“No,” Brent caught her. “It’s too late.” He drew her back again. “We’ve got to go on.”
But she pulled her hand free of his, shocked by the unknown. Rendered horrified by things she couldn’t understand. Brent tried to appeal to her, ignoring that she couldn’t follow his words.
“There’s a high intelligence at work in this place. Good or bad. That sound we heard is either a warning, or some kind of directional device. I don’t know which. But it doesn’t matter. The truth is—they know we’re here!”
She didn’t understand a word of it, of course, but his tone was so positive and reassuring that she almost smiled. But she continued to retreat, backing away slowly.
“All right,” Brent said. “I’ll go up first.”
And Brent continued his climb, while Nova watched anxiously. He hauled himself high enough up to grip the octagonal frame. He swung himself in, lost from view for a full second. Nova whimpered aloud. But his head reappeared, silhouetted against the vent. He beckoned. “Don’t be afraid. It’s empty. Come on.”
She reached up to him, climbing. He caught her hand and lifted her. He was very strong. Within seconds, he had swept her up from the strange world of the white tunnel, into the vent, and then they were both suddenly—standing in yet another maze of unreality. On the white floor of a white-walled, down-sloping tunnel, also octagonal in contour. The released air was funneling out of this down toward another white dot of far-off illumination. Another light of some kind. Brent did not hesitate. Pulling Nova, he led her toward the next outlet. The last exit to . . .
Where?
They emerged from the tunnel.
The glaring world of a new daylight invaded their aching eyes.
A cold, unreal sunlight.
And Brent stared.
And Nova shuddered against him. Helpless and afraid again.
For Brent, the universe had once more turned over.
His intellect dissolved into a thousand more little pieces.
They were on the outskirts of a city.
City.
If he could have imagined a place that a conceivable nuclear war in the year, say, 1990 might have devastated and then become a refuge of survivors trying to evade fallout, this would be that place. How else to account for the parts of a 2000-year-old original structure that now greeted his eyes? His and the girl’s.
He saw twentieth-century brick, stone and concrete, corroded sewer signs, showing through the basic foundations of a metropolis of predominantly white architecture, and the interior decor of a twenty-second-century catacomb complex scooped out of ancient foundations. Narrow streets, more like white corridors, twisted and turned between buildings with windowless walls. There was an unearthly emptiness and nakedness, a lack of ornamentation and color. It was as if a world of impersonal stone greeted them.
“Are we in a city?” Brent whispered. “Or a cemetery?”
Nova stared at him, taking her eyes away from the dead metropolis. She still couldn’t understand his words but she had become very sensitive to his moods and emotions. Fear had made them companions.
Wordlessly she slipped her hand into his.
Brent couldn’t take his eyes away from the dead city.
It was a stone monster out of his wildest nightmares.
At the Research Complex in Ape City, the scarlet-clad minister had lingered to listen to a heated discussion between Minister of Science Dr. Zaius and General of the Armies Ursus. Though the minister was also an orangutan, it was very clear where his sentiments lay. Zaius felt as though he was boxed in by enemies.
“Supposing they turn out to be our superiors?” Zaius was reinforcing his point.
General Ursus unrolled a map, his expression pugnacious.
“Their territory is no larger than ours. We shall not be outnumbered.”
“I was not referring to their numbers,” Zaius said patiently. “My supposition concerned their intelligence.”
Ursus stared at him, his gimlet eyes cold.
“Then your supposition was blasphemous, Dr. Zaius.”
The minister nodded grandly, solemnly agreeing.
“The Lawgiver has written in the Sacred Scrolls that God created Apes in His own image to be Masters of the Earth. We are His Chosen,” he reminded Dr. Zaius.
Ursus glowered at the doctor.
“Do you doubt that?” Ursus snapped.
“What I doubt,” Zaius said softly, deftly parrying, “is your interpretation of God’s intention. Has He ordained that we should make war?”
Ursus rose, pointing with the partly unrolled map.
“Has He ordained that we should die of starvation?”
The minister chimed in again. “Has He ordained that we should make peace with the Human race?”
Zaius brushed that aside. “They are mere animals.” It is Zaius who says this.
Ursus snorted, stabbing at the map with a black forefinger. “And these?”
“They are unknown,” Zaius said.
“A godly Ape,” the minister said unctuously, “is not afraid of the unknown.”
“I,” said Zaius icily, “am not afraid. I am circumspect.”
Ursus jeered slightly, assuming an air of politic joviality, but Zaius was not fooled; there were still those gimlet eyes.
“Still not too circumspect to ride with me on the Day?”
Dr. Zaius seemed to consider that very carefully.
“No.” He too rose to his feet. “As a scientist I am also curious.”
Zira and Cornelius had worked far into the night on their human guinea pigs. Cornelius took copious notes while his wife ambitiously strove to make one of the caged subhumans learn the power of speech. Zira had worked long and hard on one particularly clever human, making lip gestures and sounds through the bar of the cage. The male human had mimicked her lip movements, heroically.
“Ma-ma-ma-ma—” Zira tried and tried again.
The human had tried—but no sounds came forth.
In frustrated fury, Zira had finally given up, turning away in disappointment.
“Oh, Cornelius,” she whimpered. “If I could teach one of them to talk . . .
Cornelius nodded sympathetically.
She had set herself an impossible task to perform.
Teaching a human anything was never easy.
8.
SPECTERS
There was a stone fountain in the center of the incredible graveyard-city. Brent did not notice it until, magically, it began to spout water. A steady, spurting stream which suddenly and gracefully began to spiral before his eyes. The tiny rippling sounds it made drew him and the girl like a magnet. In the harsh glare of the white stone city with its atmosphere of total antiseptic reality, they both began to drink. Nova lapped at the fluid greedily, like a thirsty dog. Brent drank more slowly, finally straightening when he was sated. Nova continued to drink. Brent watched her.
And then . . .
Abruptly, methodically, with no conscious thought of the movement, he reached down, placed both hands around Nova’s neck and forced her head beneath the surface of the pool surrounding the stone fountain.
Nova jerked spasmodically, her entire length stiffening. Brent tightened the grip of his hands, digging into the soft flesh of the girl’s neck. He pressed down, mercilessly.
The water rippled, coalesced, shimmered, shattered and rippled into a million extensions of unreality.
Brent increased his hold. Nova spluttered, fighting. Trying to fight back. Drowning . . .
Through a dim haze, Brent saw his own reflection in the agitated waters. Two reflections, really.