Escape From The Planet Of The Apes (5 page)

Cornelius looked helplessly at Zira. She shrugged. He looked back to Lewis and shrugged also. “Dr. Milo knew—”

“Doctor?”

“Yes. And you killed him,” Zira said bitterly.

“Nonsense, dear. The gorilla killed him. Irrational accusations aren’t going to help.” Cornelius’s voice was stern.

Lewis felt sweat break out across his brow. Despite his guaranteed
Stay-DriEST
deodorant, he did not feel secure at all. He loosened his collar and fanned himself with the lapels of the white lab coat. He was too warm in the coat, but it was his symbol of authority here, and he didn’t want to take it off. Even as he fanned himself he knew he was using the coat as a security blanket and wanted to laugh at himself. “Didn’t Dr. Milo tell you where he thought you came from?” Lewis asked.

The apes looked at each other and said nothing.

“You can trust us,” Stevie said. “Please.”

Cornelius smiled, but it wasn’t a smile of amusement. “From
our
present—backwards into
yours.”

Lewis growled deep in his throat, startling the chimps. His brow wrinkled. “You mean
time travel?"

“Yes.”

“Nobody’s going to believe it. I don’t even want to report it.”

“I’d prefer you didn’t anyway,” Cornelius said.

“Nobody’s going to believe any of this,” Stephanie reminded them.

“Any of what?” Zira demanded.

“That primitive apes can talk,” Stephanie said.

“Primitive?” Zira stalked across the cage, stamping her feet. “Primitive!”

“But . . .” Stevie protested.

“What Dr. Branton means,” Lewis said, “is that in our ‘primitive’ civilization, apes just don’t talk. None of them. And I think perhaps it will be best if we arrange it so that when you do talk for public benefit, you do it for the, uh, ‘right people’.”

“I see.” Cornelius laughed softly. “We had something of the same problem in our, uh, time.”

Zira leaned against her husband and looked searchingly at the humans. Finally she smiled. “Can I say something else in confidence?”

Lewis returned the smile. “Certainly. Please do.”

“I like you.”

“Why, thank you.”

“I did from the beginning,” Cornelius said. “Both of you, I hope all humans are as pleasant as you are.”

Stevie looked worriedly from one chimpanzee to the other. “Don’t count on it,” she said. Her pretty mouth was drawn tightly, and her face was a mask. “Don’t count on it at all.”

“What do you mean?” Cornelius asked.

She grimaced. “Wait until you meet the ‘right people’.”

“Stevie,” Lewis protested. “That’s hardly fair. I would prefer you didn’t let your political beliefs intrude in this.”

“Aren’t you letting yours get in the way of your professional judgment?” Stevie asked. “Let’s not fight, Lewis. But I’m scared. I really am.”

Long curling waves rolled onto the white sandy beach outside the Western White House. The blue green of the Pacific and the brilliant white of the sand blended together as the curlers came ashore with crashing foam. Sailboats scudded past far offshore.

The president stood at his window and looked out at the bright sunshine and sea. This view always made him sigh because he couldn’t go out in a small sailboat. The Secret Service men had nearly fainted at the thought, and by the time they had outlined their security provisions, with trailing motor boats, life jackets, a trained Navy diver on the sailboat as crew, and all the rest, he knew it wouldn’t be any fun. The president sighed again and turned from the window to his aide. “You can show them in,” he said.

They filed in: General Brody, White House Chief of Staff; three Deputy Chiefs to represent the Services; his press secretary; the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, who was also his principal political advisor, as the Postmaster General had once been. The president wrinkled his nose in wry amusement and distaste. Everyone was horrified at the idea that the head of the Post Office might be a political hack with no knowledge of the mail, only skill at winning elections, and they had handed the Post Office over to the professionals. Strangely, though, the mails were faster and more efficient, and certainly cheaper, back when the Postmaster General was a politician.

The last man to come in was Dr. Victor Hasslein, Science Advisor. The president didn’t like Dr. Hasslein very much. He was one of those tall, thin, tweedy types, the kind who had intimidated the president when he was at college, and although most professors had changed their image since those years, Hasslein never did. He remained a typical scientist, with little understanding of politics, which, to the president, meant people. That was all there was to politics, so far as he was concerned. A good politician keeps people happy. A bad one has troubles.

“Please be seated,” the president said, but he had to sit before the military people would. He grinned to himself as he thought about that.

“Well,” the president said. “We’ve quite a problem here. General Brody is probably most familiar with the latest details; perhaps, General, you’ll summarize for the others?”

“Yes, sir.” Brody cleared his throat. “As most of you know, we had a Yellow Alert in SAC yesterday. An unidentified object re-entered without previous orbital trace, and impacted about ten miles from here. Naturally SAC didn’t like it and sent out the EWO. However, the object proved to be a United States NASA manned spacecraft, one of the two presumed lost in deep space over a year ago. To be exact, this was the one commanded by Colonel Taylor.”

The press secretary looked up sharply. “Sir?”

“Please wait,” the president said. “General, if you’ll continue.”

“Yes, sir. Well, the spacecraft seemed to be under command. Piloted. The Navy very creditably recovered it after it splashed—good work, Admiral.” There was a pause as everyone nodded at the admiral. “And we recovered the astronauts on board a Navy carrier. They were in good health when we got them.”

“Amazing,” the Army representative said. He looked over at the Air Force deputy. “Zeke, was Taylor alive after all that time?”

“It wasn’t Colonel Taylor,” the president said.

“But, sir, General Brody said all three astronauts were alive—and it was Taylor’s spacecraft— Good Lord! Who
are
they?”

Brody spoke. “We have only two now. One was unfortunately killed this morning in an accident at the Los Angeles Zoo.”

“Zoo?” Dr. Victor Hasslein had listened patiently, although it was obvious that someone was playing games. Now, however, his patience was exhausted. “Would it be too much to ask what astronauts were doing at a zoo?”

“They were not astronauts,” the President said slowly. “They were apes.”

“Apes?” Hasslein leaned forward, his eyes narrowing. He looked around the table. The press secretary was shocked. So was the Army man, but not the other service reps. They had been briefed by their subordinates, which meant that this wasn’t all that secret, and couldn’t be kept secret forever. “Apes,” Hasslein said again. I will not, he thought, let them see they’ve intrigued me. I will give them no points in this silly game.

“Chimpanzees, to be precise,” the president said.

“Ah. Chimpanzees,” Hasslein said, as if that explained everything. Now the others looked curiously at him, but he said nothing else. Inwardly, he smiled.

“General,” the president prompted.

“Yes, sir,” Brody answered. “So. They are, by our preliminary reports, harmless, friendly, and highly intelligent, as one might expect of animals employed in an astronautical experiment. Their clothing and gear is either simply equipment from the Taylor inventory adapted for use by apes, or is of a design and construction we cannot identify. Certainly not standard.”

Brody glanced at his notes. “There have been no major modifications of the capsule. We have no clue as to what launched it a second time, but there are definite indications that it was previously landed. The few traces of soil and other materials contaminating the capsule are confusing and their source has not been identified. Meanwhile, we have no notion of the source of these apes, nor of the fate of Colonel Taylor and his crew.”

“Someone interfered with the mission,” Victor Hasslein said thoughtfully.

“You state that as a scientific conclusion, Victor?” the president asked.

“I state it as an obvious conclusion, Mister President. We lost track of the Taylor capsule, but it was certainly not headed for re-entry at the time it vanished from the screens. Now it reappears, dramatically, and with no previous trace, so that SAC is alerted. And inside are—chimpanzees. Inhabitants of earth, with untraceable clothing. Even the mud stains make no scientific sense. It is fairly obvious that these chimpanzees did not force Colonel Taylor to land, nor did they remove him from his ship, adapt his clothing to themselves, and re-launch. Of course someone has interfered with our mission. The only question is who.”

“Russians,” the Air Force deputy said. He said it firmly. Navy nodded.

“You don’t know that, gentlemen,” the president said carefully. “What if the Soviets are as curious as we? And as mystified?”

“You’ve asked them?” the Army demanded. He gulped. “Sir?”

The president smiled. “General, if they were involved, they’d know, wouldn’t they?”

“Huh? Yes, sir—”

“And if they weren’t, why not ask them?” the president continued. “I’m in favor of security when it can help us, but it can be carried too far. In fact, I see no threat to our national security from releasing this story to the whole world. Can any of you give me a good reason why I shouldn’t?”

“Only that the press can often interfere with a scientific investigation,” Hasslein said carefully. “And surely, Mister President, such an investigation is required? I assume we do want to know what happened to our astronauts?”

The service representatives nodded vigorously. “Damn right,” the Air Force man said. He slammed his fist against the table. “Taylor was a good man, and he was
our
man. By God we’ll find out what happened to him!” The others murmured approval.

It is obvious what they are thinking, the president said to himself. They are good men, but not rational when it comes to something like this. Taylor was their man. They were prepared to have him killed in action against an enemy, or lost in a scientific experiment, but not to something mysterious at the hands of an unknown enemy.

I can’t even disagree very strongly. Besides, I want to know what happened myself. Possibly not for the same reasons that they do, but I want to know. “We’ll make a thorough inquiry,” the president assured them. “Dr. Hasslein, I’ll ask you to submit to me a list of persons who ought to be on a commission of inquiry. A Presidential Commission. Scientists, and at least two members of Congress—one from the Armed Forces Committee. I think the Joint Chiefs can give you a recommendation there.”

“A Presidential Commission,” Hasslein said. “Yes, sir.”

“You are less than enthusiastic. What better way to handle it?”

“The National Security Agency—”

“No,” the president said firmly. “I have great confidence in the NSA people, but this is far beyond their talents. I want some really top scientific talent on this, Dr. Hasslein. The implications of this event are astonishing to begin with. Particularly the last report from that UCLA chap. He implies that these apes can talk!”

Everyone looked up at the president. Hasslein snorted.

“All right, I don’t believe it myself,” the president assured them. “But I want you to look into this personally, Victor. Have the two surviving apes examined by the Commission. Meanwhile they will remain in the technical custody of the Navy, and under the supervision of that UCLA chap, uh, Dixon. Victor, Dr. Dixon should be a member of the Commission; see to it, will you? And help Monty write up the White House press release on all this. The news people are going to find this very interesting, I think.”

Interesting, Hasslein thought. He sat in his quarters in the Western White House and watched the TV newscasts. There were five TV sets in his room, and among them he could get nearly any nation’s broadcasts. He watched BBC now.

A thin, pasty-faced chap with a flower in his buttonhole and orange piping on the lapels of his Seville Row suit was trying not to smile as he read copy.

“One of two Yank spacecraft, both previously thought to have disintegrated in orbit, has mysteriously reappeared. According to American sources, this craft—”

The voice broke off and the man vanished. A shot of Taylor’s lifting-body ship appeared on the screen. “—landed in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Southern California yesterday afternoon. It is stated in the American dispatches that the spacecraft was manned—” the young man came back on screen and curled his lip—“by monkeys.”

Victor angrily changed channels. It was worse in other countries. The “silly season,” too early for baseball news, too hot for anything else; and the newsmen were having a field day. They mocked science itself, and the thought made Hasslein furious. What responsibilities did those chattering magpies ever have? They didn’t have to know anything, they could simply blame him and his colleagues for not knowing.

The local Los Angeles station was worst of all. A long-haired newscaster broke up as he read the copy. “U.S. LOST SPACECRAFT HIJACKED BY APE-ONAUTS!”

Hasslein angrily switched off the sets and stared at the blank screens in silence. “We’ll soon find out what really happened,” he muttered. “And when we do, maybe I can cram it down your laughing throats.”

And yet, he thought, what was the president being coy about? He lifted the telephone. “General Brody, please.”

The White House operator took only moments to connect him.

“Yes, Dr. Hasslein?” Brody said.

“General, what was the report the president didn’t discuss with us? The one he said he didn’t believe himself?”

“If the boss wouldn’t tell you, do you think I will?” Brody said. “Sorry, Dr. Hasslein, but I’ve got my responsibility to the president.”

“Certainly. However, you realize I will find out shortly. I do not like to be—unprepared. I can make my own inquiries at UCLA, but I prefer that you spare me that effort.”