Hasslein nodded agreement. “Ordinary citizens often are not asked about such things. Who won your war?”
“It wasn’t our war,” Zira protested, her speech slurring. She gulped more wine. “It was the gorillas’ war. They’re always fighting about something. Chimpanzees are pacifists. We never did see an enemy.”
“Oh.” Hasslein filled her glass again, then took a seat and stretched his feet out in front of him. “Hard day today, wasn’t it?”
“A little,” Zira agreed. They chatted about the museum for a while, as Hasslein continued to keep her glass full.
“Surely you know which side won the war,” Hasslein said finally.
“Neither side won,” Zira said. “The stupid fools. We told them . . .”
Hasslein frowned. “Just what did happen, then?”
“When we were in space . . . we saw the light. A blinding bright white light, it was horrible. The rim of the world seemed to melt! The whole earth must have been destroyed. Dr. Milo thought it had been. Then there was—I don’t know. Then we were here.” She lifted her glass again and drank more wine, spilling several drops on the table and drooling more down her chin.
“I feel very sleepy,” she said. “Magnificently sleepy. I think I shouldn’t drink any more.”
“Probably you’re right,” Hasslein agreed. “Tell me, Zira, what was the date in your time?”
“Thirty-nine . . . fifty-five.”
Hasslein whistled. “That’s a long time from now. Nearly two thousand years. How far back did you have records?”
“I don’t know. Cornelius would have better information. We had some records, copies of human records, that go back into your past, Dr. Hasslein. But we didn’t have details of anything much over a thousand years old.”
“I see. You are getting sleepy, and here comes Dr. Dixon. He’ll see you get to bed.” Hasslein retrieved his cigarette case as Lewis came in.
“You’re all right?” Lewis demanded. “I was told she had a fainting spell.”
“Nothing to be worried about,” Hasslein assured him. “But perhaps you don’t know. Madame Zira will be a mother shortly. I’ll leave you with your patient, Dr. Dixon. Good afternoon.”
Lewis watched Hasslein put his cigarette case in his pocket and leave the suite. He watched until the scientist was gone, and then turned to Zira, noting the nearly empty champagne bottle, and Zira’s slack smile. Just what had Hasslein learned? And what would he do with the knowledge? Lewis Dixon was suddenly afraid.
THIRTEEN
It was warm in Washington, far too warm, and the president wished he were back in the Western White House in California. If it were left to him he’d move the whole government out there, except it couldn’t really be done. All those bureaus and bureaucrats—of course, he could do without a lot of them, but not without the embassies. He sighed again thinking about California, then buzzed his secretary.
“Who’s next, Mary Lynn?”
“Dr. Hasslein, Mister President.”
“Oh.” He sighed again. What would Victor want this time? He seemed so upset about the chimpanzees. “All right. Send him in.”
Hasslein came, into the oval office and stood, straight and still, in front of the president’s desk. Except for the military people, Hasslein was the only man who stood quite that way, and the president often wondered if the scientist were a frustrated soldier.
“What can I do for you, Victor?”
“I made a tape last week, Mister President. While I interviewed the female chimpanzee. I’d like you to listen to it.”
“All right.” The president got up from behind the big desk and came around to the couch on the other side. He motioned Hasslein to a chair. “Can I get you anything, Victor? A beer, perhaps? I’ll have one myself.”
“No, thank you, sir.” He set the small tape recorder/player on the coffee table and waited until the president had opened the beer he took from the refrigerator under the end table.
“Just how did you get that tape?”
“With a clandestine recorder the CIA people gave me. A cigarette case.” Hasslein started the tape. It began with his own voice—“How long have you known you were—uh, going to have a child?” Zira answered. Eventually it ended.
The president drank the last of his beer. “So?”
“So?” Hasslein stood and paced angrily. “So Mister President, we have evidence that some day talking apes will dominate the earth. They will live in a civilization, if you can call it that, with very little science and no technology. Humans will be dumb animals, probably mistreated. And in less than two thousand years those apes will destroy the earth, killing themselves and all humans as well.”
“I doubt we will be in office then,” the president said.
“Really, sir, I am serious.”
“So am I, Victor. I have an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution, and to preserve and protect the people and nation. I don’t see how these apes are much of a threat to that oath—or, for that matter, what I am supposed to do about a theoretical threat to the earth that doesn’t mature for almost two thousand years.”
Hasslein continued to pace. He said nothing.
“Come now,” the president said. “Victor, what the devil do you expect me to do about it? What can we do about it?”
“Mister President, can apes talk now?”
“Eh? Of course not, Victor.”
“After thousands—millions—of years of evolution, they can’t talk and don’t appear to be able to learn,” Hasslein said. “Had you asked me before those three appeared in that capsule, I would have said it was absolutely impossible for apes to learn to talk at any time within the foreseeable future. That it would be at least hundreds of thousands of years before they learn.”
“Yet we have two who can.”
“Precisely!” Hasslein smacked his left fist into his open right hand. “Because these two apes are genetically different! Yet, I expect, they can interbreed with other apes. They can transmit that distinguishing characteristic, the ability to learn speech, to their progeny. If that gene is distributed among apes, then all apes will eventually have the ability to speak.”
“Oh, come now, Victor, that’s a paradox! You’re saying that they come from the future to our present; they interbreed with other apes; and by interbreeding with them, they create their own future! That if they didn’t come here to be their own great-great grandparents, they couldn’t exist at all! You don’t really believe that, do you?”
“Yes, sir, I’m afraid that’s precisely what I believe.”
“Impossible! Rubbish!”
“No, sir.” Hasslein’s eyes blazed as he glared at the president. “I can prove it. What you think of as a paradox, as a violation of the laws of causality, only appears that way because you have a very distorted view of causality to begin with. Now, let me show you.” He took a sheaf of papers from his pocket and laid them on the table. “Look here—”
“Oh, no,” the president protested. “Victor, I never got past college algebra! You take those equations and put them back in your pocket.”
“But I can’t prove it to you without them.”
“We’ll assume you prove it, all right? But what do you want me to do?” He looked at the pale blazing eyes. “No! You really think we can alter the course of the future?”
“Yes, sir. Their future is not necessarily our future. Even though it is just as real. I can—”
“I heard you on the Big News show. Not that I understood you. So you want me to alter what you believe may be the future by slaughtering two innocents. Three, now that one of them’s pregnant.” The president nodded grimly to himself. “It’s an old tradition with kings, isn’t it? Herod tried it. He wasn’t successful, either. Christ survived.”