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.
SEVEN
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.