Planet of the Apes 03 - Journey into Terror

by George Alec Effinger

  THE DEADLIEST

  CHOICE OF ALL—

  A SINGLE HUMAN LIFE ...

  OR THE SECRETS OF THE AGES

  The ancient projector cranks into motion. The old reel begins to unwind. Civilization, human civilization lives. Its secrets unfold before astonished eyes.

  Then the rusty, outdated machine grinds to a halt. The secrets will remain secrets forever.

  Unless the machine can be made to work. Only two men have the key, only two men can empower the machine that will unlock the mysteries of the ages.

  But a vicious band of bloodthirsty gorillas have seized one of them. The other’s choice is simple: the machine or the man, the sum total of scientific knowledge or the life of a friend!

  “The Legacy,” based on the teleplay by Robert Hamner

  “The Horse Race,” based on the teleplay by David P. Lewis and Booker Bradshaw

  A FATAL WAGER

  THAT CANT BE WON

  “If the human is winning, we’ll kill him before he crosses the finish line. If he loses, we’ll kill him afterward. It’s only a question of time.”

  The stakes are high—half the prefect’s horses and half his lands. And as the race draws nearer, high stakes spiral into an impossible gamble—all the prefect’s horses and all his lands against the life of one man.

  But if the stakes are high, the odds are insurmountable. The Chief of Prefects never loses.

  But the Chief of Prefects has never raced against a human before.

  The Chief of Prefects never loses.

  Or does he?

  The AWARD books based on the fascinating Planet of the Apes TV series:

  #1 MAN THE FUGITIVE

  #2 ESCAPE TO TOMORROW

  #3 JOURNEY INTO TERROR

  #4 LORD OF THE APES

  FIRST AWARD PRINTING 1975

  Copyright © 1974, 1975

  by Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation

  All rights reserved.

  AWARD BOOKS are published by

  Universal-Award House, Inc.,

  subsidiary of Universal Publishing and Distributing Corporation,

  235 East Forty-fifth Street, New York, N.Y. 10017.

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  For Carol Antosiak,

  a supplementary Muse.

  THE

  LEGACY

  based on the teleplay

  by Robert Hamner

  ONE

  Two human beings and a large chimpanzee moved slowly across the wilderness. The two human beings had once been astronauts. They had been, and still were, close friends. Their names were Pete Burke, a tall, lanky, dark-haired man, and Alan Virdon, who was more muscular, blond, and possessed of a drive and a will that motivated even his companions. The chimpanzee, whose name was Galen, followed the humans in a kind of hunched-over scuttle. He was better dressed—for the times—than the men, and, considering the times, he spoke the language better.

  These were strange times.

  Men had lost control of their world, and intelligent apes had taken their place. There were orangutans, the administrators; chimpanzees, the thinkers and doers; and gorillas, the brutish soldiers. Humans rated a mention in this list only by default of other types of ape, and by the fact that they were economically essential to the continued prosperity of the ape world. Humans were slaves, servants, or indigent village farmers. Every aspect of their lives was overseen by an ape in authority. There was no such thing as freedom for a human, nothing like dignity, either. That was why it was so odd that Burke, Virdon, and the chimpanzee Galen had become close allies. It was a thing that had never before happened in the ape world. It was a thing that would mean their deaths if they were ever recaptured by the gorillas.

  They fled across miles of unmapped wasteland. Ancient human cities were forbidden to the apes; humans went there sometimes, to avoid the constant scrutiny of their masters. But the humans who lived in the forbidden areas led a harsher existence than their fellows who remained slaves. These city dwellers were the ones who could truly define the price of liberty, such as it was.

  Burke and Vixdon had crash-landed back on Earth some two thousand years after their takeoff on an interstellar mission. The Earth they found had nothing in common with the one they had left; their families, their friends, even their society, had all been dead for twenty centuries. Galen, a renegade ape who was guilty of thinking too much, had joined them, and the three fugitives had fashioned an interdependent life together. Each had things to learn and teach; this they did, but their primary concern was just staying alive. This they had done, also, but as for tomorrow . . .

  The countryside they were crossing looked like much of the landscape they had seen in the many months of their adventures. They knew that they were in what had been North America, for occasionally a landmark was unmistakeable. But the ape civilization centered in North America, and the two millenia that had passed, had effectively erased any vestige of their old lives. Galen listened with amazement and his eager scientific curiosity when Burke and Virdon described the land as they had known it. At first, Galen found it difficult to accept the premise that human beings had created a culture that was in many ways superior to his own. If that was true, where was it now? Why were human beings now slaves? To answer these questions, Galen would have to make certain assumptions about his own race, assumptions that were painful even for him to accept.

  Low hills stretched ahead of them all the way to the horizon. The sky above was blue, with scattered tatters of clouds. The sun beat down upon them. They had been marching since before dawn, and the two humans and the chimpanzee were beginning to show the first signs of fatigue.

  “We have to keep going,” said Virdon.

  “We always have to keep going,” said Burke. “We all know that. But do we have to keep going now?”

  “Let’s get to the top of this next rise,” said Virdon. “We can rest up there, and see the neighborhood without being spotted ourselves. We can take a break up there.”

  “That says a lot about you,” said Burke tiredly. “You never suggest a rest stop down here. It’s always up there.”

  “Good, sound strategy,” said Galen. “I approve.”

  “Well, in theory, so do I,” said Burke. “But I can’t get the message across to my tired old bones.”

  “Come on, tired old bones,” said Virdon, smiling. “One more rise, after all of the traveling we’ve done in the last couple of weeks. One more rise.”

  “Sure,” said Burke, following his blond leader, “but that last rise . . . Isn’t that where you always spot the next one?”

  “I can’t help that,” said Virdon, not turning around.

  “My guiding motto used to be, ‘Let well enough alone’,” said Burke with mock displeasure. “I had to fall in with a couple of scientific investigators. Remind me next time to get stranded with a few home-loving starlets.”

  “Starlet?” asked Galen, never having heard the word before.

  “They were like, uh, beautiful works of art,” said Burke. “They didn’t do anything much, and they enjoyed sitting around. Unlike today’s ambitious leader, Alan Virdon of the Mounties.”

  “But why ‘starlets’?” asked Galen.

  “Because they brightened up your life,” said Virdon. Galen nodded; it seemed like a rational explanation. The three continued on in silence.

  They climbed the hill. Before they reached the summit, Galen signalled that he was too weary to go on. He stopped abruptly. Virdon and Burke halted as a result. They were tired, too.

  “I was just thinking,” said Galen, smiling, “until I met you two, I had a comfortable ho
use, I ate excellent food—every day—and I was living a good life. Now look at me!” He laughed softly to show his friends that he really had no regrets.

  “You’re hard to please,” said Burke. “After all, don’t you like being on the run with a fair chance of being killed by that gorilla General Urko? Out of all the apes in the world, you alone have that wonderful opportunity. I would have thought that you’d be humble.”

  Galen could not tell whether the dark-haired astronaut was serious or not. “I’d like a few minutes to think before I answer that question,” he said.

  “What about the excitement and stimulation we provide?” asked Virdon. “And all the fun things you’ve learned?”

  Galen’s eyebrows raised. “I’ve learned that the world is made up of a series of hills which I can climb up so I then get a chance of climbing down.”

  Burke laughed. “It isn’t our fault,” said the dark man. “You apes should have built your world with an eye for level ground. Anyway, you’re jumping to conclusions. How can you be sure there’s another hill on the far side of this one? There might be a river, a canyon, or a village with beautiful girls to welcome us.”

  “Want to bet?” asked Galen. “That kind of thing hasn’t happened too frequently in our travels. If we had spent as much time going across the land as we have going up and down it, we’d be I don’t know where by now.”

  “You’re I don’t know where right now,” said Virdon. Galen only grimaced.

  “I’ll bet you,” said Burke, turning back to the chimpanzee. “How about my back pay as an astronaut? The government owes me for two thousand, three hundred fifty years. Not even counting the interest on it all. Match that!”

  “Your government owes you that,” said Galen. “Your government doesn’t have an embassy in Central City. Not even a tiny record that it ever existed. My government does exist.”

  “That’s why we’re climbing hills,” said Burke softly. He stared at Galen, who suddenly felt that he had carried the joke too far.

  “I know exactly how to tell what’s on the other side of this hill,” said Virdon, trying to break up the mood of depression and loneliness that was quickly forming.

  Galen nodded and Burke laughed humorlessly. “We know,” said the chimpanzee. “We know, we know. Climb to the top and see. With all your imaginative tricks, that’s always the only way.”

  “Right,” said Virdon.

  Burke groaned aloud. The three companions shouldered their packs and resumed the climb to the top of the hill. “It’s marvelous the way you figure these things out!” said Burke. “I wish I had your talent for delving right to the solution of the world’s mysteries.”

  Virdon was several paces ahead of the other two, hefting his heavy gear into a more comfortable position on his back. He did not reply or react to Burke’s words; if he had to think up a clever retort to every one of Burke’s sarcasms, they would still be standing beside their crashed spacecraft, prisoners of the gorilla army. When Virdon reached the top of the rise, he raised a hand, beckoning the others to join him quickly. Burke scrambled up the last few yards, and Galen brought up the rear, puffing and panting from the exertion. When they reached Virdon’s position, they followed his gaze downward. “You lose,” said Virdon.

  Burke and Virdon stared off into the distance. Not far away, by their standards, within easy marching, were the blue-gray ruins of a city. A city of the human world, part of the forbidden area, a piece of Burke’s and Virdon’s lost lives.

  Virdon and Burke were, of course, excited. Galen, too, felt a strange and unfamiliar thrill as he stared down at the mass of twisted architecture that filled the low-lying area. But the chimpanzee’s feelings were scientifically detached, while the astronauts felt a resurgence of hope, an emotion that had served them cruelly in the months past, but which they could no more stifle than they could their breathing.

  “Oh, man,” said the usually unexcitable Burke, “I’ve forgotten what a city looked like!” No one moved for several moments more.

  “It means that we’ll be able to pinpoint our location exactly,” said Burke thoughtfully. “For weeks now, we’ve been climbing hills blindly. Now we can procede with a bit more sureness.”

  “I like that,” said Galen. “I’m in favor of certainty.”

  They continued to stare toward the city for another few seconds. Then, without a signal from their nominal leader, Virdon, the two men and the chimpanzee moved forward down the far side of the hill, hurrying toward the city as quickly as their tired bodies could push them.

  They reached the city itself about an hour later. They walked along its rubble-filled streets in awe and fear. Here had been one of the greatest communities of the human world, and it was now nothing more than a junkyard. They walked past ancient, crumbling department stores, all of which had long ago been looted of anything valuable or useful. In the ape world, those two words had become synonymous. Great display windows had shattered and even the shards had been scattered far away in the preceding two thousand years. Statues had corroded beyond recognition. Buildings had decayed and collapsed, falling upon their neighbors, causing avalanches of brick to fall into the highways and main streets. The smaller side streets were almost impossible to walk along, with their towering mounds of debris and the constant threat of more danger from above. Galen inspected everything with open-mouthed curiosity. Virdon’s reaction was the same as Burke’s: disappointment.

  When the two astronauts, accompanied by a third man named Jones, had gotten into trouble on their interstellar flight, they had set an automatic recall which made the spacecraft find its way back to Earth. This it had done, killing Jones and stranding Burke and Virdon over two thousand years in their own future. But Virdon had saved the small recording disk that had kept a record of their flight, and he believed that it alone could help them return to their own time. But to do so, they had to find a computer resourceful and sophisticated enough to interpret the disk. Only in a city like this could they have any chance of success; the apes hated and feared almost anything that had to do with science. The apes knew what had happened to the humans. At least, the apes in charge of the others did.

  The disappointment showed clearly on the faces of Burke, Virdon, and even Galen, as they began to realize they had little chance that the city would offer the kind of aid they sought. The streets were eerily deserted. Their footsteps were loud and echoed from the sheer walls of the buildings around them. The smell was old, stale, and foul. There was no active remnant of the human scientific community here, as Virdon had half-hoped.

  They pushed over boulder-sized blocks of brick and mortar, skirted twisted, sharp chunks of steel girders that blocked their path. Virdon called for a rest stop, and the others halted. No one said anything for a while. Then Burke spoke up. “This is downtown nowhere,” he said.

  They continued along the street, their eyes glancing from left to right. They felt an odd elation; the city was so different from everything they had seen since their journeys began. But they carried with them the same nagging doubts. The city was a constant, ugly reminder that human beings had let the worst in their nature free to ruin the world. It was a kind of vindication of everything the apes had said about humans. There it was, for Burke, Virdon, and Galen to see. The human failure.

  “Well,” said Galen, trying to cheer his friends up, “it certainly must have been wonderful, living in times that could create such a city as this.”

  “It wasn’t wonderful living in times that could knock it back down,” said Burke, sourly. Galen did not reply.

  They reached a cross street and stopped in the intersection. Neither Virdon nor Burke knew where they were going—they did not yet even know which city this might have been. Their plans, which on the road always sounded so hopeful and confident, now seemed empty. What could they do?

  “Wait a minute,” said Galen softly. He touched Virdon’s arm and motioned that the astronauts be silent. Then he pointed to the left. There was an old human standin
g in the doorway there, hiding, afraid. He was about fifty years old, dressed in tatters and rags. His hair and beard were filthy and matted with dirt. The old man, made older by the harshness of his existence, tried to press himself deeper into the doorway, out of range of the three companions’ examination.

  “Don’t do or say anything to spook him,” said Burke softly.

  The man didn’t need that kind of stimulus. He watched them in frozen surprise for a moment, then ran out of the doorway and down the street in the opposite direction. He ran with a heavy limp.

  “We could catch him,” said Galen.

  Virdon just shook his head. “Hello,” he called. The old man made no response, but kept up his shuffling progress down the street. “What do you call this city?”

  There was still no answer from the man. He was almost a block away.

  “We’re friends,” called Virdon. “We just want to talk to you.”

  “Are there any apes here?” shouted Burke. Neither man got even the slightest response from the human. Instead, he turned suddenly and darted into the doorway of another building.

  “Well,” said Burke, “there goes the welcoming committee. It looks to me like—” He was interrupted by Galen, who raised a hand for him to be quiet. Galen’s hearing was much more acute than the humans’, and they had learned to trust his hunches. Slowly, Burke and Virdon, too, became aware of the sound. They listened hard. In the distance came the pounding of approaching hoof-beats. Generally speaking, horses meant apes; more importantly, horses meant members of Urko’s gorilla army. The three fugitives looked around for hiding places. Twisted steel, broken glass, chunks of concrete . . .

  Virdon pointed to a building that had once been an impressive and imposing edifice, and which still stood only barely damaged by time and catastrophe. They all ran quickly toward it. Galen was genuinely worried; he alone knew just how close the gorillas were. He shook his head. “No time!” he muttered.