Beneath the Planet of the Apes - Avallone Michael - Страница 7

“As a soldier,” Ursus resumed, placidly, in control of his audience, “I see things simply—” His listeners had stilled, ready to absorb the rest of what he had to say.

Brent was talking to himself now, in a shattered whisper.

“I see an ape. He talks . . .! I know what happened . . . Re-entry: twenty thousand miles an hour. A force of 15G. It made Skipper blind, and muddled my brains. So everything here is delusion—” he turned to Nova almost helplessly. “Even you—which is too bad . . .”

Nova, somehow understanding the horror of what had come to him, quickly placed her hand over his mouth.

The next words of Ursus came up to them, sonorous and clear. Like shining rocks aimed at what was left of Brent’s sanity.

“What I saw, when I became your Army Commander, broke my heart. I saw our country imprisoned on one side by the sea, and by north and south and west—by naked desert. And inside our country, we found ourselves infected by those enormous parasites which we call Humans. By parasites who devoured the fruits that we had planted in a land rightly ours; who fattened on the fertility of fields that we had made green with wheat; who polluted the pure and precious water of our lakes and rivers with their animal excrement; and who continued to breed in our very midst like maggots in a once healthy body. What should we do? How should we act? I know what every soldier knows: the only thing that counts in the end is Power! Naked, merciless Force!” A low growl of applause filtered up from the crowd but no one was anxious to break the flow of Ursus’ rhetoric.

“Today, the bestial Human herds have at last been systematically flushed from their feeding grounds! No single Human Being has escaped our net. They are dead. Or if not dead, they are in our cage—condemned to die.”

The thick murmur flittering among his listeners began to swell into a low rumble, building to a full roar. Ursus smiled all too benignly. His deep-set eyes were as cold and cruel as leeches.

“I do not say that all Humans are evil,” he declared, “simply because their skin is hairless. But our Lawgiver tells us that never will they have the Ape’s divine faculty for distinguishing between Evil and Good. Their eyes are animal, their smell the smell of the dead flesh they eat. Had they been allowed to live and breed among us unchecked, they would have overwhelmed us. And the concept of Ape Power would have become meaningless; and our high and splendid culture would have wasted away and our civilization would have been ravaged and destroyed.”

Now there was no holding the audience of apes, gorillas and camp followers. The stone arena thundered with noise. Ursus beamed down on a sea of simian faces. He raised his arms in gratitude and acknowledgment. From the hillside, Brent had listened with mounting horror and cold fury. Flat on their stomachs, he and the girl had worked themselves further away from the hideous tableau. Nova was shuddering as if she had palsy. Brent tried to steady her by holding her wrist firmly.

“I’ve got to get out,” he told himself, trying to remain clearheaded. “And the only way out—is to take to the sky. I don’t know how or what with—all I know is I can’t stay here. If this place has a name, it’s the Planet Nightmare . . .”

Backtracking furiously, slithering along the green earth like snakes, Brent and the shaking girl disappeared into the foliage.

Ursus had almost reached the end of his peroration.

“. . . and those lucky enough to remain alive will have the privilege of being—used—” Here he half turned to bow slightly toward Dr. Zaius whose powerful face had remained inscrutable throughout the highly inflammatory speech,“by our revered Minister of Science, Dr. Zaius.”

This last statement was uttered in a flat, unemphatic tone, but nevertheless a small but spirited outbreak of minority clapping sounded from the crowd below the dais, filling the arena. Dr. Zaius still did not smile, but Ursus frowned, flinging a furious glance toward an outer section of his audience.

He might have guessed. Zaius’ advocates seemed to be the chimpanzee section of the crowd. The usual, typical kindly intellectuals who still used such expressions as the “milk of human kindness.” What rot! Damn Zaius and all his intellectual weaklings! Ursus gestured peremptorily and a military policeman advanced on the section, brandishing his club. The clapping subsided. Except for one very energetic female chimpanzee who kept on clapping. Her companion, a male chimp, plucked at her sleeve nervously.

“Zira!” Cornelius whispered savagely. “Stop! You’re in danger.”

“So is the future of science with that rabble-rouser fomenting a senseless military adventure,” his wife snorted angrily.

On the left flank of the crowd, in the concealment of the hillside, Nova had halted Brent. Pointing down toward the chimpanzee section, she gesticulated wildly toward Zira and Cornelius. Brent did not understand until Nova touched the ID disc around her throat and pointed back toward the arena. She had recognized Zira and Cornelius; two of the gentlest souls in this Ape City, who had helped her and Taylor effect their escape. The intelligent chimpanzees who in their long jackets and skirts and trousers had been like saints in a universe gone mad.

Ursus was winding up his oration.

“We will never lose our sense of purpose. We will never degenerate. We will never become weak and hairless—” Growls filtered up from his audience once more. “Because we know how to purify our own people—with Blood!”

His gimlet eyes swept over the dais, finding Dr. Zaius. Their glances locked. The conflict between the two of them hung like unexploded dynamite in the charged atmosphere.

“The Forbidden City,” Ursus intoned heavily, “has been closed for centuries. And rightly so. But we now have evidence that that vast, barren area is now inhabited. By whom or by what, we do not know. But if they live—and live they do—then they must eat. We must replenish the land that was ravaged by the Humans with new, productive feeding grounds. And these we can obtain in the once Forbidden Zone. So now it is our holy duty to enter it, put the mark of our feet and wheels and guns and flags upon it! To expand the boundaries of our ineluctable power!”

A mammoth a-a-a-ahhhhh! erupted from the crowd.

“To kill our enemies—” Ursus thundered, shaggy arms outflung, “known and unknown—like so many lice!”

A growl, a gathering crescendo of fury and might, swelled up from anthropoid throats. Ursus brought his arms down in a mighty sweep of finality, his voice climaxing the speech with one last fierce exhortation of brute force.

“And to invade-invade-INVADE, INVADE!”

The ranked gorillas, standing before the platform, blistered the air with applause. Hoarse shouts of exaltation rumbled wildly from the throng. With waves of acclaim cascading upon him, Ursus took a seat once more, his gorilla smile as wide as humility allowed. Dr. Zaius did not smile.

Seated and silent amid the uproar, the chimpanzee section of the audience sat in stunned despair. One Ursus, feeding flames to trigger-happy civilians, could fan a blaze that could wreck Ape City. Gorilla policemen, quick to put down troublemakers among the intellectuals, were circulating rapidly, wielding truncheons. And bayonets. The chimps who had refused to stand to honor Ursus and his speech were bullied into upright positions. All but Zira, who remained seated, her chimp muzzle screwed into an expression of defiance. Cornelius, standing to avoid a fight, was exceedingly perturbed by her foolhardiness.

“Zira!”

She wouldn’t budge. Cornelius whispered to her in a fierce undertone.

“Zira, as your husband, I beg you to stand up.”

“Only for my principles,” she said clearly and coolly.

“All right,” Cornelius smiled, in spite of himself. “For your principles then. And mine. Only stand!”