Conquest of the Planet of the Apes - Jakes John - Страница 2

Welts—open wounds—glistened in the moon’s orange light.

“God, his master must have beat the hell out of him,” breathed the second policeman, peering at the fallen simian with a grimace of distaste.

“Maybe that’s why he tried it,” said the first, wiping sweat from his upper lip. He’d just noticed something else. The ape’s eyes were not completely closed. Nor was his breathing completely stopped. The powerful chest continued to pump ever so slightly—and the chimpanzee stared at them with eyes momentarily bright with hatred.

Then a cry of pain ripped out between the ape’s lips. The eyes glazed, closed slowly. The chimpanzee was dead.

The first policeman didn’t move. His thin voice expressed his shock: “I yelled at him. You heard me—”

“I heard you.”

“Didn’t do a damn thing. Slowed him maybe a second, no more.”

“A lousy conditioning job,” said the other, trying for a callous shrug.

“I wonder how many other lousy conditioning jobs are wandering around this city grinning and lighting cigarettes and cleaning toilets.” The first policeman glanced uneasily at the moon splinters on the towers. “I hope to God not many. If enough of them hated us the way that big bastard hated us when he was dying—” He let the rest trail off, too unpleasant to contemplate.

His colleague’s laugh sounded forced. “What’s with the God bit? It’s the government that keeps ’em from running wild.”

“But did you see the way he stared at us? I just think that if a couple of hundred of those bull apes ever went really wild, this city’d need a hell of a lot more than the government to protect it. I hope I’m not on duty if it happens.”

“You will be,” grumbled the other. “You are the government, my friend.”

The two stared at each other in glum silence. From far away down one of the dark boulevards came the shrilling sound of another one of them crying out.

In pain—or fury.

ONE

The passenger helicopter swept down across the glass-faced cubes of the city in the bright morning sunshine. Rotors whipping out wind and noise, it descended to the heliport pad atop one of the largest high rises near the city core. When the hatch opened, a file of suntanned commuters from the northern valley descended one by one. But the last two out of the ’copter were hardly typical commuters.

The man came first—heavy-set, florid, with gray in his wavy hair, and a maroon suit whose rather bold, showy cut instantly said that he was no conservative toiler in a futures’ exchange or ad-sell shop. He dressed like someone connected with the entertainment industry. Still, the cuffs and elbows of his jacket revealed wear. He was, then, in some less lucrative sector of the business.

The man had a stout leash looped around his right wrist. And it was his companion, at the other end of the leash, who continued to produce over-the-shoulder stares of curiosity from the commuters lining up at the rooftop check-in point.

At the end of the leash was a young but full-grown chimpanzee; a magnificent specimen, with alert eyes. The chimp blinked in the sunlight as he surveyed the panorama of towers and cubes ranged below the heliport on every side.

He was unusually dressed: a bright checked shirt; black breeches, black riding boots. In one hairy hand he carried a sheaf of colorful handbills.

The pair took places at the rear of the check-in line. Ahead, each passenger was having his or her identity card examined by two uniformed men from State Security. There was nothing perfunctory about the examination; each person’s card was scrutinized closely by the unsmiling officers. Finally, the heavy-set man and the leashed chimp reached the desk.

While one of the officers stared disapprovingly at the ape, the other accepted the card handed over by his master.

“Armando—is that a first or last name?”

With a shy smile and a bob of his head, the heavy-set man, answered, “Both, sir—that is, it’s my only name now. A professional name. Legally registered. I am the proprietor of a traveling entertainment. We are currently playing a two-week stand in the northern exurbs.”

The second officer jerked a thumb at the ape. “Do you have authorization to dress him like that?”

“Oh, yes, sir.” Armando fished an official-looking, stamped document from under his coat, and handed it across.

The second officer unfolded the document, scanned it, then returned it with another glance at the docile animal on the leash.

“A circus ape, huh?”

“That’s correct, sir,” said Armando, with obvious pride. “The only one ever to have been trained as a bareback rider in the entire history of the circus.”

“I thought circuses were definitely past history,” observed the first man.

With a smile, Armando plucked one of the handbills from the ape’s fingers. “Not while I live and breathe, gentlemen!”

Colorful type announced ARMANDO’S OLD-TIME CIRCUS. Smaller type below listed performance dates, times, and location. The handbill’s main illustration was a rather blurry photograph of the ape in the checked shirt. In the photo, he was standing on top of the bare back of a galloping white horse.

“Mind if I hang onto this?” the first officer asked. “My kid might get a kick out of an old-fashioned show like yours.”

“My pleasure, sir,” Armando said, still smiling his sleek, professional smile. “To promote attendance is precisely why we’ve come into the city with all these handbills.”

The officer tucked the flyer in his pocket, then passed the identity card back to its owner. “Okay, Senor Armando. Go ahead—and good luck.”

The officer pressed a button. A barrier gate slid aside. Armando gave a gentle tug on the leash.

“Come, Caesar.”

Armando started toward the elevator loading area, but doors were closing on the last carload of commuters. He paused, looked around, spotted an illuminated directional sign. Giving another tug on the leash, he led the ape toward the door to an interior staircase.

They’d gone down two flights, and reached a turning between floors, when Armando felt a tug from the other end of the leash. He turned to see the young ape looking at him alertly and with interest.

“Senor Armando,” the ape said distinctly, “did I do all right?”

Armando glanced uneasily down the stairwell, then smiled. “Yes. Just try to walk a little more like a primitive chimpanzee.” Relaxing the leash, he illustrated: “Your arms should move up and down from the shoulders—so! Without that, you look far too human.”

Vaguely puzzled for a moment, the ape nevertheless nodded. He slumped a little, imitating the circus owner’s movements. Armando was pleased.

“Much better.”

But there was a touch of sadness in the man’s eyes as he went on, “After twenty years in the circus, you’ve picked up evolved habits. From me, principally. Always remember—those must be disguised. They could be dangerous. Even fatal.”

“I know you keep telling me that, Senor Armando. But I still don’t really understand wh—”

Caesar broke off as Armando made a cautionary gesture. Two levels below, a woman and her daughter were coming up the stairs. Armando signaled Caesar to follow, darted down to the next landing and out through the door. In the bright corridor, another illuminated sign pointed the way to Aerial Cross-Ramp 10. They hurried that way, past closed office doors muting the sounds of voices and machines.

Once into the oval-windowed cross-ramp with the crowded plaza far below, Armando paused again. He risked speaking with quiet urgency.

“Caesar, listen to me most carefully. As I have reminded you before, there can be only one—one!—talking chimpanzee on all of earth: the child of the two other talking apes, Cornelius and Zira, who came to us years ago, out of the future. They were brutally murdered by men for fear that, one very distant day, the apes might dominate the human race. Men tried to kill you, too, and thought they had succeeded, but Zira took a newborn chimp from my circus and left you with its mother, hoping to save your life. I guarded you—even changed your name from the Milo they had given you—and raised you as a circus ape. But of course you inherited the ability to speak.”