The wagon rumbled along at a good clip, heading back to the city, and Brent waited for the proper time to make his move. He had to pick a convenient moment. The terrain was still alive with ape preparations for war. They passed a cavalry of gorillas maneuvering in an intricate pattern that brooked no good for any foe ever caught by it. So Brent waited, biding his time, comforting Nova, who in her eternal speechlessness was never more than a senseless receptacle for all the ill that came her way. Brent’s heart had gone out to her almost from the beginning. Her appeal was enormous. Apart from her physical attributes, she was like some lost and forlorn child you wanted to hold in your arms to make her stop crying, stop being afraid. God knew he was terrified himself. Scared virtually spitless, to put it baldly, truthfully.
But a man had to fight to survive.
Something the apes should always have realized.
Their own loss if they hadn’t.
So Brent waited until the proper moment should come.
It did.
The driver had led the wagon through a stretch of deserted terrain, asprinkle with trees and shrubs, and it was here that Brent found his spot for an escape plan.
With Nova silently waiting, he opened the cage door, swung out over the roadway and clambered atop the wagon’s roof. The gorilla head of the driver, hunched over his reins, was visible just above the forward lip of the cage. Brent edged forward on his hands and knees, mindful of the jarring passage of the wagon along the bumpy roadway. His hands tightened about the long leather leash trailing from his dog collar. His eyes were not quite sane as he reached the driver. Then he jumped. Like a savage who knows that it is the victim’s death or his own. The gorilla head jerked violently. Great paws came up, fighting the hands from behind that were garroting with the leather leash. Brent was remorseless. He put all his mad weight into his arms and twisted savagely until the gorilla slumped lifelessly against his body. Brent stepped down and kicked the driver’s inert form out of the seat. When the body hit the roadway, disappearing in the wagon dust, Brent could have screamed in exaltation. Even killing felt fine and good in this godawful place!
Like getting some of your own back.
With the fever singing in his veins, he drew the horses to a halt. There was no time to lose. They couldn’t run around this infernal country in an open wagon. Not one of their wagons, at any rate.
Brent cut the two horses loose with a knife he found on a rack in the driver’s seat. Then he went back to see about Nova, but she had already jumped out of the cage to join him. Her eyes were excited but still frightened. He patted her hand, motioned to the horses, keeping a wary eye on their surroundings for any signs of the gorilla cavalry. They weren’t out of the woods yet. It was far too early to send up any skyrockets or do victory jigs.
This land still belonged to the Almighty Ape.
Quickly they mounted the horses and galloped away. It might have been Brent’s imagination but he would have sworn he could hear a great hullaballoo starting up behind them. As if their escape on horseback had been spotted, as if it was already known that two humans had outwitted their gorilla captor. Brent didn’t dare turn around and look. He had had enough of horror and fear in one day to last him a lifetime. Two lifetimes, in or out of the Hasslein Curve in the bend of Time. Now he only wanted out—the sooner the better.
He kept galloping his horse until the terrain became extremely rocky, stacked with gigantic boulders that towered as tall as buildings. Nova remained as close behind him as possible. He was ever conscious of her long-haired figure just out of reach. Whatever she was, the girl was a skillful rider, having no difficulty at all keeping up with him. Brent was grateful for that, too. He needed somebody to hold his own hand, never mind his being the only shoulder to lean on.
The high rocks loomed before them.
The sun was going down, hiding behind a shelf of ledge that seemed to fill the world. Blood-red rays tinged the landscape.
Brent rode on.
So did the girl.
Turning and twisting their mounts, they sought to find a passage between the mighty rock upheaval spread before them. A forest of stone.
They were blocked now by what must have been a recent landslide of earth and rock. The horses shied, whinnying, fighting for a level flooring for their hooves. Dismayed, Brent ordered the girl to dismount, for they could navigate now only on foot. That was obvious. No horse could have found a path through this obstacle of rock and stone and earth. There was no definable trail.
Brent and Nova found an opening between the boulders and the rocky obstacles. Stumbling and staggering, the horses behind them, they found their thorny path leading them to a shallow stream of running water. Around them on all sides the great rocks sprung like monolithic giants in a wilderness of stone.
Not too far behind them, peering from the crest of the high rock shelf, a ring of silhouetted apes watched the man and the woman work their way along the stream between the boulders.
The gorilla militia looked down, their helmeted heads and hunched shoulders menacing and unreal in the half light now darkening the planet of the apes. Their rifles and bayonets gleamed.
Brent and Nova had reached the Forbidden Zone.
A part of it, at least, where no gorilla dared tread.
Or could.
Without risking the disasters of the Unknown.
7
BRENT AND NOVA
They had emerged from the maze of rocks.
To Brent it was like walking into two thousand years of time. He had to blink against the unreality of what he now saw. What Nova must be seeing, though the girl couldn’t possibly have understood any of it. For Brent it was the single act of entering a long tunnel. He strained his eyes to see, to comprehend. But he couldn’t. He had stepped into a tableau from which there was no withdrawing. He had stepped into Yesterday—and what was worse, he had also stepped into Tomorrow. The Tomorrow he had never known.
He and Nova were in an underground subway station.
There was no mistake.
Slivers of gray daylight filtered feebly through dark upper gratings, dimly illuminating the long, corroded tracks stretching ahead between damp, glistening platforms. The stone and wood of the platforms were cracked and fissured with age.
Brent was too stunned to speak. Nova trailed along behind the barrier of his body. Brent could only stare all about him, trying to adjust to the shock of some indubitable truth struggling to make itself known to his intelligence.
He began to walk, like a somnambulist, conscious only of a drip, drip, dripping sound somewhere. Like water falling eternally on stone. The walls above the platforms, ancient, rotting, now revealed a pitiful sign of some kind. Brent ran his fingers along the wet, scummy wall, walking hypnotically, following the steady rhythm of drip, drip, drip. Nova followed him. Brent paused. The texture of the wall had subtly changed. Brent stared up the wall, at the sign. It mocked his sanity and his reason:
QUEENSBOROUGH PLAZA
The drip, drip, drip sounded very near now. Brent craned his neck higher.
A glittering stalactite, dangling from the vaulted roof of the subway cavern, looked as sharp as any sword. Brent shuddered, his eyes falling away. Until he saw another rust-eaten sign: NEW YORK IS A SUMMER FESTIVAL. And further on, another: KEEP YOUR SUBWAY CLEAN. Until, at floor level, he saw row upon row of menacing, cold stalagmites. Brent stared from the signs to the stalagmites, his courage dissolving. This wasn’t a subway, it was a cave—a hall of a mountain king where you’d expect to find trolls and witches and warlocks—! His senses reeled.
“God Almighty!” his voice crackled hollowly in the empty, dead tunnel. “This was my home! I lived and worked here once! What happened? Did we finally do it? Did we finally really do it?”
His voice rang off the barren lifeless walls. There was no answer for him. Just as there hadn’t been for Taylor.
“What does a man do when he comes home—and there is no home?” He shook his head in disbelief as
his own question echoed foolishly in his own ears. Then quietly, trying to absorb this incredible unreality, he turned to Nova, who could only stare back at him in confusion, not knowing what he was thinking or feeling.
“It’s a damn nightmare!” Brent shouted at her, letting go. “A damn nightmare—a damn nightmare!”
Nova, seeing his misery, timidly touched his face.
The long subterranean labyrinth echoed and re-echoed with his cries of frustration.
* * *
The temple was small and austere. It was exactly in the center of Ape City. There was no altar. Against a plain backdrop of stone stood the revered statue of the Lawgiver. The Great Ape was still holding his book for all Time itself. Below the idol stood an orangutan minister, clad in scarlet. Before him, listening to his invocation, knelt Dr. Zaius, General Ursus and the balance of the ape hierarchy. Like man who had come after them, the apes appealed sometimes to a Higher Divinity for success in projects about to be undertaken. Superstition, Religion and Faith was the theological end for all living creatures. Or so it would seem.
“O God,” the minister intoned unctuously, “we pray you, bless our Great Army and its Supreme Commander on the eve of a Holy War undertaken for Your sake…”
Zaius’ face was implacable. Ursus’ was smugly superior.
“…and grant,” the minister droned on, “in the name of Your Prophet, our great Lawgiver—” here he genuflected before the statue, his scarlet robes flashing, “that we, Your chosen servants, created and born in Your divine image, may aspire the more perfectly to that spiritual godliness and bodily beauty which You, in Your infinite mercy, have thought fit to deny to our brutal enemies.” The impressive words soared.
His bow deepened, his arms described a wide parabola of intense exhortation. The kneeling hierarchy amened in low voices.
“So be it,” General Ursus murmured mockingly, loud enough for Dr. Zaius to hear.
The statue of the Lawgiver smiled down on everybody.
* * *
Brent lay on the nightmarish subway platform, Nova curled up on a broken bench nearby like some immense kitten at sleep. Brent was waking up, after having fallen into a pitifully disturbed slumber alive with ghosts, demons and weird apparitions of his fancy. Blinking his eyes open, he almost groaned aloud at the eerie spectacle that was still before him, surrounding his reason; the mad vision of which he was still an integral part.
The subway station, incrusted with its silent armies of stalactites and stalagmites, continued its drip, drip, drip. A haunting, maddening refrain. Wearily, Brent stood up and stretched his stiff, aching limbs. Dazed, he staggered to the sleek wet wall and cupped his hands to catch some of the falling water which ran down steadily from the enormous stalactite overhead. He drank. The water was fresh and cold. It felt good against his parched, sun-baked mouth. He let it dribble down his chin.
He watched the sleeping Nova, his mind tumbling again with imponderables, impossibilities and wild suppositions. He really didn’t know what to think. It was all so—so—incredible.
“Are you,” he asked the sleeping girl, “what we were before we learned to talk and made fools of ourselves? Did any good ever come of talking—round all those tables? Did apes make war when they were still dumb? Did men?”
Defeatedly, with of course no answer from the girl, he went over to a rocky vent in the station wall, through which some daylight feebly filtered, to look at the outside world from which he and Nova had escaped. He craned his neck to peer through.
He caught his breath, almost jumping back in terror.
About ten yards beyond the vent, he could see a veritable squad of gorilla guards, helmeted, armed, scouring the rocky maze, still obviously searching for him and the girl. He could make out the muttered concert of their ape voices. They didn’t sound very happy about something…
“I guess we lost them,” one of the fiercest-looking gorillas was growling to the others. “The sergeant says, keep looking. We’ve been here all night. The sergeant says we’d better not come back unless we’ve found them. Keep looking!”
Brent retreated from the vent, not wanting to see or hear any more. It was still unnerving seeing and hearing animals act like men. The same inflections, the same gestures…
He returned to Nova, bent over her, and gently roused her from sleep. She stirred fitfully, her long, curved body tensing.
“Nova, wake up!” he begged.
Instantly she opened her eyes and swung erect. He could see the rapid rise and fall of her semi-bared breasts within the ragged confines of her burlap-like garments. Her eyes searched his face. He forced a smile.
“We’ve got to keep moving,” he suggested. She nodded, her lips moistening nervously. He took her hand and swung her to her feet. He held onto her hand as he led her carefully down the long, dim, glistening subway platform with its mocking signs and depressing interior that spoke so eloquently of what had happened here many centuries before.
Suddenly he was aware of a faint humming sound.
Hummmmmmmmmmnmmmmm…
He reacted. The girl did too.
He hadn’t been quite sure he hadn’t been hearing things but the awareness on Nova’s face was unmistakable.
“That hum. You hear it too!” He exulted, not knowing why. “We’re going to follow it…”
They did.
All along the platform, using the labyrinth of decayed track and seemingly endless tunnel as a guide. The hum grew gradually louder, with variations of volume and power so subtle that its tone didn’t increase abruptly. It merely increased, amplified as it were, to become a steady focus of attention. Excited, Brent clung to the girl, bringing her along behind him. The rhythmic hum and purr of the sound drew him on like a magnet. The tunnel seemed to lengthen, widen, and soon there was no more sign of the platform, the stalactites and stalagmites. None of the rotting, eroded fissures and cracks. The mouth of the cave ahead had rounded out, smoothened. Brent felt as if the way now led upward, that they would eventually surface somewhere in broad daylight in the outer world. But it was only illusion. The underground humming throbbed eerily, built symphonically, and now there was even a faint suggestion of a pleasant wind at their backs, wafting them onward, as if they were two vagrant feathers. It was totally unreal. With his ears filled with the vibrant hum of the unidentifiable noise, with all his senses riveted to an unknown force, Brent walked steadily forward, conscious only of movement and sound.
A long, slightly uphill passage loomed ahead of them.
Glimmering there, somewhere, was a high sliver of very dim light. Indirect light. The hum and the wind had both increased in velocity. They seemed to be hurled forward. Upward. The sliver of light was widening and even as they plummeted toward it, Brent could make out a rock-lined egress of some kind. The exit was just broad enough to accommodate both of them. Brent’s hair floated like a thatch on his head. Nova’s long tresses blew like pennants in the breeze. The hum had increased to dynamo intensity. It seemed to fill what was left of this world. The world of the desolate subway station had disappeared entirely.
Before them lay a high-vaulted, natural rock tunnel. With sleek, scaled, impossibly sheer sides. The light source proved to be another vent, set in the rock barrier across the uphill road’s dead end ten feet above the ground. Into it seemed to blow—or was it sucked, Brent thought wildly—the wind. From this issued the light. Too white to be the sky’s and yet…
“Whoever—or whatever—is guiding us to this place—” Brent muttered to the girl, “they breathe air, anyway.”
They drifted closer to the vent. Two black silhouettes starkly outlined against the bright, white light. The hum, like ten dynamos now, pulsated deafeningly.
Brent and Nova swept closer to the opening, to the weird vent with the weirder light.
He could see it was an octagonal frame, wrought in a white metal of some kind. He stared up at it speculatively, watching the wind rush through the opening. Grimly he got hold of himself. He began t
o climb toward the vent, putting his hand on the lowest bar of the metallic octagon to do so. Then a frightening thing happened. The electrical hum stopped, as quickly as if he had pushed a contact button. The sudden silence was terrifying.
Brent and the girl stood stock-still, stunned by the new quiet, the strange calm. Nova began to retreat, panicking.
“No,” Brent caught her. “It’s too late.” He drew her back again. “We’ve got to go on.”
But she pulled her hand free of his, shocked by the unknown. Rendered horrified by things she couldn’t understand. Brent tried to appeal to her, ignoring that she couldn’t follow his words.
“There’s a high intelligence at work in this place. Good or bad. That sound we heard is either a warning, or some kind of directional device. I don’t know which. But it doesn’t matter. The truth is—they know we’re here!”
She didn’t understand a word of it, of course, but his tone was so positive and reassuring that she almost smiled. But she continued to retreat, backing away slowly.
“All right,” Brent said. “I’ll go up first.”
And Brent continued his climb, while Nova watched anxiously. He hauled himself high enough up to grip the octagonal frame. He swung himself in, lost from view for a full second. Nova whimpered aloud. But his head reappeared, silhouetted against the vent. He beckoned. “Don’t be afraid. It’s empty. Come on.”
She reached up to him, climbing. He caught her hand and lifted her. He was very strong. Within seconds, he had swept her up from the strange world of the white tunnel, into the vent, and then they were both suddenly standing in yet another maze of unreality. On the white floor of a white-walled, down-sloping tunnel, also octagonal in contour. The released air was funneling out of this down toward another white dot of far-off illumination. Another light of some kind. Brent did not hesitate. Pulling Nova, he led her toward the next outlet. The last exit to…
Where?
They emerged from the tunnel.
The glaring world of a new daylight invaded their aching eyes.
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