Monkey Wars

by Richard Kurti

  Mico was impressed and daunted as he realized how much he had to learn about survival outside a troop.

  He would need to learn fast.

  —

  In the map room at the top of the tower the hunt for Mico was gearing up, with Sweto newly appointed to lead the mission. This devious langur had held a grudge against Mico ever since they’d clashed in the undercroft, and he longed for the chance to settle the score.

  For an entire night, Tyrell had kept Breri in the map room, remembering every hiding place Mico had used when playing as an infant, every neighborhood he’d mentioned in casual conversation.

  As he listened to Breri reel off the targets (honey farm, bins behind the pastry shop, burnt-out tamarind tree…) Tyrell realized that in all the time he’d known Mico, he had never had those private conversations that offer glimpses into a monkey’s soul. It was as if Mico had been holding back all along, and the thought filled Tyrell with an angry dread.

  Never again would he make the mistake of trusting another monkey with so much power.

  —

  Perched on the guttering, looking down on the shunting yards, Mico was amazed to see how busy the tracks were. Last night there had just been the odd train passing through, but this morning there was a rattling confusion of engines shunting back and forth with long lines of carriages in tow.

  “So…” He turned to Gu-Nah. “What now?”

  “Chocolate,” Gu-Nah replied, tossing over a pilfered bar. But Mico wasn’t going to be distracted so easily.

  “You know what I mean.” He gestured to the derelict engine shed. “Is this it? Just living wild?”

  “What would you rather do? Overthrow Tyrell’s empire?” Gu-Nah chuckled at the absurdity of the idea, but when he looked up he saw that Mico wasn’t smiling.

  “Oh no,” said Gu-Nah. “I’m just pretending to be mad. You really are mad if you think—”

  “We know all his secrets.”

  “He’s got a whole army!”

  “We know their tactics.”

  “He’s got the Barbaries—”

  “We know their weaknesses.”

  “This is the monkey who massacred the rhesus!”

  “And we’re going to let him get away with that?!”

  Mico and Gu-Nah glared at each other testily.

  “How can two outcasts take on a whole empire? Tyrell is indestructible,” Gu-Nah said firmly, trying to finish the argument once and for all.

  “Powerful, yes. Indestructible, no.” Mico handed the chocolate back as a peace offering. “In their strength is their fatal weakness.”

  “They don’t have a weakness.”

  “Tyrell controls everything,” Mico went on. “All decisions have to come from him. That makes the langur inflexible. You said it yourself, but your ideas about fighting were never going to catch on because they flew in the face of Tyrell’s need for control.”

  “What’s gone is gone.” Gu-Nah shrugged. “We missed our chance.”

  “But what if we trained other monkeys? If we had just a small troop, highly trained in your new fighting skills…” Mico picked up a coconut and tapped it. “It looks so strong, doesn’t it? But if you know how to attack it…” And with a swift hand, Mico slammed the coconut on a roof girder, striking it at just the right angle so that it split in two.

  Gu-Nah looked at the shell, then reached out and took the half with the sweet milk. “No point wasting it.”

  “If we strike at Tyrell in a new way,” Mico said quietly, “we can send a fracture line through his whole empire.”

  Gu-Nah gulped down the coconut milk. He was certainly tempted—although his experiment in the new form of fighting had been cut short, he had glimpsed its power. If the enemy had to wait for information to travel up and down a chain of command, maybe, just maybe, a small, highly trained force really could win, even if they were massively outnumbered.

  The more Gu-Nah thought about it, the more it intrigued him. He felt the old urge of combat start to stir.

  “Did you know some of the rhesus survived?” he said finally.

  Mico stared at him in disbelief. “Survived? Are you sure?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “How many? Where? Do you know how to find them?” The questions spilled from Mico’s mouth as he dared to hope that Papina might still be alive.

  Gu-Nah passed the chocolate back to Mico. “Eat well. We’ve got a long journey ahead.”

  —

  It was sunset by the time Sweto and his elites arrived at the railway sidings. They had spent all day searching bolt holes across the city and turned up nothing, but Sweto had high hopes for the engine shed; hiding here—a place most monkeys did not dare visit—was just the sort of devious move he would expect from a traitor.

  The hit squad hurried across the tracks; then Sweto peered through a crack in the engine shed walls, searching for clues that might give away the enemy’s position.

  His eyes darted to all the possible hiding places: abandoned offices—too obvious; inspection pits—too damp; gantries—too visible; the tangle of roof girders…maybe.

  Using hand signals, he directed his troops inside, and with deadly speed they flitted up the walls like shadows. As they crawled into the roof space, converging on the ramshackle shelter, Sweto picked up the musky scent of langur…and then the first solid clue: bits of orange peel.

  His heart raced. Only a monkey would leave this kind of food debris up here, but how careless of Mico not to cover his tracks.

  Sweto’s prey was within grasping distance. They were moments away from a kill.

  Slowly, silently, the elites closed in, tightening the noose, converging on the hide….Sweto reached out, grabbed hold of one of the planks of wood, then yanked it aside…

  To find nothing.

  The traitor had already fled.

  Papina checked the color of the sunlight dappling through the holes in the water tank, and could see it was time to bring the youngsters in.

  With one deft move, she swung up the rickety iron ladder and emerged onto the top of the tank. The young monkeys were squealing with delight as they played among the tangle of steel debris that had built up around the water tower. Earlier they’d found a large, rusty spring and had spent the whole day balancing a plank of wood on it to make an improvised trampoline.

  Papina looked on thoughtfully as the monkeys yelped with delight, never seeming to tire of launching themselves onto the plank and being hurled off in random directions. It seemed so long since she’d been like them, when life was just a series of joyful games, so rather than call them in straight away, she sat and watched.

  These youngsters hadn’t forgotten the horror of the massacre or the pain of losing their families, but somehow that didn’t stop them living for the moment and laughing with open-hearted enthusiasm.

  When did that change? Papina wondered. When did the accumulated weight of memory reach the tipping point where you could no longer pick yourself up again? Perhaps that was what it really meant to get old; not just a stiffening of the legs and failing of the eyesight, but a hardening of your innermost being, so that when you fell, you didn’t bounce, you started to chip…until the day came when you shattered.

  Soon sunset gave way to twilight and Papina scampered to round up the young monkeys, fending off the barrage of protests by allowing them to bring the spring inside so that it wouldn’t go missing in the night. She smiled at their jumble of voices, all gabbling over one another about how they would build a bigger, better, bouncier device the next morning.

  Then something made her hang back.

  Her ears pricked up, scanning the familiar sounds of the industrial yard. She turned. Through the dim light she saw two figures making their way toward her.

  Two monkeys.

  A moment of panic pulsed through Papina as she recognized the distinctive shape of the langur. So this was where it was all going to end, in a derelict water tower on the forgotten edges of the city—they had finally been h
unted down.

  Papina opened her mouth to screech the alarm, then hesitated. The langur would never attack with just two monkeys. And if they were spies they wouldn’t have given their presence away.

  She peered more closely…

  And then her heart seemed to stop.

  Walking toward her out of the gloom was Mico. He looked older, frailer, but it was him.

  Her vision swam, the strength drained from her legs and Papina crumpled to the ground.

  —

  She was aware of coming round and finding herself being carried somewhere in Mico’s arms. She struggled to break free, but Mico held her tightly, as if he would never let go.

  Then darkness again.

  A long and dreamless sleep, as if her mind had shut down.

  When Papina woke the sun was already burning hot in the sky. She blinked, looked for the others, then heard a voice, gentle, familiar…a voice she hadn’t heard for a long time.

  “They’re playing outside.”

  She turned and saw Mico crouched a little way away. So many thoughts tumbled through Papina’s mind, tripping one another up in the race for expression. There were so many things she wanted to scream at him—her rage at being abandoned, her pain that his promise of love and protection had been broken.

  But the words wouldn’t come. Looking into Mico’s eyes, she understood that he had also been on a long, dark journey.

  “They betrayed me too,” Mico said quietly. “I had no idea of the cunning I was up against. But in whatever time is left for me, I’ve sworn to bring Tyrell down.”

  Papina could hear the remorse in his voice, but she said nothing. She felt so numb from all that had happened she didn’t even trust her own reactions.

  “Give me another chance, Papina. Maybe I can do something to build a better life. If not for us, then for those young monkeys playing outside.”

  Papina didn’t stir. What the survivors needed more than anything else was help, inspiration, leadership; but could she trust this langur that had let her down so badly before?

  Slowly Mico edged closer until he was sitting next to her. He could feel the warmth of her body, hear her small delicate breaths. Tentatively he raised his hand and placed it gently on her head.

  She didn’t move away, but she didn’t move closer.

  —

  With the enlarged empire now secure, General Pogo found himself increasingly involved with internal security. He didn’t particularly like the work; he was an old-fashioned soldier, temperamentally more suited to open warfare than mind games and subterfuge, but Tyrell had promised him that this would be his last posting before a well-earned retirement, when he could expect to be kept in comfort for the rest of his life.

  So Pogo applied himself to the task with his usual diligence, organizing the Twopoint Brigade, establishing secret internment cells in every province, and training specialist interrogators to make wayward langurs see the error of their ways.

  Despite his best efforts, though, Pogo had been unable to persuade three particular prisoners to cooperate and, as a last resort, he’d asked Tyrell to personally intervene.

  Leaving his Barbary bodyguards upstairs, the lord ruler approached the internment rooms. He hated coming down here—the grim hopelessness of the place was too stark a reminder of the ugly foundations of his power—but now and then these things had to be done.

  As the cell door swung open the fetid smell hit him, turning his stomach in a nauseous convulsion. Tyrell steeled himself, then entered the darkness.

  Crouched on the floor, dirty and unkempt, were Trumble, Kima and Hister. Their eyes were sunken and vacant, their bodies thin; smears of blood streaked the walls and floor.

  Tyrell shook his head dolefully. “They’re such monsters, those Twopoints.”

  Kima and Hister didn’t stir; Trumble looked up bitterly, aware that Tyrell was trying to fool them into trusting him.

  “I’ve tried to rein them in but”—Tyrell gave a sympathetic sigh—“their loyalty to me is too fierce to restrain.” He looked around the pitiful cell. “The fact is, I could stop all this today.”

  Trick or not, Trumble knew they had nothing to lose by begging. “We’d be most grateful if you would help us, Lord Tyrell.”

  “It’s the very least I’d do for loyal subjects,” declared Tyrell. “But how do I know you are loyal?”

  “I’ve served the langur all my life. I’ve shed blood for this troop. What more can I do?”

  “Denounce your son.”

  It was a brutally simple answer.

  “Make a public declaration of Mico’s guilt. Disown him, swear not just your allegiance to me, but your determination to see Mico hunted down.”

  Trumble looked away, trying to hide the pain on his face, but Tyrell had one last twist of the knife. He leaned close and whispered, “When Mico is executed for his crimes, not only will you watch, but you will be the first to applaud.”

  Trumble hung his head low, then in a voice broken with emotion replied, “I can’t do that.”

  “You have to,” Tyrell insisted.

  “I can’t.”

  “There’s no other way. You must accept the reality of the new world.”

  Trumble glanced over to Kima, but she just stared at the ground. The last time he’d been imprisoned Trumble had cooperated, accepted the power of the Barbaries and spent many days teaching them about the counting stones, yet still it hadn’t saved him. He wasn’t going to make the same mistake again.

  Trumble reached out and held Kima’s hand. “Kill us now. Have done with it.”

  Not the answer Tyrell wanted to hear, but one he had expected. Old monkeys had so little to live for they became hard to manage. So Tyrell turned his gaze on Hister, who had been trying to remain unnoticed in the shadows of the cell.

  “And what about you?” he asked softly, almost tenderly. “Surely you’re too young…too pretty to languish down here in the darkness?”

  Trumble looked at Hister, expecting her to follow his defiant lead, to remain loyal to Mico, but she avoided his gaze and whispered her reply.

  “Yes.”

  Tyrell nodded. “Yes to what, exactly?”

  “Give me my freedom. I’ll denounce Mico.”

  Trumble couldn’t believe his ears. Even Kima raised her head and glared at Hister.

  “I devoted my life to him, and he abandoned me.” The anger trembled in Hister’s voice.

  “And he will be punished for it,” Tyrell pronounced. Bending down, he gently helped Hister to her feet. “You are free.”

  He guided her to the door, then turned to Kima and Trumble. “You see? That’s how easy it is.”

  As the bodyguards led Hister away, General Pogo and Tyrell paused in the blanket of humidity that cloaked the summer house gardens.

  “Do you want Trumble disposed of, my lord?” asked the general.

  “No, no. He’s far too useful to kill.”

  Pogo nodded to Hister. “But you’re not really going to give her another chance?”

  “Of course. I gave her my word,” replied Tyrell.

  “With all due respect, my lord, how can we ever trust her?”

  “Her spirit is broken. I have rescued her. Hister feels nothing but gratitude toward me. That’s how you bend monkeys to your will, General. How you make a troop of conformists.”

  —

  They treated Hister with kindness; they fed her and cleaned her, they coached her in the art of denunciation, and then they left her alone to rest.

  It was the one thing she didn’t do.

  All night the pretty young monkey wrestled with her conscience, struggling to summon the courage to defy the leader. By dawn she had found it. Not through any grand philosophy, but through a tiny pulse that was beating in her womb.

  Even though she had been abandoned, Hister had to live for her unborn baby. She could not raise an infant in a world where its father had been branded a traitor, a world where it would live in constant fear.

&nbs
p; New life deserved better.

  When the guards came for her in the morning, Hister was gone.

  “How?” Papina demanded. “A few refugees against a whole army? You’ve spent too much time in that engine shed.”

  Gu-Nah smiled; he liked this outspoken monkey. If they had all been like her maybe the rhesus would never have been conquered in the first place.

  “How?” he replied. “Simple: by not fighting on his terms.”

  Papina shook her head. “The only way we’re going to survive is by not fighting at all. We have to hide, rebuild our numbers.”

  “And that’s it?!” Mico exclaimed. “That’s your answer? Spend the rest of your days skulking in the slums?”

  He’d thought Papina would leap at the chance to fight back, but she shook her head stubbornly.

  “My monkeys have seen enough suffering to last a lifetime. They need peace.”

  Mico gestured at the ugly industrial sprawl. “You call this peace?”

  “For now.”

  “A broken troop, frightened of its own shadow?”

  “Typical langur!” Papina growled. “You don’t think anyone’s strong unless they’re swinging a weapon.”

  “Sometimes that’s the only way—”

  “And sometimes strength is just about surviving! We did that. And we’re not going to throw it away.”

  Gu-Nah hurriedly stepped between them.

  “Papina,” he said with quiet authority, “I’m a fighting monkey; I don’t think deeply. But I know one thing for sure: you won’t be safe until Tyrell is dead.”

  His words hung in the air, simple, forceful.

  Papina looked out across the yard at the young rhesus monkeys who were finding new games to play with their salvaged spring. All she wanted was to do the right thing for them.

  Seeing how torn she was, Mico crouched next to her, trying to rekindle their old intimacy. “What’s the point of surviving if you live in fear?” he whispered.

  Papina looked at him, searching his eyes for the young monkey she’d fallen in love with, the monkey she’d trusted with her life. “All you’ve given me is fancy words. How could it possibly work?”