by John Jakes
Wild gibbers and grunts keened up into shrill squeals as the crate began to sway. Caged apes!
Caesar’s instincts warned him that he had already waited too long—the massive cage would just barely fit into the bed of the van. If he didn’t leave instantly, he could be crushed to death…
As the black rectangle filled his vision, he hurled himself desperately to one side, averting his head and flattening his hands against the cold metal of the side panel.
The cage slashed past him with only inches to spare. It struck the van bed with a whang and a thump.
Caesar opened his eyes to see wooden bars close to his face. The cries of the animals cramped into the cage’s totally inadequate space filled the night with a maniacal chorus. The claw-lift released, began to rise as the chain reversed. Outside the van a man exclaimed, “Don’t drop so fast next time! You think we can afford to respring these trucks after every delivery?”
There were footsteps on the pier. The cab door opened and shut again with a metallic sound. All these were peripheral sounds counterpointing the wild squalls and barks of the helpless apes in the cage.
Caesar’s breathing was returning to normal after the close escape. With an effort, he focused his attention on the howling cargo inside the bars. Naked orangutans were stumbling and bumping against one another, struggling up again, salivating and grimacing, still disoriented by the cage’s wild seesaw descent. The arms of the terrified apes flailed wildly so that, without intended malice, they hit one another—and began to snarl in fury. One ape who had fallen clutched and clawed at another in an effort to regain its feet. Abruptly, the confusion in the cage turned to blows and cruel biting.
Horrified by the prospect of impending bloodshed, Caesar was not aware that someone had shut the side-hinged tailgate of the van until he heard it clang and lock.
“You better roll,” a man yelled from behind the truck. “Sounds like they’re ready to rip each other apart.”
As if in answer, the van’s power plant kicked over. With a low hum, the vehicle moved forward. The sudden lurch disoriented the orangutans again, sent them toppling over one another. The biting and cuffing grew worse.
Caesar watched with mingled pity and disgust, but his mere presence was enough to stop the fighting. One of the young apes floundering on the cage floor caught sight of Caesar. Snuffling loudly, he let go of the foot of the orangutan he had been about to attack, and his savage cries changed to shorter, less strident grunts.
The van took a curve. The noises of the first ape drew the attention of a few others, then of all the tightly packed prisoners. One by one they struggled to the side of the cage nearest Caesar. Suspiciously, an immense orangutan reached out between two bars. Caesar remained absolutely still.
The orangutan plucked Caesar’s checked shirt, inadvertently opening a long rip. Still Caesar displayed no sign of displeasure, or even a reaction. Other ape hands groped to touch and examine his breeches. Obviously these were wild apes not yet subjected to that conditioning of which Caesar had heard. They behaved in a primitive way, totally unlike the servant apes he’d glimpsed in the city. That gave Caesar a feeling of mastery, a sense of confidence, as he remembered another of Armando’s cautions. He began to unbutton his checked shirt.
The apes watched with primal curiosity as the van swayed along. Caesar glimpsed buildings flashing past above the open truck bed as he bundled his shirt and breeches in one hand, threw them high and away, over the side. He listened for human outcries, heard none. He reached for the topmost of three heavy bolts securing the door on the side of the cage. One by one he released the bolts. Then he drew the door open just enough to slip through.
When the apes realized his intent, they crowded to the opposite side of the cage. Caesar had all the room he needed to slip his hand around and refasten the bolts.
His fear was all but gone now. The round eyes and hunched shoulders of the apes cringing in front of him told him that they recognized, albeit in a primitive, nonvocal way, that Caesar was different. They were the ones who were afraid.
All at once the wheels bounced over a bump, throwing the apes off balance. They squealed as they floundered. Then they goggled at the one among them still upright: Caesar, who had merely reached out to grasp a bar for support.
Despite these pathetic creatures being his brothers, Caesar couldn’t help the flash of contempt that crossed his face. The apes, cowering grotesquely on the reeking, offal-littered straw of the cage, showed that they knew a superior being had come into their midst.
Caesar’s presence calmed—or cowed—the other apes in the cage. There were no further disturbances for the remainder of the trip.
He speculated about the van’s destination. Whatever it might be, he was probably better off than he would have been roaming the hostile, unfamiliar city. He worried about Señor Armando, though. Surely his failure to return was due strictly to some unexpected entanglement with the authorities. Surely no harm had come to him… No, at this moment he was probably free again, waiting for the service tunnels to clear. With all the shocks and horrors of the past twenty-four hours, any other possibility was too grim for Caesar to contemplate.
His excellent time sense told him the journey lasted about half an hour. Evidently they were driving into the thinly populated green spaces surrounding the metro complex. He recalled Armando telling him that once, such areas had sprawled with ugly row houses and huge shopping malls. But with the rise of powerful centralized government, strictly enforced law and order had been restored to the cities, and a rebuilding process had begun in the decayed central cores.
Gradually, a reverse migration took place. Mile after mile of emptied suburban slums were leveled, and returned to parklands and agriculture. City dwellers now called such exurban areas “the provinces.”
Caesar’s keen nose caught the scent of greenery and sweet earth. The sight of the crystal stars reminded him of more pleasant times in the circus—
But this brief sense of security disappeared the instant the van reached its destination.
Oval lamps whipped past overhead. The glares and flashes started the other apes gibbering and snorting again.
Then the van drove down an incline. Caesar would have tumbled against the others if he hadn’t gripped the bars tightly.
Abruptly the van braked, went into reverse, stopped again. Over the top of the side panel Caesar could see only a giant concrete pylon, half in shadow, and the faint glow of distant lights. Then he heard men’s voices, and a motor’s low purr.
The rear gate of the van, which he couldn’t see, opened with a clang. The motor revved, the cage jerked upward slightly, then began to travel horizontally.
As it cleared the back of the van, riding the prongs of a forklift, Caesar saw men in white smocks peering up at the new arrivals. He managed to get a reasonable picture of his new surroundings. The van had arrived in a vast truck bay underneath what appeared to be a large building. Each corner of the concrete expanse overhead was supported by one of those giant pylons rising from shrub plantings at ground level, about eight feet up from the floor of the bay.
The forklift rolled past the front of the van. As the driver leaned out of the cab to hand a delivery ticket to one of the white-smocked men, a female voice blared over a loudspeaker. “Shipment-five-oh-seven I-for-Indonesia ex Borneo now arriving at number two gate.”
The voice and the acceleration of the lift truck started the orangutans gibbering and salivating again. Caesar made a few such noises himself, deeming it protective action. By pressing close to the bars, he was able to see the loading dock toward which the forklift was rolling. The white-smocked men below were following the vehicle. Caesar noted with alarm that the men carried short whips, leashes, and those metallic prodding devices he’d observed in the city. To his left, looking out onto the dock, he saw communications operators behind a large window set into a wall. Above the window a glowing sign read: Ape Management Facility 10—Reception.
In that l
arge room behind the window, lights winked on banks of equipment, messengers arrived and departed, and three women bent over microphones, monitoring the arrivals outside. Caesar heard another amplified voice: “Shipment five-oh-nine A-for-Africa ex-French Cameroons now arriving at number four gate.”
The forklift bumped the edge of the dock, lowered the cage, began to withdraw its supporting prongs. Wild barkings and snarlings started on the right, further along the dock. There, other handlers were ramming prods into another noisy cage that had been similarly deposited.
“All right,” someone said outside Caesar’s cage. “Open it.”
The bolts snicked. Handlers crowded around, faces tense. Caesar blinked at the men, feigned fearful docility. He was startled to hear one of the handlers exclaim, “For God’s sake! I didn’t know we were getting a chimp in this load.”
The speaker reached into the cage, seized Caesar’s arm, jerked him outside. He was shoved across the concrete dock and in through a steel door that rolled swiftly aside. The handler followed, metal prod held waist high. Behind him, Caesar heard the cracking of whips, interspersed with an occasional yelp from the apes being hauled out of the cage one by one.
Caesar stopped just inside the entrance of a large, bare chamber. Its left wall was glass, looking into the communications center he’d seen from outside. As his handler shoved him again, the loudspeaker boomed: “After fingerprinting, shipment five-oh-seven I-for-Indonesia ex Borneo will proceed to Conditioning Cages nine-oh-one and nine-oh-two.”
“We’ll have to use one of the chimp cages too,” said Caesar’s handler to a uniformed official waiting at a table beside a metal gate. “Got a ringer in this load. Who’s on duty from the chimp section?”
“Morris, I think,” said the official. He pressed one of several colored buttons on the table. Caesar noticed two state security policemen standing beyond the gate, surveying the new arrivals. From the adjoining communications center, another operator announced: “Immigration personnel are reminded that, until further notice, State Security has requested one, repeat one, additional copy of all chimpanzee fingerprints for their files.”
The uniformed official looked sour. He grabbed Caesar’s hand, pressed it to an ink pad, then forced the hand down on a square of white card stock. He repeated the operation, passing the second card over the barrier to one of the policemen. The policeman slipped the card into a black briefcase.
Then the official touched another button. The gate opened inward, just as a hefty young man with brown eyes and an immense shock of curly hair appeared from the mouth of a corridor. He carried a prod tucked under his arm.
“Yours, Morris,” said the fingerprint official, shoving Caesar forward through the open gate. The ape’s resentment flared again. But he controlled his temper, still slumped over in excellent imitation of a wild chimpanzee.
Morris, the handler, extended his right hand tentatively. After appropriate hesitation, Caesar reached up to grasp the fingers. Morris smiled.
“He looks like a gentle one,” Morris said, leading Caesar toward the corridor.
“Bastard,” came the good-natured complaint from behind. “You’ve got the easy duty with the chimps— dammit, no!”
Caesar turned briefly to see the orangutans lined up in a ragged queue on the far side of the gate. One was being prodded and whipped for having picked up the ink pad. Caesar was glad to enter the corridor and leave the unpleasant sight behind.
The lighted corridor curved, revealing a long row of steel-barred cages, empty. Morris pressed a control panel in the wall next to the cage identified as Chimpanzees 903.
The electrically controlled door rolled aside. Morris pushed Caesar forward. As soon as he was inside, the barred door shut.
Morris pulled a banana out of his pocket, passed it between the bars.
“Enjoy it while you can, my friend. I’ll be back to see you in the morning—when the fun starts.” His lips quirked. “Damned if you don’t look like you understand me.” He turned, vanishing along the corridor.
Shortly other handlers appeared, each with one or two orangutans in tow. Seated in the dark at the back of his cell, Caesar watched the other members of his shipment being driven into the cages for their species. The ink-smeared orangutan required two handlers, one applying a whip, the other a prod, before he would enter his assigned cage. Blood glistened on the ape’s hairy back.
Finally, the last of the shipment was in place, the cages locked. Caesar remained alone in the chimpanzee cell, suddenly aware that he was exceedingly hungry. He peeled the banana and munched it without enjoyment. He didn’t care for the reference to “fun” made by the handler Morris.
When he tried to sleep, he found he couldn’t. A simmering mixture of anger, worry over Señor Armando’s welfare, and pity for the orangutans in the adjoining cages kept him on edge. The other apes barked and gibbered most of the night.
Now and then Caesar wakened from a doze to hear sounds of vicious fighting. Man has done this to us, Caesar thought. His head nodded in exhaustion. Man…
In his mind, the word became an obscene curse. Finally, mercifully, he dropped into total sleep.
In the morning, when a bell rang loudly, he began to learn the meaning of that conditioning.
7
With a roaring whoosh, a horizontal column of flame shot out from a wall aperture. The flame blazed parallel to bars that bisected the floor of the oval chamber. Shooting from one wall almost to the other, the fire was controlled by a smocked operator at a console.
The Fire Conditioning Area—so identified by a plaque outside the entrance—was the first area to which Caesar’s handler had taken him. He stood beside Morris, who was seated on a bench behind the console, waiting his turn to put his charge through the conditioning process.
Horrified, Caesar stared past the brilliant, column of perfectly controlled fire to the three wretched orangutans crouching and cringing beyond the bars. The animals had retreated to the curve of the wall—as far from the bars and fire as they could get.
Suddenly the console operator cut the flame-blast. A keeper advanced to the bars, offered a banana from a pocket. After a long hesitation, one orangutan came timidly to a point about halfway between the rear wall and bars. There he stopped.
The keeper stepped back. The console operator turned on the fire column, watching a wall clock. After ten seconds, he again extinguished the flame. The orangutan had flinched and cringed while the flame roared, but he had not retreated.
The keeper offered the banana a second time. Hesitantly, the orangutan darted forward to snatch it from his fingers. The operator triggered the fire again. The orangutan stood fast, even though Caesar could see that the animal was terrified.
The reward for the ape’s courage was a second banana. As it was consumed, the squealing diminished at the rear of the cage. A second orangutan tentatively advanced to the halfway mark.
Woosh!
After ten seconds, the flame died. The animal nearest the bars did not wait to be handed a banana. He stretched out a hairy arm to demand it. The second orangutan started shuffling forward, while the third roused herself at the rear of the cage to take a first hesitant step.
The console operator and the keeper exchanged smiles. Caesar vowed that he would show them he could learn this particular lesson very quickly indeed.
* * *
Music dinned. Blinding stroboscopic ceiling lights flashed on and off. The chimpanzee next to Caesar in the Noise Conditioning cage covered his eyes in fright. So did Caesar, though he was not nearly so frightened. Through the multicolored play of light, he could observe a demonstration at the front of the cage. A young, longhaired keeper sat at a small round table. Morris waited nearby, watching the third chimpanzee in the training group advance toward the table.
Trembling a little under the onslaught of the sound and light, the chimpanzee was still able to balance a tray bearing a soft drink container, a drinking glass, and other items. The keeper at the table ca
lled to an operator unseen in the darkness beyond the bars, “Hype the music another five points.”
Now the sound actually made Caesar’s ears ache, but the chimp with the tray barely broke stride. He laid the napkin on the table in front of the young keeper. He placed the container on the napkin, then employed an opener from the tray to pop off the container’s lid. Finally he inserted a straw into the mouth of the container, shuffled back two steps and executed a clumsy bow.
Morris grinned, producing a banana. The chimpanzee gobbled it greedily as the music cut out and the lights returned to normal.
“Okay, let’s have your next pupil, Morris,” said the keeper. Morris walked over to grasp Caesar’s hand.
“This one learns fast,” he said.
* * *
The plaque beside the door read NO Conditioning.
They were on one of the higher floors of the concrete tower that housed Ape Management’s training and breeding facilities. Caesar had glimpsed vistas of green and yellow countryside from an occasional oval window in the various corridors to which elevators had lifted them. The day had been long and tiring, even though Caesar had done well, showing evidence of exceptional learning ability at each of the conditioning locations to which he’d been taken. Along the way, Morris had slipped him an occasional extra banana, and complimented him as if Caesar could actually understand. What a shock the stocky young man would get if he knew the truth!
Morris was the least cruel of any of the handlers, keepers, or equipment operators Caesar had encountered thus far. That tended to blur Caesar’s concentration upon one central fact he had vowed not to forget: this splendid, gleaming scientific center was the instrument for subjugation of the apes, the means by which they were reduced to cowering slave status. And kindly or no, Morris was still a part of the system. As the handler led the way into a small amphitheatre, guiding Caesar to a seat on one of the higher tiers, a gorilla’s horrific scream ripped loose.
Down on the floor of the amphitheater, two gorillas lay buckled and strapped to parallel padded tables. Electrodes attached to the temples of each gorilla ran to connection points on the table pedestals. Nearby, a man in a smock sat at a console, an older supervisor hovering at his shoulder. A voice thundered out of a giant speaker in the amphitheatre ceiling, uttering a single syllable—“NO!” Simultaneously, the console operator threw a switch. Instantly both gorillas went into violent spasms, and both howled.