Текст книги "Battle for the Planet of the Apes "

Автор книги: David Gerrold

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Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 8 страниц)

In the Archives Section, Caesar, MacDonald, and Virgil were still stumbling over chunks of fallen concrete. Virgil paused for a moment as his Geiger counter clacked a little louder and quicker. He moved on, and the noise subsided.

As it did, he cocked his head curiously. There was another noise, a whirring sound. He stopped and looked around. He sniffed the air, his simian nostrils flaring. He blinked and held his torch aloft—and froze as he caught sight of the TV camera mounted high on the wall. It turned slowly this way and that, still scanning what had once been an entrance. The whirring came from its motor. It swung toward them and stopped. Virgil caught his breath.

He touched Caesar, pointing. “Look . . .”

Both MacDonald and Caesar stared at the camera. It stared impassively back at them.

MacDonald laughed at Virgil’s fear. “It’s been there for years. Breck used to have all the corridors equipped with cameras.” He added wryly, “To forestall ape conspiracies, as I remember.”

“No, no . . . it . . . was moving.”

“What?”

“Are you sure?” asked Caesar.

Virgil nodded, never taking his eyes off the camera.

MacDonald licked his lips. His mouth was suddenly dry. He swallowed and took a step sideways.

The camera moved slightly to follow him, its motor whirring softly.

“He’s . . . right. Virgil’s right!”

Virgil lifted his gun and held the trigger down for one long, angry moment. A burst of machine gun fire tore the camera off the ceiling. Pieces of it scattered across the room, ricocheted off the walls. Only a few dangling wires remained.

He stood there with his machine gun smoking. Caesar and MacDonald stared at him, hardly believing what he had done.

“Whoever or whatever is down here . . .” began Caesar.

“. . . already knows that we’re here too,” finished Virgil.

“That camera was supposed to make automatic sweeps—it wasn’t,” said MacDonald, “It was being manually controlled.”

“We’ve got to get out of here,” said Virgil.

“Not until we find those tapes,” snapped Caesar. “Come on.” He scrambled forward. MacDonald and Virgil followed.

FOUR

“Those apes!” cried Kolp. “I’ll get them for that!” He slammed his fist against the TV monitor. The screen remained blank. “They must have shot the whole camera off.”

“If we shoot them,” said Méndez, “we break years of peace.”

Kolp misunderstood him. “I know,” he said. “It’s been boring, hasn’t it?”

Méndez didn’t answer. Frowning to himself, he began switching the monitor screens to show the views from other TV cameras. He couldn’t pick up the intruders, though. “They’ve gone all the way into the Archives Section.”

“Huh?” Kolp looked at him. “Archives? What do they want there?”

“It must be important, whatever it is.”

“Blueprints,” muttered Kolp. “Plans for the underground city. That’s what they want. They must be planning to attack us again. That’s what it is, I’ll bet! I’m sure of it!” His expression grew cunning. And savage. “Well, we’ll get them. Yes, we will. We’ll get them.”

In the Archives Section, MacDonald, Caesar, and Virgil were already ripping open cartons, pulling apart crumbling file cabinets, and pawing through piles of tape canisters.

The two apes were trying to be systematic; they were picking up one tape canister at a time and reading its label, frowning darkly and moving their lips, then carefully discarding it as they decided it was not the one they were looking for and moving on to the next.

MacDonald was less careful. He was in a hurry. He knew what he was looking for and approximately where it should be. He shuffled through the files and tapes with barely controlled fury. Impatience and a need to get out of there quickly drove him to this impetuosity. “It’ll be a tape, a big, round canister,” he said. But he was only repeating himself. He had briefed the two apes many times during their journey across the desert. They all knew what they were looking for and where it should have been stored.

Should have been. But wasn’t. The room had collapsed long ago. Filing cabinets had toppled over, their contents scattered. Someone had been in here, too; whoever it was hadn’t shown much regard for the files. Papers and tapes were scattered haphazardly.

The filing cabinets and shelves were of no help, either. The tape wasn’t there. It would have to be one of the ones buried in the rubble on the floor. The three of them began digging through the piles of papers and tapes and films. They had to examine them all, each one individually. Abruptly, Virgil straightened. He held a large tape canister in his hand. “MacDonald,” he said. “Is this it?” He read aloud from the label, “ ‘Proceedings of the Presidential Commission on Alien Visitors.’ ”

Caesar and MacDonald joined him and looked over his shoulder. “I think . . .” said MacDonald. “Yes, that must be it.”

“Good,” said Caesar. “Let’s play it.”

MacDonald started to say something, then closed his mouth. He wanted to leave, but Caesar was right—the tape had to be played. There were no videotape players in Ape City. Quickly, he threaded the tape into a machine, all the while muttering, “Oh, please let it work.” He pressed the switch. The tape reels began turning slowly; the tape slid past the playback head. “Thank you,” MacDonald whispered to no one in particular.

Caesar seated himself very close to the monitor and waited impatiently. He fidgeted. MacDonald touched the fast-forward button and moved to a later point on the tape. Abruptly the screen came alive with the image of a female chimpanzee, an oddly beautiful face, somehow both kind and alien.

“Is that her?” whispered Caesar hoarsely, shifting in his seat to look at MacDonald. “Is that her?” He didn’t wait for an answer. He pressed his face close to the screen and sniffed. “Mother . . .” he said. “Mother?” The word felt curious in his mouth.

“Is there sound?” prompted Virgil.

“Oh . . .” said MacDonald. He touched another control. Abruptly, Zira’s voice came from the speaker: “It wasn’t our war. It was the gorillas’ war. Chimpanzees are pacifists. We stayed behind. We never saw the enemy.”

“Why does her voice sound so thick?” asked Virgil.

“They got her drunk; it was the only way they could get her to talk.”

“Mother . . .” whispered Caesar. His face was rapt.

Another voice on the tape, a human voice, asked, “But which side won?”

Zira’s voice replied flatly, “Neither.”

Virgil and MacDonald exchanged a worried glance. Caesar didn’t react; he was too absorbed in the flickering images of his mother. The screen was flashing through a series of color stills. Zira was lovely; her eyes were bright, large and brown and alive with warmth. Most of the pictures showed her smiling; her face creased easily into a smile. Zira had been a true madonna.

The voice on the tape continued, “How do you know if you weren’t there?”

“When we were in space . . .” said Zira, “we saw a bright white, blinding light. We saw the rim of the Earth melt. Then there was a . . . tornado in the sky.”

After a pause, the human voice asked, “Zira, was there a date meter in the spaceship?”

“Mmm.”

“What year did it register after Earth’s destruction?”

Zira’s speech was blurred, but the words were still understandable. “Thirty-nine fifty.”

The monitor screen went white.

Caesar snarled bitterly and looked up at Virgil. “And you talk to your pupils about eternity!”

The screen flickered, and another image appeared, this one a male chimpanzee. Caesar’s father, Cornelius. Caesar reached out and touched the image’s cheek. “Father . . .” He felt odd saying this word. And somehow hollow.

The same human interrogator was asking, “How did apes first acquire the power of speech?”

Cornelius’ voice—oddly like Caesar’s—came from the speaker. “They learned to refuse. At first they barked their refusal. And then on a historic day, commemorated by my species and fully documented in the secret scrolls, there came an ape who didn’t bark. He articulated. He spoke a word which had been spoken to him, times without number, by humans. He said ‘No.’ ”

The screen flickered and went black; the tape had run out. The end of it flapped around the takeup reel. Absent-mindedly MacDonald stopped it. He switched off the machine and removed the tape. “Since your father was right,” he said, “we must assume that your mother was right about the year of the world’s destruction.”

“No wonder the governor was so anxious to have me killed.”

“Not just the governor. All mankind thirsted for your blood and wanted your birth aborted. In the year 3950, apes will destroy the Earth.”

Virgil interjected quickly, “Not apes. Gorillas. But that’s only one possible future.”

They both looked at him. “How can there be more than one?” asked Caesar.

“Time has an infinite number of possibilities,” said Virgil. “It must have. We can change the present, can’t we? We must be able to change the future. There must be a way.”

Caesar stood up. “Yes,” he agreed. “There must be. Because if there isn’t . . . then there is no point in going on. No point in planning and building and learning. No point in justice. There’s no point in building a better world if you know it has no chance of survival.”

“That’s precisely why we have to change the future,” said Virgil. “And the way to do it is by making a world where wars are impossible. If we can do that, then there will be no final war. We must continue to have hope!”

Caesar looked at him. “Yes, Virgil, you’re right. As usual.” He smiled. “There’s much that we have to change. Let’s get started. Let’s go.” He headed for the door.

As the three squeezed out of the Archive Section, they heard a noise. Virgil cocked his head, then Caesar. MacDonald’s ears were not as keen, but he caught it, too. Shouts. And the sound of running feet. A lot of them.

“This way!” he cried, and pointed. “Come on!” They raced down a lateral corridor.

A corridor scanned by a TV camera.

“There they are again!” cried Alma, pointing to the TV monitors. Kolp and Méndez crowded close to watch the progress of Caesar and his friends.

Kolp grabbed a microphone. “Area Fourteen Security! They’re running away! Stop them! They’re going down corridor 11-M.”

From a console speaker, a voice replied, “We’re at the junction of corridor 11-M and 44-W. Subjects will have to pass us to escape!”

“Stop them! Do you hear? Bring them to me!”

“Yes, sir.”

Caesar, Virgil, and MacDonald were just approaching that junction. Caesar stopped abruptly and sniffed. He paused, sniffed again, turning his head this way and that. His eyes flicked from side to side. Virgil did the same. MacDonald scuffed to a stop and stared at them. “What’s holding you up? We have to get out of here!”

Virgil’s Geiger counter clacked louder. He aimed it forward and its incessant clatter increased even more.

Caesar said, “Do you smell them, Virgil?”

“Yes . . . they’re humans . . . but not like MacDonald.”

Caesar moved ahead carefully, signaling for the others to do the same. He kept his head cocked, listening, alert, ready for trouble. He moved slowly into the junction of the passageways.

And screaming, hideous figures jumped on him from the side corridors. They were dressed in grubby black uniforms and heavy goggles.

MacDonald leveled his gun, but held his fire—they were too close to Caesar. The chimpanzee snarled, whirled around, biting and snapping, suddenly breaking free of the grabbing hands. Seeing MacDonald and Virgil with their guns ready, he hollered, “Shoot! Now!” He leapt clear and began firing his own gun.

MacDonald and Virgil blasted away at the mutants. Backing away as they fired, they followed Caesar into a darkened corridor, suddenly turning and running. Their assailants, confused and shocked, came scrabbling after them.

Watching his screens, Kolp was enraged. “They got past! They got past! All right—then shoot them on sight. Never mind about bringing them here! Just get them!”

His voice reached a hysterical pitch. His face was contorted with rage. Méndez and Alma exchanged concerned glances.

“Get them!” Kolp was shouting. “Get them! Get them! Kill them! Kill them! Kill them!”

The deformed creatures slogged up the corridor after the trio of intruders. Kolp’s words blasted in their ears—from walkie-talkies and loudspeakers, from remote command posts and individual ear pieces. “Get them! Kill them! Kill them!”

The chimpanzee, the orangutan, and the man struggled up the corridor, exhausted by their run-in with the mutants. They approached another junction.

There was a sharp flash and an explosion of sound ahead of them, then a rapid staccato. They were being shot at. MacDonald felt something thump into his side, blossoming into a rivet of molten pain—he clutched at his wound, almost toppled, then threw himself backward against the wall. The two apes dropped backward, too. Seeing that MacDonald had been hit, Virgil crawled to him. Bullets ricocheted around them. “We’ve got to get out of here!” gasped the man.

Virgil gently pulled MacDonald’s hands away from his side and peered carefully at the wound. “It appears to be only a crease in the epidermis,” he remarked, then asked, “Is there another way out of here?”

MacDonald pointed back down the way they had come.

“I’ll find out,” said Caesar. “Stay here, but be ready to move . . . fast!” He strode off down the corridor, away from the mutant-controlled junction. As he moved, in his funny hunchbacked way, he watched for an alternate exit from the maze of underground passages. He cast his gaze from side to side.

There it was! A large door that they had passed on their way up, leading to a closed-off side corridor. He pushed at it—it gave a little bit, then stopped. He pushed harder—it gave a little more. Caesar anchored his feet against the rubble and pushed with all his strength. If he could get it open just enough for them to squeeze through . . .

Abruptly the door stuck. It would open no farther. Well, that would just have to do. Caesar squeezed halfway through and looked. There was an exit light very far ahead, a long way off down the tunnel. Yes, this was a way out!

He pulled back and yelled up to Virgil and MacDonald, “I’ve found it! Come on!”

MacDonald lurched to his feet, Virgil helping him. The two came running down the corridor. They squeezed painfully through the door, first Caesar, then MacDonald—the apes helping him—then Virgil, following. “Hurry!” he yelped. “Hurry!” There were mutants racing toward him from both ends of the tunnel. Somewhere a voice, a strangely reverberating voice, was yelling, “Kill them! Kill them! Kill them!”

Virgil jumped through after MacDonald, he was the smallest of the three, and together they ran toward the distant exit light. MacDonald moved slowest because of his wound; the two apes were almost dragging him. Behind them they could hear the sound of running boots.

There was a junction of corridors up ahead. “Wait!” cried Caesar, skidding to a stop. He sniffed the air, paused to listen. Virgil, too.

The orangutan pointed down one of the side corridors, “They’re coming from down there!”

“No!” said MacDonald, pointing down the other. “From there!”

“You’re both right!” snapped Caesar. “From everywhere!” Behind them, more mutants were pouring into the corridor.

“Ahead!” cried the chimp, and they ran on. They came to the light Caesar had seen; it marked a T-shaped junction. They dashed to the left, then turned the first corner to the right.

Suddenly, they were running straight into a pack of mutants, who were charging down on them. Virgil started firing his tommy gun first, then Caesar. Even MacDonald managed to get off a few quick bursts, the pain in his side was excruciating.

The mutants screamed and tried to retreat, but those in back kept coming. They bunched up in the corridor. And died as the bullets splattered into them.

They screamed. They tried to run. They scrabbled at the walls. They fought to get away from the apes’ blasting weapons. They clambered over one another. And died.

The survivors broke and ran.

The two apes and the man came charging after them, still firing. The grotesque figures ducked into side corridors and disappeared, vanished down junctions or into holes in the walls—anything to escape the savagery following them, hacking at their backs.

“There’s the exit!” gasped MacDonald. “Up ahead. Keep going.”

The end of the tunnel was lit by a stronger and brighter light. It streamed down into the gloomy darkness like a yellow beacon. They headed eagerly for it. Faster and faster. There were mutants pounding at their backs.

And then they were out. In the ruins. Running down a deserted city street. Disappearing into the melted buildings.

Kolp was livid. His expression was twisted with anger and frustration. He confronted the captain of Security. He raged at him. He bellowed like a wounded bull. He strode and waddled around the man and berated him. He vented his fury on the poor hapless captain, as if he were one of the apes himself.

“You had a hundred armed men!” cried Kolp. “You know these corridors down to the last nut and bolt. Yet they escaped! They escaped! You cretinous troglodyte! You filthy, slime-wallowing, trash-eating son of a worm! You let them escape!”

The captain of Security was as badly scarred as the rest of the men. He looked at Kolp and the rest of the council nervously. “They were fast, sir. And smart—the chimp surprised us, Governor. He found another exit.”

“But he’s only an animal!” shouted Kolp. “Nothing but an animal!”

“No, Governor,” said Méndez. “He’s more than an animal. He can speak. So can they all.”

Kolp was scornful, “Hah! It takes more than the ability of speech to make a creature human!” He scowled, his scarred cheeks creased with pain.

“Speech makes them intelligent,” insisted Méndez. “It gives them the power to manipulate ideas. Intelligence may not make them human, but it might make them humane. Perhaps they came in peace.”

“They were armed!”

“Maybe only for their self-protection.”

“You were looking at the same monitors I was, Méndez,” snapped Kolp. “Did that look like self-protection to you?”

“Yes, it did. They only fired back after they were fired on.”

“You’re soft on apes, Méndez,” Kolp snarled. “And stupid! They shot out one of our cameras. That’s an act of war! And you saw how they hunted down our men and shot them in the back! Those apes are savages!”

“I still say we ought to let them return in peace.”

“So they can raid us again? And again?” And then Kolp stopped. “Return?” he asked. “To where?”

“To wherever they came from. They must have a settlement somewhere.”

“Yes,” agreed the governor, stroking his uneven beard. “Yes . . . They must have a place somewhere—but where? Where do they live? We ought to know,” he muttered to himself. “They might try to come back. Now that they know we’re still alive, they might try to exterminate the rest of us.”

“They came with few provisions,” chimed Alma. “They can’t live too far away.”

“Which way did they head?” Kolp asked.

The captain of Security was relieved that Kolp was no longer raging at him. “They headed northwest, Governor,” he said quickly.

“Ahh, yes. Good. Organize scout parties. Collect all the equipment that will still work. Follow them. Find their hideout.”

“Yes, sir. Right away, sir!” The captain saluted and wheeling about on one heel, hurried out.

Méndez looked at Kolp. “Why?” he asked.

Kolp grinned at him. “So that we can exterminate them.” He rubbed his hands together and giggled. “Won’t that be fun?”

FIVE

Aldo stood on the ridge and peered out into the desert. Somewhere out there lay the Forbidden City. Someday, someday . . . He sniffed the air and curled his lip. Someday he would lead an army out there!

Behind him, the other gorillas sat at a small, almost burned-out fire, muttering and grunting, picking their fleas and cracking them.

Abruptly, Aldo stiffened. “Quiet,” he barked to his troops.

Eyes narrowing, he looked out into the desert. Was there something out there? Other gorillas moved up to look, too. They sniffed at the wind.

Far out, almost lost in the sparsely vegetated terrain, were three figures, too distant to be identified. His hackles rose, and he growled deep in his throat. Were they men or apes? “Look . . . there!” he pointed. The other gorillas looked, then reacted. They snorted, they snuffled, they flared their nostrils and fidgeted; they bounced up and down, they grunted, they made noises. They squinted and sniffed and became excited. They stamped their feet and pounded the ground.

“Quiet!” snapped Aldo again. His eyes narrowed to slits. The short, fat one must be an orangutan; yes, he could tell by the way the paunchy little thing waddled. The one on the other side, the one who was limping, was definitely a man. Aldo sneered. The third figure was walking like an ape. Too skinny to be a gorilla. Must be a chimp. Hmf. What were they doing out in the desert, anyway? The desert and the city were forbidden.

Aldo growled orders to his troops. They backed down off the ridge, out of sight.

As Caesar, Virgil, and MacDonald came climbing up the hill, the gorillas came charging down the slope and flung themselves on the trio.

“Hey, what . . .?” cried Virgil, as he disappeared under the thundering black bodies. They went tumbling down over the rocks.

There was the flash of a drawn sword.

Caesar was yelling, “Stop . . . it’s us . . . it’s Caesar!”

“Caesar?” Aldo frowned. “Stop,” he called. “Stop.” He said it without urgency, only curiosity. “Caesar?” The scuffling muttered off into embarrassed silence. The two apes and the man stood up, brushing off the dirt.

“That’s some welcome,” said MacDonald wryly. “We should have stayed in the city. Definitely.”

“I imagine Aldo was hoping we’d stay there indefinitely,” remarked Virgil.

Aldo came down the slope toward them. “Why were you there? To visit the city is forbidden.” His manner was grim.

Caesar was just as cold. “I know. I forbade it.”

“Then why . . .?” Aldo frowned in puzzlement. This did not make sense to him.

“Aldo,” said Virgil. “If a king forbids his subjects to wear a crown, that doesn’t mean he can’t wear one himself. Caesar is Caesar. He went to the city for a purpose.”

“What purpose?” Aldo was suspicious.

“I went looking for my past, but I found our future.”

“Huh? Explain.” The big gorilla was aggressively insistent.

Caesar snarled irritably. “You wouldn’t understand.” He started to shove past Aldo.

But Aldo stopped him. He raised his sword and pointed it directly at Caesar’s heart. “Aldo will make the future—with this.”

“No,” Caesar shook his head. “With that, Aldo will find himself in the past.”

MacDonald smothered a smile, but Virgil laughed out loud. The trio moved up the hill and on toward Ape City.

The gorillas snorted in contempt and moved back toward their outpost. Not a single one noticed the three mutant scouts who had been tracking Caesar all the way from the city. The mutants began moving away from the outpost, circling it widely to move toward Ape City.

The Ape Council meeting was divided into three sections. There were ten representatives of each species. The orangutans were older and more staid; Virgil was the youngest member. The gorillas were all brutish young males; Aldo was chief among them. The chimpanzees included both males and females; they all had kindly faces.

Caesar, Lisa, and Cornelius entered and took their seats on a dais before a table on which were stacked the apes’ laws, a set of hand-lettered parchments. Caesar was deep in thought. He hugged Cornelius fondly and bade him keep quiet, then he called the meeting to order. He rapped the table for silence. “My friends, I have convened this extraordinary meeting of the council in order that I might report on an action that I deemed necessary: a reconnaissance expedition to the Forbidden City . . .”

At that, all the apes reacted visibly. Lisa was startled and concerned. The gorillas became restless and fidgety, rattling their swords. The orangutans were outraged, and the chimpanzees were confused. The Forbidden City?

“. . . with Virgil and MacDonald as my aides,” Caesar finished.

“Why MacDonald?” complained Aldo. “Why not a soldier?”

“You will hear,” said Caesar. Cornelius crawled under the table and stayed there. “When ape history comes to be written, we want it based not on legendary fiction but on facts. We went in search of records that might provide such facts.”

“Did you find them?” asked a chimpanzee.

“Yes,” said Caesar.

“And brought them back?” said an eager orangutan hopefully.

“No,” said Caesar.

“Why not?”

“Because we went in peace to what, we thought, was a dead city; but in case there might still be human survivors, we took MacDonald to parley with them and secure permission for our search.” He paused. “There are survivors.”

The Council murmured. “Survivors?” they echoed.

“Maimed, mutated, mad, hostile, and . . . human.”

The murmur became a shocked roar.

“They attacked us,” said Caesar.

At that, the gorillas leaped to their feet. “Then let me lead my soldiers against them!” growled Aldo.

Caesar looked at him firmly, “General Aldo, not only are they armed, for they attacked us with sophisticated weapons . . .”

“We, too, have weapons.”

“. . . but the radiation in the city is still such that if you and your soldiers fought there for just a few hours, you would become maimed, mutated, and as mad as they. So also would your future children.”

The Council was shocked into silence. Then Aldo said sullenly, “Did the humans follow you here?”

“We saw no sign of it. But you are right to be concerned. We have to plan for a time when they may come out of the city, when they may find us.”

Now the chimpanzees and orangutans rose to their feet; what was Caesar saying?

“Our gorilla army will exercise constant vigilance through continuous patrols. Civilians will assist in building defenses. And we should discuss training a militia.”

Lisa gathered Cornelius up in her arms. “Caesar, is this necessary? Isn’t it possible that the humans will stay in their city and leave us in peace?”

Caesar said gently, “Yes, it’s possible. But if we wish for the peace to last, we must be prepared to fight for it.”

Lisa turned desperately to Virgil, “Virgil . . .?”

The pudgy little orangutan said calmly, “If light is possible, so is darkness. If peace if possible, so is war.”

Caesar added, “This has not been an easy decision to make, but it is a necessary one. If we are to build a world of peace, we must survive. And if we are to survive, we must be strong.” At this, the gorillas cheered.

Abruptly, there was a scuffle at the door, a flurry of sudden noise as a group of humans tried to enter. Two gorilla guards had grabbed them and were forcibly trying to evict them. The group included MacDonald, Teacher, Doctor, Jake, and a few others. MacDonald was resisting loudly, “Get your filthy gorilla hands off of me!”

“No humans in council,” the gorilla was insisting.

“Stop that!” cried Caesar. “Release them!”

“Huh?” grunted Aldo and the other gorillas. They were standing, ready for a fight. Aldo turned angrily to Caesar; he stalked up to the front of the room to Caesar’s chair. He towered over him. “No humans in council!” he roared.

Caesar remained seated. He spoke calmly, “They are here because I sent for them. Now that we know of the danger in the city, we need their help, their counsel.”

“No,” insisted Aldo. “No! No!”

The other gorillas also began roaring and pounding their tables. “No! No! No!” They began to chant: “No! No! No! No! No!”

Cornelius, intimidated by the gorillas, moved closer to his father. Caesar slipped his arms around the little chimp and stood up. He waited for the uproar to cease. After a moment the gorillas trailed off in their chanting. They weren’t intelligent enough to be embarrassed, just uncomfortable.

Caesar said calmly,"I say yes.”

The chimpanzees and orangutans, confused by the rapid pace of events, nodded their heads in agreement with Caesar; he seemed to know what he was doing. “Yes,” they echoed. “Yes. Let the humans in council.”

Cornelius relaxed, realizing that his father had won the point. Aldo realized it too; he was furious as he looked around the room and sensed the support for Caesar’s position rather than his. He growled angrily as he realized that he had lost. He turned to the other gorillas, “Come! We shall not sit with humans. No!”

He strode from the room, and the other gorillas followed. At the door they shoved the humans roughly out of their way. They stamped loudly out of the room.

Caesar walked over to the humans. He clapped his arm around MacDonald’s shoulder and led him, Teacher, Doctor, Jake, and the others over to the empty gorilla seats. He gestured them to sit down.

“Now,” said Caesar, “let us reason together and make plans.”

Méndez was saying to Kolp, “Governor, somewhere along the line, this bloody chain reaction of violence has got to stop. A destroys B; B destroys C; C destroys A and is destroyed by D, who destroys E—and before anyone knows where they are, there’ll be nobody left anywhere to know anything. Only nuclear dust, like those apes from the future predicted. The Earth will be a dead star.”

Kolp’s eyes blazed. “The star of our city is not dead. We shall live to see it rise again.”

Méndez muttered, “At whose expense this time?”

As if in answer, Alma ushered in the travel-stained captain of Security, who had come directly to Kolp’s office. He saluted sharply and said, “We found it, sir.” He began to unfold a map. “The site of Ape City.”

Méndez looked unhappy. Kolp seemed to grow. “Where?” he asked eagerly. “Where is it?”

The captain laid the map on a table. He began pointing. “There’s a gorilla outpost here. Below that is a valley; it’s planted with orchards and vineyards. There are orange groves and banana palms here. Enough to feed thousands.” He tapped the map, “Their city is here.”

“You saw it?”

“Yes, sir, we did.”

“Did they see you?”

The captain shook his head. “No, sir. They were too busy. They seemed to be holding some kind of a council. Probably a council of war. I’ll bet that Caesar was reporting to them on his reconnaissance. One day soon they’ll be coming for us.”