Conquest of the Planet of the Apes - Jakes John - Страница 25

“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.”

A sudden kick in the rump almost spilled Caesar head first.

“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 corner 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.