by John Jakes
Jason Breck refused to glance down at that stain again. With the delicate man-simian balance he was responsible for maintaining in the city, he would brook no slovenly discharge of housekeeping—or order-keeping—duties. Signs of such duties undone enraged him.
The stain, and the problem waiting in the office, erased much of his customary easygoing charm. He wanted to be neither charming nor agreeable tonight. Things were getting ever so slightly out of hand. He hadn’t slept well in recent weeks because of it.
To bring the waiting problem to a quicker solution, he had decided to stroll out on the terrace for a few minutes. His politician’s mind told him that a slight delay might actually speed matters along—by increasing the strain on the suspect.
Judging that the proper amount of time had now passed, Breck turned around. He saw that he was right, but no smile showed on his tanned face.
Inside the rolled-back doors, the flashily dressed suspect shifted in the chair on the other side of Breck’s priceless, genuine walnut desk. Three small lamps in the large office created vast islands of shadow—an intimidating effect. Near one of these lamps, Breck’s aide, MacDonald, hunched forward on the edge of a lounge, awaiting the next move. Opposite stood two other men.
Kolp was heavyset, bespectacled; Hoskyns, lean, wiry. Both held posts in the top echelon of the State Security Agency. Like MacDonald, both watched Breck on the terrace for a cue.
Walking with relaxed strides—another studied effect—Breck re-entered the office. He sat down opposite the suspect, folded his hands on the gleaming walnut desk top.
“Señor Armando,” he said. “I’m afraid I am still not satisfied with your explanation. Why did you say ‘human?’ It’s a decidedly odd term for another human to use.” Breck pinned the suspect with an emotionless stare. “Don’t you agree?”
The city governor could smell the circus owner’s sweat. It was most unpleasant. He concealed his distaste, and the nagging concern that underlay all his tension tonight, and continued to fix Armando with an authoritative stare.
Armando sputtered a few incoherent syllables— good sign—strategy working—before making sense: “Mr. Governor, I did not say ‘human’.”
“But Señor, a score of witnesses—”
“I don’t care; they are wrong. I said ‘inhuman!’ I said, ‘You lousy inhuman bastards.’ And by the Blessed Saint Francis who loved all animals, I meant it!”
For a moment Armando’s dark Latin eyes showed defiance. Breck was sure it wouldn’t last. It didn’t. Armando’s tone suddenly became conciliatory. “Sir, as I have told you several times, I came to you voluntarily. To explain that the animal has run away before. To clear up the misunderstanding. And to beg your permission to be allowed to search for my star performer again, unmolested. Would I have come here trying to deceive you? You, with the authority to command an entire city of police investigators?”
Armando indicated the silent Kolp and Hoskyns. But Breck noted the tremor in the gesture. Armando went on. “I could not hope to do such a thing, Mr. Governor! I am a plain, uneducated man. I run a circus, I—”
“We know you run a circus,” Kolp interrupted, lamplight flashing on his spectacles. He sounded irritated. Hoskyns added immediately: “We did some checking. We know that you’ve run the circus since twenty years ago—”
“The very year,” said Breck, “when the two talking apes arrived on Earth. And produced a baby whose survival could have threatened the future of the human race. You remember, don’t you?”
“Naturally, of course,” Armando nodded. “But—”
“Governor Breck.”
The governor swiveled in his silent, perfectly sprung chair. “What is it, Mr. MacDonald?”
“I don’t see where this line of questioning is leading us. It’s my understanding that the baby was shot dead along with his parents.”
“Or so the authorities believed,” Breck replied, annoyed with his aide for a moment. “However, there was some confusion about the shooting, and, since the incident down below involving this man and his animal, I’ve been wondering whether it was the right baby.”
Through narrowed eyes, Breck watched for a reaction on Armando’s face. He saw only bewilderment.
Taking off his spectacles and polishing them, Kolp began to hammer a little harder. “There’s plenty of room for suspicion. The apes could have switched their baby for one stolen from the zoo—”
“Or one from a circus,” Hoskyns said, with sharp meaning. Breck admired the way Kolp and Hoskyns worked. As a team, they were relentless. They never lost.
Abruptly, Armando began to laugh. Kolp scowled, jammed his spectacles back in place. Hoskyns licked his lips and started to say something. Breck raised one perfectly manicured hand to allow Armando to hold the floor a moment. He got the desired effect. Armando’s laugh weakened to a nervous chuckle. Then it stopped altogether. He sounded extremely defensive when he said, “Mr. Governor—you can’t be serious!”
“Oh, yes.” Breck unfolded his lean frame from the chair, walked around the desk and leaned over the circus owner. “We have here a recording of the report of the Presidential Security Commission, established twenty years ago to deal with the fate of the talking apes. They realized that Cornelius and Zira had, somehow, come out of the future, and that their descendants had subjugated the human race and all but destroyed Earth. They knew Zira to be pregnant, and recommended abortion and sterilization. We know that these procedures were not carried out because the apes escaped, were tracked down, and shot. But—what if the offspring of Cornelius and Zira somehow survived? Wouldn’t that be a matter for grave concern? Wouldn’t that be, in fact, a circumstance laden with unprecedented danger for this society?” He stormed forward, towering over Armando. “So let’s not have any more laughter, Señor! Let’s have your answer!”
Breck had to give the old man credit. He didn’t break under the sudden, deliberate pressure. If Armando were indeed lying—and all at once Breck had doubts— then some exceedingly strong motivation lent him unexpected strength.
Armando was smart enough not to incur further anger. He didn’t laugh. But his simple gesture was enough to express his continuing incredulity.
“I don’t see any way that what you suspect could have happened, sir. Every zoo in the state of California, public or private, was searched by state security officers. And every circus—including my own.”
Kolp jabbed his spectacles higher onto the bridge of his nose, then tugged a paper from Hoskyns’s file. “According to the case records, the police found a baby chimpanzee at your circus.”
Armando displayed a little more confidence—even pride.
“Indeed they did. The only chimpanzee ever to be bon in a circus—and legally certified to have been bon a month before the talking apes arrived on Earth! Doesn’t your file contain that documentation too, sir?” Despite his mild tone, the question was a challenge.
“Of course it does,” Hoskyns retorted. “But there are forgery experts available, mister. There’s not a document in the world that can’t be falsified with enough time and cash.”
Kolp gestured the remark aside. “All right, let’s stick to the issue.” He confronted Armando, scowling down at him. “Where’s the ape now?”
Armando shrugged in a helpless way. “I told you—I wish I knew. I’m worried about his safety. After hunting for him for awhile, I decided perhaps I’d better check with the authorities. I don’t want my star performer hurt or shot by accident. That’s why I plead with you to let me continue the search—”
The sound of Breck’s hand smacking the desk was as loud as a pistol shot. “I’ll decide what orders are revoked, and when.”
Armando blinked, bobbing his head. “Yes, sir. Of course. I’m sorry.” Defenses cracking again, Breck thought. Good. Armando added, “It’s just that my worry over the animal is all consuming, Mr. Governor.”
“I have matters of considerably greater scope to worry about, Señor. I don’t believe you yet
understand the seriousness of the problem. Your circus travels mainly out in the provinces, correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then you are probably unaware of the rising tide of disobedience—of downright defiance—among the servant apes. It’s happening not only here, Señor, but in every major metro complex across the country.”
MacDonald cleared his throat. Breck threw an irritated glance his way, but the black remained unruffled. “Mr. Governor,” he said, “on investigation, many of the reported offenses have proved to be minor—”
“The gorilla down below trying to bash in human heads with his chains—minor? Refusing to carry out his messenger assignment and wandering around as he damned pleased—that’s minor?” Breck realized his temper had flared; he couldn’t help it. “And what about the ape that was killed while trying to escape from the city last night? Would you characterize his offense as minor, Mr. MacDonald?”
In a quiet voice MacDonald answered, “No sir, I would not. But—”
“The ape they shot last night physically assaulted his own master!”
“Only after what must have been extreme provocation, sir. I saw the photos this morning. Over and above the bullet wounds, the ape’s entire body was a mass of scars and welts inflicted by beating—”
“Which he no doubt richly deserved!” Control, Breck thought—control! A small vein in his forehead pulsed as he wheeled toward the terrace. “God knows how many more there are just like him! All burning with resentment, all primed and ready, all—”
He wheeled again, to deliver the remark straight to the suspect. “All waiting, Señor Armando. Waiting, let’s say, for one ape with enough will and intelligence to lead them. An ape that can think. And talk.”
He drew a deep breath, both to let his words sink home, and to regain his composure. For a moment he’d allowed his subconscious fears to surface. But damn it, it was time his associates grasped the perilous potential of the situation. Especially MacDonald, who at times could be an unrealistic bleeding-heart about the ape population.
By the time he spoke again, Jason Breck’s voice was quiet and forceful as it had been at the start of the interview. “I want to ask you one more question, Señor. I can’t impress upon you too strongly that you had better answer with the truth.”
“Of course, naturally I will, sir. My whole purpose in coming here—”
“Shut up,” Hoskyns said, so harshly that Armando started.
Breck flicked Hoskyns a glance of appreciation, sat on the desk close to the suspect. He inclined his head forward, both palms resting on his knees. His eyes bored into those of the older man.
“Did your ape ever talk, Señor Armando? Or show any sign whatsoever of being articulate in your presence?”
“Never!” Armando exclaimed instantly. “Not in my presence or anyone else’s. You can question my circus hands—”
“We intend to do exactly that. Meanwhile, you’ll remain in our custody. Take him out.”
And Breck wheeled and returned to the terrace, hearing Armando’s renewed protest that he needed to find his chimpanzee before an accidental bullet brought him down.
Breck gripped the terrace rail. He noted with a shock that he was holding so tightly that his knuckles were white. He jerked his hands back, forced them to his sides. He drew long, deliberate breaths.
When Breck turned again, only MacDonald remained in the richly furnished office. His black face was unreadable.
6
In the service tunnel, two glowing ovals. Moving. Watching—to the left, the direction of the mournful harbor horns; then to the right, down the tunnel’s narrowing perspective. There, Caesar hoped and prayed Armando would appear. If not this second, then the next. If not the next, the one after…
Counting seconds, then minutes, became a mental game to relieve the mounting worry. Finally, though, he gave it up. He leaned his head against the concrete, closed his eyes, and wrapped his hands around his legs. He was frightened. More frightened than ever before in his life. As Armando had observed, he did have a good time sense. He was well aware that two hours, and more, had gone by.
Yet he refused to leave. He kept sitting there in the dark midway between the two ceiling lights, his breath hissing in and out between his teeth while he told himself over and over, any moment now Armando will come.
As if willing the miracle to reality, he heard sounds down the tunnel to the right. He leaped joyfully to his feet, began to run toward the sounds…
He skidded to a stop. The sounds were all wrong. He recognized the snarl of some type of small engine.
Instantly, light speared along the tunnel to wash over him. He’d waited too long. Late-night activity below the city was beginning.
Some sort of vehicle was speeding toward him, its cowl lights increasing in size. Caesar turned and fled in the opposite direction.
Ahead, along the tunnel walls, his flickering shadow preceded him. Behind, an air horn sounded. He’d been seen!
Doubling his speed, he plunged toward the tunnel mouth ahead. The motorized vehicle whined into a higher gear. A man yelled a command to stop.
Focusing all his attention on that growing semicircle of darkness in front of him, Caesar ran as fast as he could, but the motor vehicle was closing the gap. Caesar’s shadow became sharper on the concrete walls.
There was now but a short way to run. He could smell open water, dank and sulphurous with industrial emissions. He remembered the smell from journeys the circus had made up the coastline through the California provinces. And he fixed his mind on the source of that polluting stink. Man. The enslaver of Caesar’s own kind.
Remembering who was pursuing him behind those huge looming lights, Caesar replaced his terror with hatred. The hatred pumped new strength into him. His lips peeled back from his teeth—and a moment later he burst from the tunnel mouth onto a mist-slimed concrete pier.
He nearly toppled off the edge into the vile-smelling water. Recovering his balance just in time, he glanced both ways. A short distance on his right, the pier ended. So he went left, bent over and scuttling fast through a misty patch of light cast by a fixture on a tall stanchion. Midway up the iron pole a sign read Pier 39.
Behind him, Caesar heard a cry of dismay. His face showed ugly pleasure. The pursuing vehicle did not emerge from the tunnel. He was momentarily safe in the harbor darkness.
Caesar ran swiftly, keeping close to the windowless wall of what appeared to be an immense warehouse. A glance to the rear showed him the headlights of the pursuit vehicle spilling through the night mist from the tunnel mouth, but the vehicle didn’t appear.
The intensity of the lights began to diminish. The vehicle was abandoning a pursuit that the darkness and the night would make virtually futile. But Caesar knew that, having been seen in the harbor area, he dared not remain in it for long. Also, Armando would probably not risk returning to the tunnels at their busy time—if he ever returned at all. Caesar decided to escape the area as quickly as he could. He stopped under the warehouse wall, trying to recall what Armando had said about ape shipments being unloaded at night. He didn’t care for the idea of trying to lose himself in one of those shipments, but he supposed it was a better alternative than attempting to hide in an unfamiliar city, constantly exposed to the danger of capture.
Now his vision had adjusted to the misty darkness. Further up the pier, he detected two winking spots of reddish light. Silently, he moved in that direction. He picked up sounds: men’s voices, power winches, clanking chains. Perhaps after all the bad luck of the recent hours, he was in for something better—because the looming outline that gradually revealed itself to him was the massive curved stern of a huge freighter tied up to the pier.
Running lights picked out the sleek vessel’s identification—S. S. Pacifica, Atomic General Lines, Inc.
Other pale yellow lights gleamed high up along the ship’s superstructure. But what interested Caesar most was the pair of blinking red dots on the pier itself. He crept t
oward them, careful to place his weight with each step so as not to make an unnecessary sound with his heavy boots.
From a vantage point of about ten yards, he saw that the flashing lights were part of the rear bumper of an open-bed van parked near the freighter’s hull. He kept watching, detecting men and activity on the ship, but there was no sign of the van driver. Puzzling. The van’s rear gate was open. The driver might well be inside the streamlined cab. There was no way to tell. But with luck, the van might depart shortly. Whatever its destination, it was better than the pier. Someone back in the tunnels might report a runaway ape, and institute an organized search.
Caesar reached down and tugged off his boots, leaving them in the dark beside the warehouse wall. The pier concrete was damp against the bottom of his feet, but now he was able to move with his natural silence. He closed the distance to the van’s open bed in seconds.
Up on the ship, he saw figures passing along the rail; they were little more than blurs against the background of the misted superstructure. So far as he could tell, none of the men was looking toward the truck.
His body limned briefly by the intermittent glow of the flashing red lights, Caesar slipped forward without a sound, squatted down in the comer between side wall and rear cab partition. But his sense of security lasted no more than a few moments.
Chains rattled. A voice bawled through the fog, “Okay—lower away!”
Caesar snapped his head up, eyes flying wide in alarm. A massive boom was swinging out from the freighter’s deck. A chain hung from the boom, and at the end of the chain, a glinting steel power-claw held a black rectangle which began to descend toward the truck bed with alarming speed.
As the chain paid out, Caesar understood the nature of the rectangle. It was the bottom of a crate, coming straight down on top of him!
