Beneath the Planet of the Apes, стр. 6

Not even Taylor . . .

He pushed the dismal conclusion from what was left of his thinking mind and pushed the poor horse on. Behind him, Nova made small, almost mewing sounds from time to time. Dimly, he wondered who she was, who she might be and where in God’s name she had come from. Surely she hadn’t grown to such lush womanhood, no matter how savagely formed, in a desert horrorland like this! It was inconceivable. Even a rudimentary knowledge of biology and ethnics told him that. Ecologically, the girl could never have bloomed in a Hades like this desert. Which had to mean that she came from somewhere else. Somewhere—where there was a normal sun, fresh air and green grass and . . .

Brent’s head toyed with mirages. With vistas of cool, rippling water and waving palm trees and fresh offshore winds. He caught hold of himself and steadied the horse on a plodding path over the wretched, fruitless terrain. Before them, many more endless stretches of rock and dune glistened cruelly in the sunlight.

The mirage moved from the boundaries of his mind and set itself down before him. Twinkling. Iridescent, like a pearl.

He blinked in the scorching sunlight.

His tongue licked greedily at his parched lips.

His pulses quickened.

He saw the greenness, the lushness, the beckoning beauty of fertility off in the distance. The good green earth!

A long, low-lying swatch of terrain, bordered with trees, mounted with tall grass of so brilliant and verdant a hue that it seemed to vie with the sunlight for sheer radiance. And luminosity.

His heart soared.

Behind him, Nova clawed at his back in confirmation of what his eyes had seen. Yes. This was where she had wanted to bring him. This was where Taylor might be. Or so he thought.

The horse now spurted forward, at a fast gallop, as if it too had been miraculously revivified by the change in the scenery ahead. Taking great strides, the beast plummeted forward, bouncing Brent and the girl indiscriminately. Brent didn’t care. He couldn’t quit the empty wasteland soon enough. He was leaving Hell behind.

The greener, richer country magnified in size, looming large, larger, largest. Until it seemed to fill the whole new world. It was a fresh universe set down in the seeming middle of Nothingness. Brent rejoiced in his heart. He could tell the girl felt much better, too, by the manner in which her arms tightened around him as they drew even closer. He was unable to distinguish between fear and joy. Now, there were trees. A forest of them. Green and abiding. And thick copses of shrubbery. Hedges, measured landscaping. Like terraced gardens. The evident hand of a civilization of people. A land of green-thumbers who knew how to make things grow! Brent gave the horse its head but navigated it toward a trail cut directly into the heart of the pleasantly leafy outskirts of this oasis of beauty in a barren planet. There was hope yet . . .

The horse slowed, avoided overhanging boughs encroaching on the path and gingerly worked a passage among the verdant environs. Brent gave it free rein, but when Nova suddenly pulled at his uniform, he turned in bewilderment. She was indicating that they should both dismount and look first to see what they were getting into. It seemed a sensible idea. Brent slid off the horse and assisted the girl to the soft earth. Now, faintly, he could hear a mammoth roar. Like a distant thunder of waves beating against a shoreline. Puzzled, he allowed Nova to lead him where the bush was thickest. Here she tethered the horse so the animal could not run away. Then she joined the new white man and motioned for him to peer through the foliage in the direction of the strange cataract of sound. To Brent, unless the infernal heat he had suffered most of the day was making him hear things, the strange murmur of noise was like that of a large and vociferous crowd of people. At a stadium, say, or a political rally; like a convention.

Together, Brent and Nova crawled through the green shrubbery, found a vantage point and parted some overhead branches. Brent was the first to look. To goggle.

As he stared down toward the source of the waterfall of sound, his eyes bugged out, his mouth fell open and the scientific mind inside his skull did a pirouette of insanity.

“My God—” he blurted. “A city of apes—!”

It was true.

He was seeing what Taylor had seen way back at the beginning.

Seeing what Taylor had refused to believe until he had felt the first sting of a gorilla’s whip and the first guttural commands of his ape jailers. Until he had lost all his comrades-in-space.

Seeing and daring not to believe, for it would mean that he was truly mad and had lost his mind when the spacecraft had come down in the desert in a crash landing.

He saw the complex of Ape City. The stone warrens, the dome-shaped houses, the granite walks and paths, the immense gorilla-house aspect of the kingdom which had sprung into being after Man had lost his way in the hierarchy of power. Below him he saw the circular stone arena in the heart of the city. Unbelievably, hundreds of apes were thronged there, standing together like any mass of humans who have come to hear someone speak. He could see squads of gorillas, uniformed like some kind of military personnel, brutally herding half-naked humans into wagon cages. The air was filled with the sounds of barked commands, cries of fright and pain. And something else Brent couldn’t quite fathom. Not in his frenzy of fear and bewilderment.

“What are they doing to those people down there?” he almost begged the question of Nova. Behind him, crouching and remembering all too well, the girl did not answer. She couldn’t.

At the arena’s main gate, a picket-like arched entranceway, Brent could now see a small gathering of chimpanzees. Chimpanzees, armed with banners, walking around in circles, gesturing defiantly toward the center of the arena. The banners read: FREE THE HUMANS! UNITE IN PEACE! Nobody of the gorilla stamp was paying any attention to the dissenting chimpanzees. Brent shook himself, blinking. He was seeing things. He had to be—uniformed gorillas, chimps in civvies . . .

“This is a nightmare,” he said huskily, mutely, his tongue thick in his mouth. His frantic eyes searched the arena dumbly.

He could feel Nova’s hands trembling on his back.

Nova, who still remembered the ordeal of Ape City.

Brent was stupefied.

Nova was only—afraid.

4.

URSUS

Down below on the perimeter of the stone arena, too far away for him to have spotted Brent and Nova in the concealment of thicket above, stood General Ursus. General Ursus had eyes only for the crowd. His audience. He stood on a dais, surrounded by the populace of Ape City, all eager to hear what he had to say—to offer. General Ursus was a very large, very imposing gorilla whose military costume of braid, epaulettes and medals merely enhanced the ferocity and brute strength of his appearance. Behind him on the dais, Nova would have recognized the elderly Dr. Zaius, the stern but kindly orangutan who had at least attempted to understand the freedom that Taylor had wanted and needed. Other members of the ape hierarchy filled the chairs ringed around the platform. But for the moment, the center of all eyes and ears was the mighty General Ursus.

Ursus the Powerful.

Ursus the Great One.

Even as he now spoke, holding out his long arms, his full-chested voice sweeping over the throngs, the great white statue of the Lawgiver behind him seemed to wrinkle in a smile of simian approval. Ursus was a man of the people.

“Greetings, members of the Citizens’ Council,” Ursus boomed. “I am a simple soldier—” Deafening applause and a wildly cheering multitude greeted this pronouncement. From the cover of the shrubbery above, Brent almost broke down in total astonishment. His eyes glittered insanely in his bronzed face. “God, this is not real. It can’t be—!” Nova, terrified, pulled him back to cover.