“Wouldn’t that be the virus?”
“No, a disease doesn’t have a face unless you give it one, and everyone is giving it a different face. The fringe right blames the government. The left says it’s the multinational corporations to blame. I’ve heard the claim that it’s God’s punishment for our hedonistic ways—it started in San Francisco, you see. I’ve heard that it’s Gaia, the Earth Mother, punishing us for pollution, or that it’s the virus that killed the dinosaurs, and that it was frozen in polar ice until global warming let it out.
“No, there are too many theories,” he said. “We need a common story.”
“And what would that be?” Patel asked.
“Damned if I know,” Dreyfus said. “Although knowing the truth might be a good start.”
Thank you, Maurice signed, before dipping his fingers into the soft flesh of the durian. I was very hungry.
You’re welcome, Koba acknowledged, feeling a prickle of some emotion he didn’t recognize. It felt good, but he wasn’t sure he liked it. Or better put, he wasn’t sure he could trust it. He had never been given anything that hadn’t been taken away.
Except pain.
Maurice ate with a deliberation that was hard to understand, as if each taste of the food was important to him. As if getting it into his belly quickly so that no one else could take it wasn’t the main objective.
Maurice noticed Koba watching, and offered him a finger full.
Try.
Koba took the durian doubtfully and placed it into his mouth. It smelled bad. To his surprise, however, the taste was good. A little like a rotten banana.
I see you remembering, Maurice said. Eyes go funny. You shake.
This happens to you? Koba wanted to know.
To me, yes. To all of the apes that breathed Caesar’s mist.
The mist makes us remember?
Makes us smarter, Maurice said. Being smarter makes us remember.
Koba thought about that for a moment. He had known something else was happening to him, without being able to say what it was. Smarter? For him, that word had to do with learning tricks, or using sign. And now that he thought about it, he was using sign differently than he used to. Better.
Not true of big caterpillars, he told Maurice.
Big caterpillars?
From zoo.
Maurice’s throat suddenly swelled. Koba wasn’t sure what it meant. But it felt dangerous, and he skipped back a bit.
Don’t call them that! Maurice said. They are apes, like you, like me. Not as smart maybe, not know sign maybe, but still apes. Apes together—strong. Like Caesar says.
Koba gaped, taken aback by the usually gentle ape’s show of anger. The big caterpillars were apes?
But of course they were. They just hadn’t been taught sign like he had. But they could learn it, as he had. Now that it was pointed out to him, it seemed so obvious, and he felt stupid for not understanding earlier.
Apes together strong, he signed, feeling a sort of heat go through him. He remembered riding on top of a rolling machine as they approached the big bridge, Koba side by side with Caesar, Maurice, and Buck—the gorilla who died saving them all from Jacobs. He remembered that feeling. Together.
Caesar says this? he asked. Why?
Because it’s true, Maurice replied.
Yes, Koba said. Caesar is right. I understand now.
He wasn’t sure he did, but the concept left him almost gasping. It wasn’t just about respect for Caesar, loyalty to Caesar—it was about respect and loyalty to all apes. Even the ones who couldn’t sign.
All of his life he had felt almost as if he had a weight on one side of him that made him walk crooked. That weight was all of the things humans had done to him, and the hatred that came from that. For the first time in his life, he suddenly felt the possibility of a burden on his other side, too—one that would balance him, let him walk straight.
Even the possibility felt good.
What do you remember? he asked Maurice.
I was circus ape, Maurice said. I did tricks.
I did tricks, Koba said. Not for circus. For little pictures.
Not understand.
Koba tried to explain. After a while, Maurice scratched his head.
We had little screens in our prison, he said. Had small humans. Sometimes apes. Maybe I saw you.
Why did they do this? Koba wondered. Make us do tricks for them, wear clothes?
Humans think apes funny when they act like stupid humans, Maurice explained.
Why? Koba asked.
It took so long for Maurice to answer that Koba thought that he had refused to do so, or had forgotten the question, perhaps lost in a reverie of his own. But finally the orangutan lifted his hands.
I think maybe they hate themselves, he said.
After a time, Koba left, and Maurice was once again alone. Beautifully, wonderfully alone. He ate a little more of the durian, feeling warm inside, more content than he had felt in a long time. He listened to the forest, the quiet breath of the wind, to the singing stars of his own thoughts, the questions forming there, elegant connections between this and that thing that he had somehow never noticed before.
The feel of bark on his fingers was a luxury he had never imagined. That was an added thing. But he also reveled in absence. The absence of people looking at him, poking at him, yelling at him.
A deep part of him wanted permanent solitude, and at first—just after they left the city—he had thought to strike out on his own. He could explain Caesar’s vision to Koba well enough, but part of him resisted the idea of living together with so many apes.
And yet it seemed to him that resisting an instinct was sometimes the only way to move forward. To improve. To understand. And there was so much more he wanted to understand. More than that, he owed Caesar his freedom, and all of this, even these small opportunities to be by himself. Whatever else happened, he owed Caesar his support, his presence, anything he could provide.
So he did not mind when he saw Caesar approaching.
A good trick, he told Caesar.
A trick that nearly got me killed, Caesar replied. A trick that won’t work again.
There are always new tricks, Maurice told him.
Caesar seemed agitated. He was better than most chimps at keeping still, but the tension in his body betrayed him. Still, Maurice waited for him to speak. It wouldn’t do to hurry him.
While I was hiding, I heard the humans talking, Caesar said finally.
Maurice focused his attention on Caesar’s account of the disease, and how humans thought apes had something to do with it.
If they think we have this sickness, why come after us, Caesar asked.
Maurice thought somehow there might be a connection to the question Koba had asked him a little while ago—the one about why humans made apes act like foolish humans—but the connection was dim in the constellation of his new thoughts. He would have to work on that later, when he was alone.