by Rich Handley
She rode off, silent.
* * *
It was the old, familiar argument: human or ape?
She had always said it was a human, but her sister, younger but not as pretty, insisted it was an ape. How could it be otherwise?
They wrote their notes back and forth, sometimes using the same scrap of paper multiple times, filling them with their scrawls while playing the old disc over and over. They listened to the singing and each one of them imagining the singer.
It was a fun game, a way to pass the time, but they always made sure to hide their notes from the apes—the apes didn’t like to see humans writing.
Hers was one of the last families that could write.
It was all moot now, she mused as they trudged down the road and to the outskirts of their village. It was called Mak, and it was flat and barren and comprised only a dirty main street and a clutch of tumble-down wood cabins. It was said to once have been a great city, full of life and the center of the world, but she just couldn’t imagine it.
Still, the apes wanted it back now, for whatever reason. And they demanded that all the humans in Mak leave.
It was an insult, she told herself as she guided the horse on which her mother rode. Weren’t they descended from great leaders? Weren’t they the Sulls, related to a woman who once told both man and ape what to do? The original Sull, the may-nor of Mak?
The apes didn’t care, if they even knew anything about it. They rode into the village two days ago and told everyone to leave. And here the humans were, walking out of town in rags, with feet bare and heads bowed.
And silent; every human was silent as they left. But that was nothing strange—no one spoke because no one could.
She remembered her great-granddame speaking… or, at least, she thought she remembered that. It was a kind of croak, like the frogs made, but she seemed to recall her granddame forming words…
They approached the inspection point, and she ceased her useless reminiscing and heeded her father’s motions: let him handle it and look after her sister.
She saw three gorillas and a chimp, standing off to one side of the line of humans, talking to them and rifling through packs and boxes. She glanced at her family’s meager belongings on their second horse and shuddered. No one else had two horses, and this made her feel like the Sulls stood out, made them look like they were better than everyone else.
Well, they were, of course, but at that moment, it seemed like the worst thing in the world for the apes to think.
She pulled her sister to her side and placed her hands on the girl’s shoulders, kneading them and willing herself to relax as they neared the inspection point. When they got a little closer, she heard one of the gorillas mumbling to himself in a deep, bass voice.
“…done with this trash. Finally rid of them.”
The chimpanzee wore spectacles. She’d seen them on other apes when she was younger and discovered they helped them to see. Her own eyes were good and strong, and the thought of it made her feel better than the apes. It was a fleeting idea, because something else would always come around to chase it away.
“How long have you lived in the village?” the chimp asked her father with a fussy chirp. He held a small, thin piece of wood on which he’d fastened sheets of paper. As her father gestured, the chimp made notes on the papers with a pencil.
“I take that to mean you’ve always lived here,” the chimp grumbled. He looked over his spectacles at her and her sister and mother, and especially at the horses. “Stay here, and don’t move. Sergeant! Get to it.”
The gorilla farthest from the chimpanzee snapped his hairy fingers and pointed to the horses. The other two gorillas shambled up to them and started going through her family’s things.
Though every citizen of Mak was subjected to the same scrutiny, it was still humiliating to her.
One of the gorillas suddenly pulled a small box out of one of the packs and held it up to squint at in the sun. Her tension spiked and she took a step forward around her sister, looking from the box to her father, pleading with him with her eyes. Her father raised his eyebrows and began waving his hands at the chimpanzee.
The chimp sighed, shook his head, and motioned for a gorilla to block her father’s advance on him. Then he took the box into his own hands and opened it.
Inside were the most precious things the Sulls owned: two pieces of dull, grey metal, worn and blank. They sat in the box nestled in a scrap of fine material, the way they’d been all her life and all of her mother’s life and her mother before her. As far as she knew, they had always been that way.
The chimp frowned, glancing up at her father. “You seem to think these are worth something? I can’t see how that could be, but we’ll find out. Sergeant, bring up the next humans. We’re done with these.”
She nearly fell to the ground. The objects in the box were to be hers, her birthright, as they were for the oldest child in each generation. They were to be hers, and now the apes took them with nearly no thought, no real interest. Just took them.
Why the metal pieces mattered to her, mattered to anyone in her family, she could not say.
She moved toward the chimp, balling her hands into fists. She took two, maybe three steps, and found herself on the ground, spitting out dirt. The gorilla who knocked her down snorted, then giggled.
Her father ran to her side and picked her up off the ground. She pushed him aside, leapt over to the gorilla and, leaning over his exposed upper arm, bit him.
Once again she found herself on the ground, but this time reeling from a blow to the side of her head from the wooden butt of a rifle.
“Move along, human,” said the chimp, placing the little box in a chest that sat beside him on the dusty ground. “Or we’ll take the girl—both girls—as reparation, too.”
She managed to make it to her feet with only minimal help from her sister. Her father was too stunned by the event to muster anything beyond a slack jaw and utter resignation. He finally gathered up the reins of both horses and tugged at them.
Together, the Sulls moved past the inspection point to the sound of chuckling gorillas.
Roughly a mile down the road out of Mak, there was a small stand of trees. There they stopped, along with a few other families, and rested after their ordeal.
She searched the faces of their former-fellow villagers and found them either haunted or empty. This was somehow significant to her, a signal of something.
Her sister kept looking back at the inspection point. She walked up to her and hugged the young girl, looking down the road herself. A thought came to mind. It surprised her.
Seeing that her parents were now sitting beneath one of the trees, perhaps napping, she looked at her sister and gestured for her to join them. The girl’s eyes questioned her, but she nodded and went to join her mother and father.
It was late in the afternoon, nearly evening, when they stopped in the stand of trees, so she only had to wait an hour or so before the sun began to set and brought shadows to the landscape.
Without a sound, she slipped away from the group and down the road.
Sometime later, she sat down in the dark next to her sister under the tree. In her hand was the little box.
Before she drifted off to sleep, she massaged the lump on the side of her head and gazed out at the surrounding land and down the road away from Mak. Far off, she could see a great forest, and she felt it was somehow beckoning to her and her family. Maybe it was calling to all humans.
She opened the lid of the box and looked at the metal pieces. Touching one with a finger—which she had never done—she was pleased at how cool it was.
As sleep came, she wondered at her boldness, and at the new lengths to which she would go for something that mattered to her.
She cherished the feeling, for she believed, in that moment, she was the last human who really cared about anything at all.
* * *
The Nrr tribe shuffled about, gathering wood.
&nbs
p; It had been harder this time to get them up and moving, but she somehow knew it was the time for it. They were slow to be about the gathering, but she saw that the huts were falling apart and if she didn’t do something about it, the tribe would regret it later.
After a day of searching for pieces of wood, the Nrr began to break up into smaller groups and then as individuals. Despondent from a fruitless quest, they went about doing other things, or, in many cases, doing nothing at all.
She knew then they would have to trade for wood. And they had nothing to trade with.
“Nrr,” said her mate when she pointed at the holes in the top of their hut on the edge of what the apes called the Forbidden Zone. An animal hide, much like the ones they wore on their thin bodies, flapped in a light breeze, placed loosely over a hole, but not fixed down.
She sighed and turned from him. Was she really the only one who could see?
Sitting down on the hard ground to think, she looked at the pictures in her head. She remembered there was once something they could use to trade, but it was gone. It had been taken from them by an ape.
She had come back from a hunt for berries and had found her mate standing with an orangutan near the tribe’s small clutch of huts. The ape was pointing out across the Forbidden Zone and speaking. As she approached, both her mate and the ape glanced at her.
She saw then that the orangutan held her things, looking down at them and back up to her mate and gibbering.
Running up to them, she grabbed at the metal pieces the ape held, but when he flung up his hand, her mate pushed her away, and she tripped and fell to the ground.
Later, when the ape had gone, her mate told her, through gestures, that their visitor thought the pieces came from the Zone, and gave him a small basket of fruit for them.
It was all they’d had, but now it was gone.
* * *
A cool breeze off the lapping water around them tickled her nose. Wrapped in her arms, she felt him stiffen as he looked up at the giant figure before them.
She, too, gazed up at it then, not understanding what he saw in it.
The Good Man slipped away from her and off the horse. She did the same. He started to make the sounds from his mouth again, but they were not the good ones he often put in her ears; these were bad. They were quiet at first, then became louder.
The Good Man was in pain because of the big figure. And then he was gone.
She’d looked for him for a long time, before she found him the first time, then she lost him again. He was not the same as her, not the same as her people. He was not like the Others, either, but he made sounds like them. He was different. He did strange things, both good and bad, and he scratched things in the dirt.
She was scared when he scratched things in the dirt. She was scared that the Others would take him away from her because he did that. Because he was different. She tried to make him the same as her, so he would stay with her.
She needed him, wanted him. And she thought he wanted her.
With the Good Man, everything began to change. She remembered things. She remembered things because they were good things to remember, like her home, but there were also bad things, too, like the pain from the Others. He also gave her a good thing that he put around her neck, and that felt cool to her touch. It was good for him to do this, and it made her feel good, made her forget the bad thing the Others put around her neck. He also wanted the sounds to come from her mouth, like they did from his, but she could not remember if she could do that and so she didn’t.
She thought she wanted to, though.
After the Good Man was gone, after the giant figure, she remembered him and wanted him back. So, she looked for him.
Without him, something was wrong. Things were bad. She needed to find him.
She found someone else instead. He was like the Good Man, but not him. He was the Sad Man. He wanted to find the Good Man, too, so she took him to the Others. The Good Others.
She remembered all of this, and more, but when the Sad Man took her to a place below the ground, she didn’t remember any place like it before. It was different. There was pain there. The Sad Man tried to hurt her. She could not breathe in the water.
And there was no Good Man, only pain and darkness and then no Sad Man.
But then there was light.
* * *
Mendez XXVI was asking her something.
Albina turned her face from the girl and answered him silently.
I apologize, she said, but I’ve never encountered this before.
Mendez saw that she was shaken, and he could not recall Albina ever being shaken by anything.
What is it? It’s just a human female; what is wrong with you?
Albina looked into his eyes and then back at her subject. The dark-haired, filthy girl lay prone on a table, unmoving, her beautiful eyes open yet not seeing.
There’s nothing wrong with me. It’s her. She’s opening up, like they all do…
So, why is there a problem? There are things we need to know—and now.
She did not sigh, though she wanted to. Her leader hated sighing. She collected herself and tried to organize her thoughts, lest he think she’d become weak.
It’s not just her that I’m seeing, Mendez. I’m seeing others. Several other women’s memories…
Split personality?
No… racial memories, I believe. It’s incredible. It’s—
Mendez reached out and took Albina by her shoulders, wheeling her around to face him. The physical contact shocked her, and she knew she’d failed to hide that from her thoughts.
We don’t have time for this, Albina. Come with me now to the audience chamber. The girl will be sent in and we’ll see if she has a use to us then…
He departed, leaving her with the female. She reached out with her mind to bring her back to consciousness, hoping there’d be another opportunity to delve deeper into the fascinating world that lay within.
* * *
She saw the Sad Man again, but not the Good Man. There were more, too, that looked like her and the Sad Man, but they were not the same. They were different, too. Why was everyone now different?
And then the Sad Man tried to hurt her again.
The Different People brought her into a big place with the Sad Man and put something on her and made her sit and watch strange things. The Different People were ugly under their faces; she was confused. And still there was no Good Man.
Then the light came again.
* * *
Albina, I warn you…
This time, the Inquisitor did not look up at Mendez when he entered. She knew he’d be unhappy that she was once more delving into the girl’s mind, but it presented an unparalleled opportunity she simply could not turn away from.
I will not apologize again for my actions, Mendez, she told him. This female is special, a mind that encompasses… centuries. What I’ve found within her is—
Not important! Mendez sent, so powerfully it gave Albina pause. She ended her second examination of the girl and turned to her leader with eyes wide.
You would have me abandon a cache of knowledge that—
Silence! he raged. We are fighting for our very survival at the moment, Albina, and this—he indicated the savage with a pointing finger—is not the path to it!
She is opening up. If I could only—
Mendez cut her off with a cutting sweep of his hand. No. Have her taken away to a cell, and then you will join the others. I must go and pray.
Albina opened her mouth to speak, really speak.
No more, Mendez interjected. This is done.
* * *
She heard the Good Man before she saw him.
One of the Different People took her to a new place, still deep below the ground. There she heard who she was looking for.
She tried to go to him, but the Different Man held her back. She knew how to get away, though, and did so.
And there, separated from her in a small place, was t
he Sad Man—and the Good Man. They were together.
A great thing gathered inside her. She felt it fill her up, like nothing she ever remembered before. Not food, not water, not the Good Man lying with her, nothing.
It was different. It was not the same as anything else. Something had changed.
Her entire body shook, quavering in the chilly air of the place.
“Taylor!”
It came out nearly inarticulate, barely a word; a name. It came out as a strangled remnant of her sanity, a dam breaking to release her pent-up passion.
Nova began to think strange thoughts. Nova? Yes, that was her name.
Taylor saw her, saw her for who and what she was. She was sure of it. He and… Brent? Yes, he and Brent took care of their tormentor, and then Taylor was with her, loving her.
She forgave him. She spoke with a thousand voices and he heard her and listened.
Then pain again, hot, searing pain. And darkness followed, and still Taylor loved her.
The darkness deepened, and then there was light. The brightest light ever.
And she was no longer silent.
* * *
It’s back to the realm of the live-action television series we travel, as Robert Greenberger’s “Who Is This Man? What Sort of Devil Is He?” explores Urko’s home life and reveals details concerning one of the show’s greatest mysteries…
* * *
WHO IS THIS MAN? WHAT SORT OF DEVIL IS HE?
by
ROBERT GREENBERGER
“Kill them!”
He had commanded Zako to shoot Burke and Virdon. Why weren’t they dead?
“Kill them!” he ordered one more time.
Instead of his second-in-command’s voice, or the sound of gunfire, he heard the voices of his wife and son. What were they doing there? Where was he?
Urko’s mind was fuzzy as he climbed from the fog of sleep. His first instinct, since he couldn’t remember where he last was, was that he was a captive. But then he heard something anomalous: his wife’s voice. He and Elta couldn’t both be prisoners, so where exactly was he?
As Central City’s security chief opened his eyes, the bright light from the lamp bothered him and he was keenly aware of the aches and pains around his body. Blinking once, then twice, he quickly realized he was home and that someone was offering him a banana. This made him recoil in horror as an image of captivity flooded his mind. It triggered very unpleasant memories, angering him, mixing with the confusion and pain.
