by John Jakes
* * *
Thade ignored the odd look Attar gave him as he led the troops away from where Karubi’s body lay bleeding on the stones. He had no time for odd glances, or anything else that distracted him from his duty as a general. In the back of his mind, something whispered to him that he’d perhaps missed something important, but he paid no heed to whispers, either.
He turned to his commander. “Where are the other humans?”
They’d reached the end of the street again. Attar looked around, then pointed. “This way. They can’t have gone far.”
He made a terse hand gesture, and the apes fanned out, searching across the silent buildings, the shrouded trees, the empty doors.
Attar stepped out into the intersection, raised his head, sniffed at the night. He sniffed again, then looked around, puzzled.
Nothing. Nothing at all.
He looked at Thade. “They’ve disappeared.”
A little growl of exasperation rumbled in the general’s throat. “Ring the city!” he roared. “Block every gate!” He paused, considering, then continued, a deadly certainty filling his voice. “When you find them, kill them all. But keep the troublemaker alive. I must talk to him before he dies.”
Attar hesitated. Despite what had just happened with Karubi, he had no real objection to the general’s orders. Whether the humans were cockroaches or kings, they still had to die. But there was another problem, a problem that wouldn’t improve Thade’s mood at all. Nonetheless, it had to be said. Attar might be many things, but one thing he never shirked, not even for a general, was his duty. He took a deep breath and said, “Sir…?”
General Thade looked at him.
“The senator’s daughter is with them.”
Thade’s eyes widened. Suddenly he looked like a man who’d just been kicked in the belly. He opened his mouth, closed it. “They took her?” he asked slowly.
Attar shook his head. “She is helping them. I saw her myself.”
Thade stared at him, emotions warring across his face. Attar felt a wash of sympathy for his chief. He knew of the relationship the female and his general had once enjoyed, and he knew why that relationship had frayed into near nonexistence. But what a quandary for General Thade! The woman he had loved now consorting with a pack of wild animals, committing public blasphemy literally in the streets for all the world to see. Watching the ape’s agony made Attar sick to his stomach, but what could he do? Only be a soldier, and tell his commander the truth as he knew it. What Thade did with that knowledge was up to him. But Attar silently thanked Semos it wasn’t his problem, or his decision to make.
At last Thade began to stutter out a reply. “She had no choice,” he said. “She was terrified.” His voice grew stronger, more certain. Attar wasn’t sure if Thade was trying to convince him, or convince himself. If it was the latter, it seemed to be working, because Thade gave a small nod and said, almost pompously, “I will report the matter to the senate myself!”
While Attar tried to imagine that scene, a knowing smile began to spread across Thade’s saturnine features. “They’ll beat their chests and ask for my help.”
Attar stared at Thade, struck with awe. Yes, it might just work. The sad tale of a senator’s daughter—one of their own!—captured and brutalized by a nest of filthy humans. It could happen to any of them! Only if they gave Thade what he wanted, what he needed, would he be able to protect them.
Now Attar truly understood why Thade was a great general, and he was only a commander.
The idea was diabolical. It was heartless.
It would work.
The two apes nodded at each other in perfect understanding.
“They are weak without you, sir,” Attar said. And now they will be terrified as well…
Thade nodded brusquely. He didn’t care what they were. He knew what they were. He cared only what they could give him.
“Has she taken the old silverback with her?”
Attar sighed. He regretted the answer he must give. He’d known Krull for many years, beginning from the time he’d been a green trainee in the army under Krull’s tutelage. He knew how badly the decision he’d had to make, the choice between the senator and the senator’s daughter, must have torn him. And he thought he knew why Krull had made the decision he had. That blasted female! Her father loved her. Krull loved her. Even Thade loved her. But whom did she love?
Wild beasts. Animals. The worst, most sinful filth imaginable.
Poor Krull. But he had to answer, had to tell the truth. “Yes, sir.”
Thade stared at him. They’d been together a long time, too. The general had a pretty good idea what Attar was thinking. “I trust this will not be a problem for you?” he said searchingly.
Attar stared right back at him, his gaze raw but steady. “No, sir. As of now, he is a criminal.”
Thade nodded, satisfied, and turned away. But Attar thought of Karubi, and Ari, and Krull—and even Thade—and his expression remained troubled for some time after.
* * *
From the crest of the low hill downward, time and wind and water had wrinkled the frozen flow of lava like an old woman’s gray cheeks. The ancient fires were long dead, but the once molten tide remained, still and silent beneath the lowering moons and the glittering stars.
At the bottom, looking nearly as old as the rocks on which it rested, was a springhouse built around a cistern. The mortar between the stones had long crumbled away, but their massive weight was sufficient to hold them in place. The springhouse had been built into the side of the hill, and that it remained at all was a reminder of a time when apes had lived here, and drawn out buckets of water by hand to water their fields and fill their bellies.
The disintegrating structure looked as deserted and abandoned as the mountains of the moons, but somebody had taken the trouble to prevent accidents. Covering the front entry, sealing the opening, was a dauntingly heavy wooden door, as thick as two apes’ fists. The vagrant breezes had carried a thick coating of lava dust down from the hills to coat the planks, dust that had lain undisturbed for years, maybe decades.
Now, something struck the door a mighty blow from inside the springhouse, and the dust jumped and hung in the air before it. Somewhere a bird, disturbed by the alien sound, squawked and flapped away. Small crawling things scurried for shelter.
The muffled sound of voices. Another thumping blow. But only the resulting puff of stony powder flying from the wood showed there’d been any movement at all.
A long moment of silence as the dust settled back. Then, suddenly, a guttural, growling roar, followed by a tremendous thud, and the thick wooden planks exploded outward as if a bomb had been set off behind them.
Krull came powering out, mighty fists clenched, shedding broken planks off his massive shoulders like jackstraws.
He pushed out into the moonlight, then waited patiently as the humans, their chests heaving as they gasped for air, stumbled out after him.
Amid all the hacking and wheezing as the humans struggled to catch their breath, Ari was the last to step out into the open. Krull quickly walked over to her, as she turned to stare back at the sleeping ape city in the blue-black distance.
The old gorilla saw the direction of her gaze, and knew what she was thinking. He put a gentle hand on her shoulder and said, “We can still return.”
She didn’t take her eyes off the now-faraway place that had held all the years of her life, but she did shake her head, slowly, sadly. “No,” she whispered. “We can’t.”
6
It took a little while for the ragtag band of fugitives to settle down and realize that, for the moment, at least, they had escaped their pursuers. But, gradually, it sank in that they’d reached a place of safety.
The air was cold and clear. Small animal night sounds issued from the darkness beneath the eaves of the forest that extended almost up to the base of the looming lava cliff.
The sky overhead gleamed silently down, as all of them, in their own way, abs
orbed the changes they’d undergone in the previous several hours. Some had more to absorb than others.
Daena stood in silence a little bit off from the others, her palpable grief at the murder of her father surrounding her like an invisible barrier. Her head was bowed. Streaks of tears glimmered in tracks across her dusty cheeks.
Ari saw this and, thinking of how she would feel if her own father met such a horrible end, moved hesitantly toward the barbarian woman. As she approached, Daena looked up and saw her.
“Your father was a brave man,” Ari said gently.
Daena’s eyes opened wide, focused on Ari, flashing with rage. The ape woman hesitated again, because she could see that, even though she’d been trying only to offer solace, the human woman was clearly too upset to take it in the spirit Ari intended.
But even Ari didn’t expect what happened next.
Daena made a soft, choking sound deep in her throat, curled her fingers into sharp-nailed claws, and launched herself like a thunderbolt right at Ari’s face!
Ari thought of herself as civilized, but the fact remained that a chimpanzee’s reflexes were about fifty percent faster than a human’s, and their natural strength varied between two and five times as much as a normal human. Daena never had a chance. Ari’s long arm flicked out, and her open palm slammed into the side of Daena’s skull. The blow sent Daena flying sideways, limp as a rag doll, until she crumpled onto the ground in a huddled heap.
Krull and the humans rushed to separate the two females, although the old gorilla was much less worried about Daena than he was about shielding Ari from any vengeful harm as he stepped between his mistress and the rest of the party and let out a warning roar.
Davidson got his hands around Daena’s shoulders and helped her to her feet. She shook her head, still a little woozy, and grated through clenched teeth, “Let… me… go!”
He thought he knew what she had in mind, and since the last thing he needed at that moment was a full-tilt brawl between the two main females in the party, he tried to keep a restraining grip on her. He might as well have tried to hold back a panther. She jerked, jerked again, and was free. He reached for her, but she was running now, hard, leaping strides, and before he could say or do anything to stop her, she’d reached the edge of the forest and was gone.
Davidson watched her vanish with a sinking feeling.
Now how am I going to find my way back? he wondered.
* * *
Daena ran like a deer before the wind, twisting and dodging through the thick shrubbery, thorns and stickers tearing at her clothes, her skin. She welcomed the sheer physical exertion, and the pain also, because she was able to lose herself in it, and forget, for a few moments at least, the terrible weight of the grief that threatened to crush her.
Karubi, she thought as she ran. Father!
The words raced through her mind, finally blending together in a continuous shriek of loss, as other pictures, like a riffled deck of those cards the apes used in their games, flashed up and vanished as quickly as they’d come: sitting on Karubi’s knee as a little girl, his strong arm around her shoulders as he showed her brightly colored birds flashing through the treetops and told her their names. Walking with him along the edge of a bright stretch of water, the day summery and hot, as she struggled to cope with the changes her body was making as it slipped from childhood to womanhood. How gentle he’d been, how much he’d tried to understand, even though she could tell he was uncomfortable. And how strong and brave he’d been!
“We are men, he’d told her a hundred times, his voice quivering with emotion. “Not slaves or beasts! The apes listen to their filthy god, Semos, who whispers these lies in their ears and their souls, but they are lies! Never forget, my darling daughter, the truth: they may be stronger and faster than we are, but that doesn’t make them better. Only different. But we both look up at the stars at night, and dream…”
Now he was gone. His death cry still echoed in her ears and in her heart. She knew she’d still be hearing it on her own dying day, and that was good. Because it would always be there to remind her what it meant to be human.
She knew he’d feared the apes. What rational man wouldn’t? But he’d struggled against his oppressors all his life, and in the end, he’d conquered his own fear even in the face of death. He’d gone out as what he said he was, a man, fighting until the very end.
And he’d saved them. That was a precious gift. In dying, he’d given her and the rest of them their lives, at least for a little while longer. That was a grave responsibility, and a great challenge to live up to. She couldn’t—wouldn’t—throw that chance away, not for some sleazy, tricky ape woman, and not for a stranger who looked human but who, she sensed, was something else, something strange and frightening, beneath the familiar shape of bones and skin.
Gradually she’d been slowing, as the sharp edge of rage and grief and hate was dulled by the effort of her flight. Now she could hear them pounding along behind her, growing closer. The stranger, Davidson, was closest, gaining steadily. She could tell it was him. He had almost no woodcraft, and lumbered through the woods like a great cow—or a gorilla.
The chimp was close, too. The female. She knew chimps. She knew that if Ari wanted to catch her, she might very well be able to do it. But the female was holding back, keeping pace with her huge gorilla servant.
What did she want? Why was she here?
It made no sense. The ape was the daughter of a senator, a rich, powerful ape leader, and all she’d known, from the day of her birth, had been comfort, wealth, maybe even power. Why would she risk that, risk losing everything, to help beasts that everyone in her ape world told her to despise?
It had to be a trick, she thought, and yet a part of her wondered. The ape woman was here, after all, running through the trees just as she was. And she’d rescued them at least twice, first from Limbo’s slave pens, and then on the street, leading them to a way out of the city.
Daena’s thoughts were so confused, so all-absorbing, that when she began to hear a harsh, guttural rasping, it took her a moment to realize it was her own breathing. And now there was a stitch of pain growing in her side.
Better slow down, let them catch up. Davidson— what an odd name for a man!—thought she’d promised to take him to where he wanted to go. She hadn’t, not in her own mind, but she decided she would anyway. He was different from any human she’d ever seen. And she sensed a strength, a determination in him, that perhaps matched even her own. He must have secrets. And if his secrets could help her own people, then she would learn them.
She owed Karubi that much. And infinitely more.
If Davidson could help her pay, then so be it!
* * *
Davidson was galloping along, running on almost nothing but willpower. Back on the Oberon, he’d thought he was in pretty good shape, but an hour on a stair stepper was about as tough as a peaceful nap, compared to what he’d been doing the last couple of days—not to mention what everybody else, mostly apes, had been doing to him.
It wasn’t as if he had any choice, though. He was a stranger here, and the tangled, trackless paths of these forests were nothing like the neat, manicured national parks he’d hiked through and camped in as a kid. Without Daena to show him the way back to where he’d crashed, his chances of ever finding the pod were somewhere between slim and none, and from what he could see, old slim had been out to lunch for quite some time now.
And he had to find the pod. Without it, he was as helpless as a baby. Oh, sure, he was a lot more technologically advanced than the barbarians who passed for human here, and even, from what he could see, well ahead of the apes, too. That general, Thade, thought he was pretty handy with a sword. Wonder what he’d think of finding himself on the business end of a fully automatic, laser-sighted assault rifle?
He let the thought of that percolate warmly in his brain for a while, because it was a lot more cheerful a thought than the reality that he didn’t have an assault rifle handy. H
e didn’t even have a flashlight or a book of matches. All he had was himself, his boots, and a ripped-up set of regulation United States Air Force pilot’s underclothing. Too bad he’d had to shed the pilot’s suit. There’d been a few minor things in the pockets that might have come in handy. But not so handy it was worth drowning over them…
Damn it, that woman must be half rabbit! Was she ever going to slow down?
When she’d first gone charging off into the jungle, from his point of view, she hadn’t gone alone. She’d taken his last, best hope of ever getting himself out of this bizarre mess right along with her, and the knowledge of that had lent wings to his feet.
Now those wings felt more like concrete boots, and his lungs burned as if somebody had poured boiling sulfuric acid down his throat.
Just when he’d about decided he couldn’t go on any longer, he saw her up ahead, just a flash of blond against the darker green of the jungle. But a moment later, another flash, and then a glimpse of smooth, golden, high-kicking legs.
Maybe she was slowing down at last. The thought gave him a bit of second wind, and he lunged on ahead. Yes, she was definitely slowing! And she knew he was behind her, because now she cast a quick glance over her shoulder.
She didn’t exactly smile, but she no longer looked as if she wanted to murder everything within a ten-mile radius. Now if she’d just decide to stop, take a break, let everybody catch up and catch their breath…
Maybe he’d be able to get out of this after all!
Something began to rustle the bushes right behind him. The rustling continued, keeping up with him as he heaved himself along. He risked a fast look, and saw the kid, Birn, running easily, barely breathing hard, and grinning at him. He had that look in his eyes again, like Davidson was about the most fascinating thing he’d ever seen in his life.