Текст книги "Beneath The Planet Of The Apes "

Автор книги: Michael Avallone

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Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 9 страниц)

The gorilla cop was scanning the landscape with great care, trying to pin down the strange noise on his patrol. Crouching in the bushes, Nova and Brent lay very still. Suddenly there was an abrupt whirring noise. A bird, strangely multicolored, shot from a nearby thicket and whirled overhead. The patrolman quickly drew a heavy revolver from his belted holster and snapped off a shot. The bird was out of sight almost immediately, but Brent had to hold his teeth together to keep from screaming out loud. Nova’s quick hand once more closed over his mouth as she saw the widening red stain on his shoulder. Brent closed his eyes against the sudden agony. The random shot had caught him as surely as if it had been aimed at him.

The patrolman, satisfied that the bird had been the source of the strange sound, holstered his pistol and continued on his way through the brush. His boots made clumping noises along the path.

Brent sagged against the earth, his face drawn with pain, as Nova bent over him helplessly.

From the distant arena, heavy shouts again filled the air.

The steam room, banked benches of stone nearly obscured by the rising clouds of vapor, was the scene of an important conference. A little gorilla boy, busily ladling cold water over the hissing hot stones, might have been a statue devoid of life. Dr. Zaius and General Ursus had repaired here to discuss the important issues evoked by the open forum in the arena of Ape City.

Lolling in loincloths, ministered to by the gorilla boy, Zaius and Ursus were airing their views (and their differences) in a more intimate and unguarded atmosphere. Sometimes, disparate minds may meet in private where they cannot come together in public.

Zaius fervently hoped so. His reddish-blond orangutan coloring was in marked contrast to Ursus’ jet black, shaggier gorilla proportions. Both apes liked the steam room. It was a good place to sweat out differences and divergences of opinion.

“General Ursus,” Zaius suggested, “I can only pray that you know what you are doing.”

Ursus shrugged his mammoth shoulders, sweat trickling down off his snout of a nose.

“How can you doubt it, Dr. Zaius, after the reports we have been receiving of strange manifestations in the Forbidden Zone? Manifestations which you, as Minister of Science, have been unable to fathom. Twelve of my scouts have vanished into thin air.”

“Eleven,” Zaius reminded him, with his fetish for exactitude.

“Eleven. And the twelfth came back with incredible reports of huge walls of fire and strange earthquakes. His mind was shattered—undoubtedly by some un-Simian torture.”

“Inflicted by whom?”

“Who knows? but they live. Therefore they eat.”

“I still think you are being—hasty.”

“No,” Ursus snorted mightily. “Decisive!”

Dr. Zaius shook his head.

“Decisions come from weighing evidence. It is through evidence that a scientist arrives at the truth.”

“And a politician?”

“At expediency.”

For a long, crucial second, both apes regarded each other eye to eye. The steaming vapors swirled and eddied about them. General Ursus chuckled almost softly.

“Then let us discuss what is evident and what is expedient. What is evident is that by this overpopulation, we face famine. What is expedient is . . .”

“. . . that we should control it,” Dr. Zaius interjected quickly.

Ursus glared. His nostrils quivered.

“And be outnumbered by our enemies? I look to the day when not thousands but millions will march under the Ape banner.”

“Should we not wait until then, if we must invade?”

“And let our enemies invade us first?” Ursus wagged his mighty head. “I would sooner attack at my convenience than be forced to defend at theirs. We invade or we starve. It’s as simple as that.”

“And as dangerous,” Zaius said slowly.

Ursus frowned at his gentle foe, barely concealing the wrathful scorn he felt for all thinkers such as the eminent doctor.

“What is more dangerous than famine?” he demanded, almost shouting. The little gorilla boy paused dumbly in his labors.

“The unknown,” Dr. Zaius said.

Steam rose and hissed over the hot rocks as the cold water hit them, seeming to fan the atmosphere with the import of Dr. Zaius’ warning.

General Ursus could only glare anew.

Words of wisdom.

Intellectual thin-skinnedness.

Psychological hogwash.

Cowardice. Anything to avoid direct action or confrontation! It was no more than he expected from the likes of Dr. Zaius.

5.

ZIRA AND CORNELIUS

En route from the dissatisfying public display of sentiment at the arena, Zira paused on the threshold of her home to give further vent to her chagrin. Cornelius, dutifully following behind her, allowed her to continue. He had learned a long time ago that in dealing with a female, a male has no recourse but to give her tongue free rein. Cornelius was a very intelligent young chimpanzee, as well as a scientist. He also set great store by Zira’s intellect—and heart.

Zira was still fuming in an undertone as they reached the front door of their habitat.

“If I had any sense of scientific purpose, Cornelius, I shouldn’t be cutting up the healthy heads of humans. I should be dissecting the diseased brains of gorillas to find out what went wrong.”

Cornelius smiled. “And how would you put it right?”

He opened the door for her but she paused, striking herself on the breast. Her cute little face was puckered up in a scowl.

“Wet-nurse their babies on the milk of chimpanzees. The milk of kindness. At least when our child is born, it won’t be breast-fed on bile.”

Cornelius chuckled and pushed her gently into their house. Zira flounced in, still angry, heading for the kitchen. Cornelius took off his shoes, settled himself in an easy chair and groped for his pipe. The interior of their home never failed to fill him with a sense of comfort and well-being. They had wooden table and chairs, framed pictures included the gilt portrait of the two of them on their wedding day. An open archway in the living room led into Zira’s kitchen where she cooked and baked so many fine things. All in all a very domestic hideout for a pair of chimpanzee scientists. Cornelius sighed, thinking about that and what Zira had said, as he sat back in his worn old chair.

“The trouble with us intellectuals, my dear,” he said as he filled his clay pipe, “is that we have responsibility but no power.”

Zira didn’t answer him. She had already put on her white apron, taken out a China bowl and a box of ready-mix, and with a fork was stirring up some sort of batter. He could already smell the ingredients of something.

“I think I’ll make chocolate icing. Do you like chocolate? No—you don’t. Well, I do . . .”

Cornelius frowned. Perhaps she hadn’t heard him. He tried again.

“And if we did take power into our hands, we’d be as bad, or worse, than Them.”

She’d heard him, all right. Mixing furiously, her next words had absolutely nothing to do with chocolate icing.

“I don’t agree. They’re a genetic accident. A mistake of nature. The gorillas are cruel because they’re stupid. All bone and little brain . . .”

“Ssshh!” Cornelius begged. “My dear. I wish you wouldn’t talk like that. Somebody may hear you.”

Zira snorted and Cornelius sighed in despair.

It was at this precise moment that Nova emerged from the tiny curtained alcove to the left of the living room. Behind her, Brent swayed, tall and shadowy in the dimness of the aperture. Nova stood stock-still, her eyes fastened on Zira, hoping for the best.

“Nova!” Zira blurted, as if she had seen a ghost.

Cornelius came up out of his chair, as startled as his wife.

“What are you doing here?”

Knowing the girl could not speak, Zira’s eyes went to the figure of Brent whose face she could not yet identify in the shadows.

“Taylor—” she began, a sound of hope in her voice.

“My name isn’t Taylor,” Brent spoke up. “It’s Brent.” He stepped into the light of the room. But Zira and Cornelius had recoiled, almost as if he had struck them. They were doing a double take of wonder.

“You talked!” Zira gasped, looking around the room as if she expected some sort of trick.

“Impossible,” Cornelius agreed.

Zira stared at Brent. Her tiny eyes marveled. She shook her head, Nova almost forgotten in this fresh miracle.

“In a whole lifetime devoted to the scientific study of humans, I’ve found only one other like you who could talk.”

Brent nodded. “Taylor,” he said. His eyes roved the room, fearful.

“Taylor!” Cornelius echoed. “Is he alive? Have you seen him?”

“Where?” Zira pleaded. “Where? Tell us!”

Brent stared at them, still everlastingly confounded by the image of apes who could speak English as plain as he could. But he was adjusting. If this was lunacy, then so be it. They were all at least on the same wave length. Talking about Taylor—there was something reassuring about that, mad as it was.

“I don’t know where,” he faltered. “I’m trying to find him and the longer I’m here, the less I’m beginning to care.” He held his hand against his damaged shoulder, wincing. Nova hung back, staring at the people who could talk, but somehow looking happy that things were being accomplished. Brent smiled at her, faintly.

“We loved Taylor,” Cornelius said proudly. “He was a fine, a unique specimen.”

Brent reacted to that almost violently. His face flew from Cornelius to Zira and then to Cornelius again.

“And if it had not been for Zira,” Cornelius continued passionately, “he’d be here still—a stuffed specimen, with glass eyes, in the Great Hall of the Zaius Museum. Like his two friends.”

“Like his two friends,” Brent echoed slowly, suddenly realizing the monstrous truth of what had happened to Taylor and the others if all that he had seen and heard was true. “I don’t plan to stay quite that long. Look, can you give us some food, water, and a map, so I know where I’m going.”

Zira nodded, looking at his red-stained shoulder.

“Your arm also needs some care.” Without another word, she went out through the curtained doorway.

“I’ll get the map.” Cornelius walked to a cabinet in one corner, plucked a rolled scroll of paper from it and brought it back to the table where he spread it out for Brent’s examination. Nova hovered at Brent’s shoulder, silent, wide-eyed. Cornelius, his brows beetled in concentration, began to explain the curious red and blue markings on the map. Brent was fascinated.

“Here is our city. And here, to the north, is where Zira and I . . .”

His wife had come back, laden down with a cloth, water pitcher, a bowl, forceps and sticking plaster. As Cornelius continued, Zira deftly began to treat Brent’s shoulder. When she sprinkled the wound with some sort of powder, Brent gasped. The powder stung.

“What’s that damn stuff you’re using?” he barked.

“You wouldn’t know if I told you,” she said placidly. “Just relax. Among other things, I’m a trained vet.”

“Thanks,” Brent apologized. “Go on, go on . . .”

Cornelius indicated the map. “We last saw Taylor with Nova going through the gap between this lake and the sea.” He pointed. Brent saw the spot and nodded. A dot in that hellish wasteland . . .

Zira said, “They were heading deep into the territory we call . . .”

“Yes, yes—I know,” Brent said. “The Forbidden Zone.”

For a moment, there was a pindrop of silence. Then Zira finished dressing Brent’s wound, putting the bandage into place. Her face was expressionless. Only her eyes held a glow.

“Who told you that?” she asked.

“Your glorious leader back there.” Brent jerked his good shoulder in the direction of the arena.

Before Zira could respond, there was a knock on the front door of the house. Everybody stiffened, right where they stood. Then, as the knocking became louder, there was sudden activity. Cornelius jumped for the map on the table, Brent moved back to the curtained alcove, Zira hustled the petrified Nova in the same direction. She drew the curtains and shut them both in, out of sight. Cornelius rolled up the map quickly, taking it back to the cabinet. Zira calmly straightened out her skirt. “Open the door, Cornelius,” she said.

“But—” he indicated the medical apparatus, frightened.

“Open it.”

Cornelius spread his hands and did as she told him.

Dr. Zaius came bounding into the room, walking springily for an ape of his great years. His shrewd old face was furrowed with sternness. There was an air of great urgency about him.

“Dr. Zaius!” Cornelius stammered. “We were just going to eat . . .”

Zaius brushed by him, wagging a cane.

“Not before I’ve talked some sense into that headstrong wife of yours. Where is she?”

“Well—she’s . . .”

Desperately, Cornelius turned. He was shocked to find Zira lying down on the divan, which was located near all the medical apparatus. He blinked. Zaius blustered by him, going toward Zira on the couch. The cane clumped along the floor.

“Good day, Dr. Zaius,” Zira said wanly.

Zaius stopped fuming, concern immediately etching his face.

“What happened? Has there been an accident?”

Zira sat up. Suddenly it was clear that a large patch of sticking plaster was affixed to her right cheek. A fresh one.

“Cornelius hit me,” Zira said.

Her husband gaped down at her, openmouthed.

“For my bad behavior at the meeting,” Zira explained to the good doctor. She seemed almost contrite.

Zaius grunted. “I don’t blame him.”

Zira nodded. “I don’t resent it.” She touched the plaster gingerly. “But his nails need clipping.”

Cornelius stifled his outrage but Dr. Zaius had already put the family quarrel behind him. He waved his cane angrily.

“Enough of this nonsense! Are you so blind, you two psychologists, that you are unaware that we are on the brink of a grave crisis? You heard the Ursus speech . . .”

“Militaristic tripe!” growled Zira, her old self again.

“Sh-h-h!” Cornelius begged, agonized.

“Perhaps,” Zaius said evenly, studying Zira. “But eleven of his gorilla scouts, on reconnaissance in the Forbidden Zone, have vanished . . .”

“Well, it serves him right,” Zira said huffily.

“Zira,” Cornelius pleaded, once again, for reason, not feminine contrariness; it was an old song to Dr. Zaius.

“And Ursus,” he continued, “is determined to have his revenge. All-out war if need be.” Turning, he walked to the table. His reddish-haired body shone in the light of the room.

“Ursus now has the ‘incident’ he needs to go on a rampage of conquest.” He looked at the tip of his heavy wooden cane.

Cornelius started. “But that is appalling! When Zira and I first unlocked the secrets of the Forbidden Zone, you intervened at our trial for heresy.”

“I know.”

“The price we paid for our freedom was the vow to you never to disclose our discovery that Man evolved from the Ape . . .”

“But to remain silent,” Zira interrupted, “while this bully, Ursus, is permitted to destroy everything in his path, is no longer possible.”

Dr. Zaius’ face looked suddenly older as he fixed his gaze on his younger colleagues.

“You want to stand trial once more for heresy? No, my children, this time I may not be here to plead for clemency.”

Zira looked worried. “Where are you going?”

“Into the Forbidden Zone with Ursus.”

Zira’s expression changed to one of scorn, unhidden.

“Another manhunt, Doctor?”

Zaius was not unaware of her feelings. Or her convictions.

“The disappearance of these scouts is more than the work of a mere man. Someone or something has outwitted the intelligence of the gorillas.”

Zira snorted. “That shouldn’t be difficult.”

“Zira,” Cornelius groaned. “Please . . .”

Zaius ignored her.

“As Minister of Science, it is my duty to find out whether some other form of life exists. Some new threat to our ape civilization. Before Ursus barges in and destroys the evidence.”

Zira shook Cornelius off. “But if these creatures, or whatever they are, are so intelligent, why shouldn’t they be able to live with us in peace and harmony?”

“For the same reasons,” Zaius said, wearily almost, for he had argued the very point with Zira so many times, “that man could not live in harmony, even with his own kind. He abused his own intelligence and destroyed his own world. We apes have learned to live in innocence. Let no one, be he man or some other creature, attempt to corrupt that innocence.” When he saw the smirk on Zira’s face, he bridled. “Why? Is innocence so evil?”

“Ignorance is,” Zira said firmly.

“There is a time for truth,” Dr. Zaius said sternly.

“And the time is always now,” Zira reminded him.

Dr. Zaius stared at her.

“Bah!” he exploded, thumping his cane on the wooden floor. Cornelius shuddered, closing his eyes.

Zira shook her head. “Are you asking me to surrender my principles?”

Dr. Zaius frowned. But his eyes were kindly, glittering.

“I am asking you to be the guardians of the higher principles of science in my absence. I am asking for a truce with your personal convictions in an hour of public danger.”

“And you shall have it,” Cornelius interposed strongly, brooking no protest from Zira. “Or I—shall hit her again, Dr. Zaius.”

“Let’s have no violence, Cornelius,” Zaius muttered as he moved toward the door. “Now, I’m relying on you both.”

“And we’re relying on you, too,” Zira reminded him, getting the last shot in.

Dr. Zaius paused on the threshold of their house.

“If I should fail to return from the Unknown, the whole future of our civilization will be yours to preserve—or destroy. So think well before you act.”

“Goodbye, Doctor,” Zira said, warmly enough, “and good luck.”

From their wide window they watched him patter down the walk until his familiar figure was out of sight, cane and all. Cornelius heaved a sigh of gratitude and then went to the alcove to summon the girl and Brent out of hiding. Zira was contemplative, thinking over what Dr. Zaius had said. He had looked and sounded so tired . . .

Brent was white-faced and weak. Nova held on to him, close at his side. Zira stirred herself.

“Come on, let me finish this and get you out of here.”

“Yes,” Brent growled. “Get me out of here—please. I’ve seen the delicate, ‘humane’ way they treat humans around here. I don’t much care for it.” He took Nova’s hand and squeezed it.

“Have you a horse?” Zira asked.

“Up in the scrub,” Brent admitted.

“I’ll have to get you another set of clothes—the kind fit for humans like yourself. You’ll pass. And get rid of this.”

She pointed to his ID tags. She went to Nova and removed Taylor’s tags from her throat.

“And get rid of this too—” But Nova grabbed the tags back, belligerently almost. Zira shrugged.

“If you are caught by the gorillas,” Cornelius offered, “remember one thing.”

“What’s that?” Brent demanded.

“Never to speak.”

“What the hell would I have to say to a gorilla?”

“But you don’t understand,” Cornelius protested. “Only apes can speak. If they catch you speaking, they will dissect you. And they will kill you. In that order.”

The irony of such a proposition did not escape Brent, tired and confused as he was. He grinned wearily.

Zira had returned with the human clothing which she passed on to Brent. He was not surprised to find it no more than rags; a pitiful loincloth and smocklike thing. But he took them all the same. He wasn’t so stupefied that he couldn’t recognize kindness when he found it. These two chimps were Okay Joes.

“Cornelius is right,” Zira agreed. “Be very careful and get out of those things you are wearing as soon as you can.”

Brent nodded, arms full, took Nova by the hand and led her to the door of the house. There he stopped and turned.

“Thanks,” he said, simply. It was all he could think of to say. He had never had hospitality from an ape before.

“Thank us by finding Taylor,” Zira said softly, a light shining from deep within her gimlet eyes.

“If he’s alive,” Brent said.

There was no more to be said.

He left, taking Nova with him.

Leaving behind Zira and Cornelius to ponder again the remarkable peculiarity of humans who could speak.

The Lawgiver would have revolved on his stone base if word of that had ever come to him.

The figure of a Great Ape reading a book would not have understood—or believed—such a phenomenon.

He who was supposed to know all things.

6.

NOVA

Brent and Nova did not get very far.

As soon as he had changed from his astronaut’s white into the ragged remnants of what passed for human clothing, both he and the girl struck out through the scrub in the direction of the Forbidden Zone. The brush was quiet, almost tropical, with nothing but the occasional twitter of winged creatures indicating any form of activity. The sun still held the heavens, raining down an unremitting liquid sunshine. The glare was almost unbearably bright. Brent had to keep his eyes continually slitted. Nova seemed not to mind. Together, very cautiously, she and Brent worked a route through the trees and bushes. Once they had retrieved the horse, Brent hurriedly mounted up, swinging Nova on behind him.

They moved as fast as the terrain would allow.

Brent kept the horse at a careful trot, eyes peeled for trouble. The girl clung to him, her lithe body almost a part of his own. Any other time, any other place, it would have been an extraordinarily pleasant sensation, but not now. Brent’s mind was far too filled with the horror of Ape City to heed it.

His consciousness, his mentality, was too busy fighting off an assault of total unreality. The crash landing, the Time jump, Skipper’s death, the remarkable news about Taylor—all of it had made his sanity teeter precariously toward complete incoherence. His brain was filled with pictures and images of apes talking, apes acting like doctors, apes rolling up and reading maps . . .

But he pushed the horse on, the soldier in him still on duty. The habits of a lifetime are hard to break.

When the single rifle shot cracked out and the horse beneath him suddenly reeled in a headlong plunge to the earth, he responded almost like an automaton. The air blazed with more gunfire and then he was vaguely aware of himself and the girl, up and running; breaking like startled rabbits for the nearest cover. He heard Nova cry out in fear. His mind was perforated with frenzy. He ran madly, pulling the girl, trying to see from which point the danger came. And then time and place overwhelmed him. And doom.

Gorillas were charging them from all points of the compass. Armed gorillas, brandishing truncheons, pointing rifles. Leather-jacketed troops of some insane sort of militia. They bounded in closer and Brent whirled to fight. His eyes bulged in terror. He could now smell the zoolike aura of their bodies, could almost see the fierce intelligence in their beady black eyes. Nova screamed again. Brent struck out wildly, burying his fist on a simian snout. But they closed in on him and the girl. A swarm of brute force. Helmeted, uniformed, and oddly silent and efficient. Brent went down under a weight of bodies. Coarse, leathery hands raked him. Gorilla claws plucked at his flesh. He tried to lash out, lock away, but he was borne to the soft earth, his nostrils filled with the singular stink of defeat. His mind clouded over. They were spread-eagling him on the ground, as helpless as any chicken with a wolf pack. A rough leather collar with a long, trailing leash was slung around his neck. Nova was being similarly manhandled. Gorilla-handled? Brent strove to laugh at the bitter irony of the whole situation. But he couldn’t. His throat was like ashes. The gorilla smell and the gorilla might boxed in his senses like an awesome reversal of all the norms in any man’s universe.

Low growls and snorts emanated from his captors. But no words. Which somehow only made it worse.

The militia of gorillas led Brent and Nova away, dragging them by the long leashes off through the scrub toward—what?

Brent did not even want to speculate.

All he could remember and think of until it burned like a hot poker in his skull was Cornelius’ warning: Never speak. If they catch you speaking, they will dissect you. And then they will kill you. In that order.

There was no danger of Nova speaking.

Brent only fully realized the extent of his predicament when he and Nova were literally hurled through the gates of a human pen and the barred doors swung shut. It took only one look to understand to what incredible degree Man had fallen and the Ape had risen.

For here, locked up in wooden cages, were dozens of humans. Emaciated to the point of starvation, filthy, festered with sores, some of them howling like wild dogs, some of them dying, some of them possibly already dead. All in all, a thoroughly hopeless and helpless amalgam of savagery, stupidity and total ignorance of man’s basic superiority to his ape jailers.

Nova shrank against Brent in one corner of the horrible cage, trembling. Brent tried to hang on to his nerve. It wasn’t easy.

The awful stench of the place, the terrible sight of the gorilla guards on duty beyond the barred walls, was enough to drive a sane man right out of his mind. What was left of it.

But Brent kept his lips closed, trying not to cry out, in the name of God and science, for help.

He remembered what Cornelius had told him.

He would have to wait.

The horrors mounted.

No more than an hour later, two horse-drawn cage wagons, each driven by a gorilla teamster, clattered up outside their filthy pen. Brent felt a ray of hope. For standing outside their cage was Cornelius! Cornelius in his long coat and trousers, busy with pad and pencil. With him was an armed gorilla guard. And unless he was hearing things, Cornelius was in the process of selecting humans for research! The regular guards were manhandling at least six of the wretched human tide into one of the carts, acting obviously on Cornelius’ instructions. There was a great howling and resistance put up by the humans, but effective slashes of rubber truncheons and leather whips were making the fight pitifully inadequate. Cornelius displayed no emotion at this. Brent grit his teeth, hanging onto Nova. There was so much he couldn’t understand.

A sergeant rode up, his three stripes glowing in the glare of sunlight. The gorilla face was a mockery beneath billed cap. The sergeant barked at the guard with Cornelius: “Twenty required on Number Two Range for C Company target practice. Jump to it!”

Now more humans were thrust into the two cage-carts. Brent and Nova were manhandled out of the pen, pushed toward the first waiting cart. But suddenly Cornelius seemed to spot them and came forward, holding up a delaying paw. The guards holding Brent and the girl waited for his instructions.

“Stop a minute,” Cornelius said coolly.

He approached Brent, his face without expression, and appraised the face before him. He jabbed his fingers into Brent’s jawbone, explored his cranium. Brent strove to maintain a calm he didn’t feel. Then Cornelius lifted Nova’s eyelid, all the while murmuring some impressive medical gibberish. As if musing half aloud to himself.

“Brachycocephalic—and prognathous . . . incipient glaucoma . . . hmmm.” He raised his voice, for the guards’ benefit. “We could do with these two.” He signaled for Brent and Nova to be put aside for further examination and study.

The mounted sergeant spurred closer, his tone surly and insolent. And impatient. His right hand bore a menacing truncheon.

“Required for human target practice on Number Two Range,” he repeated. “Captain Odo’s orders.”

Cornelius stared up at him icily.

“Required for cranial research by order of Dr. Zaius, Minister of Science.” With that, he turned to the guards and indicated the second wagon. “Load them up.”

The sergeant snarled, but whipped his horse around angrily and trotted off. Brent and Nova now found themselves hustled into the second cage-cart. The door clanged shut behind them. Up front, the gorilla driver cracked his whip. The wagon rolled forward. Brent stared through the bars of the cage at Cornelius. But Cornelius had returned to his study and examination of the rest of the filthy pack remaining in the big human pen. Business as usual! Once more, Brent could only muffle his astonishment and anger. He was perplexed.

Nor did the wagon journey through the streets of Ape City lessen his aggravation. Through the bars, with the silent Nova ever just behind him, he witnessed even more of the spectacle of a world gone topsy-turvy. A universe insane. As they made for the outskirts of the complex, he could see many signs of some kind of military preparations: apes in close-order drill, apes taking courses in the use of the bayonet, apes stabbing dummies made up to resemble humans, apes going through the paces of rifle instruction. Ape City—if all the evidence was to be trusted—seemed to be making ready for some invasion or sortie. Was the city under siege? Had the humans somehow gotten back to their former level and threatened the apes with total extinction? It was too much to hope for.

Brent sank wearily to the floor of the cart. His shoulder hurt again, his eyes were like two blazing balls of fried meat, his mind was coming apart. Nova huddled against him, her eyes wide open and oddly tranquil, despite their plight. Perhaps it was an old story to her, the only thing she had ever known—being pushed around by gorillas. For Brent, it would never be easy to take.

Still, what was there he could do about it?

Now, at least.

Yet there was something hopeful, something to think about, as his eyes watched the gorillas mounting artillery field pieces and grooming horses for combat. The view did not change one iota on all the long, harrowing trip toward the outskirts of Ape City.

Something was up.

At the Research Complex, Dr. Zaius’ own special kingdom, there was also much activity, if of a different kind. Zaius himself had invited General Ursus down to see what was going on. The Gorilla, massive and impressive as always in his uniform and medals, was walking around the compound inspecting the experimental cages and devices which formed the nucleus of Zaius’ work. Zira was also on the scene. With a chimpanzee assistant at her elbow, she was accepting the newest delivery of cage-wagon humans sent from the city proper by her husband Cornelius. Zaius and Ursus, strolling the compound now for a chat, had just come into view when the gorilla driver delivered his wagonload of specimens which included Brent and Nova. The human cargo was as wretched as ever.