With Nova silently waiting, he opened the cage door, swung out over the roadway and clambered atop the wagon’s roof. The gorilla head of the driver, hunched over his reins, was visible just above the forward lip of the cage. Brent edged forward on his hands and knees, mindful of the jarring passage of the wagon along the bumpy roadway. His hands tightened about the long leather leash trailing from his dog collar. His eyes were not quite sane as he reached the driver. Then he jumped. Like a savage who knows that it is the victim’s death or his own. The gorilla head jerked violently. Great paws came up, fighting the hands from behind that were garroting with the leather leash. Brent was remorseless. He put all his mad weight into his arms and twisted savagely until the gorilla slumped lifelessly against his body. Brent stepped down and kicked the driver’s inert form out of the seat. When the body hit the roadway, disappearing in the wagon dust, Brent could have screamed in exaltation. Even killing felt fine and good in this godawful place!
Like getting some of your own back.
With the fever singing in his veins, he drew the horses to a halt. There was no time to lose. They couldn’t run around this infernal country in an open wagon. Not one of their wagons, at any rate.
Brent cut the two horses loose with a knife he found on a rack in the driver’s seat. Then he went back to see about Nova, but she had already jumped out of the cage to join him. Her eyes were excited but still frightened. He patted her hand, motioned to the horses, keeping a wary eye on their surroundings for any signs of the gorilla cavalry. They weren’t out of the woods yet. It was far too early to send up any skyrockets or do victory jigs.
This land still belonged to the Almighty Ape.
Quickly they mounted the horses and galloped away. It might have been Brent’s imagination but he would have sworn he could hear a great hullaballoo starting up behind them. As if their escape on horseback had been spotted, as if it was already known that two humans had outwitted their gorilla captor. Brent didn’t dare turn around and look. He had had enough of horror and fear in one day to last him a lifetime. Two lifetimes, in or out of the Hasslein Curve in the bend of Time. Now he only wanted out—the sooner the better.
He kept galloping his horse until the terrain became extremely rocky, stacked with gigantic boulders that towered as tall as buildings. Nova remained as close behind him as possible. He was ever conscious of her long-haired figure just out of reach. Whatever she was, the girl was a skillful rider, having no difficulty at all keeping up with him. Brent was grateful for that, too. He needed somebody to hold his own hand, never mind his being the only shoulder to lean on.
The high rocks loomed before them.
The sun was going down, hiding behind a shelf of ledge that seemed to fill the world. Blood-red rays tinged the landscape.
Brent rode on.
So did the girl.
Turning and twisting their mounts, they sought to find a passage between the mighty rock upheaval spread before them. A forest of stone.
They were blocked now by what must have been a recent landslide of earth and rock. The horses shied, whinnying, fighting for a level flooring for their hooves. Dismayed, Brent ordered the girl to dismount, for they could navigate now only on foot. That was obvious. No horse could have found a path through this obstacle of rock and stone and earth. There was no definable trail.
Brent and Nova found an opening between the boulders and the rocky obstacles. Stumbling and staggering, the horses behind them, they found their thorny path leading them to a shallow stream of running water. Around them on all sides the great rocks sprung like monolithic giants in a wilderness of stone.
Not too far behind them, peering from the crest of the high rock shelf, a ring of silhouetted apes watched the man and the woman work their way along the stream between the boulders.
The gorilla militia looked down, their helmeted heads and hunched shoulders menacing and unreal in the half light now darkening the planet of the apes. Their rifles and bayonets gleamed.
Brent and Nova had reached the Forbidden Zone.
A part of it, at least, where no gorilla dared tread.
Or could.
Without risking the disasters of the Unknown.
7.
BRENT AND NOVA
They had emerged from the maze of rocks.
To Brent it was like walking into two thousand years of time. He had to blink against the unreality of what he now saw. What Nova must be seeing, though the girl couldn’t possibly have understood any of it. For Brent it was the single act of entering a long tunnel. He strained his eyes to see, to comprehend. But he couldn’t. He had stepped into a tableau from which there was no withdrawing. He had stepped into Yesterday—and what was worse, he had also stepped into Tomorrow. The Tomorrow he had never known.
He and Nova were in an underground subway station.
There was no mistake.
Slivers of gray daylight filtered feebly through dark upper gratings, dimly illuminating the long, corroded tracks stretching ahead between damp, glistening platforms. The stone and wood of the platforms were cracked and fissured with age.
Brent was too stunned to speak. Nova trailed along behind the barrier of his body. Brent could only stare all about him, trying to adjust to the shock of some indubitable truth struggling to make itself known to his intelligence.
He began to walk, like a somnambulist, conscious only of a drip, drip, dripping sound somewhere. Like water falling eternally on stone. The walls above the platforms, ancient, rotting, now revealed a pitiful sign of some kind. Brent ran his fingers along the wet, scummy wall, walking hypnotically, following the steady rhythm of drip, drip, drip. Nova followed him. Brent paused. The texture of the wall had subtly changed. Brent stared up the wall, at the sign. It mocked his sanity and his reason:
QUEENSBOROUGH PLAZA
The drip, drip, drip sounded very near now. Brent craned his neck higher.
A glittering stalactite, dangling from the vaulted roof of the subway cavern, looked as sharp as any sword. Brent shuddered, his eyes falling away. Until he saw another rust-eaten sign: NEW YORK IS A SUMMER FESTIVAL. And further on, another: KEEP YOUR SUBWAY CLEAN. Until, at floor level, he saw row upon row of menacing, cold stalagmites. Brent stared from the signs to the stalagmites, his courage dissolving. This wasn’t a subway, it was a cave—a hall of a mountain king where you’d expect to find trolls and witches and warlocks—! His senses reeled.
“God Almighty!” his voice crackled hollowly in the empty, dead tunnel. “This was my home! I lived and worked here once! What happened? Did we finally do it? Did we finally really do it?”
His voice rang off the barren lifeless walls. There was no answer for him. Just as there hadn’t been for Taylor.
“What does a man do when he comes home—and there is no home?” He shook his head in disbelief as his own question echoed foolishly in his own ears. Then quietly, trying to absorb this incredible unreality, he turned to Nova, who could only stare back at him in confusion, not knowing what he was thinking or feeling.
“It’s a damn nightmare!” Brent shouted at her, letting go. “A damn nightmare—a damn nightmare!”
Nova, seeing his misery, timidly touched his face.
The long subterranean labyrinth echoed and reechoed with his cries of frustration.
The temple was small and austere. It was exactly in the center of Ape City. There was no altar. Against a plain backdrop of stone stood the revered statue of the Lawgiver. The Great Ape was still holding his book for all Time itself. Below the idol stood an orangutan minister, clad in scarlet. Before him, listening to his invocation, knelt Dr. Zaius, General Ursus and the balance of the ape hierarchy. Like man who had come after them, the apes appealed sometimes to a Higher Divinity for success in projects about to be undertaken. Superstition, Religion and Faith was the theological end for all living creatures. Or so it would seem.