Текст книги "Conquest of the Planet of the Apes "

Автор книги: John Jakes

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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 13 страниц)

Almost to the escalator, Caesar risked a glance to the rear. He was pulling away from them! He had a chance . . .

It vanished the moment he saw the two helmeted figures riding the down escalator adjoining the one going up. The first policeman leaped the rail, attempting to grab Caesar as he turned to flee. The other raced ahead to block Caesar’s retreat. The officer whipped up his truncheon. Caesar dodged, but the truncheon caught his forehead, sent him reeling. Mercilessly, they hammered him. Blood began to stream from a cut above his left eye. He dropped to his knees. A boot slammed into the small of his back, spilled him forward on his face. Still truncheons rose and fell . . .

Somewhere, an officer spoke into his talk-pod. “Locate Chief Inspector Kolp and tell him he can call off the hunt.”

SLAM—a murderous truncheon to the back of Caesar’s head brought total dark.

Gibbering—grunting—a sensation of swaying—a glare of lights against his closed eyes—and ape-sounds . . .

Then he heard human voices, a background of amplified announcements, the noise of a van gunning away. His head throbbed. He tried to move his legs and arms, realized that he was restrained by straps. Apparently lashed down to some kind of swaying litter. Helmeted policemen carried the litter. At the head of the procession the glasses of Inspector Kolp flashed. The police group approached a familiar barrier.

Caesar now understood the gibbers and grunts that had changed to alarmed howls; the wild apes caged near the reception area of the Ape Management Center sensed danger to one of their own kind. Clearly, the police had brought him to the center during his period of unconsciousness. A moment later, he knew why.

“This is special,” Kolp informed an official. “Call upstairs. We want the main No Conditioning amphitheatre cleared for about twenty minutes.”

The harassed official couldn’t stifle a frustrated exclamation: “Cleared? Oh, for crying out loud.”

Hazily, Caesar saw Kolp turn and stare down at him, spectacle lenses reflecting like small suns. “He probably will,” Kolp said in a cheerful voice. “That’s why we want it cleared.”

Weary with defeat, Caesar shut his eyes. He almost whimpered aloud. But some last spark of hate in him refused to give Kolp that satisfaction.

THIRTEEN

Rough hands pressed Caesar down, lashing him in place with buckles and straps. He knew what he would see when he let his eyes come open. The amphitheatre Morris had shown him—the amphitheatre where the gorillas shrieked in agony.

Now he was the subject restrained on the padded table closest to the console. An operator was already busy adjusting controls. Peering down toward his toes, Caesar realized they’d swathed him in a white hospital gown. Somehow, that only intensified his feeling of helplessness and fright.

“Hold his head in case he tries to bite me,” a voice growled behind him. Hands locked on. A U-clamp slipped under his head. He felt the cold touch of the electrodes at his temples.

Dr. Chamberlain and Inspector Kolp swung around as new voices sounded high in the amphitheatre. Caesar discovered that by turning his head slightly to the left, he too could see the arrivals. Governor Breck. And MacDonald.

The latter shot him one swift, anguished glance as the men descended to the front row. Kolp and Chamberlain approached the governor, who stood looking at Caesar with obvious pleasure.

Ignoring MacDonald, Kolp said, “I’m glad you got here in time for the end, Mr. Governor.”

“I wouldn’t have missed it,” Breck seated himself in the front row, leaned his elbows on the railing. MacDonald appeared exceedingly nervous, and with good reason, Caesar thought with a twinge of sorrow.

As if trying to cover his part in what had happened, MacDonald said to Breck, “I’m still trying to figure out why the ape made a run for it.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Mr. MacDonald!” Breck said. “It’s simple enough. The ape has intelligence! When he learned his friend Armando was dead—you’ll recall the ape was in the Command Post when the news came through—I imagine he realized the man had first betrayed him under torture.”

“But we don’t do that—to humans,” MacDonald shot back.

Inspector Kolp studied his fingernails, then removed his glasses and began to polish them. At the console, Dr. Chamberlain was whispering with the operator. The operator’s hand slid out to within inches of the switch used to send current through the table pedestal to the electrodes.

MacDonald wiped his lips. Like Breck, he leaned forward across the rail. Caesar could see his distraught eyes directly across the operator’s outstretched hand. The time for pretense was gone. He stared at the black man with open pleading.

MacDonald looked away.

“You’ve programmed in the special instruction?” Breck asked. Chamberlain nodded. “Then let’s get on with it.”

A signal from Chamberlain. The operator threw the switch over, and simultaneously the giant ceiling speaker boomed: “Talk.”

The thunder of the word seemed to carry pain, hideous pain that beat through Caesar’s body, making him arch and twist on the table. He bit the inside of his mouth to hold back a cry, lashed his head from side to side.

One of the attendants seized his head, forced it back down. The operator returned the switch to its original position.

The pain stopped.

Caesar panted. A vile sourness rose in his throat. Dr. Chamberlain pointed to the console.

“Up one third.”

The operator’s hand darted out, twisted the knob. Over went the switch . . .

“Talk.”

This time the pain—and the convulsions—were far worse. Caesar bit the inside of his mouth till it bled, forcing himself to ride out the searing, shattering hurt that made the small of his back rise and fall in spasmodic agony. Imploringly, he sought MacDonald’s face with pain-blurred eyes.

Was the black man clutching the rail in helpless anger? Caesar couldn’t be sure. The faces, the lights wavered, elongated, grew distorted under the impact of the pain . . .

The operator returned the switch to off.

Dr. Chamberlain scowled. Governor Breck hunched at the rail in a kind of wild anticipation: “More, goddam it. I want to hear him speak!”

Chamberlain himself reached forward, turned up the power again. The switch went all the way over, clack.

“TALK!”

Caesar’s back arched as high as the restraints would permit, slammed down. This time, he could not keep silent. Blood trickling from the corners of his mouth, eyes huge and glazed, he uttered a long, loud animal cry that tore up from his very gut. Frantically, his head beat from side to side . . .

“I want to hear him speak, not just yell!” Breck said.

Perspiring, Dr. Chamberlain leaned over, spun the knob all the way up. The cry from Caesar’s thrashing head became a bestial roar as the speaker thundered:

“TALK!”

He was going to die. Because all his hatred of his tormentors, all his determination, was as nothing against that electronic torrent of pain.

The operator’s fist had gone white on the switch. He stared at the screaming, bellowing animal with a kind of sick fascination. Even Breck turned a little pale beneath his tan.

Dr. Chamberlain shoved the operator aside impatiently, seized the switch and threw it to the off position.

Before Caesar could quite comprehend that the pain had stopped, Chamberlain slammed the lever forward again—"TALK!”—then back, then forward—“TALK!”—and again, and again, faster and faster . . .

“TALKTALKTALKTALK—”

His spine thrashing wildly, his reserves of strength all but gone, Caesar summoned will enough to try one last, desperate signal—a focusing of his eyes on Chamberlain’s frantic hand slamming the switch back and forth; then a pain-tormented look straight at MacDonald.

“Have pity—!”

The nearly maniacal Chamberlain continued slamming the switch on and off. Only Kolp’s hand on his arm checked him. Kolp was smiling. Breck was on his feet, ramming a fist into his palm, elated.

Slowly the reverberations of Caesar’s scream died. He felt his mind sliding into limbo, his eyes closing. He thought he saw MacDonald give a sharp little nod to signify he’d understood Caesar’s glance. He thought he saw that. But in his agony, there was no way to be certain.

And he had no strength left to look again.

He lay with his eyes closed, little threads of blood running down from the corners of his mouth, the convulsions slowly working themselves out of his tortured body. With a last soft thump, his back came to rest on the padding.

MacDonald had indeed caught the message in Caesar’s pain-wracked eyes. The glance at the flying switch—then the howling of those two human words—was not coincidence.

Like Governor Jason Breck, MacDonald was on his feet now. But MacDonald gripped the amphitheatre rail to control his emotions—while Breck gave vent to his.

“There’s our proof! My God, it’s incredible, but—we had to know.” He spun to his assistant. “You’ve no more doubts about who he is, do you, Mr. MacDonald?”

Trying to look queasy—it wasn’t difficult—MacDonald shook his head. “Is it necessary that I sit through any more of this, Mr. Governor?”

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.

Kolp reacted with a gesture toward the console. “Perhaps a little more persuasion, Mr. Governor—?”

“No,” Breck said, his tone almost mild. He’d checked a major threat to the smooth functioning of his city. He could savor victory.

Circling the table, Breck went on, “He can’t help what he is. Or how he reacts to us. You know, looking at him, it’s almost like looking at a deadly plague bacillus—knowing you’ve got it bottled up where it can’t harm anyone.” With a last, lingering glance that mingled loathing with a certain limited admiration, Jason Breck turned his back. Passing Kolp, he said, “You handle the rest.”

As Breck returned to the first row, Kolp retrieved his briefcase. He pulled a thick document.

“Dr. Chamberlain, as a representative of the agency, I have signed authority for the animal to be destroyed.”

Breck glanced at Caesar. The chimpanzee’s defiance changed to rage.

How had the ape withstood all the pain and come back to react as he was reacting now? Only the strongest, most basic emotions gave a man—or an animal—that sort of strength. Hatred was one such emotion.

“All in order,” Dr. Chamberlain said, refolding the document. “I’ll summon a vet with the proper injection—”

Kolp seemed annoyed. “He’s wired for electrocution, isn’t he?”

“Yes, of cour—”

“Then electrocute him.”

Dr. Chamberlain began, “We do not normally—” He hesitated, looked at Jason Breck.

Beginning to feel truly at ease for the first time in many weeks, the governor nodded.

“Do it now,” Kolp added.

The doctor sat down at the console. He tripped additional switches, rotated two more controls up to maximum. Then he moved the switch to the closed position.

For an instant there was no reaction from Caesar. Then—a howl of hurt. The howl was cut off as the chimpanzee’s jaw clenched shut. His eyes bulged. His back arched so steeply that the curve almost reached the limits of anatomical possibility.

Near the console, someone gagged. Dr. Chamberlain’s fingers began to flutter at his cheek. His lips moved. He seemed to be counting to himself, even while he watched the sweep dial of a timer, set in the console deck.

When the timer passed the ten-second mark, Dr. Chamberlain pulled the switch back.

Caesar hit the table with a thud. His head lolled to one side. An attendant rushed forward, bent down for a moment. Then he straightened.

“Dead.”

Now Jason Breck was all brisk movement, animation. He hurried to the amphitheatre floor to thank Dr. Chamberlain, who looked vastly relieved. Breck also pumped Kolp’s pudgy hand.

“Inspector, once again I congratulate you.”

Kolp smiled. “I’m only sorry Mr. MacDonald wasn’t here for the finish.”

Breck managed a small laugh. “You are a cold bastard, Kolp. But then, that’s why you’re excellent at your job. And successful, eh? I’m afraid Mr. MacDonald’s sensibilities are more tender than yo—ah, but there he is.”

Dr. Chamberlain and the various attendants were departing from the amphitheatre. Still looking shaky, MacDonald had entered at the top of the tiers of seats. Breck mounted the steps quickly, Kolp right behind with the helmeted officers. MacDonald’s eyes drifted past Breck’s shoulder to the still form on the nearer table.

“I gather it’s all over?”

Breck could afford to be magnanimous. Sometimes the whip was required; sometimes the velvet glove. This was an occasion for the latter. After all, MacDonald too was superb at his job, even if he were less realistic than Inspector Kolp. The governor laid his arm over MacDonald’s shoulders, turned him toward the door, saying in a not unkindly way. “Yes, it’s all over. Let’s get back to work running the city, shall we?”

He shepherded MacDonald into the corridor.

Not a little disgusted, Kolp walked after them. The last policeman filed out, leaving the amphitheatre to emptiness and silence.

On the padded table, Caesar’s form remained unmoving.