burn. But if there is a chance to stop this disease, we’re going to take it, and you’re what I have. You and your team already know the situation. If you get this right, I might just be able to rewrite history enough to keep you from being torn limb from limb by an angry mob.”
Phillips lips twisted into a faint, sardonic smile.
“That’s the best deal I’ve heard today.”
“It’s the best deal you’re going to get,” Dreyfus said. “The next best deal—you wouldn’t like that very much.”
“Well, then. Shall we shake on it?”
“I’d rather not,” Dreyfus said. “I feel dirty enough just talking to you.”
Phillips didn’t look pleased—he clearly wasn’t accustomed to being spoken to in this manner.
“There are some details of the plan—” he began.
“I know all that I want to know,” Dreyfus interposed. “Get some of those things alive. I don’t care how you do it. And just to make it clear, I don’t want anything from Anvil, or Gen Sys, or anyone else involved in this. Just do your job and quietly go away. I have enough to deal with.”
* * *
Koba stared up at the moon. He worried about it sometimes, worried that it might fall on him, fall on all of them. Fall on Caesar. He couldn’t see what kept it up.
Until Caesar led him into the woods, he had never seen the moon.
* * *
Koba wakes and he is not in the sky. He is on something cold.
He is in a cage again, but it is not Tommy’s cage. This cage does not force him to stand up, but the floor is hard, and gritty, and cold. The cage is also not very big. He looks around for Milo, but doesn’t see him anywhere. There is something in the next cage. He signs at it, but it looks at him blankly, and he realizes it is a big caterpillar.
The light in the place comes from long tubes, high overhead. Sometimes they go off for a long time.
Someone comes to feed him. She reminds him of Mary, so he signs to her. She doesn’t seem to notice, so he does his “smile,” his “talk,” his “funny walk.”
She chuckles a little.
“Aren’t you funny,” she says. “I wonder what happened to your eye.”
He tries to tell her by sign, but she just moves on and feeds the caterpillar.
Koba remembers outside and tries to get out of his cage, but finds no way out. Over the next cycle of light and dark he realizes that there are many, many cages, and that they all contain big caterpillars. He is the only one who isn’t, he realizes. Some sort of mistake has been made. The next time someone comes to feed him, he tries to explain this, but they won’t talk to him. He knows they can talk, because they do the sound talk to each other. Why won’t they talk to him?
He hopes that soon they will realize their mistake and that he should be someplace doing tricks, even if his eye is ugly now.
On the other hand, no one has hit him with a stick since he arrived.
* * *
The next time someone comes, he tries again. It is two men. They still won’t talk to him, but they point to a little bed they have brought with them and open his cage. They put a leash on him. He tries to show them that he already knows the trick of lying in bed, not curled up but lying out straight.
“Good boy,” one of the men says.
Then they put things on his hands and feet and across his chest, so he can’t move. At first Koba thinks of it as part of the trick, and he tries to “smile” and “look silly.” When he does that, they stick something in his mouth, so he can’t close it, and they push it in so far that he can’t open it any further either. He thinks of Milo with his mouth wired shut, and he starts to panic. He tries to ask them to stop, but he can’t use his hands.
They think he is a big caterpillar, and they are going to do to him whatever it is they do to big caterpillars.
They take Koba to a very bright room and they give him a shot. He knows what shots are. Mary used to give them, and said they would keep him from getting sick. They don’t want him to get sick, so he feels a little better.
Except that he does get sick. First his stomach hurts, and then he starts to vomit. The thing in his mouth won’t let anything out, so he is breathing his own vomit, and he can’t get any air.
* * *
The next thing he knows he is back in his cage, on the hard floor, still sick. He keeps shaking. The thing they put in his mouth is gone, so his teeth chatter together.
He is like this for several cycles of the lights. Then they come to get him once more. He tries to sign to them again, but he is too weak. He sees that the little bed is ready for him, but he is scared and backs up into the corner of the cage.
“He went quiet last time,” one of them says.
“Yeah,” the other says. “He’s catching on fast.”
He pulls out a thing like Tommy pointed at him, like the other man in the house pointed at him. There is a strange, explosive sound.
Something hits him in the chest and knocks him back against the wall. He looks down and sees another thing sticking out of him, like the one that hit him in the tree.
Koba good, he signs desperately. But it’s too late. He is starting to feel dizzy and sick and sleepy.
* * *
Koba is back in his cage, feeling a horrible pain in his side, like something has been stuck all the way through him. His head hurts, and he starts vomiting again.
He misses Milo and he wants someone to sign with him. He even misses Tommy. He is used to the stick. He could guess when Tommy was going to use the stick, and why. Here, pain just happens.
For a long time nothing happens at all. People come and feed him. They ignore
him when he tries to talk to them, and he begins to wonder if he is signing right. Maybe he doesn’t really know how to sign, and it is just the colors that come into his head at night that make him think he can.
Maybe Koba really is just a big caterpillar.
There is nothing to do in the cage, and he never leaves it except when they hurt him. He has no toys, so he begins plucking out his hair and arranging it on the floor. He thinks maybe he can make some buttons to talk with. He arranges his plucked hair in the symbols he remembers, but the hair doesn’t stay arranged. It moves, it gets disturbed. It is annoying, and so sometimes he screams at it.
He begins signing to himself, signing onto the floor, sometimes for a whole light cycle. His fingers and knuckles bleed from signing against the floor.
There is a long period he cannot remember. Then one day someone comes to his cage. Two people. Koba does not look at them.
“Koba,” one says. He knows the sound. It seems familiar.
“This is a waste of time,” another voice says.
“Koba,” the man repeats.
Koba gradually turns his head. The man is doing something with his hands. At first he doesn’t recognize the motion, it has been so long. But then he understands, and a tiny part of him remembers.
Koba.
He rolls to his feet.
Do you know sign? the man is asking. It feels like his mother’s arms going around him.
Koba know sign, he answers.
“I told you!” the man exclaims to the other man.
I am not big caterpillar, Koba signs.
The man looks puzzled.
What is big caterpillar? he asks.
Koba gestures at the thing in the cage beside him, then to all of the other cages.
The man laughs.
“What is it?” the other man asks.
“He thinks the other chimps are caterpillars,” he says.
“Or maybe he’s signing gibberish,” the second man tells him.
“No,” the first man says. “It’s classic. We definitely have a language ape on our hands.”
“That’s wonderful if it is true,” the second man says. “But God, he’s an ugly fellow.”
Koba isn’t sure what to do. He knows they are talking about him. So he does a “smile.” He “dances.”
“See?” the first man says. “I checked his records. He was on the TV show, Monkey of the House.”
“I’m afraid I never heard of it,” the second man says. “I’ve got better things to do than watch television.”
“It was canceled after the first season,” the first man says.
Koba, the man signs. Can you do your numbers?
Eager to please him, Koba starts counting. He gets to three and realizes he doesn’t remember the next number. He becomes agitated. What if the man becomes angry with him, and stops signing? He cannot bear the thought. He beats against the cage frantically.
It’s okay, the man signs. Maybe you forgot. The man makes soothing sounds. Koba feels the panic retreating. And then he remembers. He smiles. He tries to dance.
Four, he signs, and keeps going until the man stops him at twenty-five.
Know sign, Koba said. Not big caterpillar.
“He’s remembering fast,” the first man says.
“Good,” the second man replies. “We can use him then. Get him ready.”
“Koba,” the first man says. “My name is Amol. This is Mr. Jacobs. Would you like to work with us for a little while?” Koba isn’t sure of what he is saying, but the way he speaks reminds Koba of Mary.
Koba like sign, he replies.
Good, Amol tells him. We’ll do lots of sign.
“This had better pay off, Amol,” Jacobs says, and he walks away.
They bring one the beds they tie him to, and a man pulls out one of the ugly things that hit him and make him sleep.
He looks up at the man who knows sign.
Koba not big caterpillar, he signs, desperately. Koba good. No hurt.
I know, the man says. Koba smart chimp. Knows sign. We go do sign together.
Not hurt Koba again?
We sign, the human said.
He turns to the other man.
“You don’t need the tranq gun,” he says. “Koba will be good.”
“It’s your funeral, Doc,” the fellow says. He steps back, but he keeps the thing—the “gun”?—out.
Reluctantly, Koba climbs onto the table, and they strap him down. He wants to keep signing. He wants to talk. Instead they give him a shot, and he falls asleep.
When he wakes, he can’t move. Something hurts at the bottom of the back of his head, and it feels like his back is burning all the way down. The pain is so terrible he can’t think.
Koba did good, Amol tells him.
* * *
A few days later, it still hurts, but not as much. He can move again, but something is attached to his head and to his back. Black cables come from behind him and plug into machines with lights and pictures of nothing.
Amol comes back.
Now we sign, Amol says. He holds up a blue card.
What color is this? he asks.
Blue, Koba says.
And this?
Yellow.
It goes on like that. Amol just keeps asking questions, and Koba tries to answer them. The screens make pretty colors and weird pictures. Sometimes he sees letters, too, and numbers.
After a while, Mr. Jacobs comes.
“How is this going?” Mr. Jacobs asks. Koba does not like the way Mr. Jacobs looks at him.
“Very well, Mr. Jacobs,” Amol says. “I think he’s an ideal candidate.”
“Good. Continue, then. I would like to see your results at week’s end.”
“Yes, sir.”
Amol asks a few more questions, then he gets a shot needle and goes around behind Koba.
“This will sting just a little,” he says.
Whatever was in the back of his skull suddenly seems to come alive with pain. Koba shrieks.
What? What? Koba asks.
The man leans forward.
Study Koba in here, he says, tapping Koba’s head. Maybe help people one day.
Help Koba, he signs. Help Koba.
It’s going to be okay, the man says. Be like a game.
Amol brings him a button board. It’s not exactly like the one Mary gave him, but he likes it. He likes it so much that he hardly notices the injections, and the stuff on his back that keeps him from moving right. He wants to show Amol all of his tricks, because Amol seems to be becoming more and more disturbed. He pays less attention to Koba and more to the funny colors and patterns that appear on his rectangles.
He is agitated.
* * *
It is another day, and the men come to take Koba from his cage. They do not shoot him. He goes willingly on the little bed.
But they do not take him to where his button board is, to the room where he signs. Instead they take him to the place where pain lives.
Amol is there, though, so he isn’t as scared.
“We’re all done, Koba,” he says. “We can take all of this stuff off of you now.”
Koba good, he signs. Koba sign with Amol.
Amol watches him as he gets the shot. Koba goes to sleep.
* * *
Koba wakes in his cage, on the cold floor. He feels sick, as he always does when they make him sleep.
The weight is off of his back, but it hurts again—he can feel the now-familiar tightness of the strings they push through his skin to hold him together after they cut him up. The pain is worth it, though, to have the weight off. He looks forward to Amol’s next visit, so they can talk without the weight and the injections. He looks forward to using his button board again.
The lights cycle on and off once, but Amol does not come. Another cycle passes, and still no Amol. Koba loses count of the cycles. He signs to the people who feed him, telling them he wants Amol, but they ignore him as before.
Jacob
s comes one day. He squats down and looks hard at Koba.
Koba want to sign Amol, Koba tells him. Hurt Koba so Koba can talk, he pleads. Hurt Koba so Koba can talk. Hurt Koba so Koba can talk…
Jacobs does not sign. He looks angry.
“You stupid, ugly monkey,” he says. “If you had any idea what you and that idiot Amol have cost me… By God, I wish I could put you down myself. If I were still in charge, I would.”
He hits the cage with his hand, so hard that Koba jumps back. Jacobs keeps looking at him.
Then Koba notices something. Jacobs has something hanging around his neck. It has a rectangle on it. On the rectangle there are some letters. He remembers letters from the place with his mother. He thinks it means something, but he can’t think what.
Jacobs makes a noise in the back of his throat. Then he leaves.
* * *
More light, more dark, light-dark, light-dark blurring together, faster and faster and yet so slow.
Koba stops looking for Amol. He knows Jacobs made Amol go away. He knows Amol will not come back.
Koba begins to pull his hair out again. He begins to sign his fingers against the floor until they bleed. And over and over he sees the face of Jacobs in the blood on the concrete. And the rectangle, with the letters on it.
20
“All of them,” Clancy said.
He had heard her crying most of the night. Now she was in the aftershock, he knew—the terrible still place when the initial animal grief finally drains and leaves a numbness that borders on insensibility.
“Mom, Dad, Renee, Jack—how could it happen so fast? I saw them three weeks ago. They were fine.” She looked off into the distance. “Like San Francisco was… fine.”
“I am truly very sorry for your loss,” he said.
She looked at him, and he saw a spark of anger there.
“Do you really feel anything?” she asked.
He shrugged. “To be honest,” he said, “I don’t know. After a certain point, it’s better not to, you know?”
“God,” she said. “Why does it have to be you? Why do you have to be the only one I can talk to in this stinking place?”
The remark took him off-guard—not because it was surprising, but because he was thinking the same thing.
“What about this fellow you ‘hang out’ with? You have your phone now.”