Beneath the Planet of the Apes - Avallone Michael (бесплатные книги полный формат .txt) 📗

And the Negro did not open his eyes.

“Tell us about the apes, Mr. Brent,” the fat man said in a loud, clear voice.

The Negro’s eyes blinked open.

Brent released Nova, suddenly. She slipped from his grasp to the stone floor, sprawling in a lifeless spill of arms and legs. Brent stared down at her dumbly, appalled.

“Tell us about the apes,” the fat man repeated his request.

Brent fought to regain his mind; a compound of bewildered horror and returning intelligence. He knew he had to talk but somehow he also knew he must lie. Anything to save Nova from a possible death and the Bomb from potential activation. These people, whatever they were, no matter how intelligent and advanced, were all mad! Mad!

Shrilly, he found his voice. Anything to keep the Negro from closing his eyes again.

“The apes are a primitive, semiarticulate and underdeveloped race whose weapons have not progressed beyond the club and the sling!”

“You’re lying,” the fat man interposed, “and we know it!”

Caspay spoke up. “The ape scouts had rifles, Mr. Brent.”

Brent said nothing to that. Wearily, the Negro closed his eyes.

Brent raised a brutal foot above Nova’s insensate body. Within him rockets exploded, pain flashed, terrible ideas and thoughts took tangible shapes and forms.

His chest was on fire. Still he struggled against bringing his foot down to smash that lovely, defenseless figure.

“They should fall . . . an easy prey . . .” he gasped, “to stamp on the many peaceful weapons at your dispose . . . of her with your foot on her belly and stamp . . . GET OUT OF MY HEAD!” he snarled at the eyes-shut Negro who loomed above him.

The fat man spoke again when the Negro reopened his eyes.

“Tell us again about the apes, Mr. Brent. The first time—was not quite true, was it?”

“How do you know?” Brent raged at him. “How do you know?”

Quickly he knelt beside Nova, cradling her head in his hand, his senses all whirling, convoluting, pinwheeling riotously.

From behind the inquisitors, the wall threw up more projections. Taylor again. Taylor stumbling. Taylor heroically lost . . .

Nova, coming to in Brent’s arms, saw the wall from her position on the floor. Five images of Taylor, in red, white, blue, green and purple, sliding into identifiable focus. Her eyes widened, her lush mouth tried to form the name, “Tay-lor.” Brent could not see or understand her. He was too concerned with the terrible thought that he might have harmed her. Suddenly she lifted a feeble hand, trying to point at the far wall.

Simultaneously, the inquisitors lowered their eyes. The wall images vanished.

Brent saw only the bright white nothingness when his own eyes sought what Nova was seeing.

Caspay smiled ingratiatingly.

“Now—what may we hope for in the way of help?”

“Nothing,” Brent muttered. “Unless you set us free. Me—and her.”

Caspay’s smile hardened subtly.

“You are free, Mr. Brent. Free to do what we will.”

Mendez the Twenty-Sixth made a motion with his hand.

“Now,” he commanded.

The fat man said, “Tell us about the apes, Mr. Brent.”

Brent took a long pause. He looked at Nova, looked at the council, and then shrugged helplessly.

“The apes are marching on your city,” he said quietly.

A great silence descended on the Chamber of Interrogation. The five robed figures digested the information, each to his own intensity. The opposite wall came alive again with varying degrees of color.

Brent hugged Nova to him, glad only of the fact that she was still alive.

That they both were.

He could feel her heart beating like a bird’s against his chest.

Ape City was aquiver with the sounds of an army in motion. Riding together at the head of long columns of mounted horsemen and rolling gun carriages, were General Ursus and Dr. Zaius. Behind them, the tramp of feet, the pound of horses’ hooves and the clatter of arms sounded through the streets and roadways of the settlement. The Grand Army of the Apes was on the march at last. Trooping past the house of Zira and Cornelius, taking the same uphill country route to the Forbidden Zone as had Brent and Nova. Ursus was in his glory. Bemedaled, befitting a military monarch, Ursus was in the full panoply of his being. Zaius, thoughtful and a trifle sardonic, rode at his side, musing to himself on the pomposity and pitfalls of self-imposed delusions of grandeur. He was sure Ursus was riding for a fall. But one, unfortunately, that might take Ape City with it! And all the important work that Zaius and his colleagues had labored for years to bring about.

As they rode by the house of Cornelius and Zira, Zaius dared not hazard a look at their intelligent faces. He knew what the expression on those faces would be. Rueful and scowling!

The Grand Army moved along, clattering, jubilant, eager for an engagement, a test of its skills. General Ursus’ horse fairly pranced. The general was all smiles and superiority. Sure of Gorilla Might and Gorilla Power. The pompous idiot!

From the window of their domestic castle, Cornelius and Zira were indeed witnessing the spectacle of Might on the Move.

Zira was disgusted, as always.

“Dr. Zaius is with him. Some people’s convictions are about as deep as a mild case of mange.”

“They have to show unity,” Cornelius argued. Not too strongly.

“So should the chimpanzees.”

“But, Zira,” Cornelius protested. “We’re too few. We’d be cutting our own throats. How can we take any initiative, while—” he gestured toward the rolling gorilla army trooping past their home, “they’re here.”

They watched as the rear columns of Ursus’ forces passed the house and receded up the hill, going away, disappearing into the horizon. Zira snorted, her cute face puckered.

“Has it occurred to you that tomorrow—they won’t be here?”

Cornelius looked at her.

Their eyes locked.

A patient, knowing smile curled Zira’s mouth.

Cornelius swallowed nervously.

It was pretty obvious what his adorable, firm-minded little wife meant. What she had always meant, since the very beginning of unrest.

Revolt!

Miles up the road, moving briskly in broad sunny daylight, the Grand Army was making good time. Ursus, Zaius, a bugler, the vanguard and vanguard commander, had rounded a corner on the outskirts of Ape City, to be confronted by a sight not to Ursus’ liking. Or Zaius’ for that matter. Being the only non-gorilla in the group, Zaius was keenly affected by the spectacle of a chimpanzee student demonstration.

Half a dozen earnest, outspoken young chimpanzees were squatting directly across the line of march, sitting in the roadway, blocking the advance of the Grand Army of Apes. Ursus growled menacingly in his deep chest. The two demonstrators in the center of the pathetically valiant little group were holding aloft a banner on which the paint-scrawled plea GIVE US PEACE was clearly visible and advisory. Ursus’ brow darkened. Zaius feared the worst.

“Halt,” Ursus commanded in an undertone to the bugler.

The primitive horn blared a tinny signal which was picked up and relayed by successive buglers all down the column of gorillas and guns. The column came to a full stop some twenty yards from the little knot of demonstrators barring the roadway.

Ursus, almost chidingly, smiled down at the chimpanzees.

“Get off the road, young people.”

The “young people” continued to sit, ignoring him and his army, obstinately and sincerely contemptuous of Ursus and all he might do in retaliation. Zaius’ eyes narrowed.

Ursus wheeled to the vanguard commander, braking his mount.

“Get them out of the way!” he bellowed.