“For the same reasons,” Zaius said, wearily almost, for he had argued the very point with Zira so many times, “that man could not live in harmony, even with his own kind. He abused his own intelligence and destroyed his own world. We apes have learned to live in innocence. Let no one, be he man or some other creature, attempt to corrupt that innocence.” When he saw the smirk on Zira’s face, he bridled. “Why? Is innocence so evil?”
“Ignorance is,” Zira said firmly.
“There is a time for truth,” Dr. Zaius said sternly.
“And the time is always now,” Zira reminded him Dr. Zaius stared at her.
“Bah!” he exploded, thumping his cane on the wooden floor; Cornelius shuddered, closing his eyes.
Zira shook her head. “Are you asking me to surrender my principles?”
Dr. Zaius frowned. But his eyes were kindly, glittering.
“I am asking you to be the guardians of the higher principles of science in my absence. I am asking for a truce with your personal convictions in an hour of public danger.”
“And you shall have it,” Cornelius interposed strongly, brooking no protest from Zira. “Or I—shall hit her again, Dr. Zaius.”
“Let’s have no violence, Cornelius,” Zaius muttered as he moved toward the door. “Now, I’m relying on you both.”
“And we’re relying on you, too,” Zira reminded him, getting the last shot in.
Dr. Zaius paused on the threshold of their house.
“If I should fail to return from the Unknown, the whole future of our civilization will be yours to preserve—or destroy. So think well before you act.”
“Goodbye, Doctor,” Zira said, warmly enough, “and good luck.”
From their wide window they watched him patter down the walk until his familiar figure was out of sight, cane and all. Cornelius heaved a sigh of gratitude and then went to the alcove to summon the girl and Brent out of hiding. Zira was contemplative, thinking over what Dr. Zaius had said. He had looked and sounded so tired…
Brent was white-faced and weak. Nova held on to him, close at his side. Zira stirred herself.
“Come on, let me finish this and get you out of here.”
“Yes,” Brent growled. “Get me out of here—please. I’ve seen the delicate, ‘humane’ way they treat humans around here. I don’t much care for it.” He took Nova’s hand and squeezed it.
“Have you a horse?” Zira asked.
“Up in the scrub,” Brent admitted.
“I’ll have to get you another set of clothes—the kind fit for humans like yourself. You’ll pass. And get rid of this.”
She pointed to his ID tags. She went to Nova and removed Taylor’s tags from her throat.
“And get rid of this too—” But Nova grabbed the tags back, belligerently almost. Zira shrugged.
“If you are caught by the gorillas,” Cornelius offered, “remember one thing.”
“What’s that?” Brent demanded.
“Never to speak.”
“What the hell would I have to say to a gorilla?”
“But you don’t understand,” Cornelius protested.
“Only apes can speak. If they catch you speaking, they will dissect you. And they will kill you. In that order.”
The irony of such a proposition did not escape Brent, tired and confused as he was. He grinned wearily.
Zira had returned with the human clothing which she passed on to Brent. He was not surprised to find it no more than rags; a pitiful loincloth and smocklike thing. But he took them all the same. He wasn’t so stupefied that he couldn’t recognize kindness when he found it. These two chimps were Okay Joes.
“Cornelius is right,” Zira agreed. “Be very careful and get out of those things you are wearing as soon as you can.”
Brent nodded, arms full, took Nova by the hand and led heir to the door of the house. There he stopped and turned.
“Thanks,” he said, simply. It was all he could think of to say. He had never had hospitality from an ape before.
“Thank us by finding Taylor,” Zira said softly, a light shining from deep within her gimlet eyes.
“If he’s alive,” Brent said.
There was no more to be said.
He left, taking Nova with him.
Leaving behind Zira and Cornelius to ponder again the remarkable peculiarity of humans who could speak.
The Lawgiver would have revolved on his stone base if word of that had ever come to him.
The figure of a Great Ape reading a book would not have understood—or believed—such a phenomenon.
He who was supposed to know all things.
6
NOVA
Brent and Nova did not get very far.
As soon as he had changed from his astronaut’s white into the ragged remnants of what passed for human clothing, both he and the girl struck out through the scrub in the direction of the Forbidden Zone. The brush was quiet, almost tropical, with nothing but the occasional twitter of winged creatures indicating any form of activity. The sun still held the heavens, raining down an unremitting liquid sunshine. The glare was almost unbearably bright. Brent had to keep his eyes continually slitted. Nova seemed not to mind. Together, very cautiously, she and Brent worked a route through the trees and bushes. Once they had retrieved the horse, Brent hurriedly mounted up, swinging Nova on behind him.
They moved as fast as the terrain would allow.
Brent kept the horse at a careful trot, eyes peeled for trouble. The girl clung to him, her lithe body almost a part of his own. Any other time, any other place, it would have been an extraordinarily pleasant sensation, but not now. Brent’s mind was far too filled with the horror of Ape City to heed it.
His consciousness, his mentality, was too busy fighting off an assault of total unreality. The crash landing, the Time jump, Skipper’s death, the remarkable news about Taylor—all of it had made his sanity teeter precariously toward complete incoherence. His brain was filled with pictures and images of apes talking, apes acting like doctors, apes rolling up and reading maps…
But he pushed the horse on, the soldier in him still on duty. The habits of a lifetime are hard to break.
When the single rifle shot cracked out and the horse beneath him suddenly reeled in a headlong plunge to the earth, he responded almost like to automaton. The air blazed with more gunfire and then he was vaguely aware of himself and the girl, up and running; breaking like startled rabbits for the nearest cover. He heard Nova cry out in fear. His mind was perforated with frenzy. He ran madly, pulling the girl, trying to see from which point the danger came. And then time and place overwhelmed him. And doom.
Gorillas were charging them from all points of the compass. Armed gorillas, brandishing truncheons, pointing rifles. Leather-jacketed troops of some insane sort of militia. They bounded in closer and Brent whirled to fight. His eyes bulged in terror. He could now smell the zoolike aura of their bodies, could almost see the fierce intelligence in their beady black eyes. Nova screamed again. Brent struck out wildly, burying his fist on a simian snout. But they closed in on him and the girl. A swarm of brute force. Helmeted, uniformed, and oddly silent and efficient. Brent went down under a weight of bodies. Coarse, leathery hands raked him. Gorilla claws plucked at his flesh. He tried to lash out, kick away, but he was borne to the soft earth, his nostrils filled with the singular stink of defeat. His mind clouded over. They were spread-eagling him on the ground, as helpless as any chicken with a wolf pack. A rough leather collar with a long, trailing leash was slung around his neck. Nova was being similarly manhandled. Gorilla-handled? Brent strove to laugh at the bitter irony of the whole situation. But he couldn’t. His throat was like ashes. The gorilla smell and the gorilla might boxed in his senses like an awesome reversal of all the norms in any man’s universe.
Low growls and snorts emanated from his captors. But no words. Which somehow only made it worse.
The militia of gorillas led Brent and Nova away, dragging them by the long l
eashes off through the scrub toward—what?
Brent did not even want to speculate.
All he could remember and think of until it burned like a hot poker in his skull was Cornelius’ warning: Never speak. If they catch you speaking, they will dissect you. And then they will kill you. In that order.
There was no danger of Nova speaking.
Brent only fully realized the extent of his predicament when he and Nova were literally hurled through the gates of a human pen and the barred doors swung shut. It took only one look to understand to what incredible degree Man had fallen and the Ape had risen.
For here, locked up in wooden cages, were dozens of humans. Emaciated to the point of starvation, filthy, festered with sores, some of them howling like wild dogs, some of them dying, some of them possibly already dead. All in all, a thoroughly hopeless and helpless amalgam of savagery, stupidity and total ignorance of man’s basic superiority to his ape jailers.
Nova shrank against Brent in one corner of the horrible cage, trembling. Brent tried to hang on to his nerve. It wasn’t easy.
The awful stench of the place, the terrible sight of the gorilla guards on duty beyond the barred walls, was enough to drive a sane man right out of his mind. What was left of it.
But Brent kept his lips closed, trying not to cry out, in the name of God and science, for help.
He remembered what Cornelius had told him.
He would have to wait.
* * *
The horrors mounted.
No more than an hour later, two horse-drawn cage wagons, each driven by a gorilla teamster, clattered up outside their filthy pen. Brent felt a ray of hope. For standing outside their cage was Cornelius! Cornelius in his long coat and trousers, busy with pad and pencil. With him was an armed gorilla guard. And unless he was hearing things, Cornelius was in the process of selecting humans for research! The regular guards were manhandling at least six of the wretched human tide into one of the carts, acting obviously on Cornelius’ instructions. There was a great howling and resistance put up by the humans, but effective slashes of rubber truncheons and leather whips were making the fight pitifully inadequate. Cornelius displayed no emotion at this. Brent grit his teeth, hanging onto Nova. There was so much he couldn’t understand.
A sergeant rode up, his three stripes glowing in the glare of sunlight. The gorilla face was a mockery beneath billed cap. The sergeant barked at the guard with Cornelius: “Twenty required on Number Two Range for C Company target practice. Jump to it!”
Now more humans were thrust into the two cage-carts. Brent and Nova were manhandled out of the pen, pushed toward the first waiting cart. But suddenly Cornelius seemed to spot them and came forward, holding up a delaying paw. The guards holding Brent and the girl waited for his instructions.
“Stop a minute,” Cornelius said coolly.
He approached Brent, his face without expression, and appraised the face before him. He jabbed his fingers into Brent’s jawbone, explored his cranium. Brent strove to maintain a calm he didn’t feel. Then Cornelius lifted Nova’s eyelid, all the while murmuring some impressive medical gibberish. As if musing half aloud to himself.
“Brachycocephalic—and prognathous… incipient glaucoma… hmmm.” He raised his voice, for the guards’ benefit. “We could do with these two.” He signaled for Brent and Nova to be put aside for further examination and study.
The mounted sergeant spurred closer, his tone surly and insolent. And impatient. His right hand bore a menacing truncheon.
“Required for human target practice on Number Two Range,” he repeated. “Captain Odo’s orders.”
Cornelius stared up at him icily.
“Required for cranial research by order of Dr. Zaius, Minister of Science.” With that, he turned to the guards and indicated the second wagon. “Load them up.”
The sergeant snarled, but whipped his horse around angrily and trotted off. Brent and Nova now found themselves hustled into the second cage-cart. The door clanged shut behind them. Up front, the gorilla driver cracked his whip. The wagon rolled forward. Brent stared through the bars of the cage at Cornelius. But Cornelius had returned to his study and examination of the rest of the filthy pack remaining in the big human pen. Business as usual! Once more, Brent could only muffle his astonishment and anger. He was perplexed.
Nor did the wagon journey through the streets of Ape City lessen his aggravation. Through the bars, with the silent Nova ever just behind him, he witnessed even more of the spectacle of a world gone topsy-turvy. A universe insane. As they made for the outskirts of the complex, he could see many signs of some kind of military preparations: apes in close-order drill, apes taking courses in the use of the bayonet, apes stabbing dummies made up to resemble humans, apes going through the paces of rifle instruction. Ape City—if all the evidence was to be trusted—seemed to be making ready for some invasion or sortie. Was the city under siege? Had the humans somehow gotten back to their former level and threatened the apes with total extinction? It was too much to hope for.
Brent sank wearily to the floor of the cart. His shoulder hurt again, his eyes were like two blazing balls of fried meat, his mind was coming apart. Nova huddled against him, her eyes wide open and oddly tranquil, despite their plight. Perhaps it was an old story to her, the only thing she had ever known—being pushed around by gorillas. For Brent, it would never be easy to take.
Still, what was there he could do about it?
Now, at least.
Yet there was something hopeful, something to think about, as his eyes watched the gorillas mounting artillery field pieces and grooming horses for combat. The view did not change one iota on all the long, harrowing trip toward the outskirts of Ape City.
Something was up.
* * *
At the Research Complex, Dr. Zaius’ own special kingdom, there was also much activity, if of a different kind. Zaius himself had invited General Ursus down to see what was going on. The Gorilla, massive and impressive as always in his uniform and medals, was walking around the compound inspecting the experimental cages and devices which formed the nucleus of Zaius’ work. Zira was also on the scene. With a chimpanzee assistant at her elbow, she was accepting the newest delivery of cage-wagon humans sent from the city proper by her husband Cornelius. Zaius and Ursus, strolling the compound now for a chat, had just come into view when the gorilla driver delivered his wagonload of specimens which included Brent and Nova. The human cargo was as wretched as ever.
Zira, withholding her shock, approached Brent and Nova very casually. She had not expected to see them again so soon.
Brent held his ground. There was nothing else he could do.
Zira stared up at him.
“Male. Type E cranium. Very unusual!” The chimpanzee at her elbow rapidly made some notes on her pad.
Zira reached up, tweaked Brent’s ear and gave him a deliberately deadpan wink that only he could see.
“Weak occipital development. Substandard lobes—” She turned her attention to Nova who was staring at her dumbly. “Female. Type—” She broke off, for now she could see Dr. Zaius and General Ursus walking toward her. The sight disturbed her. Zaius was saying, “…so be it. You know that my scruples were dictated by caution—not by cowardice. When the day comes, I shall ride with you.” Ursus was grunting a reply, but his piggish eyes were roving over Brent and Nova with undue interest. Zira quickened her routine survey, anxious to be gone. The guards were impatient too.
“It’s been a long time since we’ve been able to study specimens of such extraordinary clinical interest,” Zira said too loudly. “Take them inside…”
“You can’t have them,” General Ursus suddenly spoke up behind her. Zira whirled.
General Ursus’ ugly face was wreathed in what passed for a smile. A horsewhip was coiled in his huge right paw.
“They’ve been marked,” he explained quietly, “for target practice.” As he said this, he flicked the whip and it cut cruelly across Nova’s li
the body. Brent flinched but held his silence. General Ursus had already turned away, leading Dr. Zaius off with him. Zira raged inwardly. The gorilla driver, now that his leader had spoken, needed no second urging; he was already pushing Brent and the girl toward his cage-wagon. The vehicle was empty now, its desperate occupants removed for further research. The door at the rear hung open. Zira helped the driver to force Brent and Nova into the van. Brent moved like a dead man. This last had been too much for him. All the fight had gone out of him. He was dead-tired and dead-hopeless. As the driver went about his paces, Zira locked the cage door. Brent sat down on the floor of the wagon, his head in his hands. Nova began to weep. Softly and terribly. Brent was suddenly galvanized. He jumped to his feet, shaking the bars of the cage, his face furious. The cords in his neck stood out with the effort. Nova, with uncomprehending obedience, stopped crying and followed suit. Together they made a pitiful sight. Humans rattling the bars of their cage.
Brent wildly pointed to the lock of the cage door.
Zira nodded as the driver returned to the front seat of his wagon. Her cute chimpanzee face was almost kindly.
“These poor animals,” she said so that the driver could hear her. “They think blind force is the answer to everything.”
The driver grunted, and reached for his whip.
“Wait—I’ll double-lock the door,” Zira said.
Under cover of the clatter of the wagon rolling once more into motion, Zira took out her key and unlocked the door of the cage, but without opening it. Brent stared at her.
“Good luck,” she whispered.
He kept on staring at her, dumbly, long after the driver’s whip had spurred the horses into a steady trot, long after her simian figure in its outlandish skirt and jacket was a solitary speck in the dust of the roadway. The motionless figure of Zira was a sight that Brent would always remember. For whatever was left of his life.
He could not account for the lump of something in his throat, nor for the fact that his eyes had filled with tears.
Zira’s milk of kindness had engulfed him.
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