Planet of the Apes Omnibus 2 Page 30

  Mandemus sighed, “You will never understand, Caesar, will you? As long as there are weapons here, there will always be danger.”

  Caesar looked back at him. “No, you don’t understand. As long as there are weapons anywhere, there will be danger. This armory must stay here, always ready, always waiting.”

  “Waiting,” muttered Mandemus. “If a weapon is made, it will be used, Caesar,” he said, “I do not think we have won the war. The weapons have.” And with that, he turned and disappeared back among the cases and crates of death.

  Waiting. Like a distant bomb, with “Alpha-Omega” painted on its sides. Waiting. Like the woman, no longer mad, sitting, staring. Her hand on a console. On a button. Waiting.

  EPILOGUE

  Many years later, many centuries after the fact, a lawgiver stood on a hillside and taught a class.

  “We still wait, my children. The weapons still wait. The danger still exists. But each new generation is a renewal, a renewal of the promise that we can survive together. We must. Or none of us will survive at all.”

  He closed his book softly. “The promise is yours to keep. Yours to pass on to your children for them to keep.” He looked over his class and smiled. “We have not done badly so far.”

  The rapt faces of ape and human children stared back at him. Chimpanzees, orangutans, and gorillas, blacks, Orientals, and Caucasians. All together…

  PLANET

  OF THE

  APES

  (2001)

  WILLIAM T. QUICK

  1

  Deep space.

  A blizzard of stars rushed in, vast beyond comprehension, pouring from the cup of time into the eye of eternity. Falling forward, falling onward, faster and faster—

  Suddenly the perspective shifted, tossing the endless heavens across the grid of vision like a plate of thrown diamonds. And something… appeared.

  Something glowing. A curl of luminescence, a lick of light, a rolling wave of electromagnetic pressure against the eye: a vacancy in space, a hole, a doorway?

  Perhaps a doorway. A doorway in a star-streaked frame. The frame set above a control panel that glittered in Christmas tree profusion: winking, blinking lights, gleaming switches, enigmatic buttons.

  Across the buttons… a long, hairy finger! Tap. Taptap. Tappity-tappity-tap! Digital patterns, a web, a path across the stars. Tap-tap!

  The chimpanzee, his expression as he worked far more intelligent and aware than that of any normal monkey, wore a monitoring vest and helmet as he sat and watched his fingers leap and gavotte across the control panel. His brown eyes peered intently from beneath a bony shelf of brow, watching the panel, watching the screen, watching the panorama of stars wheel and swirl across the screen. His eyes widened as a sharp red light suddenly flashed with cruel clarity, limning his bulging features in a throbbing crimson glow.

  Beeeeeeep! The piercing wail sharp as a razor, startling; the chimp jerked at the lash of sound. His fingers clutched, scrabbled at the buttons on the panel. Beeeeeeep! Panic now, a frenzy of fingers, spastic jitters. Heart pounding, breath whooshing, brown eyes wide, twitching and darting.

  Faster and faster, negative feedback, loss of control…

  BEEEEEE…

  Black screen.

  Shiny as a black mirror. In the mirror a reflection: slowly rising up, a face appeared. Captain Leo Davidson, a sturdy, dark-haired man in his twenties, reached over the chimp’s shoulder and punched off the red light. The beeper stopped screaming.

  Silence.

  “You lose,” Davidson said.

  The chimp twisted in his harness, looked around the interior of the flight simulator, looked at Davidson. He opened his mouth, rubbery lips twisting around a confusion of chimp sounds.

  Davidson nodded. “Surprised? I changed your flight sequence.”

  The chimp made more quizzical noises and turned back to the control panel. He tapped the dead keys, glanced at Davidson.

  Davidson grinned at the chimp. “I know you can hit the fastball… but what about the curve?”

  The chimp grimaced in puzzlement and banged harder at the unresponsive keyboard. When nothing happened, he looked at Davidson again.

  “That’s enough, Pericles.”

  The chimp twisted away, banged hard with both hairy fists on the control panel, the equivalent of a human five-year-old’s temper tantrum.

  “Stop it!” Davidson said, more sharply now.

  Pericles ignored the order and continued to take out his frustration on the control board.

  No response. Davidson fired his big gun.

  “Or no treat!”

  Pericles couldn’t have ended his eruptions any faster if Davidson had stuck a live electrical cord in his furry ear. His long, flexible fingers stopped moving. He peered at Davidson anxiously.

  “How well do I know you?” Davidson said, his tone rich with benign triumph. Evidently Pericles thought so, too, as he eyed Davidson silently and waited for his treat…

  * * *

  The huge craft coasted silently along, protecting the tender, delicate bits of life so carefully nurtured within, a metal shield against the cold and vacuum of space.

  Davidson and Pericles walked hand-in-hand, with Pericles looking like a trusting five-year-old out for a walk with Daddy. As they passed by, Davidson glanced at a large representation of the Oberon’s ship identification icon on one wall: a stylized inverted triangle containing red and white stars and bars on a blue background above the name of the ship itself.

  Beyond this was the entry to the animal living quarters. As always, the whoosh of warm, damp air and thunderously sharp animal smells that billowed into his face when he came through the door reminded him of pleasant childhood days at the zoo. The sounds came next, all the various grunts and hacks and sighs and snuffles that caged animals could make. To his human nose it smelled like long-forgotten excursions to see the lions and tigers and monkeys, but to Pericles, it smelled like home.

  The first thing they saw as they entered was a large sign that read.

  CAUTION: LIVE ANIMALS. SECURITY ACCESS ONLY.

  They strolled past dozens of cages, some empty, most occupied. The occupants of each cage were identified by square tags on the cage fronts with serial numbers and nicknames etched into the metal.

  Davidson thought what he always thought when he came to visit this place: Welcome to the Monkey House…

  There sure as hell were enough monkeys around. An orangutan, hump-shouldered, hairy as a giant Pekinese, watched them solemnly with a saggy-chinned old-man expression. A gibbon with his distinctive solid black face surrounded by a flaring muff picked his nose as they went past. And a gorilla, wide as an ox and about as lively, snorted phlegmatically over a belly like a kettledrum at Pericles, though he ignored Davidson entirely.

  Most of the cages were filled with chimpanzees, however, a loud, noisy, and sometimes irritable crew, most of them now screaming raucous greetings at Pericles’s return. Pericles eyed them with haughty disdain. He was a pilot, and he knew it.

  In the background, medical techs had a few of the apes out of their cages, exercising them, checking them out, or just playing with them. One of the techs, with a chimp watching intently, picked out the tune of a simple melody on an electric keyboard; Davidson had heard it a million times, but never could remember its name. After he finished, the tech made way for the chimp, who leaned forward, placed his finger on the keyboard, and mimicked the tune exactly. All of these monkeys, Davidson knew, required a lot of human contact to stay in good mental shape. Which only made sense. Thanks to the marvels of gengineering, these were some of the smartest apes that had ever existed.

  Up ahead the chief medical officer, Lieutenant Colonel Grace Alexander, turned and saw them coming. As soon as he spotted her, Pericles dropped Davidson’s hand like a boiled potato and went loping down the hall toward the woman, who spread her arms wide in welcome, then staggered slightly as Pericles heedlessly leaped into her embrace.

  She got hi
m settled, looked down, saw how upset the chimp still was. “Was the Homo sapiens mean to you again?” she cooed into Pericles’s ear. She looked up at Davidson. “We all know it’s just rocket envy.”

  Ouch, Davidson thought. He didn’t want to think about how right Colonel Alexander was, or how pathetic it was for him to be jealous of a monkey. But he managed a smile as he gestured at Pericles’s passionate hug. “Ever consider an actual boyfriend?” he asked her.

  “You mean, do I enjoy being miserable?” She snorted. “I’ll stick with my chimps.”

  Pericles, growing bored with the human byplay, suddenly jumped away from Colonel Alexander’s arms, bounced, and landed on the stainless steel counter nearby. He reared up, grabbed the latch of an overhead cabinet, and pulled open the door. Behind the door was a huge bag of treats, which the monk stared at wistfully. Leo watched a second, then went over, reached into the bag, and pulled out a biscuit. Pericles’s alert brown gaze followed him every inch of the way. Grinning, Davidson put the hand holding the treat behind his back, then held out both hands, fisted, for Pericles’s inspection.

  Pericles eyed first one hand, then the other, his hairy visage solemn as a judge. He chose Davidson’s left fist. Davidson uncurled his fingers to reveal an empty palm. Pericles’s forehead wrinkled. Immediately, he indicated Davidson’s right hand. Davidson opened it. Empty again!

  Pericles’s eyes opened wide. He let out a sound that was halfway between a screech and a whine, a clamor of pure frustration.

  “Another curveball,” Davidson agreed. He reached into his back pocket, pulled out the treat, and gave it to Pericles, who swallowed it in a single gulp.

  Colonel Alexander’s lips quirked in disapproval. “You weren’t authorized to change his flight training,” she said.

  “I’m teaching him.”

  “You’re teasing him.”

  Davidson watched Pericles glowering at him. The chimp didn’t look exactly happy…

  “He’s gene spliced, chromosome enhanced… state-of-the-art. He can take it.”

  Alexander eyed him dubiously.

  “When you frustrate them, they lose focus. Get confused, even violent.”

  Suddenly the sounds of a nearby disturbance distracted both the humans and the monkey. Inside a large cage, a chimpanzee was raising a ruckus, jumping, slapping at the bars, whining insistently. Alexander led Pericles over to the caged chimp.

  “Congratulations, Pericles,” she said. “You’re going to be a daddy.”

  Pericles stood before the cage, peering at the female on the other side of the door as she flung herself with even greater vigor at the bars. He looked faintly puzzled, as if he couldn’t figure out what the uproar was all about.

  Davidson knew the feeling. He suspected it was a common emotion, shared by all males in the presence of the females of their species in full-tilt upset mode. He glanced at Alexander. “I thought I saw a smirk on his face.”

  The two of them stared at Pericles’s erstwhile mate, who was now reaching a crescendo of emotional clamor. Her fervor almost frightened Davidson. He wondered what Pericles thought about it.

  “Actually,” Alexander said dryly, “the female was the aggressive one.” She looked directly at Davidson.

  No kidding, Davidson thought with a small inward shudder. He’d known a few of those in his life, too. Maybe even this one right in front of him. Is she coming on to me?

  “Aggressive works for me,” he said, and thought he detected more than a flicker of response as he stared boldly into Alexander’s eyes.

  Their minor flirting was interrupted by a young tech who walked up to Davidson, grinned, and said, “Hey, Leo. You got a postcard.”

  Davidson nodded his thanks and took the small wireless screen the tech handed to him. The screen was blank, except for the date blinking in one comer: 02-07-2029. He glanced at Alexander, then wandered off to find a quiet corner so he could read his mail.

  He got himself settled in, out of the general busyness, and clicked the screen. Immediately he was looking at a full-motion video shot of the front of his house back home. Squeezed together in a small crowd were his mom and dad, his sister, his younger brother, and a small posse of other assorted relatives. They were all smiling and waving madly. One little boy was waving a toy model of the Oberon itself, the ship where Davidson was now reading his video mail.

  Davidson’s mother, looking flustered, which only made her seem even more like the woman in the cookie commercials, glanced at somebody offscreen and said, “Now?” Davidson couldn’t hear the answer, but his mom turned back to face him, gathered herself, took a breath, and said, “Okay. Hi, honey… It’s me, your mom.”

  Hi, Mom, he mouthed silently.

  In the close-up shot, he could see she was wearing a tiny pin in the shape of the Oberon on her chest. The camera jittered a moment and swung away, revealing the run-down airstrip in the background, a primitive wind sock dangling limply, and several small planes in front of a sagging, paint-scoured hangar.

  Davidson smiled softly. This was the place where he’d first discovered his dreams of becoming a pilot. What a great leap, from that place to where he was now!

  The camera’s focus returned to his mother as she said, “I have so much to tell you…”

  But Davidson’s father good-naturedly elbowed in, grinning. “But she won’t,” he said. “’Cause this is costing me a fortune.” His smile widened. “Hi, son. The TV showed some pictures of you from space.”

  A sudden burst of static distorted the picture. Davidson looked up, two vertical creases suddenly appearing above the bridge of his nose. That’s weird…

  Then the video returned. “We’re all real proud of you,” his father was saying.

  And over his dad’s shoulder, his mom added, “We just want you to come home to us safely…” Then she choked up, couldn’t go on.

  Davidson felt himself choking up a little, too.

  Abruptly, the video of his family vanished entirely from the screen. More static, then a total blank, followed by the message: your service has been interrupted.

  He shook the little screen, then banged on it, but nothing happened.

  Except that all the lights in the room around him went out. In the darkness, he could hear the panicked animals going nuts, screaming, hooting, howling, banging on their cage bars.

  The lights flared back up to normal brightness. What the hell…? Davidson wondered. He glanced at Alexander, who looked equally puzzled, then turned and dashed from the room.

  * * *

  Davidson jogged up to the security door that guarded entry to the Oberon’s bridge. Next to the wide, thick barrier made of shatterproof, mono-steel reinforced superglass was a handprint identification reader that was monitored and operated by a central security computer. Davidson placed his palm on the surface plate of the reader, then waited while the computer read the unique whorls and lines of not just his fingerprints, but his entire palm as well. Finally the telltale flashed green and the security door slid ponderously open; he pushed hurriedly on through to the bridge.

  The lighting had been somewhat dimmed in the control room of the vessel, the better to see the large digital data screen that dominated the area. At the moment, the screen didn’t seem to be showing anything—just a swirling, twisting rush of visual noise patterns, rich in colors and motion, but devoid of any coherent information—a computer-generated light show.

  Davidson glanced at Frank Santos and Maria Cooper, a pair of air force majors standing next to him, then turned back toward the screen, where he finally noticed Karl Vasich, the fortyish commander who ruled the Oberon and everybody aboard with an iron hand. Vasich was working on the control panel with a young specialist whose name, Davidson vaguely recalled, was Hansen.

  “We found it,” Frank said.

  Maria shook her head. “It found us.”

  Davidson looked at the screen. The formless colors had resolved into the starry black of deep space. But something was growing there, rush
ing toward them. A twisting, boiling cloud of energy. He’d never seen anything like it before. It was huge…

  “It’s moving like a storm,” Hansen said, sounding impressed, and not a little frightened.

  Vasich nodded curtly. “That’s what it is. An electromagnetic storm.”

  “This is what’s causing the blackouts on Earth,” Frank added.

  Maria watched the thing growing, growing. “It’s… beautiful.” She sighed.

  Vasich gave her a look that might have been scornful. “So’s the sun, till you get too close.”

  “This is weird,” Hansen interrupted, as he worked his own controls. “I’m picking up frequency patterns.”

  Vasich looked over his shoulder. “Tune them in,” he ordered.

  The shifting wash of light across the screen twitched, then suddenly resolved into a flickering series of momentary images—like somebody channel-surfing at warp speed. The process was so rapid Davidson knew he wasn’t catching everything, but in quick succession he made out an ancient set of television color bars, a nearly forgotten sight from the dark ages of broadcasting; a quick glimpse of something from the TV Ur-Western Bonanza; grainy figures kicking at a soccer ball, along with a recognizable scrap of noise as the announcer called the action in Arabic; oddly dressed teenagers dancing forgotten steps to unknown pop tunes in front of the American Bandstand logo; some kind of quiz show; the reassuring, hound-dog visage of Walter Cronkite, telling the world how it was on that long-vanished day; an earnest chef laboring over a cluttered cabinet topped with plates, dishes, cooking utensils; a senseless fragment from some vanished Tom and Jerry cartoon; a forest of sawing violins and a frantically pumping conductor leading a BBC symphony presentation; Fidel Castro, dark-bearded and long-haired, looking about twenty years old, waving his arms as he spoke passionately about something or other; Ally McBeal, thin as a stick, expression rapidly changing; a flash of posterboard Spanish, some indecipherable public service message; what looked like a million Chinese troops wheeling rigidly past a reviewing stand on which a smiling Mao Zedong waved cheerfully…