Battle For The Planet Of The Apes (7 page)

“They got her drunk; it was the only way they could get her to talk.”

“Mother . . .” whispered Caesar. His face was rapt.

Another voice on the tape, a human voice, asked, “But which side won?”

Zira’s voice replied flatly, “Neither.”

Virgil and MacDonald exchanged a worried glance. Caesar didn’t react; he was too absorbed in the flickering images of his mother. The screen was flashing through a series of color stills. Zira was lovely; her eyes were bright, large and brown and alive with warmth. Most of the pictures showed her smiling; her face creased easily into a smile. Zira had been a true madonna.

The voice on the tape continued, “How do you know if you weren’t there?”

“When we were in space . . .” said Zira, “we saw a bright white, blinding light. We saw the rim of the Earth melt. Then there was a . . . tornado in the sky.”

After a pause, the human voice asked, “Zira, was there a date meter in the spaceship?”

“Mmm.”

“What year did it register after Earth’s destruction?”

Zira’s speech was blurred, but the words were still understandable. “Thirty-nine fifty.”

The monitor screen went white.

Caesar snarled bitterly and looked up at Virgil. “And you talk to your pupils about eternity!”

The screen flickered, and another image appeared, this one a male chimpanzee. Caesar’s father, Cornelius. Caesar reached out and touched the image’s cheek. “Father . . .” He felt odd saying this word. And somehow hollow.

The same human interrogator was asking, “How did apes first acquire the power of speech?”

Cornelius’ voice—oddly like Caesar’s—came from the speaker. “They learned to
refuse
. At first they barked their refusal. And then on a historic day, commemorated by my species and fully documented in the secret scrolls, there came an ape who didn’t bark. He articulated. He spoke a word which had been spoken to him, times without number, by humans. He said ‘No.’ ”

The screen flickered and went black; the tape had run out. The end of it flapped around the takeup reel. Absent-mindedly MacDonald stopped it. He switched off the machine and removed the tape. “Since your father was right,” he said, “we must assume that your mother was right about the year of the world’s destruction.”

“No wonder the governor was so anxious to have me killed.”

“Not just the governor. All mankind thirsted for your blood and wanted your birth aborted. In the year 3950, apes will destroy the Earth.”

Virgil interjected quickly, “Not apes. Gorillas. But that’s only
one
possible future.”

They both looked at him. “How can there be more than one?” asked Caesar.

“Time has an infinite number of possibilities,” said Virgil. “It must have. We can change the present, can’t we? We must be able to change the future. There must be a way.”

Caesar stood up. “Yes,” he agreed. “There must be. Because if there isn’t . . . then there is no point in going on. No point in planning and building and learning. No point in justice. There’s no point in building a better world if you know it has no chance of survival.”

“That’s precisely why we
have
to change the future,” said Virgil. “And the way to do it is by making a world where wars are impossible. If we can do that, then there will be no final war. We must continue to have hope!”

Caesar looked at him. “Yes, Virgil, you’re right. As usual.” He smiled. “There’s much that we have to change. Let’s get started. Let’s go.” He headed for the door.

As the three squeezed out of the Archive Section, they heard a noise. Virgil cocked his head, then Caesar. MacDonald’s ears were not as keen, but he caught it, too. Shouts. And the sound of running feet. A lot of them.

“This way!” he cried, and pointed. “Come on!” They raced down a lateral corridor.

A corridor scanned by a TV camera.

“There they are again!” cried Alma, pointing to the TV monitors. Kolp and Méndez crowded close to watch the progress of Caesar and his friends.

Kolp grabbed a microphone. “Area Fourteen Security! They’re running away! Stop them! They’re going down corridor 11-M.”

From a console speaker, a voice replied, “We’re at the junction of corridor 11-M and 44-W. Subjects will have to pass us to escape!”

“Stop them! Do you hear? Bring them to me!”

“Yes, sir.”

Caesar, Virgil, and MacDonald were just approaching that junction. Caesar stopped abruptly and sniffed. He paused, sniffed again, turning his head this way and that. His eyes flicked from side to side. Virgil did the same. MacDonald scuffed to a stop and stared at them. “What’s holding you up? We have to get out of here!”

Virgil’s Geiger counter clacked louder. He aimed it forward and its incessant clatter increased even more.

Caesar said, “Do you smell them, Virgil?”

“Yes . . . they’re humans . . . but not like MacDonald.”

Caesar moved ahead carefully, signaling for the others to do the same. He kept his head cocked, listening, alert, ready for trouble. He moved slowly into the junction of the passageways.

And screaming, hideous figures jumped on him from the side corridors. They were dressed in grubby black uniforms and heavy goggles.

MacDonald leveled his gun, but held his fire—they were too close to Caesar. The chimpanzee snarled, whirled around, biting and snapping, suddenly breaking free of the grabbing hands. Seeing MacDonald and Virgil with their guns ready, he hollered, “Shoot! Now!” He leapt clear and began firing his own gun.

MacDonald and Virgil blasted away at the mutants. Backing away as they fired, they followed Caesar into a darkened corridor, suddenly turning and running. Their assailants, confused and shocked, came scrabbling after them.

Watching his screens, Kolp was enraged. “They got past! They got past! All right—then shoot them on sight. Never mind about bringing them here! Just
get them!
”

His voice reached a hysterical pitch. His face was contorted with rage. Méndez and Alma exchanged concerned glances.

“Get them!” Kolp was shouting. “Get them! Get them! Kill them! Kill them! Kill them!”

The deformed creatures slogged up the corridor after the trio of intruders. Kolp’s words blasted in their ears—from walkie-talkies and loudspeakers, from remote command posts and individual ear pieces. “Get them! Kill them! Kill them!”

The chimpanzee, the orangutan, and the man struggled up the corridor, exhausted by their run-in with the mutants. They approached another junction.

There was a sharp flash and an explosion of sound
ahead
of them, then a rapid staccato. They were being shot at. MacDonald felt something thump into his side, blossoming into a rivet of molten pain—he clutched at his wound, almost toppled, then threw himself backward against the wall. The two apes dropped backward, too. Seeing that MacDonald had been hit, Virgil crawled to him. Bullets ricocheted around them. “We’ve got to get out of here!” gasped the man.

Virgil gently pulled MacDonald’s hands away from his side and peered carefully at the wound. “It appears to be only a crease in the epidermis,” he remarked, then asked, “Is there another way out of here?”

MacDonald pointed back down the way they had come.

“I’ll find out,” said Caesar. “Stay here, but be ready to move . . . fast!” He strode off down the corridor, away from the mutant-controlled junction. As he moved, in his funny hunchbacked way, he watched for an alternate exit from the maze of underground passages. He cast his gaze from side to side.

There it was! A large door that they had passed on their way up, leading to a closed-off side corridor. He pushed at it—it gave a little bit, then stopped. He pushed harder—it gave a little more. Caesar anchored his feet against the rubble and pushed with all his strength. If he could get it open just enough for them to squeeze through . . .

Abruptly the door stuck. It would open no farther. Well, that would just have to do. Caesar squeezed halfway through and looked. There was an exit light very far ahead, a long way off down the tunnel. Yes, this was a way out!

He pulled back and yelled up to Virgil and MacDonald, “I’ve found it! Come on!”

MacDonald lurched to his feet, Virgil helping him. The two came running down the corridor. They squeezed painfully through the door, first Caesar, then MacDonald—the apes helping him—then Virgil, following. “Hurry!” he yelped. “Hurry!” There were mutants racing toward him from both ends of the tunnel. Somewhere a voice, a strangely reverberating voice, was yelling, “Kill them! Kill them! Kill them!”

Virgil jumped through after MacDonald, he was the smallest of the three, and together they ran toward the distant exit light. MacDonald moved slowest because of his wound; the two apes were almost dragging him. Behind them they could hear the sound of running boots.

There was a junction of corridors up ahead. “Wait!” cried Caesar, skidding to a stop. He sniffed the air, paused to listen. Virgil, too.

The orangutan pointed down one of the side corridors, “They’re coming from down there!”

“No!” said MacDonald, pointing down the other. “From there!”

“You’re both right!” snapped Caesar. “From everywhere!” Behind them, more mutants were pouring into the corridor.

“Ahead!” cried the chimp, and they ran on. They came to the light Caesar had seen; it marked a T-shaped junction. They dashed to the left, then turned the first corner to the right.

Suddenly, they were running straight into a pack of mutants, who were charging down on them. Virgil started firing his tommy gun first, then Caesar. Even MacDonald managed to get off a few quick bursts, the pain in his side was excruciating.

The mutants screamed and tried to retreat, but those in back kept coming. They bunched up in the corridor. And died as the bullets splattered into them.

They screamed. They tried to run. They scrabbled at the walls. They fought to get away from the apes’ blasting weapons. They clambered over one another. And died.

The survivors broke and ran.

The two apes and the man came charging after them, still firing. The grotesque figures ducked into side corridors and disappeared, vanished down junctions or into holes in the walls—anything to escape the savagery following them, hacking at their backs.

“There’s the exit!” gasped MacDonald. “Up ahead. Keep going.”

The end of the tunnel was lit by a stronger and brighter light. It streamed down into the gloomy darkness like a yellow beacon. They headed eagerly for it. Faster and faster. There were mutants pounding at their backs.

And then they were out. In the ruins. Running down a deserted city street. Disappearing into the melted buildings.

Kolp was livid. His expression was twisted with anger and frustration. He confronted the captain of Security. He raged at him. He bellowed like a wounded bull. He strode and waddled around the man and berated him. He vented his fury on the poor hapless captain, as if he were one of the apes himself.

“You had a
hundred
armed men!” cried Kolp. “You know these corridors down to the last nut and bolt. Yet they escaped! They
escaped!
You cretinous troglodyte! You filthy, slime-wallowing, trash-eating son of a worm!
You let them escape!
”

The captain of Security was as badly scarred as the rest of the men. He looked at Kolp and the rest of the council nervously. “They were fast, sir. And smart—the chimp surprised us, Governor. He found another exit.”

“But he’s only an animal!” shouted Kolp. “Nothing but an animal!”

“No, Governor,” said Méndez. “He’s more than an animal. He can speak. So can they all.”

Kolp was scornful, “Hah! It takes more than the ability of speech to make a creature human!” He scowled, his scarred cheeks creased with pain.

“Speech makes them intelligent,” insisted Méndez. “It gives them the power to manipulate ideas. Intelligence may not make them human, but it might make them humane. Perhaps they came in peace.”

“They were armed!”

“Maybe only for their self-protection.”

“You were looking at the same monitors I was, Méndez,” snapped Kolp. “Did that look like self-protection to you?”

“Yes, it did. They only fired back after they were fired on.”

“You’re soft on apes, Méndez,” Kolp snarled. “And stupid! They shot out one of our cameras. That’s an act of war! And you saw how they hunted down our men and shot them in the back! Those apes are savages!”

“I still say we ought to let them return in peace.”

“So they can raid us again? And again?” And then Kolp stopped. “Return?” he asked. “To where?”

“To wherever they came from. They must have a settlement somewhere.”

“Yes,” agreed the governor, stroking his uneven beard. “Yes . . . They must have a place somewhere—but where? Where
do
they live? We ought to know,” he muttered to himself. “They might try to come back. Now that they know we’re still alive, they might try to exterminate the rest of us.”

“They came with few provisions,” chimed Alma. “They can’t live too far away.”

“Which way did they head?” Kolp asked.

The captain of Security was relieved that Kolp was no longer raging at him. “They headed northwest, Governor,” he said quickly.

“Ahh, yes. Good. Organize scout parties. Collect all the equipment that will still work. Follow them. Find their hideout.”

“Yes, sir. Right away, sir!” The captain saluted and wheeling about on one heel, hurried out.

Méndez looked at Kolp. “Why?” he asked.

Kolp grinned at him. “So that
we
can exterminate
them
.” He rubbed his hands together and giggled. “Won’t that be fun?”

Aldo stood on the ridge and peered out into the desert. Somewhere out there lay the Forbidden City. Someday, someday . . . He sniffed the air and curled his lip. Someday he would lead an army out there!

Behind him, the other gorillas sat at a small, almost burned-out fire, muttering and grunting, picking their fleas and cracking them.

Abruptly, Aldo stiffened. “Quiet,” he barked to his troops.

Eyes narrowing, he looked out into the desert. Was there something out there? Other gorillas moved up to look, too. They sniffed at the wind.