En route from the dissatisfying public display of sentiment at the arena, Zira paused on the threshold of her home to give further vent to her chagrin. Cornelius, dutifully following behind her, allowed her to continue. He had learned a long time ago that in dealing with a female, a male has no recourse but to give her tongue free rein. Cornelius was a very intelligent young chimpanzee, as well as a scientist. He also set great store by Zira’s intellect—and heart.
Zira was still fuming in an undertone as they reached the front door of their habitat.
“If I had any sense of scientific purpose, Cornelius, I shouldn’t be cutting up the healthy heads of humans. I should be dissecting the diseased brains of gorillas to find out what went wrong.”
Cornelius smiled. “And how would you put it right?” He opened the door for her but she paused, striking herself on the breast. Her cute little face was puckered up in a scowl.
“Wet-nurse their babies on the milk of chimpanzees. The milk of kindness. At least when our child is born, it won’t be breast-fed on bile.”
Cornelius chuckled and pushed her gently into their house. Zira flounced in, still angry, heading for the kitchen. Cornelius took off his shoes, settled himself in an easy chair and groped for his pipe. The interior of their home never failed to fill him with a sense of comfort and well-being. They had wooden table and chairs, framed pictures included the gilt portrait of the two of them on their wedding day. An open archway in the living room led into Zira’s kitchen where she cooked and baked so many fine things. All in all a very domestic hideout for a pair of chimpanzee scientists. Cornelius sighed, thinking about that and what Zira had said, as he sat back in his worn old chair.
“The trouble with us intellectuals, my dear,” he said as he filled his clay pipe, “is that we have responsibility but no power.”
Zira didn’t answer him. She had already put on her white apron, taken out a China bowl and a box of ready-mix, and with a fork was stirring up some sort of batter. He could already smell the ingredients of something.
“I think I’ll make chocolate icing. Do you like chocolate? No—you don’t. Well, I do.”
Cornelius frowned. Perhaps she hadn’t heard him. He tried again.
“And if we did take power into our hands, we’d be as bad, or worse, than Them.”
She’d heard him, all right. Mixing furiously, her next words had absolutely nothing to do with chocolate icing.
“I don’t agree. They’re a genetic accident. A mistake of nature. The gorillas are cruel because they’re stupid. All bone and little brain…”
“Ssshh!” Cornelius begged. “My dear. I wish you wouldn’t talk like that. Somebody may hear you.”
Zira snorted and Cornelius sighed in despair.
It was at this precise moment that Nova emerged from the tiny curtained alcove to the left of the living room. Behind her, Brent swayed, tall and shadowy in the dimness of the aperture. Nova stood stock-still, her eyes fastened on Zira, hoping for the best.
“Nova!” Zira blurted, as if she had seen a ghost.
Cornelius came up out of his chair, as startled as his wife.
“What are you doing here?”
Knowing the girl could not speak, Zira’s eyes went to the figure of Brent whose face she could not yet identify in the shadows.
“Taylor—” she began, a sound of hope in her voice.
“My name isn’t Taylor,” Brent spoke up. “It’s Brent.” He stepped into the light of the room. But Zira and Cornelius had recoiled, almost as if he had struck them. They were doing a double take of wonder.
“You talked!” Zira gasped, looking around the room as if she expected some sort of trick.
“Impossible,” Cornelius agreed.
Zira stared at Brent. Her tiny eyes marveled. She shook her head, Nova almost forgotten in this fresh miracle.
“In a whole lifetime devoted to the scientific study of humans, I’ve found only one other like you who could talk.”
Brent nodded. “Taylor,” he said. His eyes roved the room, fearful.
“Taylor!” Cornelius echoed. “Is he alive? Have you seen him?”
“Where?” Zira pleaded. “Where? Tell us!”
Brent stared at them, still everlastingly confounded by the image of apes who could speak English as plain as he could. But he was adjusting. If this was lunacy, then so be it. They were all at least on the same wave length. Talking about Taylor—there was something reassuring about that, mad as it was.
“I don’t know where,” he faltered. “I’m trying to find him and the longer I’m here, the less I’m beginning to care.” He held his hand against his damaged shoulder, wincing. Nova hung back, staring at the people who could talk, but somehow looking happy that things were being accomplished. Brent smiled at her, faintly.
“We loved Taylor,” Cornelius said proudly. “He was a fine, a unique specimen.”
Brent reacted to that almost violently. His face flew from Cornelius to Zira and then to Cornelius again.
“And if it had not been for Zira,” Cornelius continued passionately, “he’d be here still—a stuffed specimen, with glass eyes, in the Great Hall of the Zaius Museum. Like his two friends.”
“Like his two friends,” Brent echoed slowly, suddenly realizing the monstrous truth of what had happened to Taylor and the others if all that he had seen and heard was true. “I don’t plan to stay quite that long. Look, can you give us some food, water, and a map, so I know where I’m going.”
Zira nodded, looking at his red-stained shoulder. “Your arm also needs some care.” Without another word, she went out through the curtained doorway.
“I’ll get the map.” Cornelius walked to a cabinet in one corner, plucked a rolled scroll of paper from it and brought it back to the table where he spread it out for Brent’s examination. Nova hovered at Brent’s shoulder, silent, wide-eyed. Cornelius, his brows beetled in concentration, began to explain the curious red and blue markings on the map. Brent was fascinated.
“Here is our city. And here, to the north, is where Zira and I…”
His wife had come back, laden down with a cloth, water pitcher, a bowl, forceps and sticking plaster. As Cornelius continued, Zira deftly began to treat Brent’s shoulder. When she sprinkled the wound with some sort of powder, Brent gasped. The powder stung.
“What’s that damn stuff you’re using?” he barked. “You wouldn’t know if I told you,” she said placidly. “Just relax. Among other things, I’m a trained vet.”
“Thanks,” Brent apologized. “Go on, go on…”
Cornelius indicated the map. “We last saw Taylor with Nova going through the gap between this lake and the sea.” He pointed. Brent saw the spot and nodded. A dot in that hellish wasteland…
Zira said, “They were heading deep into the territory we call…”
“Yes, yes—I know,” Brent said. “The Forbidden Zone.”
For a moment, there was a pindrop of silence. Then Zira finished dressing Brent’s wound, putting the bandage into place. Her face was expressionless. Only her eyes held a glow.
“Who told you that?” she asked.
“Your glorious leader back there.” Brent jerked his good shoulder in the direction of the arena.
Before Zira could respond, there was a knock on the front door of the house. Everybody stiffened, right where they stood. Then, as the knocking became louder, there was sudden activity. Cornelius jumped for the map on the table, Brent moved back to the curtained alcove, Zira hustled the petrified Nova in the same direction. She drew the curtains and shut them both in, out of sight. Cornelius rolled up the map quickly, taking it back to the cabinet. Zira calmly straightened out her skirt. “Open the door, Cornelius,” she said.
“But—” he indicated the medical apparatus, frightened.
“Open it.”
Cornelius spread his hands and did as she told him.
Dr. Zaius came bounding into the room, walking springily for an ape of his great years. His shrewd old face was furrowed with sternness. There was an air of great urgency about him.
“Dr. Zaius!” Cornelius stammered. “We were just going to cat…”
Zaius brushed by him, wagging a cane.
“Not before I’ve talked some sense into that headstrong wife of yours. Where is she?”
“Well—she’s…”
Desperately, Cornelius turned. He was shocked to find Zira lying down on the divan, which was located near all the medical apparatus. He blinked. Zaius blustered by him, going toward Zira on the couch. The cane clumped along the floor.
“Good day, Dr. Zaius,” Zira said wanly.
Zaius stopped fuming, concern immediately etching his face.
“What happened? Has there been an accident?”
Zira sat up. Suddenly it was clear that a large patch of sticking plaster was affixed to her right cheek. A fresh one.
“Cornelius hit me,” Zira said.
Her husband gaped down at her, openmouthed.
“For my bad behavior at the meeting,” Zira explained to the good doctor. She seemed almost contrite.
Zaius grunted. “I don’t blame him.”
Zira nodded. “I don’t resent it.” She touched the plaster gingerly. “But his nails need clipping.”
Cornelius stifled his outrage but Dr. Zaius had already put the family quarrel behind him. He waved his cane angrily.
“Enough of this nonsense! Are you so blind, you two psychologists, that you are unaware that we are on the brink of a grave crisis? You heard the Ursus speech…”
“Militaristic tripe!” growled Zira, her old self again.
“Sh-h-h!” Cornelius begged, agonized.
“Perhaps,” Zaius said evenly, studying Zira. “But eleven of his gorilla scouts, on reconnaissance in the Forbidden Zone, have vanished.”
“Well, it serves him right,” Zira said huffily.
“Zira,” Cornelius pleaded, once again, for reason, not feminine contrariness; it was an old song to Dr. Zaius.
“And Ursus,” he continued, “is determined to have his revenge. All-out war if need be.” Turning, he walked to the table. His reddish-haired body shone in the light of the room.
“Ursus now has the ‘incident’ he needs to go on a rampage of conquest.” He looked at the tip of his heavy wooden cane.
Cornelius started. “But that is appalling! When Zira and I first unlocked the secrets of the Forbidden Zone, you intervened at our trial for heresy.”
“I know.”
“The price we paid for our freedom was the vow to you never to disclose our discovery that Man evolved from the Ape…”
“But to remain silent,” Zira interrupted, “while this bully, Ursus, is permitted to destroy everything in his path, is no longer possible.”
Dr. Zaius’ face looked suddenly older as he fixed his gaze on his younger colleagues.
“You want to stand trial once more for heresy? No, my children, this time I may not be here to plead for clemency.”
Zira looked worried. “Where are you going?”
“Into the Forbidden Zone with Ursus.”
Zira’s expression changed to one of scorn, unhidden. “Another manhunt, Doctor?”
Zaius was not unaware of her feelings. Or her convictions.
“The disappearance of these scouts is more than the work of a mere man. Someone or something has outwitted the intelligence of the gorillas.”
Zira snorted. “That shouldn’t be difficult.”
“Zira,” Cornelius groaned. “Please…”
Zaius ignored her.
“As Minister of Science, it is my duty to find out whether some other form of life exists. Some new threat to our ape civilization. Before Ursus barges in and destroys the evidence.”
Zira shook Cornelius off. “But if these creatures, or whatever they are, are so intelligent, why shouldn’t they be able to live with us in peace and harmony?”
“For the same reasons,” Zaius said, wearily almost, for he had argued the very point with Zira so many times, “that man could not live in harmony, even with his own kind. He abused his own intelligence and destroyed his own world. We apes have learned to live in innocence. Let no one, be he man or some other creature, attempt to corrupt that innocence.” When he saw the smirk on Zira’s face, he bridled. “Why? Is innocence so evil?”
“Ignorance is,” Zira said firmly.
“There is a time for truth,” Dr. Zaius said sternly.
“And the time is always now,” Zira reminded him Dr. Zaius stared at her.
“Bah!” he exploded, thumping his cane on the wooden floor; Cornelius shuddered, closing his eyes.
Zira shook her head. “Are you asking me to surrender my principles?”
Dr. Zaius frowned. But his eyes were kindly, glittering.
“I am asking you to be the guardians of the higher principles of science in my absence. I am asking for a truce with your personal convictions in an hour of public danger.”
“And you shall have it,” Cornelius interposed strongly, brooking no protest from Zira. “Or I—shall hit her again, Dr. Zaius.”
“Let’s have no violence, Cornelius,” Zaius muttered as he moved toward the door. “Now, I’m relying on you both.”
“And we’re relying on you, too,” Zira reminded him, getting the last shot in.
Dr. Zaius paused on the threshold of their house.
“If I should fail to return from the Unknown, the whole future of our civilization will be yours to preserve—or destroy. So think well before you act.”
“Goodbye, Doctor,” Zira said, warmly enough, “and good luck.”
From their wide window they watched him patter down the walk until his familiar figure was out of sight, cane and all. Cornelius heaved a sigh of gratitude and then went to the alcove to summon the girl and Brent out of hiding. Zira was contemplative, thinking over what Dr. Zaius had said. He had looked and sounded so tired…
Brent was white-faced and weak. Nova held on to him, close at his side. Zira stirred herself.
“Come on, let me finish this and get you out of here.”
“Yes,” Brent growled. “Get me out of here—please. I’ve seen the delicate, ‘humane’ way they treat humans around here. I don’t much care for it.” He took Nova’s hand and squeezed it.
“Have you a horse?” Zira asked.
“Up in the scrub,” Brent admitted.
“I’ll have to get you another set of clothes—the kind fit for humans like yourself. You’ll pass. And get rid of this.”
She pointed to his ID tags. She went to Nova and removed Taylor’s tags from her throat.
“And get rid of this too—” But Nova grabbed the tags back, belligerently almost. Zira shrugged.
“If you are caught by the gorillas,” Cornelius offered, “remember one thing.”
“What’s that?” Brent demanded.
“Never to speak.”
“What the hell would I have to say to a gorilla?”
“But you don’t understand,” Cornelius protested.
“Only apes can speak. If they catch you speaking, they will dissect you. And they will kill you. In that order.”
The irony of such a proposition did not escape Brent, tired and confused as he was. He grinned wearily.
Zira had returned with the human clothing which she passed on to Brent. He was not surprised to find it no more than rags; a pitiful loincloth and smocklike thing. But he took them all the same. He wasn’t so stupefied that he couldn’t recognize kindness when he found it. These two chimps were Okay Joes.
“Cornelius is right,” Zira agreed. “Be very careful and get out of those things you are wearing as soon as you can.”
Brent nodded, arms full, took Nova by the hand and led heir to the door of the house. There he stopped and turned.
“Thanks,” he said, simply. It was all he could think of to say. He had never had hospitality from an ape before.
“Thank us by finding Taylor,” Zira said softly, a light shining from deep within her gimlet eyes.
“If he’s alive,” Brent said.
There was no more to be said.
He left, taking Nova with him.
Leaving behind Zira and Cornelius to ponder again the remarkable peculiarity of humans who could speak.
The Lawgiver would have revolved on his stone base if word of that had ever come to him.
The figure of a Great Ape reading a book would not have understood—or believed—such a phenomenon.
He who was supposed to know all things.