by John Jakes
A percentage of the incoming alarms and outgoing responses dealt with situations in which the citizens were obviously served. An attempted robbery resulted in the almost instant deployment of squads of policemen. A flash fire sent crews roaring through the nearest service tunnels aboard silver-and-yellow pumpers. An incident of ape rebellion, or even simple misconduct, produced a barked order for the dispatch of a police team of the appropriate size and strength.
When less urgent, or perhaps confidential, messages required delivery, some of the chimpanzees, orangutans, and gorillas assigned to the Command Post were used for delivery service. Caesar, however, was given a more menial job.
After being fitted with a civilian defense armband— more than half the apes down here wore them, he noted—he was taken by a staff supervisor to a semicircle of computer terminals. There, he was shown how to file stacks of the printout material.
A large file room adjoined the Command Post. The file fronts were color-coded. Red-tabbed printouts went into red wall files, blue into blue, and so on. It was idiot’s work, but Caesar pretended to have a little difficulty learning the basic routine so that later, as he moved slowly through the aisles, feigning perplexity but in reality observing the various work functions, he would not be too closely scrutinized.
MacDonald departed after observing Caesar’s first few minutes of instruction. He promised the staff supervisor that he would return later that night, after he attended a civic banquet with Governor Breck, to check on the progress of the new “volunteer.”
So that was the significance of the arm bands, Caesar deduced. Extra duty. Service to the state, over and above the regular work of many of the apes, whose slow pace Caesar matched with little effort.
His mind constantly sorted and analyzed the incoming sensory data. Not all the apes were working here in addition to laboring for human masters. Aldo, who came and went frequently with message pouches, wore no armband. Caesar therefore decided he was on permanent assignment.
As he was leaving the file chamber, he saw a new arrival—Mrs. Riley’s Lisa. She wore one of the armbands, so in her case, too, it was slavery piled upon slavery. He gave Lisa a warm look of acknowledgement and admiration as they passed one another. Lisa reciprocated with her soft, round eyes.
During trips to the files, Caesar assimilated another fact. The Command Post was apparently vital to security and control of the city since it was so heavily patrolled by helmeted policemen. They guarded the entrances and also kept a close watch on the apes.
Late in the afternoon, a gong rang three times. The puzzled Caesar was suddenly prodded by a nearby policeman.
“Go! Stupid ape. Don’t you know when it’s feeding time?”
Stifling his anger, Caesar followed the other animals shuffling down a corridor that led off one side of the Command Post.
In a sort of scaled-down cafeteria at the corridor’s end, the apes filed past counters where female apes handed out rations of fruit, barely cooked meat, and disposable cups of water. The apes ate standing up; there were no benches or tables provided.
On the way back to the Command Post, Caesar saw another corridor branching off the one to the meal room. A glowing sign pointed the way to Staff Messenger Quarters. He imagined sourly what those “quarters” must be—cells or cages for Aldo and his fellows.
Toward ten-thirty in the evening, Governor Breck, MacDonald, Pine, and two other staff assistants appeared at the foot of the stair to the street. All wore expensive formal wear. Picking up another sheaf of green-tabbed printouts, Caesar watched obliquely as Breck and MacDonald spoke with a staff supervisor— asking about his behavior, no doubt.
The supervisor accompanied the two as they walked toward Caesar. The supervisor seemed to be nodding and smiling.
An electric bell, more strident than any Caesar had heard before, rang four times. Governor Breck glanced up, scowled. MacDonald darted to a nearby terminal that began to chatter and spew out paper.
Carrying his file material, Caesar started in that direction, interested to know what had put such a strained look on MacDonald’s face—and why the black man was staring at him even as he ripped off the first part of the new printout and passed it to the governor.
Breck read, then exclaimed, “I knew it! I knew that goddam circus owner was lying!”
“Apparently Inspector Kolp put out a four-bell because he thought we were still at the banquet,” MacDonald said, tearing off the next portion rolling from the machine. At the words “circus owner,” Caesar had gone rigid.
Moving along an intersecting aisle, Lisa halted and gave him a puzzled glance. He fought to compose his features as he heard MacDonald summarize the new printout. “But they insist he fell to his death accidentally.”
Breck snatched the paper, scanned it, crumpled it in rage. “While trying to escape. He knew dawn well he’d be exposed by the Authenticator.”
Sickened, Caesar absorbed the full impact of what he’d just heard. He weaved from side to side, his eyes closing. Suddenly a hand touched his arm.
He opened his eyes and saw Lisa standing there trying to steady him.
Trembling, he pulled away from her. He knew that Señor Armando must have died trying to protect him.
“—and the reason he feared exposure,” Breck was shouting, “is because that one talking ape is still alive somewhere! Pine!”
Sadness filled Caesar’s eyes as he stumbled toward the file room. He realized he was risking discovery displaying his emotions. He let the pile of filing material slip from his fingers, and forced a grunt of dismay as it scattered in the aisle.
Armando dead—trying to save him. It was too much to bear…
Dimly, he grew aware of Breck’s loud voice again. “Mr. Pine, arrange for full distribution of the Achilles list immediately. Copies to each police substation, including the ones on the city perimeter. Details are left to the individual commanders, but I want every ape on the list rounded up and delivered to the Center for reconditioning by 0600 tomorrow morning.”
“Yes, Mr. Governor. Are there offenses to be specified?”
“Violation of Article Four, Paragraph Nine. Each of them is a potentially dangerous threat to state security.”
Caesar watched unnoticed as Pine whirled and ran across the Command Post to a message machine. In a moment, the sequence lights above the machine indicated the operator was busy transmitting the governor’s order.
Nearer at hand, MacDonald was saying, “With all due respect, sir, I think I’m entitled to know what the hell is going on.”
“The Achilles list, Mr. MacDonald. Referring to our enemy’s Achilles’ heel.”
“Enemy!” MacDonald blew up. “The apes?”
Breck ignored the protest. “The list contains the name of every ape who has been reported for an overt act of disobedience within the last year. Somewhere within that group, we may find the one we’re after.”
“To charge animals with being threats to state security is nonsense!”
“The charge will do, for our purposes,” Breck returned sharply. “Besides the possibility that it includes the talking ape, the Achilles list constitutes the hard core of our obedience problem. And the time’s come to break every last one. I should have done it long ago.”
“You won’t break them,” MacDonald shot back angrily. “You’ll only aggravate the problem all the more. The action is folly—the list is folly—and I must protest both in the strongest possible terms!”
Deliberately Caesar slowed the pace of his restacking, in order to watch the end of the confrontation. Breck’s tanned cheeks looked mottled. He was furious at the public display of insubordination.
Then he regained control. A couple of sharp glances made those staring return to their work. Breck addressed MacDonald with quiet force. “Very well, Mr. MacDonald. Your protest has been duly noted. But from now on, you’re on special assignment. One assignment only—indefinitely. It’s your job to find that talking ape.”
* * *
“How long does it take you to pick ’em up, for God’s sake?”
He twisted his head around, knuckling the floor for balance. He came up into a crouch, hatred simmering in his eyes.
“No,” the man barked. “No!”
Caesar cringed—and started shuffling the printout material together, helter-skelter. He hurried away from the scowling supervisor and, a moment later, was safe in the sanctuary of the empty file room. The shock of Armando’s death, coupled with Governor Breck’s sudden and repressive action against the ape population, started him trembling again, not from fear but from a peculiar new determination. It was time to act…
He had the capability, the beginnings of a plan, and the advantage that his human masters thus far were ignorant of the fact that he possessed either one.
Starting back toward his work station, he saw that the route to the cafeteria and cage corridors was momentarily clear. Shambling, he headed that way. He succeeded in slipping out of the Command Post proper without detection. Ahead, the concrete hall was empty, the ape feeding room shut down for the night.
Before he could begin to execute the plan he had conceived, he had to verify the extent of his own powers. He intended to do that now. Stealthily, he turned the corner beneath the sign that pointed the way to Staff Messenger Quarters.
* * *
As Caesar had suspected, the “quarters” for apes on full-time duty at the Command Post consisted of nothing more than a pair of huge bays in the sides of the extremely dim corridor. The corridor ended in a blank wall. Caesar could only surmise that there was no possible way for the apes to escape, other than back through the Command Post. Trying that, they would surely be beaten or shot down—hence the lack of bars.
He approached the recessed bays in the security of almost total darkness. The only illumination was provided by a single fixture glowing feebly in the ceiling of each bay. There was barely enough light for Caesar to discern forms within the bays.
He crouched by the right-hand wall. His sense of smell told him the inhabitants of the bays were all males. Gradually, staring across into the left bay, he discerned a row of cheap mattresses where apes lay sleeping— some soundly, some restlessly, turning and thrashing with an occasional nightmare squeal or whimper.
Directly under the light fixture, Caesar saw a neatly, swept heap of orange and banana peels and a fallen broom. Then he became aware of soft grunting from the darkest comer at the end of the bed-row, out of reach of the light. Silently, he darted across to the edge of the left bay. He could just make out a group gathered in the corner beyond the sleepers. He believed he recognized Aldo, squatting in a semicircle of his fellow gorillas. Then he separated distinct voices from the almost continuous grantings. It was a meeting—a group council of those who did not care to, or could not, sleep.
Drawing in a long breath, Caesar took eight swift paces into the bay. He stepped over the broom and halted by the litter, directly under the glowing fixture. It haloed his head with an eerie radiance.
“Aldo,” he said.
He did not speak loudly. He remained motionless as the grunting suddenly stopped. Massive heads turned. Great eyes glinted from the darkness. On a nearby pallet, a gorilla wakened. He saw Caesar, and went crawling to the head of his mattress, whimpering in fear.
“Aldo,” Caesar repeated, quietly, gently. “I am speaking to you. Come here.”
From the huddled group crouching in the darkness there came snufflings, snortings of fright. Caesar raised a hand, palm up. “There is nothing to fear. Come.”
Caesar was not sure that his entire meaning would be communicated to the gorilla. But the sense of it was. Aldo rose, huge shoulders hunching. He shambled forward keeping his head averted as if he dared not look on the splendid, upright animal who had spoken in the human tongue—the ape whose head was bathed in glow from the ceiling.
Aldo stopped within a pace of Caesar, who slowly turned his hand over and laid it reassuringly on the gorilla’s shoulder. “Aldo,” he said, “I cannot stay with you long. But there are things that you and I and our fellow creatures must begin to do. I will show you. I will help and teach you. We will teach others. And then we will no longer be treated with cruelty. We will no longer be slaves, Aldo—watch…” Bending down, Caesar snatched up the broom, holding it aloft under the light so that it was clearly visible to the waking apes along the bed row, and to Aldo’s cronies emerging ever so slowly from the back corner. With a savage grimace, Caesar brought the broom’s handle down across his lifted knee and snapped it in half. Then he handed one of the pieces to Aldo.
Without even a “Do!” command, the gorilla peeled his lips back in pleasure and imitated Caesar perfectly. He lifted his leg and cracked the half of the broom handle in half again. Then he stamped both halves beneath his feet with obvious pleasure.
Again Caesar laid his hand on the gorilla’s shoulder. He let pride and admiration shine from his eyes as he said, “Good. We understand one another, even if every word I speak is not familiar to you. I must go back before I am missed—” He hardly paused for breath, realizing that the act of speech, in itself, has a transfixing effect upon the gorillas now shuffling forward to crowd around Him. “—but I will come again. And we will begin to repay the human beings for the way they treat us. Wait for me.” And with a last gentle squeeze of the gorilla’s shoulder, Caesar turned and walked from the bay. With cold, vicious pleasure, he knew now that what he had in mind could succeed.
After he had taken a few steps, noises in the bay caused Caesar to turn and glance back. He saw gorillas grabbing bits of the broom, using their teeth and hands to break them wrathfully into ever-smaller fragments.
11
In Señor Armando’s tiny traveling troupe, Caesar had been the sole ape, so he’d had no prior opportunity to learn whether the grunts, barks and other sounds uttered by gorillas, orangutans, or chimpanzees constituted a formalized series of meanings for primitive communication. Now he knew—-and his mastery of communication on this primitive level developed rapidly during the week he spent in the Command Post, on duty from morning till midnight.
At twelve every night, a human steward, an ill-tempered young man with a skin problem, arrived with a leash to fetch Caesar home to a more comfortable, but nevertheless barred, sleeping area near the pantry in Governor Breck’s penthouse. Still, throughout the week, Caesar had many chances to study problems of communicating with Aldo and his simian comrades. A surreptitious visit to the sleeping bays late at night-—a moment stolen when the staff supervisors were occupied elsewhere—during these and other encounters, Caesar discovered that a combination of the spoken word, various grunts, barks, and chuckling noises, plus hand and visual signals, could make his wishes—and his will—known to his fellow creatures. The apes, in fact, were much more intelligent than their masters gave them credit for being. That also played to Caesar’s evolving strategy.
Buoyed by rising confidence, he was eager to be taken off Command Post duty and put on more routine chores in Breck’s household. That would give him liberty to circulate in the city.
On the Monday following Armando’s death Caesar was allowed to sleep a bit later than usual. After the steward opened the cage to kick him awake, he was required to mop the gleaming inlays of the kitchen floor. Then the steward presented him with a hamper and one of those red shopping cards he’d noticed in the hands of other servant apes.
“Let’s see whether you’re as smart as that MacDonald says you are,” the steward sneered, scratching at his cheek-blemishes. “You miss anything on that list, or come back with one wrong item—” He gleefully pantomimed giving Caesar a beating, then pointed. “Go.”
The steward left the kitchen by another door. Caesar paused only long enough to snatch a pen from the counter and hide it in the pocket of his elegant green jacket.
* * *
His route took him into the bustling main plaza where he had f
irst arrived with Señor Armando. He slouched as he walked, moving slowly enough so that he could scan his surroundings and search for opportunities to begin implementing his plans.
One opportunity presented itself as he passed the outdoor cafe. He saw the same group of women chattering over pre-lunch cocktails. He paused by the curtained railing separating the tables from the plaza proper, and pretended to study his red shopping card. Actually, he was watching the gorilla waiter hovering behind the ladies.
One woman pulled a pale green cigarette from her perspex case and placed it between her lips. Automatically, the waiter reached into his pocket. Then his glance locked with Caesar’s.
Caesar blinked and uttered two almost imperceptible grunts. Slowly the waiter removed his hand from the edge of his pocket.
The lady with the cigarette said plaintively, “Frank—!”
The waiter did not move. With a tolerant smile, the lady leaned over and tapped the pocket containing Frank’s lighter. He pulled the lighter out and threw it on the table.
All conversation stopped. The other ladies raised startled eyebrows. The woman with the green cigarette said softly, “No!”
Still peering at Frank over the edge of his shopping card, Caesar flashed a message with his eyes. And although there was the start of a ripple of fear across the gorilla’s shoulders, Frank did not cringe. He turned his back and walked into the cafe.
At the table there was consternation. “Mr. Lee!” one of the ladies cried. The Oriental proprietor popped into sight. “I’m afraid your Frank definitely needs reconditioning—” She picked up the discarded lighter and started to explain.
Caesar glided away into the crowd, pleased.
* * *
Outside Mr. Jolly’s bookshop, he encountered Mrs. Riley’s attractive Lisa. She was just emerging with a new volume under her arm. Empress of Love, Caesar noted with wry amusement. He risked a slight bow to the girl, chimp, then glanced meaningfully at the book and uttered a series of short, guttural sounds. The pretty chimpanzee immediately dropped the book. He flashed her a look of approval and watched until she walked on, leaving the book behind.