Conquest of the Planet of the Apes - Jakes John - Страница 33

Inspector Kolp glanced up at him, contemptuous. “No stomach for seeing justice done, Mr. MacDonald?”

“Justice—!” MacDonald exploded. He held his temper, breathed deeply. “If that’s what you call it, I’m not ashamed to say no.”

Breck could hardly take his eyes from the supine Caesar. “Go on if it’s making you sick. We’ll handle the rest of it.”

With an unsteady gait, MacDonald began to climb the amphitheatre steps. The moment his face was averted, it hardened into lines of determination. He batted the door aside, staggered into the corridor, then seemed to slough off the trembling. He flashed a glance to his right, saw darkness outside the oval window at the corridor’s end. Walking fast, he headed the other way.

At an intersection of corridors, he waited until two handlers passed. They gave the rumpled, sweating black man an odd look before disappearing.

MacDonald bent over a drinking fountain, pretended to drink as he tried to remember a tour of the Ape Management Center he’d taken once in company with a number of other civic officials. Chamberlain’s staff had shown off the entire facility. MacDonald recalled comments about groups of floors having their own electrical control complexes.

But which way to go? He had no idea.

He wiped his eyes, read the various glowing signs at the corridor intersection. Most indicated laboratories along the branching hallways. One, pointing down a hall relatively free of doorways, said Lounge and Washrooms.

He hurried that way, aware of the press of time, and filled with a very real doubt that he could do what he wanted without a mistake.

Luck stayed with him to the point of revealing a stairway at the very end of the corridor. He pushed through the door, ran down one flight, then another. The walls of the landings were solid concrete.

Cursing the wasted effort, he bolted back up two flights, then one more, to a landing with a door marked Power Service, Floors 8-10.

He reached for the handle, started as footfalls clacked below.

Damn! Someone coming up . . .

Swiftly, he went up to the next floor two steps at a time. There he turned around, started down noisily, encountering an armed guard at the power door landing.

“Mr. MacDonald!” the guard said. “I didn’t realize you were in the building, sir.”

“Little emergency project with the governor.” MacDonald wondered how steady his own voice sounded. Not very, it seemed from the inner vantage point of his mind. By way of explanation, he added, “Seems to be some trouble with the elevators—”

“It does happen,” replied the guard with a sycophantic smile. He touched his cap. “I’ll have someone check into it.”

“Do that,” MacDonald said over his shoulder, already on his way down to the next landing, and swearing again at the necessity for the time-consuming ruse.

He went down two more flights. An exit door above clanged. He whirled and raced back up. By the time he reached the power room door and twisted the knob, his chest ached from exertion. He slipped inside, latching the door behind him. His eyes went wide at what he saw.

On the tour, he’d had the purpose of rooms like this explained. But the guide hadn’t bothered to conduct the group inside. On his right, a pair of huge, dark, faintly humming cylinders bulked to the ceiling. Other sealed cubes of metal on his left clicked and buzzed. And ahead—that was the source of the interplay of colored lights that dappled the aisle.

He rushed to the wall-sized pane of thick glass at the aisle’s end. The pane comprised an immense circuitry schematic of the eighth through tenth floors. Onto the glass were etched three large circles duplicating the outer perimeter of the ape management tower, A lighted numeral above each identified the floors.

Within each circle was a maze of pulsing, crisscrossing lines of light. They brightened, darkened, changed colors even as he watched. MacDonald’s face reflected the different colors as he punched a frustrated fist against the lower part of the glass.

The glass vibrated faintly. Licking his bruised knuckle, he realized what he’d struck. Not the glass itself but a double row of toggle switches under the center circle. Dazzled by the array of flashing light-stripes, he hadn’t seen the switches at first.

He discovered a similar double bank beneath each of the etched circles. He squatted, face close to the toggles under the circle representing floor nine. Then he uttered a ragged sound of relief.

Along with individual numerical identification for each toggle, groups of them had small embossed label-plates. On the bottom row, above a battery of some dozen switches, a long, narrow plate bracketed the twelve as No. Cond. Amphi.

He ran his index finger across the plates for the individual toggles. Speak. Syst, Ovhd. Lghtng., Cons. Master, Tab. One. Tab. Two. Tab. For table? All right.

He threw both table switches to off position. Parallel yellow green lines near the center of the circle dimmed to darkness.

A moment later he inched the landing door open. All clear. He started down the stairs again, this time more slowly.

His watch showed that almost seven minutes had elapsed since he had feigned illness and left the amphitheatre. That could have been six minutes, fifty-nine seconds too long. All his effort might be wasted. Still, he’d done all he could, short of seizing a policeman’s weapon and blasting everyone in sight. And that would have gotten him shot, and done nothing at all for the chimpanzee.

MacDonald reached the ninth floor, began to walk back toward the intersection that would lead him to No Conditioning. In another minute or two, he’d find out whether he had succeeded or failed. Depressed and weary, he suspected it was the latter. He approached the door to the amphitheatre with hesitation, paused to listen. Inside, he could hear no distinct sounds. With a heavy swallow of dread, he forced himself to tug on the handle, open the door, and enter.

An almost sensual thrill coursed through Jason Breck in those seconds when the supine ape screamed two words in the human tongue. Then he felt a new, euphoric calm.

He need no longer fear his enemy. He could marvel at him.

Breck’s face was almost benign as he dismissed the queasy-looking MacDonald and stepped down from the amphitheatre seats. The police and attendants backed out of his way. Breck approached Dr. Chamberlain, who only now appeared to be returning to a state approaching sanity. On Chamberlain’s smock huge sweat-rings showed beneath the armpits.

“Is he alive?” Breck asked. The ape’s white-gowned chest did not appear to be moving.

Dr. Chamberlain crossed to the table, placed his ear near Caesar’s lips, then listened to his chest. “Yes. Barely.”

“It’s amazing, absolutely amazing!” Breck breathed. “I want to hear him say something else.”

“We may need to stimulate him with a light injection,” Chamberlain said. Breck’s nod gave permission.

An attendant produced a hypodermic, injected Caesar’s arm below the cuff of his gown, stood back. No one in the room spoke. A minute passed. Another.

With a restive groan of pain, the chimpanzee stirred. Shifted his head from side to side. Opened his eyes slowly and blinked once. Then he rolled his head over until his left cheek pressed the table. His eyes were blank, unreadable.

Breck watched with total fascination. “Ask him—” he thought a moment. “Ask if he’s capable of abstract reasoning.”

No one seemed quite certain about who was to pose the question. Inspector Kolp took the initiative, striding to tableside, crimping the chimpanzee’s jaw between thumb and fingers.

“You heard the governor,” he said.

Caesar’s blank expression changed to one of open defiance. Kolp applied more pressure.

“Answer Governor Breck!”

Savagely, Caesar wrenched free of Kolp’s grip. He moved his head to signify refusal. To Breck it seemed a movement of great strength.