Текст книги "Escape from the Planet of the Apes"

Автор книги: Jerry Pournelle

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Текущая страница: 2 (всего у книги 10 страниц)

FOUR

It was dark at the Los Angeles Zoo. Jim Haskins whistled as he made his final rounds of the hospital section. There’d been a lot of excitement earlier, but it was all quiet now, and things were almost normal. He still resented the two Marines with guns outside the hospital section, and the other Marines and their officers camped in trailers not far away, but they weren’t interfering with Jim’s routine now, and he’d finally caught up on his chores. It was time to go home.

First, though, he looked in on his fox cub. Somehow the poor thing had gotten loose and ended up in the run with the Dingo’s, and those Aussie wild dogs had made a mess of her. Luckily there had been a keeper near enough to rescue her. The fox looked all right now. She had taken sedation nicely, and the IV was dripping properly. Jim nodded in satisfaction. He wasn’t quite a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine yet; he had another year of night school to go. But all the vets agreed that Jim Haskins had a touch about him that was worth more than book learning.

There was a deer in the next cage, with ultraviolet lights to keep it warm. Jim didn’t think it was going to make it. Pneumonia was always bad with animals, and the deer family hardly ever recovered from it. Too bad, really, but at least it wasn’t one of the rare species. The gorilla was in the next cage, and it seemed to be asleep. That was a bad one, thought Jim. His official name was Bobo, but somebody had dubbed him “Monstro” and that stuck. He had been all right until his mate died, then he’d taken to brooding, and he was getting meaner all the time. Jim hoped the curator would trade Monstro to another zoo, someplace that needed a gorilla. It would be nice if they had an unattached female Monstro could woo, but the chances were pretty slim at his age.

Then there were the three new chimps. Nice healthy ones. They must have been sombody’s house pets, because they insisted on wearing clothes. They wanted to keep knives, too. Jim had been firm about that. The zoo rules had to be kept, even by chimpanzees brought in by the Navy and a lot of doctors and armed Marines. The lights were still on in the new chimps’ cage. Jim made sure there was plenty of bed straw and that the floors were clean, and they had oranges and bananas to eat. They were acting a bit scared. They hadn’t eaten anything, and they wouldn’t climb on the jungle gym or swing on the tires, but maybe they’d get over that in a day or so. Chimps were always fun. Jim had never had any trouble with chimps. He liked them.

The female seemed lonesome, sitting there at the edge of the cage. Jim found an especially nice banana and peeled it for her. He reached through the bars. The regulations said he wasn’t supposed to get that close to the cages when he was alone. Apes could grab a man and hurt him. They wouldn’t mean to, usually, but they could play rough, and it might be necessary to hurt one of the animals if it got loose.

But he’d never had trouble with chimps, and she looked so lonesome sitting there.

She slapped the banana away. Then she slapped him.

Jim stepped back from the cage and shrugged. “Have it your way, mate. Good night.” He flipped out the lights, and swung his flashlight around for a final inspection. Everything was in order, and he left the hospital ward, carefully closing the door.

The chimpanzees stared at the closed door.

“I’m not his mate,” the female said carefully. “I’m yours.”

“Zira, please. Control yourself, my dear. I think they’re trying to be kind.”

“This cage stinks of gorilla,” Zira insisted. She sat on the straw. One of the males joined her and took her hand. “But—Cornelius, where are we?” she asked. “And why are we pretending to be dumb animals?”

Cornelius looked up at the other male. “It was your idea, Dr. Milo. You haven’t had a chance to explain before. I think now would be a good time.”

“I did not think it wise to let them know we can speak, before,” Milo said carefully. He peeled an orange and ate it, grimacing as the juice ran across his fingers. “Now I’m sure of it. Consider. As we achieved orbit in Colonel Taylor’s spacecraft, we saw an explosion below. At least one entire hemisphere was destroyed. I do not doubt that the entire earth was made uninhabitable. Are we agreed?”

The seated chimpanzees nodded. “But if Earth is destroyed, where are we?” Zira asked again.

“I’ll tell you in a moment. Consider the situation, then. We are possibly the only survivors of our civilization. The last of the apes have killed each other in a war that no one could win. The fools have accomplished what they’ve been trying to achieve for centuries, and we can never go home. Now. As to where we are. I believe that in some fashion—and I lack the intellect to know precisely how, although I have theories—we have traveled from our own time into the past. Our civilization, the time of the apes, is in the distant future of this time. We are in our dim past, at a time when men are the dominant species on Earth, and apes cannot as yet speak.”

“But—we saw the earth destroyed!” Cornelius insisted.

“And Earth will be destroyed,” Milo said evenly. “Just as we saw it. But it destroyed itself in such a manner that we were sent into the past.”

“How?” Cornelius insisted.

“I told you, I am not precisely certain,” Milo said. “The philosophers have shown there is a definite relationship between time and velocity. Somehow, we had, through the combined orbital velocity of our spacecraft and that imparted to us by the greatest explosion in Earth’s history, just the right velocity to send us into the past. If you do not like that explanation, call it magic; I have no better one. The important thing is, we are here.”

Cornelius nodded. “All right. We’re in our own past. What an opportunity!”

“For an historian like yourself, yes,” Milo agreed. He looked around the cage and up at the electric lights, and waved his arms expansively. “Marvelous equipment! Think, Cornelius, all the old legends are true. Humans did have a machine civilization, with power to do almost anything they wished!”

“And destroyed it,” Cornelius reminded him.

“And destroyed it,” Milo repeated. He lowered his voice in wonder. “But why, Cornelius? With all this, with so many amazing things, so much we have not seen but must exist for all this to exist, could they not have been happy with it? We would have been dazzled by a tenth of this.”

“For how long?” Zira asked.

Milo nodded. “True. Humans and apes alike, never satisfied with what they have.” He sighed and paused a moment. “Your first question,” he said. “Consider. If we speak, the humans will ask us about our origin.” He had turned very serious. “Will we be able to conceal enough from them? I do not think they would be edified to learn that one day their world will crack like an egg and fry to a cinder because of an ape war of aggression.”

“I see,” Cornelius said. “I think you are right. Zira? Do you agree?”

“No.” She looked around the semidarkened cage. “If we don’t talk to them, they’ll keep us in cages. They won’t give us any clothes. We don’t even have sanitary facilities! Cornelius, I can’t live like a barbarian! We are civilized intellectuals.”

“Shh,” Milo said. “You’re disturbing the gorilla.” He pointed to the inhabitant of the next cage.

“Oh. Sorry,” Zira called. There was no answer and she looked up, not too surprised. Gorillas were never polite.

“He doesn’t understand you,” Milo reminded her. “Apes, at this instant in time, cannot yet talk. And I believe that for the moment, we would do well to follow their example. We can reveal nothing if we will not communicate with them.”

“All right,” Cornelius said. “I’ll go along. Zira?”

“Good night,” she told him. She stretched out on the straw and grimaced. “I think we will need the sleep. Good night.”

Zira woke early. The zoo was filled with unfamiliar noises: birds whistling, the growls of large carnivores, mechanical sounds of the zoo machinery. She could identify almost none of it. The whole concept of a mechanically dominated world was alien to her, although her husband’s historical research had at least made her intellectually familiar with the idea. She knew about this world, but she couldn’t feel it.

Cornelius and Milo were still asleep as Zira got up from the straw and washed herself in the shallow pool in one corner of the cage. The big male gorilla still slept in his own cage; Zira curled her lip at him. She had never liked gorillas, although she knew it was an indefensible prejudice.

Zira spent the next few minutes exploring the cage. It was certainly secure, fastened with padlocks that required keys. She didn’t wonder that the humans had used that kind of lock. In her own world and time, men in cages would play with the locking system so that if there were any way it could be opened without a key, they’d get it open. She supposed that apes must do the same here and now.

Wherever and whenever that was. The thought frightened her. They had seen the world destroyed. All agreed they’d seen it. But it was beginning to fade, a memory harder and harder to call up, like a dream from a long time ago. It had happened so fast. They had barely launched Colonel Taylor’s ship and made orbit when the world flamed white and red and orange, the shock wave hit them, and their ship had begun an automatic re-entry sequence.

Her reverie was interrupted when the main door opened and the man who had tried to give her the banana last night came in. He smiled, his lips pressed carefully together so that his teeth didn’t show, and said “Feel better this morning?”

Zira almost answered. If the human hadn’t been so ugly, so manlike, she would have; but it always surprised her to hear humans talk. She had known only three who could. She felt ashamed of herself for slapping the keeper last night. How could he know she didn’t like bananas? He was only trying to be nice.

The man looked into all the cages, then went into the enclosure with the deer and did something Zira couldn’t see. It was obvious that the human liked animals. He seemed as civilized as any chimpanzee. As she watched him, Cornelius and Dr. Milo woke up.

Zira turned to her husband and said “Good morning.”

The keeper turned quickly from the sick deer. “Who’s there?” he said when no one answered, he wandered through the zoo hospital building, looking everywhere, and muttering.

“Quiet,” Cornelius whispered.

“I still think it’s the wrong idea,” Zira said. “We ought to talk to them.” She kept her voice low. The keeper finally went back to his sick deer. He was still shaking his head and muttering.

A few minutes later the doors opened again. Two humans in white coats came in. The male was about six feet tall, with sandy brown hair and the kind of square-jawed features that Zira associated with the more aggressive humans. The female was much shorter, with dark hair and eyes. The soldiers at the door followed her into the room and gazed at her for a time before they went back outside, and Zira deduced that they found her very attractive. She had never understood human standards of beauty.

“Good morning, Dr. Dixon,” the keeper said.

“Morning, Jim. This is my new assistant. Dr. Stephanie Branton. Stevie, meet Jim Haskins. He’s a better animal psychiatrist than I am.”

The humans chattered together for a long time. Two soldiers brought a desk and some tables into the corridor outside the cages, then brought in crates of apparatus. Zira watched with interest. The equipment was unfamiliar, but extremely well made, and she felt envy. If she could have had some of her designs built that well . . .

All three apes watched as the humans set up their apparatus. Dr. Milo was worried; what did these humans intend? Who were their friends and who their enemies?

It was quite possible, he thought, that they would have no friends at all.

FIVE

Dr. Lewis Dixon watched lazily as the zoo people set up his apparatus. He was by nature a careful man, but not a worrier; there was no point in driving himself crazy about how the chimpanzees got in Colonel Taylor’s space capsule. He would find out or he wouldn’t, and worrying was not going to help a bit.

He grinned at Stevie, and she smiled back. She had been with his team only about three weeks, and they were already half in love. He even had disturbing thoughts about orange blossoms and weddings. Lewis Dixon had always sworn that he would marry someone outside his profession; somebody with a life of her own, a different kind of career, so that they would have some common interests but different ones too. Stevie was making hash out of all his resolutions. She’d had the same idea, and she wasn’t having any more success than he was. He winked at her, and knew she was thinking the same things.

Stevie and Jim carried some of the equipment into the cage. “Female’s a little uppity,” Jim said. “Slapped me last night. Not hard, though.”

“Hey, be careful, Hon,” Lewis called.

“I will.” Stevie grinned. Lewis thought it a very nice grin. Good teeth. No future dental bills to pay.

The test apparatus was simple. A shade that could be raised and lowered divided a low table. The experimenter sat at one side, and the subject at the other. As Stevie and Jim set it up, Lewis observed the chimps through half-closed eyes.

They’d seen something like this before. He was certain of it. They were almost purposive in their attempts to ignore what Stephanie was doing. Lewis had never seen chimpanzees act that way before. But, he thought, I’ve never seen chimps wearing full pressure suits either. Or carrying a suitcase full of clothes, if I can believe that Navy flight surgeon. “They had to be trained to work some of the controls of that spacecraft,” Lewis said. “May as well make the first tests hard ones. These are probably very intelligent chimps.”

“All right,” Stephanie called.

“Try the female first,” Lewis said. “She keeps watching you. I think she wants to play.”

Jim led Zira to the screen. Stephanie lowered the screen to reveal a red cube. She raised the screen and placed a number of other objects with the cube: a red cone, a blue cube, red sphere, etc., then lowered it again. Zira promptly pointed to the red cube.

Stephanie smiled. “Very good.” She touched a button in the apparatus, and a compartment on Zira’s side opened. It had raisins, and the chimp ate them quickly, smacking her lips.

Lewis entered the cage, whistling softly to himself. “You can forget simple discrimination tests,” he said. “Those chimps are trained. Very well trained.”

“Sure about the others, Doctor Dixon?” Jim asked.

Lewis nodded. “I was watching them. They reacted when she reached for the cube. These chimps have been exposed to a lot of tests, Jim. We’d better make the next one tough.”

“Wonder if they can play games?” Stevie asked. She brushed long soft brown hair away from her eyes and put a hair clip back into place. “Tic-tac-toe? Some chimps can play it.”

Lewis shrugged. “That’s true. OK.”

They set an illuminated game board on the table. Stephanie handed Zira the stylus and nodded as the chimpanzee made a mark in the center square. “She knows the rules all right.”

“Try the male,” Lewis suggested. Jim took Cornelius by the hand and led him to the table.

Cornelius made a mark in the corner. Zira made another. Then Cornelius. Three moves later, Zira leaped up and held her hands clasped over her head, victorious boxer style. She chattered laughter.

“That settles that,” Lewis said. He took raisins from his pocket and gave them to Zira, then a smaller number to Cornelius. “Stevie, I’ve never heard of chimps who could play Tic-tac-toe by the rules. Not like that, waiting their turn to move—the best I’ve ever seen is a race to make three in a row. Those are the best trained chimpanzees I’ve ever heard of.”

“Is it just training, Lew? Couldn’t it be intelligence?”

“It’d be a whole order of magnitude higher than we expect of apes,” Lewis Dixon said. “OK. Let’s find out Kroeger’s test.”

“Sure.” Stephanie helped him attach a banana to the ceiling. The ladder was removed from the cage. Then several boxes and a stick were laid on the cage floor.

The three chimps stared at the boxes, up to the banana, and out to Lewis and Stevie.

“Maybe they aren’t hungry,” Jim said. “Fed ’em a lot last night.”

“I think they’re too stupid,” Lewis said. “They were only trained, not intelligent. As I thought.”

Zira snorted. One of the other chimps squalled. Zira looked at the boxes for a moment, then attached two together. She added others until they formed a staircase, and, with the pole, would let her reach the banana. Zira climbed to the top of the box, used the stick to touch the fruit, and climbed back down again.

“But why didn’t she get it?” Stevie asked.

Zira turned to the girl. “Because I loathe and detest bananas.” Her voice was very clear and carefully controlled.

Cornelius shouted: “Zira!”

Stephanie sat very carefully at the desk outside the cage.

“You all right?” Lewis asked. His own legs felt a little rubbery.

“Sure. It surprised me, that’s all. I don’t know why. It’s only a chimpanzee speaking English. We did hear that, didnt we, Lewis?” She continued to sit at the desk.

“We surely did,” Lewis said. He turned to the chimps. “Can all of you talk?”

There was no answer at first. Then Zira said, “Of course we can. The others don’t want to while you’re here. Will you leave us alone for a minute?”

“Ye gods!” Lewis said. He motioned to the keeper who was standing as if carved from stone. They left the cage, locking it carefully behind them. “Come on, Stevie,” Lewis said.

“Do you think it is wise to leave them?” she asked. She struggled to her feet, surprised at how hard it was to stand.

“Yes. Now come on.” He put his arm around her waist as they went out the door at the end of the hall. The door closed behind them.

There was a long silence. “They may be listening to us,” Cornelius said at last.

“Nonsense,” Zira snorted. “If they knew how to make it possible to listen to us, they already knew we could talk. It is time we told them everything.”

Milo studied Zira’s face intently as he said, “Zira, are you mad?”

“Dr. Milo, please do not call my wife mad.”

“I did not call her mad, Professor Cornelius. I merely asked her if she had gone mad. And I repeat the question. Zira, are you mad?”

“No. But I hate deceit.”

“So do I,” Milo replied. “But there is a time for truth and a time, not for lies, but for silence. Until we know who is our friend and who is our enemy—”

“And how in God’s name do we find out if we won’t communicate?” Zira demanded. “We can speak. So I spoke.”

“We can also listen,” Milo said.

“No longer,” Cornelius reminded them. “Besides, did you not see the interest Dr. Lewis took in us? He already suspected something. He goaded Zira into making that staircase. With words. Already he half expected her to understand him. And Milo, what do we hear when we listen? A lot of psychiatric small talk.”

“We can also observe—”

“A display of primitive apparatus.”

“Primitive?” Zira gave the table a vicious kick. “It’s prehistoric. This junk wouldn’t test the intelligence of a newt.” She kicked the display again, and a leg fell off the table.

“Zira, for God’s sake, be calm,” Cornelius protested.

“I am calm.” She continued to kick the apparatus. “Why should I be upset? Our world is gone. We’re trapped here among primitive humans, possibly the only intelligent apes in the universe, and we’re locked in a cage that stinks of gorilla! Why shouldn’t I be calm? I am calm!” She delivered another vicious kick.

“Now you’ve disturbed Milo,” Cornelius said, fighting to remain calm himself.

Milo screwed his clenched fists into his eyes as he paced in frustration. He walked as far from the other two as he could, until he was stopped by the bars separating their cage from the gorilla. Then he faced them angrily. “For God’s sake, stop fighting! It’s too late anyway. Now they know. We’ve got to think what we ought to tell them.”

“You don’t have to shout at me!” Zira snapped.

“I am NOT SHOUTING!” Milo shouted. He shook himself. More quietly, he said “Use your heads and start thinking.”

“Milo, look out!” Cornelius shouted. He rushed forward, but not in time. The gorilla in the next cage had reached through the bars and seized Milo. It held him against the bars and laughed.

“MILO-O-O-O!” Zira screamed. “Milo! Cornelius, help him!”

The door opened and Lewis Dixon came in. He saw the situation and shouted to the keeper. “Get your pistol, Jim! Quick!” Dixon rushed forward to the gorilla cage and began to open the door. He waved to distract the gorilla, shouted, anything to make it release the chimpanzee. It did nothing, but continued to hold Milo, squeezing tighter, not moving.

“He’s killing him!” Zira shouted. The two chimpanzees were trying to pull the gorilla’s hands away from Milo’s throat. “We’re not strong enough!”

Jim Haskins came up with a .32 automatic. He looked on in confusion.

“Shoot, Jim!” Dixon commanded.

“That’s a valuable animal,” Haskins protested. He stood there, paralyzed.

“Damn it, so are the chimps!” Dixon screamed. “Shoot the damned gorilla!”

Jim shuffled about in indecision. The two Marines had rushed into the room and stood outside the cage, uncertain of what to do.

“Shoot the gorilla!” Dixon commanded.

One of the Marines raised his rifle. He fired, slowly, three times. Bright splotches appeared on the gorilla’s chest. It looked up, surprised, but it did not release Milo.

“Again!” Dixon ordered.

Jim Haskins came into the cage. With a sad look he placed his pistol against the gorilla’s head and fired. The shot was not very loud after the blast of the Marine’s rifle.

The gorilla convulsed and staggered backward, his grip about Milo’s neck relaxed at last.

Milo fell in a shapeless heap. He did not move.