Horrified by the prospect of impending bloodshed, Caesar was not aware that someone had shut the side-hinged tailgate of the van until he heard it clang and lock.
“You better roll,” a man yelled from behind the truck. “Sounds like they’re ready to rip each other apart.”
As if in answer, the van’s power plant kicked over. With a low hum, the vehicle moved forward. The sudden lurch disoriented the orangutans again, sent them toppling over one another. The biting and cuffing grew worse.
Caesar watched with mingled pity and disgust, but his mere presence was enough to stop the fighting. One of the young apes floundering on the cage floor caught sight of Caesar. Snuffling loudly, he let go of the foot of the orangutan he had been about to attack, and his savage cries changed to shorter, less strident grunts.
The van took a curve. The noises of the first ape drew the attention of a few others, then of all the tightly packed prisoners. One by one they struggled to the side of the cage nearest Caesar. Suspiciously, an immense orangutan reached out between two bars. Caesar remained absolutely still.
The orangutan plucked Caesar’s checked shirt, inadvertently opening a long rip. Still Caesar displayed no sign of displeasure, or even a reaction. Other ape hands groped to touch and examine his breeches. Obviously these were wild apes not yet subjected to that conditioning of which Caesar had heard. They behaved in a primitive way, totally unlike the servant apes he’d glimpsed in the city. That gave Caesar a feeling of mastery, a sense of confidence, as he remembered another of Armando’s cautions. He began to unbutton his checked shirt.
The apes watched with primal curiosity as the van swayed along. Caesar glimpsed buildings flashing past above the open truck bed as he bundled his shirt and breeches in one hand, threw them high and away, over the side. He listened for human outcries, heard none. He reached for the topmost of three heavy bolts securing the door on the side of the cage. One by one he released the bolts. Then he drew the door open just enough to slip through.
When the apes realized his intent, they crowded to the opposite side of the cage. Caesar had all the room he needed to slip his hand around and refasten the bolts.
His fear was all but gone now. The round eyes and hunched shoulders of the apes cringing in front of him told him that they recognized, albeit in a primitive, nonvocal way, that Caesar was different. They were the ones who were afraid.
All at once the wheels bounced over a bump, throwing the apes off balance. They squealed as they floundered. Then they goggled at the one among them still upright: Caesar, who had merely reached out to grasp a bar for support.
Despite these pathetic creatures being his brothers, Caesar couldn’t help the flash of contempt that crossed his face. The apes, cowering grotesquely on the reeking, offal-littered straw of the cage, showed that they knew a superior being had come into their midst.
Caesar’s presence calmed—or cowed—the other apes in the cage. There were no further disturbances for the remainder of the trip.
He speculated about the van’s destination. Whatever it might be, he was probably better off than he would have been roaming the hostile, unfamiliar city. He worried about Señor Armando, though. Surely his failure to return was due strictly to some unexpected entanglement with the authorities. Surely no harm had come to him . . . No, at this moment he was probably free again, waiting for the service tunnels to clear. With all the shocks and horrors of the past twenty-four hours, any other possibility was too grim for Caesar to contemplate.
His excellent time sense told him the journey lasted about half an hour. Evidently they were driving into the thinly populated green spaces surrounding the metro complex. He recalled Armando telling him that, once, such areas had sprawled with ugly row houses and huge shopping malls. But with the rise of powerful centralized government, strictly enforced law and order had been restored to the cities, and a rebuilding process had begun in the decayed central cores.
Gradually, a reverse migration took place. Mile after mile of emptied suburban slums were leveled, and returned to parklands and agriculture. City dwellers now called such exurban areas “the provinces.”
Caesar’s keen nose caught the scent of greenery and sweet earth. The sight of the crystal stars reminded him of more pleasant times in the circus—
But this brief sense of security disappeared the instant the van reached its destination.
Oval lamps whipped past overhead. The glares and flashes started the other apes gibbering and snorting again.
Then the van drove down an incline. Caesar would have tumbled against the others if he hadn’t gripped the bars tightly.
Abruptly the van braked, went into reverse, stopped again. Over the top of the side panel Caesar could see only a giant concrete pylon, half in shadow, and the faint glow of distant lights. Then he heard men’s voices, and a motor’s low purr.
The rear gate of the van, which he couldn’t see, opened with a clang. The motor revved, the cage jerked upward slightly, then began to travel horizontally.
As it cleared the back of the van, riding the prongs of a forklift, Caesar saw men in white smocks peering up at the new arrivals. He managed to get a reasonable picture of his new surroundings. The van had arrived in a vast truck bay underneath what appeared to be a large building. Each corner of the concrete expanse overhead was supported by one of those giant pylons rising from shrub plantings at ground level, about eight feet up from the floor of the bay.
The forklift rolled past the front of the van. As the driver leaned out of the cab to hand a delivery ticket to one of the white-smocked men, a female voice blared over a loudspeaker. “Shipment five-oh-seven I-for-Indonesia ex Borneo now arriving at number two gate.”
The voice and the acceleration of the lift truck started the orangutans gibbering and salivating again. Caesar made a few such noises himself, deeming it protective action. By pressing close to the bars, he was able to see the loading dock toward which the forklift was rolling. The white-smocked men below were following the vehicle. Caesar noted with alarm that the men carried short whips, leashes, and those metallic prodding devices he’d observed in the city. To his left, looking out onto the dock, he saw communications operators behind a large window set into a wall. Above the window a glowing sign read: Ape Management Facility 10—Reception.
In that large room behind the window, lights winked on banks of equipment, messengers arrived and departed, and three women bent over microphones, monitoring the arrivals outside. Caesar heard another amplified voice: “Shipment five-oh-nine A-for-Africa ex French Cameroons now arriving at number four gate.”
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.