by Titan Books
The action in the arena was fast, desperate, and exciting, although Burke’s tactics and methods looked strange to the villagers. They shouted encouragement to Tolar. Dalton watched tensely. Galen was worried to the point of distraction, but helpless. Irnar was evidently bored, judging by his frequent yawns. “They’re like children, aren’t they?” he asked Galen.
Tolar jumped at Burke, fully confident now. Burke sidestepped agilely and chopped down with the side of his hand, hitting Tolar just behind the ear. This was a move completely unknown in the ape world. It was something Tolar could not be prepared for; all of his previous opponents had simply tried to wrestle. Burke’s karate blow sent Tolar spinning into the dust. Tolar lay stunned. Burke stood waiting.
The reaction of the villagers was stunned amazement. Never before had Tolar been even close to defeat. It had been dozens of games since any opponent had even sent Tolar sprawling, as Burke had done. All at once, the crowd found its voice and directed another volley of insults at Burke.
Tolar got to his feet and charged again. It was a clumsy run, motivated by the huge wrestler’s desire to recoup his image of being undefeatable. He wanted to crush Burke in one powerful lunge. Again, nimbly, the astronaut moved to the side, like a bullfighter performing a veronica, and clubbed Tolar on the side of the head. Tolar went down again, shaking his head. He panted, resting on one knee in the dry dust of the arena. Twice more Tolar charged, and twice more Burke made the champion look almost foolish, so easily did he send Tolar crashing to the ground. The charges came ever more slowly, as Tolar grew wary and just a bit frightened. Burke, too, was frightened; he knew his own limits, and he wondered if he could wear Tolar down before the exertion of the battle wore him down.
The spectators, as fickle as any crowd ever was, began to change in response to the fighting of Burke, which looked to the people of Kaymak crazy but effective. A few voices cheered when Tolar was knocked down for the third time, and a great many more shouted their approval on the fourth knockdown. The humans wanted and demanded a hero and a champion; it was becoming clear to the combatants that the man didn’t necessarily have to be Tolar.
Dalton, sitting among them, was aware of this, also. He watched in almost unbearable tension. He had never seen his father treated like this in the arena. His aversion to the games was overcome by his concern for his father.
Irnar watched, also concerned for his champion. He wondered how it would affect his village to have the longtime hero defeated by a common thief and criminal. As he watched, Tolar struggled to his feet, circled around Burke, and tried to grab hold of the astronaut. Burke placed one foot behind Tolar’s right foot and gave a quick shove with his shoulder. Tolar fell heavily to the ground, not badly hurt but deeply humiliated. He sat in the dirt and looked up at Burke, desperation on his face.
* * *
The main street of Kaymak was deserted as Jason and his troopers rode into town. The roaring of the crowd in the amphitheater filled the air, but for the moment Jason ignored it. He pulled to a halt outside the prefect’s house, noting the flagpole and the signal pennant which flew from it. Jason told his soldiers to wait while he himself dismounted and glanced around, puzzled by the emptiness of the town and by the screams coming from the amphitheater, which he now listened to curiously. He shook his head; another outlying village, another town full of mad apes and crazier humans. He strode up to the door of Irnar’s house and. knocked. There was no reply. He opened the door and entered.
The main room was empty. “Irnar!” called Jason.
“Prefect Irnar!” He was answered only by silence and the muffled sound from the arena. With an expression of displeasure, Jason turned and left the house.
As Jason emerged from Irnar’s home, he glanced around again, puzzled and increasingly annoyed. There was another roar from the amphitheater. Coming to a quick decision, Jason strode off in that direction.
* * *
Tolar was in very bad shape, shaky and bleeding from cuts over his eyes. Burke kept backing away from him, not wanting to hurt Tolar any further, but Tolar refused to give up—of course, to do so meant death, but there was a look in Tolar’s eyes which said that surrender meant far worse things to him than death. He forced the fight to Burke, and the astronaut had no choice but to send Tolar down again. This time, Tolar did not move at all.
The villagers watched, suddenly silent once more. Then, from various parts of the amphitheater, voices cried out, “Throw the sword! Throw the sword! Throw the sword!” Over and over this was repeated; more and more people took up the cry.
* * *
Virdon could hear the roaring; the longer it lasted, the more uncomfortable he grew. “What’s happening?” he demanded of the gorilla guard. He might have asked the inanimate stones in the ground, for all the response he got.
* * *
Galen watched, not sure if Burke’s seeming victory were much better for their situation than a defeat. Irnar lifted the sword and threw it out into the arena. The crowd screamed. “It’s not how I would have had it,” said Irnar to Galen, “but it may all work out for the best.”
The crowd took up a different chant now. “Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!” echoed in the arena as the humans stood, screaming insanely and waving clenched fists. Burke stood over the inert body of Tolar; the sword fell at his feet and, almost instinctively, he bent down to pick it up.
Tolar opened his eyes weakly, looking up at Burke. There was frustration and humiliation on his face, but not fear. Burke stared down at him, holding the sword. They regarded each other, oblivious of the pandemonium around them. Burke did not move.
The frenzy of the villagers grew. “Kill him! Kill him!” they screamed, while the eagerly awaited climax to the game was delayed by Burke’s hesitation. This was the moment they had come to see. It did not matter to them whether Burke killed Tolar or the other way around; it was as Irnar had said: they had come to see blood. Dalton was the only spectator still sitting, except for Galen and Irnar. The youth remained quiet, surrounded by the shouting people, his vision cut off by their standing bodies.
While this scene formed, Jason entered the amphitheater. He was stopped momentarily by the two gorilla guards at the entrance, but, with a curt and contemptuous glance, he silenced them. The villagers were making so much noise that his questions had to be shouted. The guards shouted an answer and pointed in the direction of the Prefect’s Box. Jason followed their gaze and saw Irnar. He did not acknowledge the directions from the gorillas—after all, they were rural police, inferior in all ways to his own troopers from Central City—but headed into the stands and around the amphitheater toward Irnar.
The villagers’ emotion mounted further as they screamed for the kill. Burke, suddenly understanding what he was expected to do, turned away and threw the sword to the ground. The villagers were momentarily appalled; then they shouted their anger and rage at Burke. The insults they had hurled at him before were remembered and amplified. Dalton watched, too stunned and afraid to stand, unable to see the action, only partially aware of what was happening. He tried to understand the change in their screams. While all of this was happening, Jason was making his way slowly through the furious crowd, clubbing his way among the uncaring humans, whose attention was focused on the two men in the arena.
“I don’t understand,” murmured Knar. He was fascinated by Burke’s reaction. Galen was about to reply when some commotion nearby attracted his attention. He looked off to one side; he was not certain of what he saw through the mass of people there. He squinted his eyes just a little and waited. A second or two later he was sure. He saw the uniformed gorilla moving through the crowd. Galen was shinned by what he saw; Jason was well-known to him. General Urko’s chief aide was well-known to almost every ape in the empire. And, Galen knew surely, he himself would be well-known to Jason.
The villagers screams were even louder, although that seemed scarcely possible to the suddenly frightened Galen. As he watched, the humans began moving down throug
h the stands, into the clear central area of the arena. It appeared that a riot was about to begin.
“No!” cried Irnar, worried. He waved to the gorillas that stood to either side of his box. “No! Stop them! Stop them!” The gorillas moved forward to follow the order.
As the villagers swept down toward the arena, Jason had more difficulty getting to the Prefect’s Box. He pushed and clubbed with his fists, but it was all he could do to prevent himself from being carried along with them.
Galen took the opportunity to slip away from the Prefect’s Box. He saw that Jason was momentarily blocked and Irnar’s attention was elsewhere. Galen moved away from Jason, down toward the arena and the crowd.
Dalton stood now, unable to maintain his tense paralysis any longer. The crowd swept around him. He was completely fascinated by what was happening; he felt an unpleasant sense of disgust.
Burke and Tolar both were menaced by the approaching crowd, Tolar for his defeat, Burke for his refusal to carry out the execution. The humans still chanted, “Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!” Burke, almost hypnotized by the chant, fearful that he might at any second be torn apart by the mob, stooped to pick up the sword. His expression was slightly dazed.
Galen pushed through the crowd and reached Burke’s side. “Galen!” cried Burke.
“No time!” answered the chimpanzee. “Urko’s lieutenant is up there! He’ll recognize us!”
Burke looked up toward the Prefect’s Box. Jason was talking urgently with Irnar, whose expression was startled, then angry. They both started to make their way down toward the arena. “Come on, then!” shouted Burke over the screaming mob. He and Galen tried to push their way through, Burke in the lead. He used the sword threateningly, almost cutting a way forward. Meanwhile, the gorillas were trying to rush people out of the arena, shoving them toward the entrance. “Out!” cried one gorilla, brandishing his rifle. “Everybody out!” He fired the rifle into the air. Near him, humans, frightened by this threat, hurried to comply with the ape’s direction. A stream of villagers started pouring out of the amphitheater. The gorilla moved away to help channel the remainder of the humans. Burke and Galen slipped by him as he turned. Another gorilla started toward Burke; the astronaut hurled the sword at the ape. While the gorilla ducked, Burke and Galen hurried out of the arena among the other townspeople.
They emerged, panting and bruised. “Virdon,” said Burke.
“No time!” said Galen, wheezing slightly. “Later!”
* * *
Inside the arena, Irnar and Jason were trying to shove their way through the crowd toward the entrance. Jason walked ahead of the prefect, roughly hitting the humans, clearing a path. As the two apes came out of the amphitheater, they looked around in frustration. Burke and Galen had escaped.
7
Jason stood at the window of Irnar’s office, staring out at the street with great annoyance. Behind him, Irnar paced nervously. In all of the twenty-five years he had been prefect of Kaymak, no one of Jason’s importance had ever visited him. And now, the official visit had to happen on the worst day of his entire career. From the window came indistinct crowd noises; they faded slowly. After a moment, the door opened and a gorilla entered. Irnar looked up at the ape. “Well, Morko?” asked the prefect.
“We’ve finally managed to clear all the humans off the street,” said the gorilla, panting a little, obviously exhausted.
“Any damage?” asked Irnar. “Any injuries?”
“Nothing serious,” said Morko. “One of my troopers was slightly hurt. I’ve never seen the humans so—”
Jason interrupted the report of the rural officer. “What did you say?” he cried, as though he couldn’t believe what he had heard. “A trooper hurt? By a human! Don’t you have rifles?”
Irnar tried to soothe Jason’s outrage. “My orders are that weapons are used only as a last resort. You may go, Morko.”
“I don’t like this,” said Jason in a dangerously quiet voice. The gorilla trooper gave him an anxious look, then left Irnar’s office. Jason turned on Irnar in angry incredulity. “Your reports always described this as a peaceful village!” he said.
“It was!” said Irnar, protesting. “I mean, it is! The game wasn’t brought to its proper conclusion, that’s why they—”
Jason had heard enough. Everything about this rural village and its prefect sounded to him like sheer lunacy. “Games!” he shouted, slamming his fist on Irnar’s desk. “You don’t govern with games! You govern with this!” He raised his gauntleted hand, fingers open, and slowly closed it again into a rock-hard fist. “And you don’t allow two important prisoners to escape! I’ve never seen such incompetence!”
“I don’t believe that I can be held responsible for their escape,” said Irnar coolly. He had had enough of Jason’s attitude; he was angry enough to forget just how powerful Urko’s aide was.
“Well, then,” said Jason acidly, “who can I hold responsible? You bring him in here, because I have some plans for him.”
Irnar ignored that. “I had no way of knowing that chimpanzee and the horse-thief were important prisoners, not until you came.” Irnar was showing signs of irritation and anxiety. He was swinging Virdon’s metallic disk on its thong as he spoke. The habit annoyed Jason.
“Must you play with that thing?” growled the gorilla. Irnar caught the disk and stared back angrily at Jason. The silence grew very tense. Irnar’s resolution failed him first and he looked away from Jason’s angry eyes. He opened his desk drawer, and dropped the disk into it. Then he closed and locked the drawer.
“Is that all right?” asked Irnar in a dull voice.
“Thank you,” said Jason dryly. “Now let’s see the one prisoner you haven’t lost. Not yet, anyway.” He turned and started for the door. Irnar looked at Jason’s back, his thoughts filled with disdain for the gorilla’s crude manner and self-pity for having gotten involved in the entire sorry situation.
* * *
On the opposite edge of town from the amphitheater was a thick stand of trees that began only a few yards from the last hut in the village. The small forest ran on a couple of hundred yards, with only a narrow, grass-covered trail through it. In a clearing at the farther edge of this woodland stood Tolar’s house. The structure was a rather primitive wooden shack, crude even by the standards of the rural humans. Not far from the house, about halfway between the building and edge of the woods, stood a well. Dalton was at the well, drawing up a bucket of water, which he transferred into another bucket. He turned and carried the water toward the house. He did not realize that, as he labored, he was watched by two pair of eyes, one pair human, the other chimpanzee, staring out from the shelter of the woods.
Hidden by the underbrush, Galen and Burke watched Dalton enter his house. For a moment longer the two held still. Then they crawled back a short distance and crouched among the trees.
“I don’t understand your thinking, Pete,” said Galen.
“Trust me,” said Burke.
“But what makes you think they’ll help us? Until now, we’ve been nothing but enemies to them, particularly you. You attacked them in the clearing, you were held as a criminal in the cage, and you fought Tolar in the arena.”
“I could have killed that man,” said Burke, peeling the bark from a twig and staring into the distance. For a few seconds he did not speak. The events of the day had been a heavy emotional drain on him. “The crowd wanted me to,” he said finally, a trace of sadness in his voice. “He owes me something, don’t you think?”
* * *
Tolar had made a separate sleeping area for himself by putting up poles and draping heavy, dark material over them. Now his quarters were even darker, for he had covered the window with the same thick fabric and closed the crude shutters over the outside. Tolar lay on his rough bed, his eyes wide open in the gloom, staring into the darkness that covered him. He heard the door open and Dalton enter, but he did not move. Dalton pulled back the hanging material that separated Tolar from the rest
of the living room, and light flooded across Tolar’s body. Still, Tolar didn’t turn, didn’t acknowledge in any way his son’s presence.
“Father?” said Dalton. “Fresh water from the well?”
There was no response from Tolar. There was not even a flicker in the man’s eyes to indicate that Tolar had heard his son speak. Dalton looked at his father for a moment, troubled. Then he made a decision and crossed to Tolar’s window.
“You should have some light in here,” said Dalton.
“Leave it closed.”
“But, Father,” said the youth, pulling back the dark fabric.
“Do as I say.”
“This darkness is unhealthy.”
Tolar’s breath was exhaled in a sudden burst. “The dead have no need of light,” he said bitterly.
“And the living?” asked Dalton, pushing open the shutters.
“He disgraced me, Dalton,” said Tolar, his voice filled with recrimination. “Why didn’t he use the sword? Why? It is something I cannot understand. The man was no coward.”
Dalton couldn’t answer immediately. He, too, wondered the same thing. When he did reply, his words were hesitant. He was trying to express ideas he had not thought out fully. “I’m… not sure, Father,” he said. “I think…” He broke off, grappling with concepts entirely foreign to what he had always been taught. “I keep remembering things Mother said. Secret things she’d tell a small boy because she couldn’t tell you. About violence and killing and what is right and wrong. She tried to make me understand that there are other ways to prove one’s manhood.”
“Your mother could know little of that,” said Tolar.
“Perhaps more than either you or I,” said Dalton.
Tolar dismissed the idea. “I’m a dead man who breathes,” he said, “and he did this to me.”
“He spared your life, Father,” said Dalton. “Can that really be bad?”