Conquest Of The Planet Of The Apes (8 page)

The forklift bumped the edge of the dock, lowered the cage, began to withdraw its supporting prongs. Wild barkings and snarlings started on the right, further along the dock. There, other handlers were ramming prods into another noisy cage that had been similarly deposited.

“All right,” someone said outside Caesar’s cage. “Open it.”

The bolts snicked. Handlers crowded around, faces tense. Caesar blinked at the men, feigned fearful docility. He was startled to hear one of the handlers exclaim, “For God’s sake! I didn’t know we were getting a chimp in this load.”

The speaker reached into the cage, seized Caesar’s arm, jerked him outside. He was shoved across the concrete dock and in through a steel door that rolled swiftly aside. The handler followed, metal prod held waist high.

Behind him, Caesar heard the cracking of whips, interspersed with an occasional yelp from the apes being hauled out of the cage one by one.

Caesar stopped just inside the entrance of a large, bare chamber. Its left wall was glass, looking into the communications center he’d seen from outside. As his handler shoved him again, the loudspeaker boomed: “After fingerprinting, shipment five-oh-seven I-for-Indonesia ex Borneo will proceed to Conditioning Cages nine-oh-one and nine-oh-two.”

“We’ll have to use one of the chimp cages too,” said Caesar’s handler to a uniformed official waiting at a table beside a metal gate. “Got a ringer in this load. Who’s on duty from the chimp section?”

“Morris, I think,” said the official. He pressed one of several colored buttons on the table. Caesar noticed two state security policemen standing beyond the gate, surveying the new arrivals. From the adjoining communications center, another operator announced: “Immigration personnel are reminded that, until further notice, State Security has requested one, repeat one, additional copy of all chimpanzee fingerprints for their files.”

The uniformed official looked sour. He grabbed Caesar’s hand, pressed it to an ink pad, then forced the hand down on a square of white card stock. He repeated the operation, passing the second card over the barrier to one of the policemen. The policeman slipped the card into a black briefcase.

Then the official touched another button. The gate opened inward, just as a hefty young man with brown eyes and an immense shock of curly hair appeared from the mouth of a corridor. He carried a prod tucked under his arm.

“Yours, Morris,” said the fingerprint official, shoving Caesar forward through the open gate. The ape’s resentment flared again. But he controlled his temper, still slumped over in excellent imitation of a wild chimpanzee.

Morris, the handler, extended his right hand tentatively. After appropriate hesitation, Caesar reached up to grasp the fingers. Morris smiled.

“He looks like a gentle one,” Morris said, leading Caesar toward the corridor.

“Bastard,” came the good-natured complaint from behind. “You’ve got the easy duty with the chimps—dammit, no!”

Caesar turned briefly to see the orangutans lined up in a ragged queue on the far side of the gate. One was being prodded and whipped for having picked up the ink pad. Caesar was glad to enter the corridor and leave the unpleasant sight behind.

The lighted corridor curved, revealing a long row of steel-barred cages, empty. Morris pressed a control panel in the wall next to the cage identified as Chimpanzees 903.

The electrically controlled door rolled aside. Morris pushed Caesar forward. As soon as he was inside, the barred door shut.

Morris pulled a banana out of his pocket, passed it between the bars.

“Enjoy it while you can, my friend. I’ll be back to see you in the morning—when the fun starts.” His lips quirked. “Damned if you don’t look like you understand me.” He turned, vanishing along the corridor.

Shortly, other handlers appeared, each with one or two orangutans in tow. Seated in the dark at the back of his cell, Caesar watched the other members of his shipment being driven into the cages for their species. The ink-smeared orangutan required two handlers, one applying a whip, the other a prod, before he would enter his assigned cage. Blood glistened on the ape’s hairy back.

Finally, the last of the shipment was in place, the cages locked. Caesar remained alone in the chimpanzee cell, suddenly aware that he was exceedingly hungry. He peeled the banana and munched it without enjoyment. He didn’t care for the reference to “fun” made by the handler Morris.

When he tried to sleep, he found he couldn’t. A simmering mixture of anger, worry over Señor Armando’s welfare, and pity for the orangutans in the adjoining cages kept him on edge. The other apes barked and gibbered most of the night.

Now and then Caesar wakened from a doze to hear sounds of vicious fighting: Man has done this to us, Caesar thought. His head nodded in exhaustion. Man . . .

In his mind, the word became an obscene curse. Finally, mercifully, he dropped into total sleep.

In the morning, when a bell rang loudly, he began to learn the meaning of that
conditioning.

With a roaring
whoosh,
a horizontal column of flame shot out from a wall aperture. The flame blazed parallel to bars that bisected the floor of the oval chamber. Shooting from one wall almost to the other, the fire was controlled by a smocked operator at a console.

The Fire Conditioning Area—so identified by a plaque outside the entrance—was the first area to which Caesar’s handler had taken him. He stood beside Morris, who was seated on a bench behind the console, waiting his turn to put his charge through the conditioning process.

Horrified, Caesar stared past the brilliant column of perfectly controlled fire to the three wretched orangutans crouching and cringing beyond the bars. The animals had retreated to the curve of the wall—as far from the bars and fire as they could get.

Suddenly the console operator cut the flame-blast. A keeper advanced to the bars, offered a banana from a pocket. After a long hesitation, one orangutan came timidly to a point about halfway between the rear wall and bars. There he stopped.

The keeper stepped back. The console operator turned on the fire column, watching a wall clock. After ten seconds, he again extinguished the flame. The orangutan had flinched and cringed while the flame roared, but he had not retreated.

The keeper offered the banana a second time. Hesitantly, the orangutan darted forward to snatch it from his fingers. The operator triggered the fire again. The orangutan stood fast, even though Caesar could see that the animal was terrified.

The reward for the ape’s courage was a second banana. As it was consumed, the squealing diminished at the rear of the cage. A second orangutan tentatively advanced to the halfway mark.

Woosh!

After ten seconds, the flame died. The animal nearest the bars did not wait to be handed a banana. He stretched out a hairy arm to demand it. The second orangutan started shuffling forward, while the third roused herself at the rear of the cage to take a first hesitant step.

The console operator and the keeper exchanged smiles. Caesar vowed that he would show them he could learn this particular lesson very quickly indeed.

Music dinned. Blinding stroboscopic ceiling lights flashed on and off. The chimpanzee next to Caesar in the Noise Conditioning cage covered his eyes in fright. So did Caesar, though he was not nearly so frightened. Through the multicolored play of light, he could observe a demonstration at the front of the cage. A young, longhaired keeper sat at a small round table. Morris waited nearby, watching the third chimpanzee in the training group advance toward the table.

Trembling a little under the onslaught of the sound and light, the chimpanzee was still able to balance a tray bearing a soft drink container, a drinking glass, and other items. The keeper at the table called to an operator unseen in the darkness beyond the bars, “Hype the music another five points.”

Now the sound actually made Caesar’s ears ache, but the chimp with the tray barely broke stride. He laid the napkin on the table in front of the young keeper. He placed the container on the napkin, then employed an opener from the tray to pop off the container’s lid. Finally he inserted a straw into the mouth of the container, shuffled back two steps and executed a clumsy bow.

Morris grinned, producing a banana. The chimpanzee gobbled it greedily as the music cut out and the lights returned to normal.

“Okay, let’s have your next pupil, Morris,” said the keeper. Morris walked over to grasp Caesar’s hand.

“This one learns fast,” he said.

The plaque beside the door read NO Conditioning.

They were on one of the higher floors of the concrete tower that housed Ape Management’s training and breeding facilities. Caesar had glimpsed vistas of green and yellow countryside from an occasional oval window in the various corridors to which elevators had lifted them. The day had been long and tiring, even though Caesar had done well, showing evidence of exceptional learning ability at each of the conditioning locations to which he’d been taken. Along the way, Morris had slipped him an occasional extra banana, and complimented him as if Caesar could actually understand. What a shock the stocky young man would get if he knew the truth!

Morris was the least cruel of any of the handlers, keepers, or equipment operators Caesar had encountered thus far. That tended to blur Caesar’s concentration upon one central fact he had vowed not to forget: this splendid, gleaming scientific center was the instrument for subjugation of the apes, the means by which they were reduced to cowering slave status. And kindly or no, Morris was still a part of the system. As the handler led the way into a small amphitheatre, guiding Caesar to a seat on one of the higher tiers, a gorilla’s horrific scream ripped loose.

Down on the floor of the amphitheater, two gorillas lay buckled and strapped to parallel padded tables. Electrodes attached to the temples of each gorilla ran to connection points on the table pedestals. Nearby, a man in a smock sat at a console, an older supervisor hovering at his shoulder. A voice thundered out of a giant speaker in the amphitheatre ceiling, uttering a single syllable—“NO!” Simultaneously, the console operator threw a switch. Instantly both gorillas went into violent spasms, and both howled.

The operator jerked the switch to off. The speaker blared again, even louder. “NO!” The switch went forward.

The spasms of the gorillas were worse this time. Saliva trickled from their lips as their arms, legs, and chests heaved in reaction to the electric agony being fed through the forehead wires. This time, the operator glancing at a sweep hand on a clock face mounted on his console, kept the current flowing longer. Sickened by the sight, Caesar was still unable to keep from watching.

“Volume all the way up,” ordered the supervisor. The operator turned again. The amplified voice made the bones in Caesar’s skull throb.

“NO!”

Over went the switch. The gorillas arched in agonized convulsions. Their screams made Caesar want to howl his own protest, but he fought the reaction with all of his will. At last, the ghastly yelping ended as the switch returned to off position.

The supervisor answered the operator’s inquiring look with an upraised hand. He circled the console, approached the first gorilla, who had partially torn one arm strap with his writhing. Gazing down into the gorilla’s pain-wracked eyes, the supervisor said very softly, “No.” And although the operator’s hand did not touch his switch, the effect was precisely the same. The still recumbent gorilla began to twist and grind his teeth and convulse over the entire length of his body. The supervisor gave a satisfied nod, stepped to the next padded table. Again he said, “No.” The second gorilla howled and shook with spasms . . .

And Caesar was on his feet, eyes flaring with hatred.

Morris grabbed his arm, exclaimed sharply, “No!”

The realization that he’d almost betrayed himself rocked Caesar back to sense. With only a split second of delay, he began trembling. He lowered his head, hunched his shoulders in a less violent duplication of the shock-spasms the apes had demonstrated.

Firmly, Morris pushed Caesar’s shoulder until he was seated again. Caesar let his simulated cringing and shuddering gradually work itself out.

The operator and the supervisor began to unbuckle the straps on the now docile gorillas. The supervisor glanced up to the amphitheater seats.

“We’ll take him next, Morris.”

“I think we can skip it, Doctor Bowen,” Morris answered. “He’s got the message.”

To demonstrate, Morris turned to Caesar and said, “No!”

Once more Caesar simulated the cringing and shuddering of the gorillas. The supervisor observed him for a moment, finally gave a crisp nod.

From one set of doors at floor level, handlers appeared with wheeled carts, to which they transferred the semiconscious gorillas. Morris guided Caesar out to the corridor, suffused now with blood-colored sunset light filtering through a distant oval window.

As Caesar followed the handler toward the elevators, the latter said, “Be thankful you were born a chimp, my friend. I’ve been here four years and that section still makes me sick.”

Caesar wished he dared speak his enraged thoughts.
Yes, it sickens you. But you still work for them.

Instead, he accepted another banana with a feigned chitter of pleasure.

When the elevator doors opened, Morris preceded Caesar into one of the oversized cars in which he had been lifted to the No Conditioning amphitheatre. Like the other car, this one had thickly padded walls—and some additional telltale signs to show that, despite its calm, scientific atmosphere, the Ape Management Center was still a place that inflicted hurt on animals fresh from the wild.

One of the wall pad sections was torn, spilling out foam-wool stuffing. And on parts of the rear wall and floor, Caesar saw a dried stain. His sense of smell identified it immediately as ape urine.

A terrible scuffle had occurred in this car today. An animal had been so beaten and terrorized that he’d lost control of his bodily functions . . .

Anger simmering again, Caesar realized that the car had stopped sooner than he expected. A check of the indicator showed the numeral three lighted, not B-1, where his original cage was located.